 "Bangladesh is in the throes of Islamist pogrom against minority Hindus, and our liberals are busy obfuscating reality")
What started as a students’-led ‘liberation movement’ in Bangladesh leading to Sheikh Hasina’s ouster is in danger of losing its legitimacy before the eyes of the world as it appears to have been co-opted, appropriated and hijacked by Islamist fundamentalists who have utilised the ensuing chaos, turbulence, lawlessness and the lack of any governing authority to launch a genocidal campaign against the minority Hindu population.
Ever since the Bangladesh prime minister was forced to flee, resulting in a power vacuum in the eighth-most populous country in the world, images, videos and accounts are streaming in of atrocities against the Hindu minority in Bangladesh, whose numbers have dangerously depleted over decades almost to the point of extinction.
The circumstances are so dire that even India’s external affairs minister mentioned the issue during his statement in both Houses of the Parliament. S Jaishankar told the Parliament that attacks on police, including police stations and government installations are being carried out, “properties of individuals associated with the regime were torched across the country. What was particularly worrying was that minorities, their businesses and temples also came under attack at multiple locations. The full extent of this is still not clear.” He said India is “monitoring the situation with regard to the status of the minorities.”
Given MEA’s proclivity for dry understatements, one can be reasonably certain that the situation is alarming. Led by radical Islamist groups such as the banned Jamaat-e-Islami and its various front organisations and entities, an ethnic cleansing of Hindus is under way across the length and breadth of the country. Hindu temples are being desecrated, business establishment and houses destroyed, torched, and Hindu citizens subjected to targeted killings by murderous mobs going around with ‘lists’.
The Bangladesh Army, now the custodian of all power till a promised interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus takes oath, has been mysteriously missing in action. Law enforcement personnel are absconding, having come under retributive attack from vengeful ‘protestors’, and in the ensuing free-for-all, Hindu properties and places of worship and women have become prized meat for religious fanatics involved in wanton violence.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsHarrowing videos have surfaced on social media that give an indication of the unfathomable cruelty and genocidal nature of the violence being perpetrated on defenceless minorities. One viral video clip shows radical Islamist lunatics inspecting the genitals of a murdered man, possibly lynched to death, and expressing satisfaction that he was a Hindu.
A particularly poignant graphic has been shared on X (formerly Twitter) by Radharamn Das, the vice-president and spokesperson of Iskcon Kolkata, depicting a human figure hanged till death superimposed on the national flag of Bangladesh, with a hashtag #SaveBangladeshiHindus.
At this hour of crisis, minorities in Bangladesh need all the support they can get. In a final act of travesty, Leftists and ‘liberals’ in India – who fashion themselves as defenders of minority rights – instead of raising their voice and calling for an end to the persecution and slaughter, are resorting to either false equivalence or blatant denial of the pogrom.
This motley group, that sheds liberal tears over the ‘state of minorities’ in India – even though on all parameters minority population is thriving in India – have kept their eyes wide shut on the plight of Hindus across the border, and are busy propagating the myth of a ‘secular revolution’.
These liberal elites, many of whom are Hindu by religion, would rather submit to the street veto of violent Islamists to buy peace. They frame themselves as Islam-adjacent, propagate a faux secularism that places the burden of civil amity solely at the doorstep of Hindus and undermine their own religiosity and culture in the hope of an elusive compact with Islamist radicals.
In a monstrous act of moral turpitude, liberal elites who still command an outsized narrative control over India’s public discourse, are playing down or whitewashing the bigotry of the violent Islamists solely because the victims are Hindu.
They are twisting themselves into gordian knots to deny the reality that a religiously motivated violence is taking place next door, that has forced even the European Union (EU) to come out with a statement, and liberals’ sole motto seems to be to somehow prove that the nature of the ‘liberation movement’ is still “secular”.
Violence against Hindus in Bangladesh is baked into the very nature of the country that emerged from the seismic throes of the Partition. According to Minority Rights Group, an NGO, the official 1951 census for East Pakistan put the number of Hindus at 22 per cent of the total population of the province. This number has depleted to 15 per cent in 1991 and in the 2011 census, Hindus dwindled to just 8.5 per cent of Bangladesh population.
Despite a history of ethnic cleansing and sexual violence against Hindu women – exceptionally severely during the Bangladesh Liberation war when the Hindu community was subjected to targeted executions, brutalisation of women in rape camps – it takes brazen hypocrisy to deny the possibility of history repeating itself.
The anti-Hindu attitude is so ingrained in the psyche of this cabal that their members are ready to reject even overwhelming evidence of atrocities in social and tradition media, preferring instead to bury their collective heads deep into the sands of delusion. In their minds, Hindus cannot be the victims. Muslims, even when they are the aggressors, retain exclusive victimhood rights.
Therefore, Indian TV channels that are airing reports of targeted violence are apparently not trustworthy according to some, while for some they are running fake narratives.
Regardless of their denial, the vengeful violence against Hindus, who are perceived to be supporters of the fallen Sheikha Hasina’s Awami League, has got wide coverage in local and international media. The violence started as soon as Hasina fled on Monday and even as protestors were celebrating her ouster.
News agency AFP quoted Rana Dasgupta, who leads an organisation representing minorities in Bangladesh, as saying that houses and shops of minority people were attacked, vandalised and looted in “at least 97 places on Monday and Tuesday” and “at least 10 Hindu temples” were attacked by Monday.
Among the temples targeted, desecrated and burnt to cinders are Iskcon temple in Meherpur, Khulna. Spokesperson Yudhistir Govinda Das was quoted, as saying in Indian media outlets that deities of Lord Jagannath, Baladev, and Subhadra Devi were burnt and three devotees somehow managed to escape.
Others were not so lucky. Local councillor of Awami League Haradhan Roy and his nephew were lynched to death. The grab from a Telegram channel bearing the name of Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, carried the image of deceased men and a chilling message, relaying that 13 Hindu houses and three temples in Rangpur have been “set on fire” and “even one Hindu child cannot be left out”. The post was shared by Sanjeev Sanyal, the EAC to prime minister of India, albeit in his personal capacity, with a line saying: “As a Bengali Hindu and a descendant of refugees, find this particularly chilling.”
According to The Daily Star, a Bangladeshi newspaper, Hindu houses and businesses were attacked and looted in 27 districts on Monday, including the sub-districts of Lalmonirhat Sadar, Kaliganj, Hatibandha, Sadar, Dinajpur district, Khansama, Khulna, Barishal, Patuakhali, Sherpur, Narsingdi, Noakhali and Narail, among others.
“There are no areas or districts left where communal attacks have not taken place. We’re continuously getting reports from different parts of the country about attacks on houses and business establishments… They’re crying, saying they are being beaten up, and their houses and businesses are being looted. What is our fault? Is it our fault that we are citizens of the country?”, asked a desperate Monindra Kumar Nath, senior joint general secretary of the Oikya Parishad (unity council) in quotes carried by The Daily Star.
Religious persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh is systemic, part of documented history and praxis. The scourge intensified in the last few years. According to ‘Ain o Salish Kendra’, a human rights group, at least 3,679 attacks took place on the Hindu community between January 2013 and September 2021, including vandalism, arson and targeted violence, reported BBC.
That the student-led quota agitation will so quickly turn into persecution and pogrom against Hindus should have perhaps been anticipated.
The warning shots were fired when the Hasina government on August 1 banned Jamaat, a subcontinental version of the Muslim Brotherhood that has an exclusivist Islamist vision for the world, a history of violence against Hindus and secularists, and is singularly responsible for radicalisation of Bangladeshi polity. Jamaat, whose registration was cancelled by the country’s Supreme Court in 2013, wasn’t going to walk into the sunset.
The decision to ban the Islamist organization and its student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir, under anti-terrorism law following weeks of anti-quota stir and violence in which hundreds were killed essentially tipped the scale against the Hasina government.
There were two reasons. One, Jamaat, believed to be backed by Pakistani intelligence agency, ISI, pulls greater popular weight than its ally, former PM Khaleda Zia’s BNP. It had been the driving force behind the orgy of violence that shook Bangladesh since July.
Second, and a deeper reason was that the student stir, that gave a layer of legitimacy to the so-called ‘liberation movement’ against Hasina’s heavy-handed rule, can be traced back to the key role played by Islami Chhatra Shibir cadres who had managed to infiltrate influential Universities and educational institutions, from where the instigations for a student-led movement against Hasina’s Awami League government took off. The movement wasn’t as organic as we have been led to believe.
According to India Today, “the main centres of the Islami Chhatra Shibir are Dhaka University, Chittagong University, Jahangir University, Sylhet University, and Rajshahi University. In fact, all the student organisations that won university elections in the last three years won with the support of Islami Chatra Shibir.”
Bangladeshi newspaper The Daily Star reported, quoting campus sources, that “Shibir members started to take positions at Chattogram Government College and Government Mohsin College on Monday evening, just hours after the government’s ouster.” They were joined by Jatiotabadi Chatra Dal, another front organisation, who took control of Chittagong University halls. The plan was set in motion.
This partly explains why the celebration over Hasina’s ouster quickly turned to anarchy and opportunistic pogrom against the Hindus. First, the cops bore the brunt of retaliatory violence. By evening on Monday, various police stations were set on fire by angry mobs bent on revenge, with several policemen either burnt alive or breathing their last in hospitals. At least 29 police stations were attacked all over the country, arms and ammunitions looted while law enforcement personnel fled for their lives, leaving stations unmanned.
In this administrative void, horrific violence was unleashed against the Hindu minorities and their places of worship.
The BBC reported, quoting Avirup Sarkar, a Bangladeshi Hindu, that mobs were making lists of Hindu properties to be attacked. Sarkar’s cousin lives in Netrokona, where a “mob of about 100 people, armed with sticks, stormed the house, smashing furniture, TV, bathroom fittings and doors. Before leaving, they took all the cash and jewellery…” They left with a warning that “You people are descendants of the Awami League! This country is in a bad shape because of you. You should leave the country.”
New York Times quoted Prionthi Chatterjee, a Hindu student in Dhaka, as saying that “Muslims had attacked her family at their home in the southern Bagerhat region, killing her father and leaving her mother with head injuries. ‘My father was an innocent teacher,’ she said in a phone interview, adding that her parents tried to call the army and the police for help but that no one responded.”<
Reuters reported that 200-300 mainly Hindu homes and businesses had been vandalised since Monday, and 15-20 Hindu temples damaged. The nationwide vandalism and that caused destruction to numerous moments, statues, including that of founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, artefacts, and cultural institutions didn’t spare even noted personalities.
Popular Bangladeshi folk singer Rahul Anand’s residence, a vibrant cultural hub that was visited by French president Emmanuel Macron, was torched, valuable musical instruments burnt to cinders. The singer somehow managed to escape with his family members.
What I have painstakingly recounted for you, dear readers, is just a slice. Hindu students who had taken part in the movement against Hasina’s ‘autocratic rule’, now feel betrayed by their colleagues, crying out for help.
The betrayal cuts deep.
One Dhaka university ex-student, Nilay Kumar Biswas, a Hindu, was quoted by Deep Halder in The Print, as saying, “Many Hindus were there in the protests… It was not just about quota reforms then, but an overhaul of the entire system. But today, as communal riots have broken out against Hindus everywhere, the Bangladeshi Hindu is asking a simple question to her fellow citizens: Is this not our country also?”
Even as I type this column late into Wednesday night/ early Thursday morning, reports from fellow journalists are pouring in on social media of armed robbery at midnight by Islamist thugs. A sense of helplessness and abandonment pervades as no police or army are in sight.
And yet amid this desperate tragedy and undeniable evidence of carnage at a mass scale, our liberals are plumbing newer depths of duplicity. Some are posting purported images of Muslims “guarding” temples and virtue-signalling over it without caring to explain whom are they “guarding” it from.
Some are claiming that attacks on Hindus are “isolated”, “exaggerated”, or just a “spin” by Hindu right wing in India.
The liberal anxiety and resultant attempt at coverup of Muslim atrocities against minority Hindus arise from a position of insecurity. Their fear lies in the fact an honest acknowledgement of the truth may lend credibility to the voices of Dharmics and Hindu Nationalists who are pointing to the ethnic cleansing across the border, and that in turn may lead to Hindu political mobilisation in India, which the liberals are desperate to prevent.
Their political survival and sway over power depend on the fracturing of Hindu unity along the lines of caste and creed – the strategy that has been successfully employed by Congress party, the representative of the ancien régime in the recently concluded general elections. Any political consolidation of Hindu votes, albeit over an issue that originates from across the border, is a further blow to their waning influence. Hence the reflexive need to jump on to any narrative where the Muslim can be portrayed as the victim, and the equally reflexive playing down of atrocities when Hindus are under attack from Islamists.
The final stamp of liberalism is earned by paying obeisance to an Islamist cause. Minorities be damned.
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