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 in regards to the Quran on Fb. The remark rapidly 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 house 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 taking place, however I may really feel one thing was mistaken.”
Stepping outdoors, he noticed folks 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 mentioned. “However they broke in anyway.”
The violence unfold rapidly, 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 thing – every thing I had labored for. It was as if we have been nothing – our lives didn’t matter,” Krishna, a small-scale farmer, informed Al Jazeera. “They smashed our home windows, destroyed our furnishings, and commenced looting every 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 capable of extinguish the flames, the household’s tin-roofed and walled house 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 house.
“I despatched my spouse and sons away to stick with family within the metropolis,” Krishna informed us in an exhausted voice. “They have been terrified.”
At the least 20 different Hindu houses in Monglargaon have been additionally attacked.
“After they attacked my house, my two daughters and spouse fled via the backdoor into the jungle,” mentioned Bijon Das, referring to a dense patch of timber 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 houses.
The mob violence lasted for about three to 4 hours earlier than safety forces intervened.
“I noticed that a lot of the harm was to tin-roofed homes and tin-shuttered outlets,” mentioned 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 through which Monglargaon falls, downplayed the dimensions of the violence, arguing that “only some houses and outlets had been barely broken”.
She insisted that some social media studies had “exaggerated” the violence, and informed Al Jazeera that legislation enforcement officers had managed to cease a mob from getting into a temple belonging to the Worldwide Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), a Hindu non secular motion.
Native authorities, together with the military and police, are working to revive a “sense of safety” for the area’s Hindus, Tanu mentioned.
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 road 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 army plane after 15 years in energy, following a well-liked rebellion towards her more and more authoritarian rule. Greater than 1,000 individuals 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 celebration, in flip, are considered as having been extra sympathetic to the nation’s Hindu minority – which makes up 10 % of the inhabitants – than the nation’s different main political forces, such because the Bangladesh Nationalist Occasion (BNP) and the Jamaat-e-Islami. Activists from the BNP and Jamaat – which each confronted extreme curbs below Hasina’s rule – not face these restrictions.
Reviews from the aftermath of the Hasina regime’s collapse counsel large-scale looting and the ransacking of nationwide monuments and authorities buildings. Greater than 200 folks have been killed, throughout religions, principally Awami League activists and police officers, as Hasina’s fall precipitated a thirst for retribution and revenge.
In response to 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 unbiased investigative outlet, which scrutinised essentially 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 focusing on minority teams will not be unusual in Bangladesh, particularly when the federal government modifications arms,” mentioned 42-year-old Deboraj Bhattacharjee, a Hindu banker in Dhaka. “However the best way some explicit 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 Occasion (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
As many as 49 Indian media retailers disseminated a minimum of 13 false studies about Bangladesh between August 12 and December 5, 2024, in keeping with an investigation by Rumor Scanner, an unbiased Bangladeshi fact-checking organisation.
Nonetheless, “because the fall of Hasina, there isn’t any approach to deny the worry and insecurity that’s gripping the Hindu communities … principally in rural areas,” mentioned Bhattacharjee. Anti-Hindu non secular activists, “who couldn’t dominate a lot through 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 Know-how (BUET), Dhaka’s premier engineering faculty, mentioned 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 obtained justice or compensation,” mentioned Pias.
The assaults additionally shine a lightweight 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 house to 90 % of our non secular websites, and that’s the place our connection lies,” Pias defined. “Nonetheless, the vast majority of Bangladeshi Hindus don’t help the present Indian authorities or its ‘Hindutva’ extremism,” he mentioned, referring to the Hindu majoritarian ideology of the BJP.
That stress to dissociate from India will get difficult 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,” mentioned Chakravarty, a 29-year-old pharmacy proprietor at Dowarabazar market, who spoke provided that his full identify 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 via – and barely survived – final week.
‘Trapped inside for two.5 hours’
Because the mob rampaged via Dowarabazar market final week, Chakravarty discovered himself trapped inside his store, pondering solely of his three-year-old daughter. His spouse had handed away through 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 rapidly put the shutter down,” Chakravarty informed 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 mentioned, 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 house. “I stored calling my household, questioning if our home was attacked,” he mentioned. His aged mom, father and sister-in-law are actually staying along 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’d have survived. I’d have had a cardiac arrest,” he mentioned, his voice cracking with emotion. “If that they had gotten inside, they may have crushed me to loss of life.” 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 house and located the door damaged, and every 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 mentioned. Another households whose houses had been attacked had been left with out even “utensils to prepare dinner their meal the following morning”, he mentioned.
Chakravarty, who additionally supplies fundamental medical remedy door-to-door in close by villages, mentioned 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. “Individuals right here work collectively – even have fun collectively in non secular festivals and gatherings. This has by no means occurred earlier than,” he famous.
“It will go away a scar for a very long time.”
Who’s in charge?
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 non secular minorities following the ousting of Hasina. However, he added, “lots 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 non secular establishments”, he mentioned.
Calling on the non secular leaders from all faiths for a “nationwide unity” on Thursday final week, Yunus mentioned there was a “discrepancy between the fact and the information printed by overseas media”, about assaults on non secular 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. Additionally they known as for a five-day vacation for the most important pageant 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 legislation after an area politician accused him of insulting the Bangladeshi flag by elevating a saffron flag (generally related to Hinduism) on prime 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 loss of life outdoors a Chattogram court docket, 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 searching for to ban ISKCON.
In the meantime, Hasina issued an announcement 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 mentioned.
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 recollects shedding 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 costs of “extortion and loss of life threats”.
“Hindus weren’t secure below Hasina both,” he mentioned. “We have been used as political pawns. The sense of safety many Hindus felt through 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 through the Awami League’s 15-year rule, the celebration’s secular stance usually gave minority teams a way of safety and security,” Datta mentioned. “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, principally of Hindus, between June 2023 and July 2024 through the Hasina administration.
A outstanding human rights group, Ain o Salish Kendra, reported a minimum of 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 circumstances.
In 2021, following mob assaults on Hindu minority households and temples in Bangladesh throughout and after Durga Puja, rights group Amnesty Worldwide mentioned, “Such repeated assaults towards people, communal violence and destruction of the houses 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, careworn that the minority motion in Bangladesh is distinct and unbiased from each India and Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League.
“It’s not a brand new phenomenon. The demand for a minority safety legislation and the institution of a minority fee has been longstanding,” he informed 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 much too lengthy,” he defined.
Khalid Mahmud Chowdhury, a former minister in Hasina’s cupboard now in exile in India, nonetheless, defended his celebration’s monitor file.
“When you evaluate the violence towards Hindus throughout non-[Awami League] regimes with what occurred below ours, the distinction is evident,” he informed Al Jazeera.
“Some assaults did occur throughout our rule, we can’t deny that. Nonetheless, what’s taking place after August 5 is sheer brutality and a violation of human rights,” he added. “They [the interim government] try 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 now be liable to change.
Bangladesh’s legal professional basic, Md Asaduzzaman, urged throughout an October excessive court docket 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 % of the inhabitants are Muslim,” he mentioned.
Nath warned that eradicating secularism from the structure would considerably threaten the rights of spiritual minorities. “Prior to now, governments have promised us protections and rights of their election manifestos, however as soon as in energy, they didn’t implement them,” he mentioned.
Bhattacharjee echoed these issues.
“If secularism is taken out of the structure, it’ll ship a transparent message that non secular minorities not matter to the state.”
Already, he mentioned, 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” fairly than mobs pushed by sentiments towards the neighborhood.
“The actual problem for this interim authorities isn’t about combating disinformation from another nation,” he mentioned. “It’s how they deal with the rising violence at house, 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.”
