New Delhi: India needs to “break up Bangladesh” to gain access to the Chittagong sea port, Pradyot Kishore Debbarma, the founder of BJP’s coalition partner in Tripura TIPRA Motha party, said Tuesday, joining the growing chorus against Bangladesh chief adviser Muhammad Yunus’s remarks on India’s “landlocked” Northeastern states.
Addressing a ‘High-level Roundtable on Sustainable Infrastructure and Energy’ in Beijing on 28 March, Yunus said that Bangladesh is the “only guardian of the ocean” in the region due to the landlocked nature of India’s Northeast. A two-minute-nineteen-second video clip of his speech was uploaded on Yunus’s official social media accounts.
“Seven states of India, eastern part of India, called seven sisters. They are a landlocked region of India. They have no way to reach out to the ocean. We are the only guardian of the ocean for all this region. So this opens up a huge possibility. So this could be an extension of the Chinese economy. Build things, produce things, market things, bring things to China, bring it out to the rest of the world. That’s a production house for you. That’s the opportunity we should seize,” Yunus said.
Apart from Debbarma, Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma also condemned Yunus’s remarks, calling them “offensive” and “provocative” and reflective of “deeper strategic considerations and longstanding agendas”.
Member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Economic Advisory Council Sanjeev Sanyal too questioned the premise of Yunus’s statement that came at a time bilateral relations are frosty over attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh and New Delhi’s decision to give shelter to ousted premier Sheikh Hasina.
Interesting that Yunus is making a public appeal to the Chinese on the basis that 7 states in India are land-locked. China is welcome to invest in Bangladesh, but what exactly is the significance of 7 Indian states being landlocked? https://t.co/JHQAdIzI9s
— Sanjeev Sanyal (@sanjeevsanyal) March 31, 2025
Debbarma, who is the titular head of the Manikya dynasty that governed the erstwhile kingdom of Tripura for centuries before its accession to India in 1949, said India’s “biggest mistake” was to let go of the Chittagong port in 1947 despite the people in the hills dotting the region wishing to be a part of India.
“Rather than spending billions on innovative and challenging engineering ideas we might as well break up Bangladesh and have our own access to the sea. The Chittagong hill tracts were always inhabited by indigenous tribes which always wanted to be part of India since 1947. There are lakhs and lakhs of Tripuri, Garo, Khasi and Chakma people who reside in Bangladesh in terrible conditions in their traditional lands,” Debbarma posted on X.
Time for india to make a route to the ocean by supporting our indigenous people who once ruled Chittagong so we are no longer dependent on an ungrateful regime . India’s biggest mistake was to let go of the port in 1947 despite the hill people living there wanting to be a part… pic.twitter.com/IhyFbTZDQ3
— Pradyot_Tripura (@PradyotManikya) March 31, 2025
The Chittagong port is located 75 kilometres from Tripura’s southern tip of Sabroom where stands the India-Bangladesh Maitri Setu over the Feni river. In March 2024, PM Modi had inaugurated a land port in Sabroom and said it will facilitate the movement of passengers and cargo between India and Bangladesh “as through the new port one can move directly to Chittagong port of Bangladesh which is 75 kilometres away as opposed to moving to Kolkata or Haldia port in West Bengal which is about 1,700 kilometres away”.
Debbarma said that India’s “biggest mistake” was to “let go” of the port in 1947 despite the hill people living there wanting to be a part of India.
Kanchan Prabha Devi, the mother of the TIPRA Motha founder’s late father Kirit Bikram Kishore Debberma, had signed the agreement that merged Tripura with the Indian union in October, 1949.
Speaking to ThePrint, Debbarma said India must realise that Hasina, who had to flee the country and take shelter in New Delhi in August 2024 following an uprising against her government and party Awami League, was India’s only ally in Bangladesh. “The immediate fear is that insurgent groups operating against India from Bangladesh soil are also getting a fertile territory to regroup now,” Debbarma said.
Meanwhile, Sarma, who also leads the North-East Democratic Alliance (NEDA), the BJP-led NDA’s electoral wing in the region, said Yunus’s remarks underscores the persistent vulnerability narrative associated with India’s strategic Chicken’s Neck corridor, which is a narrow strip of land in West Bengal that connects Northeast India to the rest of the country.
“Historically, even internal elements within India have dangerously suggested severing this critical passageway to isolate the Northeast from the mainland physically. Therefore, it is imperative to develop more robust railway and road networks both underneath and around the Chicken’s Neck corridor,” Sarma posted on X.
The statement made by Md Younis of Bangladesh so called interim Government referring to the seven sister states of Northeast India as landlocked and positioning Bangladesh as their guardian of ocean access, is offensive and strongly condemnable. This remark underscores the…
— Himanta Biswa Sarma (@himantabiswa) April 1, 2025
Sanyal said while it is interesting that Yunus was making a public appeal to the Chinese on the basis that seven states in India are landlocked and China is welcome to invest in Bangladesh, “but what exactly is the significance of 7 Indian states being landlocked?”
Deputy leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha, Gaurav Gogoi too joined in to term Yunus’s remarks as “deeply concerning and unacceptable”.
It is unfortunate that India’s foreign policy has weakened to the point where even a nation whose independence India actively supported is now leaning toward strategic opposition.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently wrote to Bangladesh on the occasion of its National Day,…
— Gaurav Gogoi (@GauravGogoiAsm) April 1, 2025
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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