In the face of unrelenting persecution of the religious and ethnic minorities in Bangladesh, the sheer fatuousness of Amartya Sen’s assertion that “Bangladesh has not experienced any recent religion- based riots” (HT, August 2) has appalled many lesser mortals. The eminent economist is closely tied to an NGO in Bangladesh, but in his anxiety to be politically correct, he has failed to appreciate the sufferings of that country’s hapless minorities.
Thanks to the commendable role played by a section of the Bangladeshi media, the no-holds-barred savagery — loot, arson, rape, murder and desecration — perpetrated on the Hindus in Bangladesh in the wake of the country’s parliamentary elections in October 2001 and since then have been well documented.
Any riot situation involves two conflicting parties. But in Bangladesh, it is a one-sided affair with the minorities always at the receiving end. Call it ‘religion-based riots’ or ‘religion-based repressions’, but to dismiss the harsh reality of minority-bashing in Bangladesh is simply absurd.
The systematic persecution of minorities in Bangladesh — dating back to 1947 — has been taking place much before the demolition of the Babri masjid in 1992 and the sordid events in Narendra Modi’s Gujarat last year. To correlate these deplorable happenings in India to the assaults on the minorities in Bangladesh and treat them as mere cause-and-effect is to dilute the crimes against humanity there.
British journalist John Vidal, in an article in The Guardian (July 21), summed up the pogrom in Bangladesh: “In 2001, dozens of people were killed, more than 1,000 women from minority groups were raped and several thousand people lost their land in three months around the election.” Most disturbing of all was the incredible insensitivity with which the Bangladesh government of the day ignored these crimes and allowed the culprits, mostly BNP and Jamaat cadres, to go scot-free.
Unsurprisingly, the last 20 months have seen no let-up in the low- intensity violence directed against minority communities — Hindus, Buddhists and Christians, along with Chakma, Garo and Santhal tribals. To avoid international opprobrium, the culprits now take on individual targets one by one. Forcible occupation of land is rampant and rising. Selective killings of leading Hindus and Buddhists have also increased steadily.
The Calcutta killings and Noakhali riots in 1946 set the stage for organised communal violence in East Pakistan. Successive Muslim League governments and military regimes in Pakistan used it as a device for political crisis management in the country’s rebellious eastern wing.
The liberation of Bangladesh in 1971, insertion of secularism, socialism, nationalism and democracy in the new nation’s Constitution and the banning of all communal parties promised a respite from communal violence. But the assassination of Sheikh Mujib in August 1975, the de-secularisation of the Constitution and the lifting of the ban on communal parties by General Zia-ur Rehman and declaration of Islam as State religion by General Ershad heralded an era of renewed attacks on minorities.
Between October 31 and November 2, 1990, the Ershad regime, in a bid to divert public attention from the on-going mass movement against it, engineered massive attacks on Hindus. Two years later, following the demolition of the Babri masjid, thousands of Hindu houses were destroyed, hundreds of Hindu women raped and innumerable Hindu temples desecrated or destroyed. The ruling BNP cadres, supported by Jamaat-e-Islam activists, had spearheaded these attacks. Instead of containing the violence and bringing the culprits of the 2001 pogrom to book, the incumbent Khaleda Zia government has repressed people — intellectuals, journalists and human rights activists — who sought to publicise the human rights violations.
Pervasive insecurity among the minorities has triggered waves of out- migration since 1947. In 1941, Hindus constituted 28 per cent of the total population in East Bengal. It came down to 22 per cent in 1951, 18.5 per cent in 1961, 13.5 per cent in 1974, 12.1 per cent in 1981 and 10 per cent in 1991. In the last two years, the Hindu population is estimated to have come down to 8.5 per cent.
International organisations like Amnesty International, the UN Human Rights Council, the European Commission and the international media have “uncovered evidence that Bangladesh is sliding into a situation in which oppression of minorities is becoming systematic”. But these warnings have made no impact on the cynical BNP-Jamaat regime.
In its findings on the 2001 pogrom, an Independent People’s Investigation Commission has blamed the BNP-Jamaat combine for unleashing “the planned and systematic attacks” on the Hindus as part of a “strategy to rid the country of not only the religious minorities but also all the ethnic groups, and turn it into a monolithic theocratic State.”
Despite its defeat in the last election to the BNP-Jamaat combine, the Awami League remains the largest party, having obtained 40 per cent of the total votes against the 37 per cent secured by the BNP. As monolithic Hindu support tilts the balance in its favour in 62 of the total 300 constituencies, BNP-Jamaat strategists want to reduce the Hindu population to around 2 per cent through forced migration.
As a part of the strategy to deprive the Awami League of Hindu votes, Jamaat leaders have been urging the minorities to opt for a separate electorate system. The Jamaat is growing rapidly in the poorest rural areas and fundamentalists are infiltrating every professional space, creating the “backdrop for the introduction of the strict Sharia laws”.
In the emerging scenario, the minorities have two stark options: embrace Islam or migrate to India. As in Bosnia and Kosovo, only humanitarian intervention by the international community can salvage the minorities in Bangladesh. But who will initiate such a move? Surely not India. New Delhi has forgotten its solemn assurance to the minorities in East Bengal during Partition that India would guarantee their future peace and security.
(The writer is former Additional
Secretary, Research and Analysis Wing, and retired Director General, Indo-Tibetan
Border Police)