IN SOLIDARITY WITH PHILIPPE BENOIT OVER HIS REFUSAL TO ACT AS INTERPRETER TO SHAIKH HASINA, PRIME MINISTER OF BANGLADESH, IN PROTEST AGAINST THE GENOCIDE OF HINDUS 🕉 BY ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISTS IN BANGLADESH

IN SOLIDARITY WITH PHILIPPE BENOIT OVER HIS REFUSAL TO ACT AS INTERPRETER TO SHAIKH HASINA, PRIME MINISTER OF BANGLADESH, IN PROTEST AGAINST THE GENOCIDE OF HINDUS 🕉 BY ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISTS IN BANGLADESH 

You have done what so many Hindus 🕉 have not done. You have by your action not only upheld the best humanitarian and intellectual traditions of the world but have in so doing exposed the hollowness of so-called secularists in India and elsewhere and the utter insincerity of the pronouncedly Islamic Awami League and its leader, Sheikh Hasina, the pretentious Prime Minister of Bangladesh, whose father, Bangabandhu Shaikh Mujibur Rahman, had participated and precipitated the gory Partition of India with its limitless Hindu 🕉 casualty in Kolkata (refer the Great Calcutta Killing, 16 August, 1946), the subsequent two and a half month Noakhali genocide of the Hindus and the general destruction post-Partition which affected millions of families. Pakistan was made by Jinnah with the full support and action of Hussain Suhrawardy's close confidante and associate, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman here in the eastern part of India in the Bengal Presidency. That subsequently Mujib had a change of heart after the West Pakistan-conducted genocide of three million East Pakistanis is difficult to believe despite his secular pretensions. The reasons are obvious to any serious student of history. Mujib's acquiescence of Islamic fundamentalists between 1972 and 1975 is evident from historical happenings in Bangladesh in that period. Thereafter, the country slid into progressively greater Islamic fundamentalism after the assassination of Mujib and his family, a most unfortunate turn out of events. Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of Mujib, has further allowed the country to precipitate progressively towards potentially degenerating into an Islamic State where minorities will be wiped out leaving no trace whatsoever. The present genocide of the Bangladeshi Hindus 🕉 is merely the tip of a deep-immersed Islamic iceberg that has been increasing in magnitude beneath the cover of secularism and democracy with its age-old theocratic intent intact, both in principle and in practice. That you, Philippe Benoit, have in refusing to be a hypocrite like so many others raises my estimation of you and French adherence to its original revolutionary principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. Kudos to you and a big heart-felt thank you!

Written by Sugata Bose