Greater Bangladesh

Greater Bangladesh (Bengali: বৃহত্তর বাংলাদেশ, romanized: Brihôttôr Bangladesh), or Greater Bengal (Bengali: বৃহত্তর বাংলা, romanized: Brihôttôr Bangla) is the irredentist ideology of Bangladesh to inevitably expand its territory to include the Indian states that currently has, or historically had, large populations of ethnic Bengali people. These include West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, and Jharkhand to the west, Sikkim to the north, and the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur, and Nagaland to the east. Greater Bangladesh would naturally therefore take on the more inclusive title of Greater Bengal, as her people would be united under a common ethnicity and heritage based on language rather than one based on religion.

The first and only real attempt at forming such an entity was made in 1943 by the Indische Legion under Bengali Nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose, de facto leader of the Azad Hind movement. Such endeavors, however, failed to ultimately materialize due to Germany and Japan’s loss in World War II.

A related term is "West Bangladesh", which is used by Bharatiya Janata Party leaders to allege that Bengali Hindu regions in India are being Islamised and becoming more similar or amenable to integration with Bangladesh through illegal immigration and political maneuvering.^{[1][2][3][4][5]}