Dhaka, Bangladesh – Krishna Das had by no means imagined that his peaceable life in Sunamganj, a northeastern district of Bangladesh, would come crashing down on a seemingly peculiar Tuesday night final week.
The set off was an allegation of blasphemy. A younger Hindu man, Akash Das, had allegedly posted an insulting remark concerning the Quran on Fb. The remark shortly unfold throughout social media, igniting protests and escalating tensions, significantly within the predominantly Muslim neighborhood of Dowarabazar, about 270km (168 miles) from the nationwide capital Dhaka.
Krishna was at residence when the primary indicators of chaos reached his doorstep in Monglargaon village about 8pm. “I heard shouting coming from the market,” Krishna recalled. “I couldn’t perceive what was occurring, however I may really feel one thing was unsuitable.”
Stepping exterior, he noticed individuals gathering within the streets, chanting slogans. Quickly, the group grew right into a mob, waving sticks and batons. “I rushed inside, locked the doorways, and tried to cover,” he stated. “However they broke in anyway.”
The violence unfold shortly, despite the fact that Akash Das, the 17-year-old Hindu man from his neighbourhood, had already been arrested by the police below the “cyber safety act” earlier than the mob descended on Monglargaon.
“They destroyed every little thing – every little thing I had labored for. It was as if we have been nothing – our lives didn’t matter,” Krishna, a small-scale farmer, instructed Al Jazeera. “They smashed our home windows, destroyed our furnishings, and started looting every little thing of worth. They took cash, little jewelry and something they may discover. Even the kitchen utensils.”
The attackers even set fireplace to a part of his home. Although Krishna was in a position to extinguish the flames, the household’s tin-roofed and walled residence was destroyed, their possessions gone – and their sense of safety shattered. When Al Jazeera met Krishna 4 days after the incident, his household – a spouse and two teenage sons – was not at residence.
“I despatched my spouse and sons away to stick with family within the metropolis,” Krishna instructed us in an exhausted voice. “They have been terrified.”
No less than 20 different Hindu properties in Monglargaon have been additionally attacked.
“After they attacked my residence, my two daughters and spouse fled by way of the backdoor into the jungle,” stated Bijon Das, referring to a dense patch of bushes behind his home.
“I’ve despatched my daughters and spouse to my relative’s home within the metropolis [Sylhet, the nearest big city],” he added, saying that a number of Hindu males have been staying again solely to protect their properties.
The mob violence lasted for about three to 4 hours earlier than safety forces intervened.
“I noticed that many of the harm was to tin-roofed homes and tin-shuttered retailers,” stated native journalist AR Jewel, who was on the scene when the assault occurred, estimating about 20 properties have been affected.
Nonetheless, Meher Nigar Tanu, the highest bureaucrat for the subdistrict wherein Monglargaon falls, downplayed the dimensions of the violence, arguing that “only some properties and retailers had been barely broken”.
She insisted that some social media studies had “exaggerated” the violence, and instructed Al Jazeera that regulation enforcement officers had managed to cease a mob from coming into a temple belonging to the Worldwide Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), a Hindu spiritual motion.
Native authorities, together with the military and police, are working to revive a “sense of safety” for the area’s Hindus, Tanu stated.
Nonetheless, worry lingers. In Monglargaon, the village on the coronary heart of the violence, many homes have been seen locked final week on Friday morning, and the streets have been eerily quiet – with safety forces stationed at avenue intersections.
For a lot of Hindus throughout Bangladesh, Monglargaon is a microcosm of the neighborhood’s deep insecurities lately.
‘A twofold downside’
On August 5, then Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled rapidly from Dhaka for India on a navy plane after 15 years in energy, following a well-liked rebellion towards her more and more authoritarian rule. Greater than 1,000 persons are estimated to have been killed within the crackdown by her safety forces earlier than she resigned.
India is extensively perceived in Bangladesh as having propped up Hasina’s rule. Hasina and her secular Awami League occasion, in flip, are considered as having been extra sympathetic to the nation’s Hindu minority – which makes up 10 p.c of the inhabitants – than the nation’s different main political forces, such because the Bangladesh Nationalist Get together (BNP) and the Jamaat-e-Islami. Activists from the BNP and Jamaat – which each confronted extreme curbs below Hasina’s rule – now not face these restrictions.
Stories from the aftermath of the Hasina regime’s collapse recommend large-scale looting and the ransacking of nationwide monuments and authorities buildings. Greater than 200 individuals have been killed, throughout religions, largely Awami League activists and police officers, as Hasina’s fall precipitated a thirst for retribution and revenge.
In line with the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council (BHBCUC), a minority rights group, there have been 2,000 incidents of “communal violence”, together with 9 Hindu deaths and 69 assaults on locations of worship, between August 4 and August 20.
Nonetheless, investigations by Netra Information, an impartial investigative outlet, which scrutinised probably the most extreme claims, the deaths of the 9 Hindu males, discovered that the killings have been “politically and personally motivated, not religiously pushed”.
In the meantime, as relations between India and Bangladesh plummeted, some media studies in India exaggerated the dimensions of violence towards Hindus. “Assaults concentrating on minority teams are usually not unusual in Bangladesh, particularly when the federal government modifications palms,” stated 42-year-old Deboraj Bhattacharjee, a Hindu banker in Dhaka. “However the best way some specific Indian media, aligned with BJP, are twisting the bottom actuality and spreading a local weather of worry doesn’t assist us right here.”
He was referring to India’s ruling Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Get together (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
As many as 49 Indian media retailers disseminated at the least 13 false studies about Bangladesh between August 12 and December 5, 2024, in response to an investigation by Rumor Scanner, an impartial Bangladeshi fact-checking organisation.
Nonetheless, “for the reason that fall of Hasina, there isn’t a approach to deny the worry and insecurity that’s gripping the Hindu communities … largely in rural areas,” stated Bhattacharjee. Anti-Hindu spiritual activists, “who couldn’t dominate a lot throughout the Hasina rule, now are in power”, he added.
Abhro Shome Pias, a 27-year-old Hindu pupil who research at Bangladesh College of Engineering and Expertise (BUET), Dhaka’s premier engineering school, stated there had been “numerous incidents of violence and persecution of Hindus”.
“Many Hindus have been displaced, and their lands have been grabbed forcibly, and it’s unclear whether or not they’ve acquired justice or compensation,” stated Pias.
The assaults additionally shine a light-weight on a painful fact for a lot of Bangladeshi Hindus: They are saying they should continually show their loyalty to their nation over India.
“India is residence to 90 p.c of our spiritual websites, and that’s the place our connection lies,” Pias defined. “Nonetheless, nearly all of Bangladeshi Hindus don’t help the present Indian authorities or its ‘Hindutva’ extremism,” he stated, referring to the Hindu majoritarian ideology of the BJP.
That stress to dissociate from India will get sophisticated when the large neighbour is seen as peddling amplified accounts of Hindu atrocities in Bangladesh, say neighborhood members.
“Hindus in Bangladesh are going through a twofold downside,” stated Chakravarty, a 29-year-old pharmacy proprietor at Dowarabazar market, who spoke given that his full title not be revealed. “On one hand, Indian media spreads disinformation and exaggerates incidents, a few of which by no means even occurred. This fuels anti-India sentiment, which, in flip, contributes to a sense of insecurity amongst us, the Hindus.”
It’s an insecurity Chakravarty lived by way of – and barely survived – final week.
‘Trapped inside for two.5 hours’
Because the mob rampaged by way of Dowarabazar market final week, Chakravarty discovered himself trapped inside his store, considering solely of his three-year-old daughter. His spouse had handed away throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and his daughter’s security was his sole concern.
“I used to be inside once I heard them chanting slogans. As they attacked, I shortly put the shutter down,” Chakravarty instructed Al Jazeera. “I used to be trapped inside for about two and a half hours whereas they attacked my store and others close by.”
The attackers used machetes, threw bricks, and wreaked havoc on close by companies. “They couldn’t enter my pharmacy, however broken my gates,” he stated, including that his uncle’s pharmacy in the identical market was fully ransacked. “There wasn’t even a paracetamol left.”
From inside his pharmacy, Chakravarty’s thoughts raced again residence. “I saved calling my household, questioning if our home was attacked,” he stated. His aged mom, father and sister-in-law at the moment are staying together with his brother in Sylhet metropolis, and his daughter is with them.
“If it weren’t for my motherless daughter, I don’t know if I might have survived. I might have had a cardiac arrest,” he stated, his voice cracking with emotion. “If that they had gotten inside, they may have overwhelmed me to dying.” Nonetheless, there have been no reported accidents or casualties within the assault available on the market that day.
“Later that night time, I got here residence and located the door damaged, and every little thing – furnishings, garments – was destroyed. They even ransacked our drawers. Within the morning, there was nothing left in the home to make use of,” he stated. Another households whose properties had been attacked had been left with out even “utensils to prepare dinner their meal the subsequent morning”, he stated.
Chakravarty, who additionally offers fundamental medical therapy door-to-door in close by villages, stated when he visited sufferers, he “noticed disbelief of their eyes”.
“The particles, the damaged bits of furnishings, bricks, and damaged glasses throughout the premises,” he recounted.
But, Chakravarty emphasised that such violence was unprecedented within the area. “Folks right here work collectively – even have fun collectively in spiritual festivals and gatherings. This has by no means occurred earlier than,” he famous.
“This may go away a scar for a very long time.”
Who’s guilty?
The interim management in Bangladesh, led by 84-year-old Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, has accused the Indian media of exaggerating assaults on Hindus in Bangladesh.
Shafiqul Alam, press secretary to Yunus, acknowledged to Al Jazeera that there had been some assaults on spiritual minorities following the ousting of Hasina. However, he added, “most of the occasions reported within the Indian media have been exaggerated and a part of an industrial stage dissemination of deliberate disinformation”.
The interim authorities is dedicated to upholding “freedom of faith, freedom of affiliation, and freedom of meeting for all spiritual establishments”, he stated.
Calling on the spiritual leaders from all faiths for a “nationwide unity” on Thursday final week, Yunus stated there was a “discrepancy between the truth and the information revealed by international media”, about assaults on spiritual minorities.
In the meantime, Hindu activists have staged a number of large-scale protest rallies within the capital, Dhaka, and elsewhere since August to demand, amongst different issues, legal guidelines to guard minorities, the institution of a minority ministry, and a tribunal to prosecute acts of oppression towards them. In addition they known as for a five-day vacation for the most important competition for Hindu Bengalis, Durga Puja.
However tensions escalated additional after the arrest of Chinmoy Krishna Das, a Hindu monk previously related to ISKCON, in November. Das had been rallying protests after Hasina’s elimination. He was detained below a colonial-era sedition regulation after a neighborhood politician accused him of insulting the Bangladeshi flag by elevating a saffron flag (generally related to Hinduism) on high of it at a rally calling for an finish to the violence towards Hindus.
His arrest and subsequent bail denial triggered a wave of protests, culminating in a lethal conflict with police when a Muslim lawyer was hacked to dying exterior a Chattogram courtroom, allegedly by the supporters of ISKCON.
Police arrested greater than 20 people in reference to the homicide, amid protests by legal professionals and college students who known as for a ban on ISKCON in Bangladesh. The Supreme Court docket has thus far rejected authorized petitions looking for to ban ISKCON.
In the meantime, Hasina issued a press release from exile in India final week, accusing Yunus of failing to guard Hindus and different minorities. “Hindus, Buddhists, Christians – nobody has been spared. Eleven church buildings have been destroyed. Temples and Buddhist shrines have been damaged. When the Hindus protested, the ISKCON chief was arrested,” Hasina stated.
Have been Hindus safer throughout Hasina’s regime?
But, some Hindus argue that the notion that the neighborhood was safer in Bangladesh below Hasina is misplaced.
Bhattacharjee remembers dropping two acres (about 0.8 hectares) of household land by the hands of activists of a former Awami League MP, who was arrested final September on expenses of “extortion and dying threats”.
“Hindus weren’t secure below Hasina both,” he stated. “We have been used as political pawns. The sense of safety many Hindus felt throughout the Awami League regime was extra psychological than actual.”
Nonetheless, Sreeradha Datta, a professor and Bangladesh professional at Jindal Faculty of Worldwide Affairs on the outskirts of New Delhi, India, defined to Al Jazeera that the notion of Hindu security below a Hasina administration is rooted in historic context.
“Whereas violence towards Hindus did happen throughout the Awami League’s 15-year rule, the occasion’s secular stance typically gave minority teams a way of safety and security,” Datta stated. “In distinction, throughout earlier non-Awami League governments, just like the BNP-Jamaat alliance, assaults on minorities notably elevated. This continues to affect the present perceptions.”
The minority rights group, BHBCUC, had earlier reported 45 murders, largely of Hindus, between June 2023 and July 2024 throughout the Hasina administration.
A outstanding human rights group, Ain o Salish Kendra, reported at the least 3,679 assaults on the Hindu neighborhood between January 2013 and September 2021, together with vandalism, arson, and focused violence, with Awami League leaders allegedly complicit in a number of instances.
In 2021, following mob assaults on Hindu minority households and temples in Bangladesh throughout and after Durga Puja, rights group Amnesty Worldwide stated, “Such repeated assaults towards people, communal violence and destruction of the properties and locations of worship of minorities in Bangladesh over time present that the state has failed in its obligation to guard minorities.”
Manindra Kumar Nath, president of the BHBCUC, burdened that the minority motion in Bangladesh is distinct and impartial from each India and Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League.
“It’s not a brand new phenomenon. The demand for a minority safety regulation and the institution of a minority fee has been longstanding,” he instructed Al Jazeera.
Nath additionally famous that Hindu college students have been actively concerned within the protest motion that led to the elimination of Hasina’s authorities. “They united to protest the unfulfilled guarantees and calls for that Hasina has ignored for a lot too lengthy,” he defined.
Khalid Mahmud Chowdhury, a former minister in Hasina’s cupboard now in exile in India, nevertheless, defended his occasion’s monitor file.
“If you happen to evaluate the violence towards Hindus throughout non-[Awami League] regimes with what occurred below ours, the distinction is obvious,” he instructed Al Jazeera.
“Some assaults did occur throughout our rule, we can’t deny that. Nonetheless, what’s occurring after August 5 is sheer brutality and a violation of human rights,” he added. “They [the interim government] are attempting to take away secularism from the structure.”
The nation’s structure designates Islam because the state faith whereas additionally recognising “secularism” as one of many guiding rules. Nonetheless, this will likely now be vulnerable to change.
Bangladesh’s lawyer normal, Md Asaduzzaman, urged throughout an October excessive courtroom listening to that he would help the elimination of secularism from the structure. “Socialism and secularism don’t mirror the realities of a nation the place 90 p.c of the inhabitants are Muslim,” he stated.
Nath warned that eradicating secularism from the structure would considerably threaten the rights of non secular minorities. “Up to now, governments have promised us protections and rights of their election manifestos, however as soon as in energy, they did not implement them,” he stated.
Bhattacharjee echoed these issues.
“If secularism is taken out of the structure, it’ll ship a transparent message that spiritual minorities now not matter to the state.”
Already, he stated, the federal government was downplaying assaults on Hindus, by suggesting that solely these affiliated with the Awami League had been focused and that the attackers have been “miscreants” slightly than mobs pushed by sentiments towards the neighborhood.
“The true problem for this interim authorities isn’t about combating disinformation from another nation,” he stated. “It’s how they deal with the rising violence at residence, particularly with fundamentalist teams now emboldened. The main target must be on guaranteeing Hindu minorities really feel secure once more.”
“Phrases aren’t sufficient any extra.”
