 "Hindus attacked, Islamism on rise: How Bangladesh is disparaging the legacy of its own founder")
As per media reports, Bangladesh is set to remove the image of the country’s founding father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, affectionately known as ‘Bangabandhu’, from its currency notes. The central bank of Bangladesh, Bangladesh Bank, is stated to have been printing new notes commemorating the ‘July uprising’ in the country—the series of student protests that culminated in the ouster of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, Rahman’s daughter, from power and her eventual exit from Bangladesh.
The so-called July uprising saw a series of violent protests that had the support of vested interests from the West trying to toe the ruling establishment in their line. Awami League supporters, its ideologues, were the prime target of these protestors, who attacked everything that stood for Rahman’s version of Bangladesh. Bangabandhu’s statue was vandalised, and Hasina’s house was ransacked. The hardcore feeling of Islamic jihad that was earlier bottled up came out on the streets. Violent fundamentalist mobs were unleashed upon the minorities, primarily Hindus.
Somewhere, amid plunder and lawlessness, the founding ideal of Bangladesh was lost. Rahaman’s idea of a secular nation, bound together by shared Bengali ethnicity, has been lost, and a resurgence of pre-1971 East Pakistan is apparent, which has doomed the future of not just the minorities but of the whole populace of Bangladesh.
The arrest of an International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) priest, Chinmoy Krishna Das, manifests what has gone wrong in Bangladesh today. Advocate Ramen Roy, who was representing him, was brutally attacked, and his house ransacked by radical Islamists. Roy, battling for his life in the hospital ICU, became the latest symbol of the horrifying impunity that defines minority persecution in Bangladesh. When threats to lawyers escalated, Das was left legally unrepresented in a Chattogram court on Tuesday. Videos circulating online show lawyers openly warning that anyone daring to defend the Hindu monk would face public thrashing. This chilling incident alone lays bare the grim reality for Hindus in Bangladesh today, where justice is not just elusive—demanding it is a risk to life itself.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsThe attack on Roy is not an isolated incident; it is part of a broader, systematic assault on the country’s 20 million-strong religious minorities. The message is clear: Hindus, Christians, and Buddhists are second-class citizens, and their rights can be trampled with impunity. The Yunus-led interim government, far from addressing the violence, remains a passive spectator as radicalised mobs dictate the law. The ongoing wave of hundreds of attacks against minorities, coupled with a deafening silence from the authorities, reveals a nation that has betrayed its founding principles. How much more blood must be spilled before the world takes notice?
Several countries have indeed mentioned it, but their responses remain disjointed and insufficient. The United States has called for the respect of fundamental freedoms, with Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel emphasising the importance of religious and human rights. Meanwhile, the UK Parliament held an urgent debate, with members expressing alarm over the attacks on Hindus and the persecution of monks under the interim government. These reactions, while significant, have been piecemeal, failing to coalesce into the kind of global pressure campaign necessary to hold Bangladesh accountable for its egregious treatment of minorities.
Yunus, hailed globally for his work on poverty alleviation, now stands at the helm of a government presiding over rampant human rights violations. His silence and inaction send a chilling message: that the lives and rights of 20 million religious minorities are expendable. Without coordinated international pressure and the threat of diplomatic consequences, the Bangladesh government will continue to turn a blind eye, emboldening extremists and further eroding the safety and dignity of its minority citizens.
India’s response to the escalating violence against minorities in Bangladesh has been pointed, but it walks a fine diplomatic line. The Ministry of External Affairs expressed “deep concern” over the attacks on Hindus, Christians, and Buddhists, detailing the horrors of arson, looting, and desecration of temples. This rare public statement underscores the gravity of the situation but also hints at the challenges India faces in addressing it without overstepping its diplomatic boundaries.
Historically, India has maintained close ties with Bangladesh, particularly under Sheikh Hasina’s leadership, which saw improved bilateral cooperation in areas like trade, security, and connectivity. However, Hasina’s forced resignation and escape to India amid violent protests have strained relations. India’s suspension of visas for Bangladeshi nationals, save for medical emergencies, reflects the growing tensions.
Hasina’s statement, shared by the Awami League, not only called for the release of Chinmoy Krishna Das but also laid bare the systematic targeting of Hindus. In just three days of chaos following her resignation, over 200 attacks on Hindus were reported, resulting in deaths, sexual assaults, and widespread destruction. The scale of violence is unprecedented, with its roots entrenched in historical patterns of majoritarian oppression. For India, the challenge now is balancing its role as a regional power advocating for minority rights with its strategic interests in ensuring a stable and cooperative neighbour. Yet, as the atrocities mount, mere statements of concern may no longer suffice.
On Friday, a mob attacked three Hindu temples in Chattogram, targeting the Shantaneshwari Matri Temple, Shani Temple, and Shantaneshwari Kalibari Temple. These attacks occurred in broad daylight, with slogan-shouting assailants pelting the temples with bricks, leaving the religious sites damaged and the local Hindu community gripped by fear. The incident is tied to sedition charges filed against a former ISKCON member, which sparked widespread protests and violence. These attacks on sacred spaces are not just acts of vandalism; they are calculated strikes aimed at eroding the spiritual and cultural foundations of a beleaguered minority.
The night of December 3 saw even more devastating violence in Manglargaon and Monigaon East Gunigram, where over 100 houses and businesses belonging to the Hindu community were attacked, looted, and vandalised. A temple in the area was also damaged, with estimated losses exceeding 1.5 million Bangladeshi taka. The trigger? Allegations of blasphemy against Akash Das, a 20-year-old Hindu villager, for a Facebook post—allegations that led to his arrest even before the attacks began. The carnage left countless villagers displaced, fleeing their homes out of sheer terror. The Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Oikya Parishad has condemned these brutal acts and demanded immediate arrests, compensation for victims, and rehabilitation efforts. Yet, the fear that grips these minority communities is not easily dispelled, as the attacks expose a chilling truth: no place, not even the sanctity of one’s home or temple, is safe.
There are videos of even Bangladeshi security forces attacking Hindus after they held protests over a social media post. This comes after a Muslim trader’s alleged derogatory post against ISKCON and Sanatana Dharma.
Amidst the bloodied streets and desecrated temples, Yunus’s remarks about the need for “accurate reporting” and bridging gaps between “reality and media narratives” reveal a grotesque attempt to gaslight the suffering of Bangladesh’s minorities. His choice of words, dripping with indirection, suggests an ugly insinuation that the reports of violence, arson, and murder are exaggerated or fabricated. By focusing on discrediting media coverage instead of addressing the systemic persecution of Hindus and other minorities, Yunus displays not just a failure of leadership but an alarming willingness to trivialise the atrocities unfolding under his watch. This deflection, wrapped in a façade of diplomacy, is a stark betrayal of the very citizens he is sworn to protect, proving him complicit in perpetuating their plight rather than resolving it.
Not to mention the insidious complicity of the left-liberal intelligentsia in our own country, which bends over backward to whitewash the sins of the Bangladesh state. An article in The Indian Express had the audacity to claim, “While there has been anti-Hindu violence in Bangladesh as part of a broader pattern of lawlessness since the collapse of Sheikh Hasina’s government, the violence is not state-sanctioned persecution, especially in comparison to violence against Bangladesh’s indigenous people, Indian Muslims or minorities in Pakistan and Sri Lanka.” This shameful apologia not only downplays the very real and targeted violence against Hindus but also makes utterly baseless and unnecessary comparisons to Indian Muslims, who are not facing anything remotely comparable to the communal terror unleashed in Bangladesh.
Dragging Indian Muslims into this discourse is a deliberate and disingenuous attempt to dilute the gravity of the atrocities in Bangladesh. To equate their experiences with the horrors faced by Bangladeshi Hindus is not only factually absurd but morally reprehensible. It reveals the extent to which certain commentators will go to shield the Bangladeshi government from scrutiny, even at the cost of trivialising the trauma of an oppressed community.
The further attempt to compare the response of the Bangladeshi interim government with India’s handling of its internal issues is a disgraceful exercise in moral equivalence as well. The statement, “Moreover, the Bangladeshi interim government has responded to this violence by establishing a series of meetings on national unity (including with religious leaders) and sending additional forces to secure mandirs across Bangladesh,” reeks of disingenuous propaganda.
What is being presented as an effort to restore order is nothing more than a half-hearted attempt to placate religious leaders, while the real issue—the systemic violence against Hindus—remains largely unaddressed. If the violence wasn’t state-sanctioned, as the article tries to claim, why then does the government need to deploy forces to secure temples in the first place? Is it not the state’s responsibility to ensure that such violence doesn’t occur in the first place?
To then draw a comparison with India is not just an intellectual dishonesty—it is an outright distortion of reality. The violence faced by Indian Muslims, particularly in areas like Sambhal, is not of the same scale or nature as the unchecked, state-ignored near genocide of Hindus in Bangladesh. Moreover, India has an active and vocal media, a strong judiciary, and a robust civil society that, while imperfect, does engage in real-time debates on such issues. Drawing equivalence between the two merely distracts from the brutal reality of what’s unfolding in Bangladesh and shifts the focus away from the responsibility of Yunus and his administration. Instead of grappling with the horrors in Bangladesh, this narrative misleads by suggesting that India is somehow equally complicit in communal violence—when, in fact, it is Bangladesh that remains silent in the face of a full-scale, state-ignored assault on its Hindu population.
During the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in India, hundreds and thousands took to the streets sloganeering, “Say No to CAA”, even though the religious minorities of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh are very much a responsibility of India under the Nehru-Liaquat Pact. However, considering the condition of religious minorities in Bangladesh, we need something far more substantial than the CAA.
The question must be asked: why hasn’t the Indian government implemented the provisions of CAA for the protection of religious minorities from Bangladesh yet? Meanwhile, in Bangladesh, there are voices calling for reunification with Pakistan—a stark reminder of the moral degeneracy that has taken hold in the country. It was the Indian Army that saved Bangladesh from the brutalities of the Pakistani Army during the war for independence. Yet today, Bangladesh’s growing anti-India and pro-Pakistan sentiments only serve to tarnish the legacy of that liberation. It is a deep betrayal, reflecting a dangerous drift away from Rahman’s ideas and the very values that once shaped the Bangladeshi freedom struggle. One can only hope that the Bangladesh government will take real steps to halt the violence, restore peace, and safeguard its religious minorities before it’s too late.
The writer takes special interest in history, culture and geopolitics. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
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