BARBARISM IN BANGLADESH

BARBARISM IN BANGLADESH 

Hindus have no protection in Bangladesh. They have never had it in the past. There has been systematic ethnic (Hindu) cleansing going on in Bangladesh over the past decades whose culmination has now been reached in the 75th year since 'The Great Calcutta Killing' and the Noakhali genocide of Hindus in 1946. When ten year old Hindu girls are raped by Islamists, nothing more needs to be said about the plight of the Hindus in Bangladesh.

All this talk of secularism in Bangladesh is hogwash. It is an Islamic state in intent and in practice where free thinking is deemed anti-Islam and atheist and secular bloggers are hacked to death. The state, despite pretentious talk about bringing the culprits to justice, has done virtually nothing in that direction. Over 3700 cases of crimes against Hindus have been cited by human rights organisations over the past decade but no one has been brought to book on that count.

Taslima Nasrin protested against Islamic violence unleashed on Hindus in her book 'Lajja', published in 1993, but the book was banned by the BNP and Taslima, bearing death threats from Islamists, had to flee Bangladesh. Since then she has been living in exile under constant security guard. But her intrepid voice is ever raised against the forces of evil that have taken Bangladesh to the days of demonic dark. Taslima is even disallowed from entering West Bengal as she is perceived to be a threat to peace and harmony in the state.

The Constitution of Bangladesh promulgated in 1972 was a secular one with no mention of it having any state religion. But General Ershad later perverted it and declared Islam to be the state religion. The Awami League has vowed to restore the original secular Constitution. If it does so, it will be a step in the right direction. Meanwhile, Taslima Nasrin continues to be denied entry into Bangladesh and her book, 'Lajja', continues to remain under ban in her home country.

Bangladesh was born in blood as East Pakistan when Suhrawardy under orders from Jinnah organised 'The Great Calcutta Killing' on 16 August, 1946. Noakhali followed soon after and the two and a half month genocide of Hindus there forced Gandhiji to agree to Partition. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was Suhrawardy's close confidante and associate, his loyal follower and organiser of the demand for Partition. So, when East Pakistanis were murdered by the millions by the marauding army from West Pakistan it was time to rectify course and seek shelter, succour and support in India which Mujib did along with a hapless hundred lakhs of fleeing East Pakistanis. Kolkata became home for the refugees and their leader, the very Kolkata which had been bathed in blood by Islamists on 16 August, 1946.

This bit of bloody history needs to be heeded and that is : Partition, Pakistan and Bangladesh thereafter would never have been but for the blood spilled from the arteries of tens of thousands of innocent Hindus in Kolkata and Noakhali. And who spilled them? The forefathers of these very ones in Bangladesh who are now enacting a genocide of Hindus there to finish off the unfinished business of total annihilation. If they succeed, India will be blessed with a two-pronged adversarial neighbourhood in Pakistan and Bangladesh, both fuelled by Islamic hate of Hindus. Pakistan and Bangladesh may be separated in terms of linguistic culture but when it comes to religion, their fanatics will claim a common bond of the Umma and a common objective in the destruction of Hindus and Hinduism. Sheikh Hasina knows it all -- her heritage in the propagation and prevention of this hate, her electoral past compulsions and actions thereof and her ideological stand in regard to her own religion. 

So, what is the future of the Hindus in Bangladesh? Why? -- a progressive petering out through conversion and exodus. What will Hasina do about it? Nothing whatsoever beyond being a bystander, a silent spectator and, thus, by default, an indirect facilitator of the process of Hindu perversion to Islam and the completion of the corruption which began in undivided Bengal with the Great Calcutta Killing and the Noakhali genocide of 1946 where her 'secular' father had been the confidante and associate of Suhrawardy who had initiated it. Hasina will do nothing substantial that will stop this fanatical Islamic community in Bangladesh from taking the country to the Dark Ages. Her past record proves this contention and the future is built out of the past. Were she a Mustafa Kemal Pasha, she would have long back altered the course of Bangladesh in this regard. But she has not. So, she neither has the wish nor the will nor the ideological conviction of plurality of culture to bring about these reforms in a fast-sliding Bangladesh polity where the yawning chasm of Islamism lies in wait to swallow all alternative lines of civic and religious living.

Is there no hope then? Is Bangladesh doomed? Not quite. My hope lies in the progressive youth of Bangladesh who have learnt to think. They have started the resistance movement in real earnest at a great danger to their selves. They are the hope.

Written by Sugata Bose