Aditi Bhaduri 

In the summer of 2004, I met a woman from Bangladesh- let's call her Roopsha - living discreetly with her 8-year-old son in an almost hidden galli in Barasat. This West Bengal city lay not far from the Bangladesh border. Later, I found many women from Bangladesh were living quiet, discreet lives, melting into the local Bengali population. They were all Hindus, as was Roopsha.

Roopsha, however, stood out with her slightly haughty air and privileged economic status. While many other women were working as domestic helpers in the houses of the more affluent in the locality, Roopsha had no such need. Her husband, a government employee in Bangladesh sent her money each month so she and her son could lead comfortable lives.

This was novel considering that West Bengal and indeed many other parts of India are awash with economic migrants from Bangladesh, who often enter the country illegally. Yet it was intriguing. Why would a woman lead a life in a different friendless land, away from her husband and native hearth when there was no marital discord? Roopsha’s story, as I found out, was that of many of the other women.

The violence against minorities, in particular the Hindu community, unleashed in Bangladesh as the Bangladesh National Party took charge in the country, had forced many of these women, almost all in their 30s and 40s to cross over to India foremost for physical safety. The violence was also majorly directed at women through sexual violence, abductions, forced marriages, and conversions. That is why Roopsha’s husband had thought it prudent to send his 32-year-old wife to India. Since he often travelled out of town for work, he was worried about leaving her alone at home with her son. 

Protest in Tripura, India against attacks on Minorities in Bangladesh

This was the same narrative of Phalguni, who had crossed to India with her teenage daughter. Phalguni, then 37, was a widow, with two teenage daughters. They lived next door to her brother-in-law’s house. After the BNP's victory, the local goons, affiliated with Begum Khaleda Zia’s party, or its ally the Jamaat-e-Islami of Bangladesh, began to terrorize the unmarried girls in the village. Phalguni's brother-in-law advised her to go away to India with her daughters as he may not be able to protect them.

Women in the smaller towns and rural areas farther from Dhaka were especially vulnerable. 

Bangladesh has long been witnessing radicalization of society. Therefore, what we are seeing today with the continued attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh is not a fringe movement but a culmination of a long process. We had not noticed because of the mindless romanticism with Bangladesh, a country born in the crucible of genocide and ethnic cleansing. 

The Jamaat-e-Islami, which had allied with the Pakistani Army during Bangladesh's brutal liberation war, remains a potent force with a strong presence amongst the youth and student groups and is strongly allied with the BNP - the other major political party in the country. The first attack on Hindus - on Durga Puja celebrations – occurred in the very first year of Bangladesh’s birth in 1972.

The process of Islamization of the country took root when General Ziaur Rahman, through a military proclamation, amended the 1972 Constitution and inserted “Bismillah-Ar-Rahman-Ar-Rahim” (In the name of Allah, the beneficent, the merciful) in the preamble. The principle of secularism was removed from the Constitution in 1977 through the Fifth Amendment. In 1988 Islam was declared the state religion. 

In society, this was manifested through the Arabization of the culture. Noted Bangladeshi journalist and avowed secularist Saleem Samad noted that political speakers begin with the salutation Bismillah-Ar-Rahman-Ar-Rahim and end it with Allah Hafez, a change from the more traditional "Khuda Hafeez".

Bangladeshi Hindu priest Chinmoy Das who has been arrested

In its more malignant form, this change was an attack on  "bauls" - the wandering minstrels of Bengal whose syncretism is legendary, on jatras - the Indigenous Bengali street plays, cartoonists, writers, and artists. And - on religious minorities, particularly Hindus, who constitute the largest group though it has dwindled from 24 percent to 8 percent.

The rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan gave yet another fillip to Islamism in the country. During the Soviet Jihad, many Bangladeshis travelled to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets, who together with India had helped birth the country. The slogan "Amra hobo Taliban/ Bangla hobe Afghan' (We will be Taliban, Bangla (desh) will be Afghanistan) became popular in the 1990s and openly chanted in Bangladesh. After its rout, many of the jihadists returned to Bangladesh and helped spread the radical ideology.

The first significant attack on Hindus in Bangladesh occurred in 1992 during the demolition of the Babri Masjid in India, when the BNP government, led by Khaleda Zia, was in power. Further large-scale attacks occurred after the Awami League’s defeat in the 2001 elections. 

Though many of the Jamaat's leaders had been imprisoned and even executed on charges of war crimes, other groups like the Hefazat-e-Islam sprung up as a front. The Hefazat, launched in 2010 to "protect Islam" from the secular ruling Awami League Party, was spurred particularly by a proposed policy to confer equal inheritance rights to women.

It was the same Hafazat that had mounted the protests during Prime Minister Modi's visit to Bangladesh in March 2021 to celebrate the golden jubilee of Bangladesh’s Independence and the birth centenary of its founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The protests left 12 people dead across different districts, with attacks on Hindu establishments. 

Even sadder has been the growing radicalism and communalism across Bangladeshi society, something, we in India, again turned a blind eye to. Every time attacks on Hindus took place, it was shrugged off as the exception, the handiwork of fringe elements. So tempting was the idea that Bangladesh, born out of Bengali nationalism would remain secular and democratic, that those who thought otherwise would be castigated as being right-wing. Yet, secular Bangladeshis did not fail to see the steady co-opting of Sheikh Haseena - herself a devout Muslim but avowed secularist - and her Awami League by this phenomenon. 

So embedded is Islamism in Bangladeshi society, that the Awami League also began making concessions to them and adopting their practices to keep itself secure. The government's 2018 Digital Security Act targeted bloggers, journalists, and political activists but not religious radicals or communal activists whose hate posts went viral on social media. 

In the meanwhile, instances of violence against Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, and Ahmadiyyas kept increasing.

Rights groups claim that since 1972 none of the perpetrators responsible for sectarian violence against religious minorities, vandalism of temples, desecration of deities, arson, and plunder, have been prosecuted. 

The attacks have occurred on the flimsiest and sometimes non-existent grounds. For instance, on 30 October 2016, after a Facebook post attributed to an illiterate Hindu fisherman, hundreds of religious zealots launched a coordinated attack on six villages inhabited by Hindus in Nasirnagar, Brahmanbaria. Hindus have often been arrested for fake Facebook posts and hurting the feelings of Muslims.

Bangladesh's Communist Author Santholi Haq meeting ISCKON Chief Charu Ranjan Das in Chittagong

According to Samad "Fake posts on social media are often engineered by Islamic bigots backed by masterminds who have a political colour of the ruling party launch sectarian violence. Hindus are visible minorities in cities and towns in Bangladesh. In the villages, they are mainly artisans, fisherfolk, and traders. The zealot’s soft targets are the temples, Hindu neighbourhoods, and their businesses in commercial districts and markets."

In 2021, a young Hindu man from Noagaon, Shalla Upazila, allegedly made a Facebook post criticizing Mamunul, a local Hefazat leader, who was opposed to the sculpture of Bangabandhu. After this, a mob with improvised weapons attacked the village. According to the police, 70-80 houses were vandalized in the incident. The Hindu man was detained the same night to calm the Hefazat supporters, said Police Officer-in-Charge Nazmul Haque. Many local Hindus fled their homes to save themselves as followers of Hefazat entered the village, ransacked, and looted many houses.

This violence continued right through 2022, peaking during the Durga Puja season - the main religious festival of Bengali Hindus. 

Such violence had prompted Prof Robaet Ferdous of Dhaka University, an outspoken defender of religious freedom, to say, “It’s not a failure of the local administration, police or the ruling party to protect the Hindus, but I see the collapse of the society during a national crisis, which contradicts the legacy of the glorious liberation war in 1971 which promised to establish secularism, pluralism, and freedom of expression in Bangladesh.”

According to Rana Dasgupta, Secretary of the Hindu Buddhist Unity Council, "... a culture of impunity has been created in Bangladesh for attacks on Hindus. Those involved in these attacks have never been prosecuted, and as a result, it continues...." The proportion of Hindus in Bangladesh is eight percent of the total population, but according to Dasgupta appointments and promotions were not done in that proportion.

Before the 2018 elections, the General Assembly of Bangladesh Hindu-Buddhist-Christian Unity Council presented various demands to all political parties, including the formation of a National Minority Commission, the formulation of a law for the protection of minorities, the formulation of a law against discrimination, and the formation of a minority ministry. Yet, nothing came of it. In the 53 years since gaining independence, the country has failed to establish any minority protection law, minority commission, or minority ministry. 

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The chickens have now come home to roost. In the initial days of the mayhem after Sheikh Hasina's sudden flight from the country, the violence on Hindus was rationalized as being a spontaneous outburst of anger at the Awami League and its supporters. India's expressions of concern were scoffed at, alleging Hindutva alarmism, fake news by the Indian media, and so on. The continuation of violence, directed particularly and systematically against the Hindu community in Bangladesh, however, tells a different tale. History will record that it all occurred under the watch of a Nobel Peace Laureate.