 "Dangerous game: Yunus has made Bangladesh a puppet of China and Pakistan")
The killing of Bhabesh Chandra Roy, a Hindu minority leader in Bangladesh from Dinajpur’s Basudebpur village, illustrates the dire condition of the Hindu minority in that country. This is not a one-of-a-kind incident or an inadvertent and isolated one. It explains a pattern and a system of structured persecution. India-hatred is now synonymous with Hindu-hatred.
Hindu monk Chinmoy Krishna Das’ arrest and imprisonment in November last year unearthed the Bangladeshi Kangaroo court and debilitating law and order situation. Muhammad Yunus’ attempt to irk India through his provocative statements on the Northeast in China explains his ulterior motive. He makes Bangladesh a mirror image of Pakistan. Its economy is in complete shambles. Recovery is remote. Socio-economic and political paralysis is beyond repair. Given these precarities, Yunus and his collaborators depend on minority oppression, especially of Hindus, and propaganda peddling.
Bhabesh Chandra Roy’s death marks the exacerbating condition of the Hindus. He was reportedly taken from his home and beaten to death on Thursday. Yunus’ duplicity and crocodile tears on the debilitating conditions of the Hindu minority under the current patchwork government are a mere media show-off and counterfeit publicity of naivety and non-complicity. The octogenarian’s love for power blinds him to throwing the state to the fanatics.
Bangladeshi cosmopolitanism is a textbook reality. The ground reality is phenomenally abysmal. The Hindu demographic nosedive in Bangladesh since 1947 illustrates religious hatred and hegemony. The so-called students’ protest and ousting of Sheikh Hasina, a democratically elected leader, were a well-engineered plan executed with remarkable calculation involving a host of collaborators from the home turf to overseas overseers and investors. Election is no longer a political itinerary of the current unelected dispensation in Bangladesh. Hindu oppression underlines its core occupation. Minority safety is reduced to a mere public pronouncement or decorative statement. Liquidation of Hindu leadership is reportedly its covert strategy.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson categorically stated, “We have noted with distress the abduction and brutal killing of Shri Bhabesh Chandra Roy, a Hindu minority leader in Bangladesh. This killing follows a pattern of systematic persecution of Hindu minorities under the interim government, even as the perpetrators of previous such events roam with impunity.”
Impact Shorts
More ShortsThe message is loud and clear. Unfortunately, the interim government’s hand-in-glove approach has reportedly emboldened the perpetrators. Justice is not served. The perpetrators expand their checklists and commit crimes with impunity. The politically indulgent ecosystem encourages the amplification of oppression against the Hindus. Islamists break all barriers to unleash their religious passion. Their activities were largely undercover because of Hasina’s anti-Jamaat-e-Islami stand. Now they have the leeway to do anything they think fit to expand and establish their cause.
Pakistan has become a role model. The pre-1971 conditions have again arisen. Those forces remained supine after 1971 and prepared the ground. The groundswell during Hasina’s time has metamorphosed into a crushing force. Its nuisance value and street veto have led the country to an irrecoverable position. Fanaticism rules the street. How long would the minority Hindus survive such an unceasing onslaught? The gravity of the situation requires quick reconsideration of the matter. Status quoism will be counterintuitive. Another round of Hindu dispossession will be unavoidable. The thinning minority will find their claims of being in Bangladesh a mere memory. The symptoms are visibly alarming through the tragic death of Bhabesh Chandra Roy.
There are two sides to this seamless aggression against the Hindu minorities. One is diversionary tactics to conceal the interim government’s incompetence and ulterior motives. The other is to fan the flame of religious exclusivity. Yunus’ controversial and provocative statements on India’s Northeast in China conjoin with the dangerous idea of reviving the military airbase in Lalmonirhat (Rangpur Division) with Pakistani and Chinese funding. The proposed military preparedness is to checkmate India’s narrow Siliguri Corridor. It is designed to disable India’s Northeast, inflicting a disconnect. This will jeopardise India’s national security.
Bangladesh suffers from the Shishupala syndrome, annoying India more than it can afford. It has decided to join China in its sinister objective of strategically encircling India. Yunus is a mere puppet. China is the puppeteer. Yunus has also tried to court Pakistan. Bangladesh is playing a very dangerous game. It will have to pay for this sooner than later.
Dr. Jajati K Pattnaik teaches at the Centre for West Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Dr. Chandan K Panda teaches at Rajiv Gandhi University (A Central University), Itanagar. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
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