Bangladesh Could not Forsake the Heritage of Religious Persecution
Nidhu Bhusan Das
“In the
country where violence is done with impunity, the religious minority can never
think they are safe.”
-Bangladesh poet &
columnist Sohrab Hassan
Bangladesh has drifted a long
distance along the path of Islamist fundamentalism, communal discourse and
violence since the tragedy of 15 August 1975 that saw the resurrection of communal
forces in the country.Islamists, it appears, direct and dominate the political
discourse of the country. This indicates the weak state of the secular forces in
the country which emerged as a secular republic through a glorious Liberation
war in 1971.They have so far failed to restore the 1972 Constitution of the
country. Bangladesh could split off from Pakistan but could not forsake the
heritage of religious persecution.
The religious minority Hindus and
their places of worship are often attacked and the community have often fallen
victim to communal violence in the country of 169 million. Silent migration
from the country is relentless and the Hindu population has dwindled to around
10 percent. This year the Durga Puja was jeopardized following widespread
violence by the Islamists. Such incidents are not new. True Prime Minister Sheikh
Hasina has been uncompromising against Islamism and communalism and her Government
was prompt to take action against the culprits.
Community leader Gobinda Chandra
Pramanik told the media that at least 150 Hindus were injured across the
country and at least 80 makeshift temples had been attacked. Authorities did
not confirm the figures. Protests by the Islamists began on 13 October after
footage emerged of a Quran being placed on the knee of a Hindu god during Durga
Puja celebrations. The Islamists would not let the law to take its course but
come out in strength to terrorise the minority community and vandalise their
puja pandals and temples. The minority community makes up about 10 per cent of
the population.
Two Hindu men have been killed in
fresh communal violence in Bangladesh, police officials said Saturday, taking
the number of deaths to six from recent unrest in the Muslim-majority country,
it is reported. The
Anti-Hindu violence spread to more than a dozen districts across Bangladesh.
“One
person was killed and 30 others were injured in mob attacks on ISKCON temple in
Bangladesh's Noakhali on Friday. The incident unfolded in Chowmuhani area where
Section 144 has been imposed to keep the situation under control. It is
with great grief that we share the news of an ISKCON member, Partha Das, who
was brutally killed yesterday by a mob of over 200 people. His body was found
in a pond next to the temple. We call on the Govt. of Bangladesh for immediate
action in this regard," the official Twitter handle of the ISKCON said.
Police said the latest violence occurred in
the southern town of Begumganj when hundreds of Muslims formed a street
procession after Friday prayers on the final day of the puja. More than
200 protesters attacked a temple (ISKCON)
where members of the Hindu community were preparing to perform the last rites
of the 10-day festival, local police station Chief Shah Imran told reporters.
The attackers beat and stabbed to
death an executive member of the temple committee, he said. On the morning of
16 October, another Hindu man's body was found near a pond next to the temple,
district police chief Shahidul Islam told the media. "Two men have died
since the attack. We are working to find the culprits," he added.
Earlier, at least four people were
killed on the day the violence began when police opened fire on a crowd of
around 500 people attacking a Hindu temple in Hajiganj, one of several towns
hit by the disturbances.
Local authorities said they have
deployed extra security including paramilitary border guards to control any
further unrest.On 15 October (Friday) violence broke out in the capital Dhaka
and Chittagong, prompting police to fire tear gas and rubber bullets at
thousands of brick-throwing Muslim protesters.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina met
leaders of the Hindu community on14 October and promised stern action."So
far around 90 people have been arrested. We will also hunt down all the
masterminds," Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said.
The Father
of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was killed in a pre-dawn Army coup
on 15 August 1975. Later on 3 November that year his four confidantes and
national leaders who led the liberation war of 1971 in his name- former
Vice-President Syed Nazrul Islam, former Prime Minister Tajuddin Ahmed, former
Home Minister A H M Kamruzzaman and Captain (Rtd) Mansur Ali - were killed in
Dhaka Central Jail where they had been incarcerated by the ambitious and misled
military leaders.
The Hindu population in Bangladesh has dwindled
progressively since independence in 1971. It is a fact that population of Bangladesh is on the
increase and a reverse trend is evident in case of the Hindus. Not that
the birth rate has decreased and mortality rate scaled up among the Hindus.
Then what could be the reasonable cause for the unnatural / unbiological
decline of the second largest population of the country which fought for
independence from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan with the avowed pledge to
establish a secular state based on a linguistic-cultural nationalism rooted in
the Language Movement of 1952?
The plausible answer is Bangladesh could split off from
Pakistan but could not forsake the heritage of religious persecution. The
heritage may be traced to the Noakhali Genocide of 1946 which made the Hindu
persecution so pronounced. British historian Yasmin Khan in her prize winning
book The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan tells us at least 5,000 Hindus were
massacred, hundreds of Hindu women raped and thousands forcibly converted to
Islam; many more fled to India. Even Mahatma Gandhi’s peace mission to Noakhali
failed to quell the atrocities which continued unabated during his stay. Gandhi
left Noakhali, urging the Hindus there to “Quit Noakhali or Die” (NY Times.
8 April 1947).The same template of persecution is perpetuated by the Islamists
in Bangladesh.
What Gandhi said proved prophetic.
Even after the emergence of Bangladesh, the Hindu population dwindled from
13.5% in 1974 to 8.96% in 2011, a nearly 33% decline. This suggests the prevalence
of a deeply anti-Hindu environment in the country. Besides, on the eve of the second
anniversary of victory in the Bangladesh Liberation War for tenable reasons
the general clemency for the Islamist collaborators was announced. This paved
the way for their rehabilitation and propagation of Islamist ideology vis-a-vis
the nascent secularism in Bangladesh.
True, the Constitution adopted by the
Constituent Assembly in 1972 made Bangladesh a secular democratic republic. The
fundamental rights enshrined in the third part of the constitution,inter alia, promises
equality before law, no discrimination on grounds of religion, right to
protection of law, protection of right
to life and personal liberty and freedom of religion. The noble constitutional
provisions could not come to the rescue of the Hindus because matching actions
were not taken. In contravention of the non-communal provisions of the new
constitution, they retained the anti-Hindu Enemy
Property Act of Pakistan and rechristened it as Vested Property Act in
1974.Bangladesh Government thereby vested itself
with the “enemy” properties previously seized since the 1965 Indo-Pak War and
continued to use the discriminatory law to confiscate the land owned by the
Hindus.
Approximately 1.2 million Hindu
families, or 44% of all Hindu households, have been affected by Enemy/Vested
Property Act. Hindus have been dispossessed of more than 2 million acres of
land. Even after the Restoration of Vested Property Act passed in 2001, land
encroachment involving Hindu land has continued but mostly during BNP
governments. Subsequent amendments of the original constitution made the
religious minorities including Hindus second class citizens and encouraged
atrocities against the Hindus.
In the ruling Awami League there had
been wolves-in- sheep’s clothing that formed and led the puppet Government installed
by the military. So, many avowed programmes and plans could not be implemented
in the war ravaged country right away. Vis-à-vis this situation when Bangabandhu
took decisive steps, forces defeated in the liberation war both within and
outside the ruling party surreptitiously organised the coup and killed the
Father of the Nation and torpedoed the dream of nation.
A
seminal book by Professor Abul Barkat of Dhaka University, Inquiry
into Causes and Consequences of Deprivation of Hindu Minorities in Bangladesh
through the Vested Property Act, published in 2000 shows that the largest
beneficiary of Hindu property transfer in the past 35 years of Bangladeshi
independence were people belonging to Awami League (the wolves-in-
sheep’s clothing).They
grabbed 44.2 per cent of the land. Other grabbers are affiliated with BNP
(31.7%), Jatiya Party (5.8 %), Jamat-e-Islami (4.8%) and others (13.5%). The
greatest appropriation of Hindu property took place immediately after
independence during the first Awami League government (1972–75) and during the
first period of rule of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (1976-1980). The
confiscation of the land broke the economic backbone of the Hindus. So,
migration of the Hindus is the natural consequence.
