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 abnormal 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, notably within the predominantly Muslim group 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 occurring, however I may really feel one thing was mistaken.”
Stepping outdoors, 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, regardless that Akash Das, the 17-year-old Hindu man from his neighbourhood, had already been arrested by the police beneath 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 had 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 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 relations within the metropolis,” Krishna instructed us in an exhausted voice. “They had been terrified.”
At the least 20 different Hindu houses in Monglargaon had been additionally attacked.
“Once they attacked my house, my two daughters and spouse fled by 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 had 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 many of the injury 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 had been affected.
Nevertheless, Meher Nigar Tanu, the highest bureaucrat for the subdistrict by which Monglargaon falls, downplayed the dimensions of the violence, arguing that “only some houses and retailers had been barely broken”.
She insisted that some social media experiences had “exaggerated” the violence, and instructed 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 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, concern lingers. In Monglargaon, the village on the coronary heart of the violence, many homes had been seen locked final week on Friday morning, and the streets had been eerily quiet – with safety forces stationed at avenue intersections.
For a lot of Hindus throughout Bangladesh, Monglargaon is a microcosm of the community’s deep insecurities today.
‘A twofold downside’
On August 5, then Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled swiftly 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 broadly 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 % of the inhabitants – than the nation’s different main political forces, such because the Bangladesh Nationalist Social gathering (BNP) and the Jamaat-e-Islami. Activists from the BNP and Jamaat – which each confronted extreme curbs beneath 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 had been killed, throughout religions, principally Awami League activists and police officers, as Hasina’s fall precipitated a thirst for retribution and revenge.
Based on 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.
Nevertheless, 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 had been “politically and personally motivated, not religiously pushed”.
In the meantime, as relations between India and Bangladesh plummeted, some media experiences in India exaggerated the scale of violence towards Hindus. “Assaults focusing on minority teams are usually not unusual in Bangladesh, particularly when the federal government modifications fingers,” stated 42-year-old Deboraj Bhattacharjee, a Hindu banker in Dhaka. “However the way in which some explicit Indian media, aligned with BJP, are twisting the bottom actuality and spreading a local weather of concern doesn’t assist us right here.”
He was referring to India’s ruling Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Social gathering (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
As many as 49 Indian media shops disseminated not less than 13 false experiences about Bangladesh between August 12 and December 5, 2024, in accordance with an investigation by Rumor Scanner, an impartial Bangladeshi fact-checking organisation.
Nonetheless, “for the reason that fall of Hasina, there isn’t any option to deny the concern and insecurity that’s gripping the Hindu communities … principally in rural areas,” stated Bhattacharjee. Anti-Hindu spiritual activists, “who couldn’t dominate a lot throughout the Hasina rule, now are in energy”, 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, stated there had been “numerous incidents of violence and persecution of Hindus”.
“Many Hindus have been displaced, and their lands had been grabbed forcibly, and it’s unclear whether or not they’ve obtained 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 consistently show their loyalty to their nation over India.
“India is house to 90 % of our spiritual websites, and that’s the place our connection lies,” Pias defined. “Nevertheless, the vast majority 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 enormous neighbour is seen as peddling amplified accounts of Hindu atrocities in Bangladesh, say group members.
“Hindus in Bangladesh are dealing with 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 – and barely survived – final week.
‘Trapped inside for two.5 hours’
Because the mob rampaged by Dowarabazar market final week, Chakravarty discovered himself trapped inside his store, pondering 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 after 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 house. “I stored calling my household, questioning if our home was attacked,” he stated. 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 stated, his voice cracking with emotion. “If that they had gotten inside, they may have crushed me to demise.” Nevertheless, 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 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 houses had been attacked had been left with out even “utensils to cook dinner their meal the following morning”, he stated.
Chakravarty, who additionally offers fundamental medical remedy 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. “Individuals right here work collectively – even rejoice collectively in spiritual festivals and gatherings. This has by no means occurred earlier than,” he famous.
“It will depart a scar for a very long time.”
Who’s accountable?
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 fact and the information printed 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 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 beneath a colonial-era sedition legislation 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 demise outdoors 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 Courtroom has to date rejected authorized petitions in search of 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 stated.
Had been Hindus safer throughout Hasina’s regime?
But, some Hindus argue that the notion that the group was safer in Bangladesh beneath 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 fees of “extortion and demise threats”.
“Hindus weren’t secure beneath Hasina both,” he stated. “We had been used as political pawns. The sense of safety many Hindus felt throughout the Awami League regime was extra psychological than actual.”
Nevertheless, Sreeradha Datta, a professor and Bangladesh knowledgeable at Jindal Faculty of Worldwide Affairs on the outskirts of New Delhi, India, defined to Al Jazeera that the notion of Hindu security beneath 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 usually 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, principally of Hindus, between June 2023 and July 2024 throughout the Hasina administration.
A distinguished human rights group, Ain o Salish Kendra, reported not less than 3,679 assaults on the Hindu group 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 stated, “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 responsibility to guard minorities.”
Manindra Kumar Nath, president of the BHBCUC, harassed 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 legislation and the institution of a minority fee has been longstanding,” he instructed Al Jazeera.
Nath additionally famous that Hindu college students had 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, nevertheless, defended his occasion’s observe report.
“Should you examine the violence towards Hindus throughout non-[Awami League] regimes with what occurred beneath ours, the distinction is obvious,” he instructed Al Jazeera.
“Some assaults did occur throughout our rule, we can’t deny that. Nevertheless, what’s occurring 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 ideas. Nevertheless, this will likely now be vulnerable to change.
Bangladesh’s legal professional normal, Md Asaduzzaman, prompt throughout an October excessive courtroom listening to that he would help the elimination of secularism from the structure. “Socialism and secularism don’t replicate the realities of a nation the place 90 % of the inhabitants are Muslim,” he stated.
Nath warned that eradicating secularism from the structure would considerably threaten the rights of spiritual minorities. “Previously, 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 had been “miscreants” somewhat than mobs pushed by sentiments towards the group.
“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 house, particularly with fundamentalist teams now emboldened. The main focus must be on guaranteeing Hindu minorities really feel secure once more.”
“Phrases aren’t sufficient any extra.”