The cries of Hindus of Bangladesh

Scores of amateur videos recorded on smartphones were uploaded on Facebook, where cries of panic-stricken Hindu
women, girls and children were heard SALEEM SAMAD
Cricket star and former captain Mashrafe Bin Mortaza of the Bangladesh team posted a touching reaction on his Facebook
account, rueing the mayhem and carnage carried out against the Hindu community in Bangladesh over the last few days.
The ruling Awami League lawmaker Mortaza posted a picture of the burning village in Rangpur, where hooligans torched
homes of the Hindu community. The Facebook post says: “Saw two defeats last night. One was the Bangladesh cricket team’s and that
one hurt. The other one was a defeat for the whole of Bangladesh, which tore my heart to pieces.”
Bangladesh has once again plunged into racial riots during the annual Durga Puja festival since 13 October. The hooligans armed
with metal bars, bamboo and batons vandalised, ransacked,  desecrated temples and makeshift Durga Puja sites. They torched
thousands of homes of the Hindu community and looted business establishments in half of the cities and district towns in the country.
“This isn’t the first time that minorities in Bangladesh have come under attack,” Amnesty International’s South Asia campaigner, Saad Hammadi.
“Targeting religious sensitivities to stoke communal tension is one of the worst forms of human rights violation.”
Hindus of Bengal had witnessed the infamous 1946 Noakhali Riot and Kolkata Killings as a prelude to the bloody partition. In 1964 a
sectarian violence erupted in Bangladesh on the alleged theft of hair of Muslim’s most revered prophet Muhammad in Kashmir,
India.
Of course, the genocidal campaign in 1971 by Pakistan military forces, the second such genocide after the Second World War after
that of the Nazis in Germany, also had targeted the Hindus to exterminate them from East Bengal.
Bangladesh Hindu Unity Council @UnityCouncilBD tweeted: “We want the right to practice our religion. We want protection in
our temples. We want [the] protection of Hindu women. We want the right to live in peace in our homeland Bangladesh.” Rana Dasgupta, a lawyer and general secretary of Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council (BHBCUC) said “It is unfortunate that a majority of the grassroots leaders of the ruling Awami League were also seen with the rioters.”
The Unity Council lamented at a press meet in Chattagram port city said they have lost faith in the political leadership for their failure
to protect the vandalism and discretion of Hindu temples and makeshift Durga Puja altar. Well, the rioting occurred when
the civil and police administration apparently did not swing into action, Dasgupta lamented. Scores of amateur videos recorded on
smartphones were uploaded on Facebook, where cries of panic- stricken Hindu women, girls and

children were heard. Most eyewitnesses in social media claimed that the attire of the hooligans was in shirt and
trousers, not wearing caps, sporting beard in kurta and pyjama, traditionally worn by Islamists or Madrassah students.
Months after the brutal birth of Bangladesh, the first Durga Puja festival in 1972 was attacked in capital Dhaka, Chittagong and
elsewhere and police pointed fingers towards the defeated henchmen of Pakistan military
forces.
Everybody believed the story. When intermittent incidents occurred almost every year, civil society, human rights groups and
media paused briefly to review what went wrong with the vision of secularism and pluralism. An estimated 3 million people
were victims of racial cleansing and another 10 million people were forced to become ‘war refugees’ and took shelter in
neighbouring states of India. It was a nightmare for the Delhi government to manage the crisis. Plus hundreds of officers and
soldiers revolted and joined the Mukti Bahini along with tens of thousands of barefoot guerrillas
were recruited from among the  students and farmers to resist the marauding Pakistan military. The bloody war was fought and won to establish an independent Bangladesh based on secularism, pluralism and democracy. In the fifth year of independence,
the architect of Bangladesh Sheikh
Mujibur Rahman was assassinated
in a military putsch and thus the
nation plunged into perpetual
darkness.
Revival of Islamism surfaced and
local henchmen indicted for crime
against humanity and waging war
against Bangladesh were released
after the “Collaborators [of
Pakistan] Act, 1972” was scraped
by a military dictator General
Ziaur Rahman, a liberation war
hero.
Parties propagating religion was
banned in the 1972 constitution.
The military junta amended the
law and allowed Islamist parties to

function. Promptly the Jamaat-e-
Islami, an active collaborator of

the Pakistan military surfaced after
long hibernation with new vigour
and resurgence of political Islam.
In 2001 the Islamist party joined
the electoral alliance with the
rightist party Bangladesh
Nationalist Party (BNP) led by
Khaleda Zia.
Hours after the result of the
unofficial elections were
announced, the hooligans
unleashed a countrywide reign of
terror against Hindus, as well as
opposition Awami League
supporters. Thousands were
maimed and police refused to
register cases against the
perpetrators.

In 1992, violence was unleashed
against the Hindus by Islamists in
protest against the demolition of
the controversial Babri Masjid.
The sectarian violence continued
from December 1992 till March
1993. The 12th-century heritage
Dhakeshwari temple was attacked
during the racial riots.
For 20 years, the persecuted
Hindus, Christians, Buddhists and
Adivasis did not receive justice,
not to speak of compensation.
Also, the Ahmadiyya sect of
Muslims was not spared by
Islamists. The ruling party remain
silent and believes the Islamist
version that the Ahmadiyya’s are
heretic. On every Friday Jumma
prayer, the Islamist march in front
of the Ahmadiyya mosque
chanting slogan to ban the heretics
and shut down their mosque.
Nevertheless, the ripple effect has
begun. And protests are being held
in all educational campuses, cities
major intersections and in front of
the press clubs all over the
country.
The 1971 liberation war veteran
Sachin Karmakar, a retired Mukti
Bahini commented that the
successive governments in a bid to
win the heart of the Islamists on
their side have dug canals and
invited crocodiles for the
protection of their thrones. Now
the hungry crocodiles are chasing
us as their prey?
Saleem Samad is an independent
journalist and columnist based in
Bangladesh, a media rights
defender. Recipient of Ashoka

Fellowship and Hellman-
Hammett Award. He could be

reached at saleemsamad@hotmail.com;
Twitter: @saleemsamad

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Why are Hindus continuing
to cry in Bangladesh? –
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