“Whenever something goes down, the first attack will always be on Hindus.” Thus goes the conventional wisdom in the Hindu community in Bangladesh. They are not entirely wrong. It seems that unscrupulous parties are always at the ready to attack the Hindu community as soon as there is the slightest bit of unrest in the country. This happens for a plethora of reasons. They include the general assumption among the anti-Awami forces that Hindus always vote for (or support) the party they abhor. This may have instigated the most recent bout of attacks against a wide number of Hindu homes and businesses after the fall of the Hasina regime, although I believe that much of the attacks were done by vested quarters who were just looking for an opportunity to attack Hindus based on their communal mindsets or avarice for Hindu properties. But we must not forget that in 2018, for example, Awami League men gang raped a woman for voting for BNP in Subarnachar, Noakhali. This proves that everybody wants to oppress Hindus at the first chance they get.
This means that Hindus are not safe under any regime. Many in the community believe that Hindus are more secure under the Awami League. This seems true when one reviews the horrendous track record of BNP-Jamaat in terms of protecting the minority. But even during the Awami League, the Nasirnagar attacks happened under the leadership of an Awami League leader. Biswajit Das was hacked to death in front of the media by men of the Bangladesh Chhatra League. Therefore, Hindus are persecuted almost always in Bangladesh. This may be one of the reasons why Professor Abul Barakat’s claim that, by 2046, no Hindus would be left in Bangladesh and that around 632 Hindus left the country for India between 1964 and 2013 may sound accurate. This is part of the reason why many communal Muslims say that “Hindus have their one foot in India.”
If this is true, then it is a sad statement about our country. Because Hindus do not leave the country because they don’t love the country. This is evident in the participation of Hindus in the 1971 liberation war and the recent July revolution that ousted Sheikh Hasina. As Muslim students bled and died on the streets of Bangladesh, so did Hindu students. Therefore, the main reason Hindus leave the country, along with economic reasons and a perception of some Hindus that they would be better off in India, is that they simply don’t feel safe and secure in their country. This is a failure of the state of Bangladesh. Even though they die for the country, the state of the country, time and again, fails to give them proper protection. The promise of the liberation war of 1971 was that all citizens of Bangladesh, regardless of race, language, religion, caste, or other identities, would have a safe and secure life where they would not have to worry at every turn and also where their social mobility would be guaranteed.
The state has clearly been failing the Hindu community in this respect. In my personal experience, safety, security and social mobility of Hindus are greatly hindered under the rule of BNP-Jamaat. While the Awami League regime in many cases promote educated and high class/caste Hindus to powerful positions with the hope that they would be loyal to their regime, as soon as they go a bit against the interest of the regime, they get into hot water. Remember what happened to former Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha, the first Hindu to be appointed to that role, who was driven out of the country because he had a fallout with the government.
Now that Hindu community is under attack yet again, many in the community are contemplating leaving the country for India or a different country. They no longer feel safe. This is a sad development given that the victory of the students promises a new safe country for all citizens. And it is not a given that a better life waits for Hindus if they go to India. India is rife with its own problems that include discrimination on the basis of caste and national origin. If Hindus in Bangladesh do indeed flee to India, much of this will happen via illegal means under Indian law and they will have a life of refugees in many cases. That will provide further credence to the Indian BJP’s narrative that Bangladesh is just like Pakistan where minorities are not safe and India needs to be a Hindu state that ensures the safety of Hindus from these countries. This narrative is wholly demeaning for Bangladesh and one that cannot be proved right. This is the geopolitical game that India wants to play with Bangladeshi Hindus as its pawns. That is why many BJP-leaning Indian media have featured fabricated reports and numbers of attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh to feed into the narrative of the party they favour. This needs to be counteracted by government action in Bangladesh that will bring justice to the people who have already been attacked and ensure that such attacks are never carried out again in the future.
The new government needs to be vigilant about protecting the rights of minorities. It is heartening to see that the newly appointed Chief Advisor of the interim government, Professor Dr. Muhammad Yunus, has called for the protection of Hindus repeatedly. Now it is time to put those words in action and reassure Bangladeshi Hindus that the new government would protect them and that they need not flee to India or any other country.
The very term “minority” is an offensive terminology in my opinion. Nobody should be deemed minor based on their religion in a country that promises equality and justice for all. But so long as the term minority is being used, the new government and the governments that follow must prove that they will continuously uphold the rights of minorities as that is the true mark of a liberal government that believes in basic human rights. Let us hope that the upcoming governments will work to their best ability to ensure rights for Hindus so they never have to think of fleeing anywhere.
Anupam Debashis Roy is a postgraduate student at the London School of Economics and the editor of Muktiforum.
