The entire world, except the wretched liberals of this country, is deeply concerned about the attacks on minorities (that is, mostly the Hindus) in Bangladesh in the wake of the recent political turmoil there. Hindus were attacked in at least 27 out of 64 districts.
The agitation was against Sheikh Hasina government. Why the hell were the Hindus targeted, if not for communal reasons? Who will buy the liberals’ theory that Hindus were targeted because they have been voting for the Awami League?
Hatred against the Hindus is actually deep-rooted; ever present in the minds of the people—in fact, existing since pre-independence era as in other parts of undivided India—it just needs an excuse and opportunity to erupt. The moment the rule of law weakens for whatever reason, it comes out in all its virulence.
Blaming all the past and present atrocities on the Hindus in Bangladesh on the ‘few’ Islamists, Jamat-e-Islami (JEI) and Hefazat-e-Islami members et al is a red herring and an insidious attempt to bury your head in the sand even as the ugly truth is poking in your face. Liberals of this country want to project a false image as if except those few, the entire Muslim population of Bangladesh loves the Hindus. Even if you dismiss the horrifying accounts of atrocities on Hindus given by people like Taslima Nasreen as fiction, let me ask a simple question. When was the last time the Hindus in Bangladesh felt safe? Even when the so-called secular political parties were in power, it has never translated into safety and security for the Hindus.
Such is the hypocrisy of the liberals that they have gone to town with the reports of some students in Chittagong having allegedly taken it upon themselves to guard Hindu temples and churches but have disgustingly remained tight-lipped on those scores of instances of rape, rapine, murder, plunder, arson and forcible seizure of land committed upon the Hindus—so much so that Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, in his measured and restrained-by-diplomatic-protocols words, while congratulating the new Bangladeshi PM, was obliged to “hope for an early return to normalcy, ensuring the safety and protection of Hindus and all other minority communities.” Mentioning Hindus was significant.
Cherry-picking or highlighting only one aspect while ignoring the others is sheer chicanery.
Long History of Atrocities against Hindus in Bangladesh
Though Hindus are dispersed all over the country, they are found in substantial numbers (17 to 25%) in seven districts of Khagrachari, Magura, Bagerhat, Narail, Thakurgaon, Khulna and Moulvibazar. Communal hostility aside, the fundamental objective of atrocities against them is to drive them out of the country. That is how the Hindus population that was 30% at the time of the Partition has fallen to about 8% according to the 2022 Census. Abul Barkat, an economist at Dhaka University, had found in his research that about 750 Hindus flee Bangladesh every day to India for safety and better survival.
According to Ain O Salish Kendra (ASK), a Bangladeshi human rights organisation, over 3,710 incidents targeting Hindus were reported between January 2013 and September 2021, with many instances involving the complicity of Awami League leaders in acts of vandalism. Rana Dasgupta, the General Secretary of the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Oikya Parishad, told the Daily Star in October 2021 that even Awami League workers had joined in attacking Hindus.
In the current spate of anti-Hindu violence, besides Hindu houses and businesses, temples were specifically targeted for vandalism, leaving no doubt about the communal nature of the attacks. They also burnt down the 140-year old Dhaka house of a famous singer Rahul Ananda that served as a vibrant cultural hub for musicians and contained over 3,000 handcrafted musical instruments.
In a gruesome incident, the rioters set fire to the Zabir International Hotel in Joshor district and 24 guests staying at the hotel were burnt alive. No tears were shed by the liberals.
Who Engineered the Riots and the Coup?
Frankly, we do not know for sure but it has all the trappings of an engineered coup. Whoever the CIA, their old friend and comrades-in-arms of the ISI since the Mujahideen War, or perhaps even China did it; whether single-handedly or in concert, they deserve 100% marks for their professional excellence in having ‘mobilized’ such a large number of rioters, having ‘bought’ the political opponents/Islamists to add both width and sharp edge of widespread violence to it, and for having suitably ‘won over and controlled’ critical leadership of the armed forces.
In order to continue projecting the image of a ‘essentially peaceful and legitimate student protest fuelled by her wrong decisions’, the army and the air force provided her the helicopter and the C-130 Hercules transport aircraft to enable her to flee. That was a dead giveaway of an engineered coup because had the army not intervened according to the pre-written script and taken her out safely, she would certainly have been lynched by the mob.
Engineering riots, movements or civil unrest through highly skilled agent provocateurs, ‘subverted’ powerful people or ‘opinion builders’ amongst the public is an old trick in covert intelligence operations. The Arab Spring movements of 2010s were also engineered by the USA through front organizations like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, Freedom House, and National Endowment for Democracy etc. Key leaders of the movements were trained by the Americans in campaigning, organizing through new media tools and monitoring elections, besides organizing protests. As Stephen McInerney, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy, admitted, “We did help support their development of skills and networking…That training did play a role in what ultimately happened.”
Before that the Orange Revolution and the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine were engineered by the CIA. Regime changes in Latin American countries have, of course, been old favourites of the CIA. The on-going civil unrest in Venezuela following the July elections betrayed the American hand because in January, they had threatened to reinstate sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sector, crucial for their economy; days after the country’s top court had upheld a 15-year ban on the opposition candidate María Corina Machado.
They have been following basically the same tried-and-tested script everywhere with some ‘locally-suited’ modifications: mobilize protests; escalate the level of violence in the protests; create a narrative using their grip on media and now social media usually focusing on human rights abuses and state excesses; use legal and political institutions to deepen the crisis (for example, in the instant case the Bangladesh High Court had upheld the job quota order, giving the students an excuse to get enraged); ‘win over’ the military and ask them to intervene under the pretext of national interest, serving the people and similar lofty sentiments; and eventually topple the government.
Also Read: Creation of Bangladesh, turned out to be Indira Gandhi’s biggest mistake
That the Bangladesh opposition led by BNP (Bangladesh Nationalist Party) of Khaleda Zia (who was almost instantly released from house-detention in a tell-tale sign) and the Islamists, were in league with the army and their ‘handlers’ abroad was evident from the fact that they were found in the army chief’s office just an hour after Hasina fled.
Given the long history of students’ involvement in Bangladesh (starting from the Language Movement 1952 to the 1971 freedom movement and beyond), students were just the ‘right face’ for the unrest; a clever way to ‘legitimately’ conceal the real forces behind them. The JEI has, in any case, a student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS) also.
Had the students been the prime movers, the agitation should have subsided after their supreme court substantially scaled back the job quota order on July 21. But, it did not subside and thus betrays the real prime movers behind them.
Economy Alone is not enough to Quell Public Discontent
Hasina had breathed life into the economy of Bangladesh. The country’s GDP per capita surpassed India’s in 2023. The country’s Human Development Index (HDI), which measures a nation’s health, knowledge, and standard of living, also surpassed India’s in 2020. Yet, she had to flee on 45 minutes’ notice in such a disgraceful manner that the rioters ransacked her house (even the kitchen!) in a manner acutely reminiscent of Sri Lanka two years ago. It also points towards the coup having been engineered.
How Sheikh Hasina Screwed Up Things
Public anger against her had been building up since the past decade; the stupid order regarding quotas was only the final straw. She had been subverting democracy in every which way possible; including rigging in elections; going ahead with election that the BNP had boycotted; muzzling of media including the notorious Digital Security Act of 2018; and imprisoning leaders, journalists and activists on trumped-up charges.
She presided over the deaths of nearly 440 people during the current short agitation. However, now she has fled and the police are scared of revenge by the people under the new dispensation. A key police association has tendered an apology and simultaneously announced a strike demanding security to the cops. The newly-appointed and utterly bewildered IGP Md Mainul Islam attributed the recent casualties among policemen to some unprofessional and overly ambitious officials who violated human rights—whatever that means.
Whosoever gave her good or bad advice, and wisdom or lack of it; her singular lack of ‘sensibility’ expected in a so-called democratic PM, not to speak of her complete inability to gauge public sentiments and the way the winds were blowing in the society and in the army, is yet another proof that most of the nations created after the dissolution of the British Empire have miserably failed to evolve into responsible political entities.
Nominating a Nobel Laureate Exposes the Hollowness of the Society
It was utterly simplistic and childish on the part of the Bangladesh president, with the obvious blessings of the army and the opposition, to ask a Nobel Laureate in economics to head the interim government. It was no different from illiterates in some village asking the only literate person in the village to become the village chief. Yunus does not have popular mandate. Economy was not doing badly anyway. Bangladesh suffers from a host of sociological problems including religious fanaticism. What vision or solution Yunus has for them?
Challenges before India
The creation of Bangladesh itself was a strategic blunder of Mrs. Gandhi as it freed Pakistan from the extremely difficult problem of maintaining its armed forces on two fronts 5,400 km apart by sea route! Now they have to maintain forces on one front only, thus reducing our numerical advantage in forces drastically. With Bangladesh poised to slip into the hands of Islamists who might very well be at least unfriendly with India, the blunder stands proved.
If the CIA/ISI did it, their position would fit into logical pattern. However, it is not clear as yet as to how would then the Chinese fit into it or how would they view the development if they did not have a hand in it?
Logical Future of Hindus in Bangladesh
Not to speak of what the BNP or the Islamist jihadis of JEI/HEI would or could do to the Bangladeshi Hindus, let us not forget that in October 2021, speaking of communal violence in India, even Hasina had threatened India and the Bangladeshi Hindus both in a virtual address to the latter, “But they (India) have to be aware that such incidents should not take place there which would have an impact on Bangladesh, and the Hindus in our country will suffer.”
Poor, hapless Hindus in Bangladesh do not have anybody they could look forward to for their survival with honour, without their housed burnt, property looted, menfolk murdered and women brutally raped.
They are staring in the face of living in a Talibanized Bangladesh, at least in feature, if not in form. Or, as Prof. Abul Barkat had predicted in 2016, no Hindus might be left in Bangladesh in three decades!
