August 5 marks the sudden overthrow of the elected Awami League government in Bangladesh. A swift resignation, followed by the unceremonious fleeing of former PM Sheikh Hasina to India. Since then, Bangladesh has been on the minds of many thinking—and some unthinking—Indians. Several analyses, replete with conspiracy theories, have been bandied about.
Is this a US-engineered regime change? Is the head of the caretaker government, Nobel laureate Mohammad Yunus, a US stooge? Is there a hidden Chinese hand in the coup? Or should the credit—or blame—go to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, operating out of London and within Bangladesh?
Or was it Bangladesh’s Jammat-i-Islami, the radical Islamist organisation with dreaded student wing ‘Chhatra Shibir’, the ones who upturned Hasina’s tottering government? Or, contrarily, if not in addition to the above, was this actually a student-led popular uprising against a ‘dictatorial’ regime? And what about the role of our own Research and Analysis Wing? How did they help safeguard our interests?
That there have been regime changes in the region is undeniable. But who is behind them? First Pakistan, with the deposition, then imprisonment, of Imran Khan in April 2022. Then Sri Lanka a couple of months later in July 2022. More recently, Maldives in November 2023. The way these governments were toppled, especially in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, bear an uncanny similarity with what happened in Bangladesh. In Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, the residences of the deposed leaders were ransacked in the most unseemly manner. In Pakistan, it was the Corps Commander’s official residence in Lahore.
The regime change has also been accompanied by the tearing down of statues of the founder of the nation, ‘Bangabandhu’ Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. What is the deeper or symbolic meaning of this outrage? Are elements within Bangladesh trying to negate or erase the very foundations of the nation? Do they wish to cancel the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan, turn Bangladesh back into Pakistan? Or is this, in addition, Islamist idol-breaking?
Another, certainly worse fact that no one denies, regardless of their political or ideological leanings within Bangladesh, is the ferocious and murderous attacks on Hindus. It has been called a targeted and planned exercise in ethnic cleansing, the worst in the country’s history since 2001. When Khalida Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party came to power, thousands of Hindus across the country were massacred, raped, and looted. So it’s a tried and tested template of incentivising agitationists.
Most Hindus in India, barring West Bengal, didn’t know how bad the plight of Hindus in Bangladesh was till Taslmia Nasreen’s Lajja (1993) came out. The novel portrayed the attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh in the aftermath of the destruction of the Babri Masjid in December 1992. More recently, Deep Halder and Avishek Biswas in Being Hindu in Bangladesh: An Untold Story (2023) have documented the tragedy of Hindus in that country in graphic detail.
In November 2016, the Dhaka Tribune reported an ominous warning by Professor Abul Barkat of Dhaka University: “No Hindus will be left in Bangladesh after 30 years.” The story was widely quoted by the Press Trust of India in India. In November 2021, the United News of India reported the steady decline of the Hindu population in Bangladesh: “Over the past 50 years, the total population of Bangladesh has more than doubled, but not in the case of Hindus. The number of Hindu people had dropped by around 7.5 million (75 lakh).”
When the first census was taken in 1974 after Bangladesh’s independence, Hindus constituted 13.5 percent of the population. By 2011, they were only 8.5 percent. By 2024, assuming the same, if not worse, rate of decline, the percentage would be less than 6.5 percent. Where have all the Hindus gone? The missing Hindus have fled, converted, or been killed—raleev (convert), galeev (perish), chaleev (flee).
Unfortunately, the plight of the Hindus in Bangladesh, or Pakistan for that matter, elicits little concern in the international community. You rarely see United Nations or human rights groups taking up this matter. Only recently, much better organised Hindu action groups in the US such as the Hindu American Foundation or Coalition of Hindus of North America raising their voices against the ongoing pogrom against Hindus in Bangladesh.
In India, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its affiliates do raise their voice. More recently, educated “hyper-Hindus” and their media outlets too. Plus WhatsApp and social media outraging over these atrocities. The BJP and the present Modi government have made their concerns known. Thankfully, this has broken the governmental taboo on the ‘H’ word. But why is the opposition not so vocal? And the left liberal press and influencers? The abject silence or muffled murmurs are shameful, or worse, complicit in a larger global funded narrative.
Among the ironies of the regime change violence in Bangladesh is the slaughter of leftists, who had made common cause with the Islamists. Some of the mutilated corpses have been identified as belonging to them in addition, of course, to Hindus. But the Left-Islamist alliance continues the world over, India and the US included.
Now to the most horrific part. The videos of Hindu women being abducted, molested and humiliated are too gruesome to dwell on. Documented sources, going back to the Bangladesh liberation war, show that these are not isolated instances.
Secular Bangladeshis regret these violent acts against the Hindus, but have been powerless to prevent them. The army has looked the other way, even joining Jamaati agitators, on occasion chanting “Nara-e-takbeer, Allah hu Akbar!” The police have deserted their posts fearing reprisals. Among those targeted have been members of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League. The future of the party is uncertain, but it is likely that they will regroup and remain a force in the political chessboard.
A third front on our eastern borders is extremely dangerous. Plus, there are already thousands of refugees at our door. Do we have it in us to turn a crisis into an opportunity? Thankfully, at least for now, the opposition has lent its support to the government.
(Views are personal)
(Tweets @MakrandParanspe)
Makarand R Paranjape | Author and commentator
