Surge in Anti-Hindu Violence in Bangladesh Provokes Deep Concern in India

India’s leading organisation Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has warned that the condition of Bangladesh's minorities, particularly the Hindus, was going from “bad to worse” in the wake of toppling of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina by opposition-backed protestors on Monday.

“Till last night, more than 20 Hindu shops in Jessore, homes in Panchgarh district and Jhenaidah became targets of fundamentalists. Even the crematoriums and temples have been vandalised. There’s hardly any Bangladeshi district left where such attacks haven’t taken place,” VHP’s General Secretary (International Affairs) Bajrang Lal Bagra told Sputnik India on Tuesday.

Bagra also stressed that Hindu minority being “persecuted” in Bangladesh was not new, which is why the religious group today constitutes around 8%, according to the 2022 Census of the population, as compared to 32% in the 1940s.

Meanwhile, the VHP official noted that the organisation had received numerous “distress calls” from members of the Bangladeshi Hindu community since Monday. He assured that the organisation was completely aware of the fact that the toppling of Hasina presented India with a “challenging situation” at its eastern border.

“But we are also duty-bound to extend a helping hand to Hindu and other minorities in Bangladesh from the ongoing persecution. Of course, we expect such support within the framework of international human rights laws,” he emphasised.

Bagra remarked, “Bharat couldn't turn a blind eye” to the attacks on Hindus in the neighbouring country and he urged the Indian government to take steps to protect the Bangladeshi minorities.

Western Double Standards Called into Question

Further, the VHP official pointed out that even though the western countries were vocal in their criticism of Hasina on the question of human rights, they may have little to say when it comes to attacks on Hindus after the fall of the ex-PM government.

“The West has been criticising the elected government of Bangladesh on the issue of human rights, which is entirely an internal matter for them. But, what we are seeing is that Hindus and other minorities in Bangladesh are at the receiving end. While the Sheikh Hasina government did its level best to shield them from radical Islamists in Bangladeshi society and politics, we have little hope from those who are now in charge of the country,” Bagra stated.

VHP’s concerns on attacks on Western double standards on the issue were echoed by Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, a Dhaka-based counter-terrorism expert, author and editor of Blitz publication. He believes that human rights policy was a pretext to topple the regime.

“West always looks into matters according to their agendas. In Bangladesh, their target was regime change and human rights was one of the many issues for exerting pressure on the government. Even now, when the US State Department has welcomed change of regime in Bangladesh, it has been as expected extremely timid in condemning attacks of Hindus and religious minorities,” Choudhury told Sputnik India.

Bangladeshi Hindus: The Road Ahead

Giving a sense of history of persecution of the Hindu minority in Bangladesh, Choudhury noted that such hate crimes had become a “rogue culture” in Bangladeshi polity, where power has alternated between Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) coalition.

Often, the BNP-JI coalition has been criticised for fanning radical Islamist ideology for its own political ends in the predominantly Muslim country, which was founded in 1971 on secular ideals by Hasina’s father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

“During the last fifteen-and-half years, it was propagated that Hindus were enjoying special privileges under Sheikh Hasina's government. At the same time, they were portrayed as more inclined towards India than Bangladesh,” Choudhury highlighted.

“Anti-India sentiment” was systematically spread like a wildfire by opponents of Hasina, the expert said. He cautioned that the situation could intensify in coming days.

While Choudhury hoped that Bangladesh would continue to remain a secular country in coming years, he also expressed apprehension over the current circumstances.

“Unfortunately, for the last several decades, radical Islam has been gradually expanding its fangs through numerous ways, particularly through the madrassas in Bangladesh,” he stated. We can only believe, the upcoming interim government and future governments in the country shall save the nations from falling into the deep hole of radical Islam and religious hatred,” Choudhury concluded.

Sputnik Opinion

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