Author: G.R. Chowdury
Publication: Cultural Survival
Date: January 31, 1992
URL: http://209.200.101.189/publications/csq/csq-article.cfm?id=250
Unnatural Disasters: Pogroms have killed thousands
of Bangladeshi. minorities; millions more are refugees in India.
In the West, Bangladesh is a synonym for poverty,
a basket-case nation with a soaring population, a pitiful economy, and a plague
of natural disasters. Less well known is that the country's minorities have
long waged one of the world's most difficult and serious struggles for survival.
Successive military - and government-sponsored pogroms have killed thousands
of minority Bangladeshis outright, while the fortunate ones have become refugees
in India.
In perhaps the most dramatic instance, the
Pakistan army killed three million people in nine months during the course
of Bangladesh's 1971 war in independence. Ten million refugees took shelter
in India. Most victims were members of the Hindu minority.
Today, attacks on minorities and their cultures
in Bangladesh take many forms. Minorities are the victims of government-sponsored
pogroms and riots as well as of a ban on the hiring of minorities. Moreover,
they suffer police, military, and judicial inaction in the face of individual
and Muslim-sponsored terror, discrimination, and repression.
A particularly glaring case is the Enemy Property
Act, initially passed in 1949, then renamed in 1965 and 1972. Under this law
the government can confiscate minority properties and businesses with no compensation
or notice simply by declaring a person to be an enemy of the state. Between
1975 and 1989, the Bangladesh government confiscated 1.5 million acres of
land from the nation's minorities, in addition to homes, fishing ponds, shops,
and businesses. A November 1991 report indicates that 60 percent of minority
property may have already been confiscated.
ROOTS OF VIOLENCE
Though born as a country only 20 years ago,
Bangladesh is an ancient land with a long history. Together with the present-day
Indian state of West Bengal, ancient Indian scriptures refer to it as Banga
desh (land). Banga, which the English called Bengal, covers the world's largest
delta, that of the rivers of Ganga and Brahmaputra.
For millennia, the Bengali area of the Indian
subcontinent has had a mixture of religious, linguistic, and ethnic groups.
In Bangladesh, today's minorities are Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians, as
well as plains and hill tribal and Urdu languages. The fate of all these groups
has come to be linked to that of Hindu Bengalis, who constitute more than
95 percent of the minorities.
The Muslim presence dates at least from the
fourteenth century, when non-native Muslim kings - Pathans and Mughals - became
ruler of Bengal. However, Bengalis had started embracing Islam even before
then, and Muslim rule expedited that process. In the seventeenth century,
Muslim power declined throughout India as British power rose, but relations
among Hindu, Muslims, and Buddhists remained relatively peaceful.
Two hundred years of British rule dramatically
changed the relations between Bengal's Hindus and Muslims. An early British
action that may mark the first distancing of Hindus from Muslims was the Permanent
Settlement Act. This 1792 law vested Bengal's tax collection in the hands
of the overwhelmingly Hindu gentry at a time when most peasants were Muslim.
(Muslim rulers also depended on this Hindu gentry for governing Bengal.)
More concretely, religion-based politics in
Bangladesh - known in the region as "communalism" originated in
Britain's partitioning of Bengal in 1905 on the basis of religion. Western
Bengal, with a Hindu majority, formed one province, and Muslim East Bengal
another. The British claimed the area was too large to administer as one unit,
but mostly Hindu nationalists accused the British of a divide-and-rule policy
that injected religion into Indian politics. The English exacerbated the tensions
by granting several benefits to Muslim elites at the cost of the Hindu middle-class.
After much agitation, in particular from the nationalists, Britain reunited
Bengal in 1912, but communal politics remained a permanent feature there,
as in all India.
Still, a precarious balance existed in Bengal
until the late 1940s. In 1946, on the eve of Indian independence and the partition
of India into India and Pakistan, a ghastly pogrom, supported by the ruling
Muslim League administration in Bengal, occurred against poor, rural Hindus
in the eastern Noakhali district. Estimates of the number of Hindus murdered
varies, from a government figure of 1,000 to unofficial figures of tens of
thousands. This killing created the term "Noakhalir danga" (Noakhali
Riot), and it set the stage for the future of minorities in Bangladesh.
Mahatma Gandhi intervened to stop the Noakhali
carnage, but after Pakistan came into being there was no Mahatma to stop the
killing of Hindu and other minorities. Anti-Hindu pogroms in East Pakistan
took place in 1947, 1949, 1951, 1952, 1954 1956 1564, and 1971. Pakistan's
military-bureaucratic rulers routinely used anti-Hindu riots and anti-India
slogans to slow the growth of Bengali nationalism.
In 1964, at the height of the Bengali nationalist
movement, Pakistan unleashed a reign of terror. Estimates of number of Hindus
murdered varies from 10,000 to several times that. Newspapers in India reported
this event extensively, but those in Pakistan only noted that even Muslims
were killed trying to save Hindu neighbors. The New York Times failed to cover
the tragedy, although the Washington Post and London Times reported that over
1,000 were killed in the first days of the killing, including a U.S. priest.
Then came the 1971 independence war during
which Pakistan targeted Hindu and other minorities, affecting the homes and
businesses of almost all Hindus families. Over 70 percent of those killed
and those who became refugees were Hindu and other minorities. Bengali police
and the Pakistani army frequently stopped men stripped them naked to check
whether they were circumcised or not, and asked them to recite from the Koran.
Non-Muslim women were practically barred from wearing anything that would
identify them as such, since their identification as anything but Muslim could
mean instant death. Many books cover this subject, almost all in Bengali;
Bhayabaha Aviggata (Terrifying Experience) covers over 50 instances in which
the Pakistan army and its collaborators murdered Hindus and Muslims. In one
case, soldiers shot to death 338 Hindus at Syedpur in North Bengal after loading
them in railway box cars.
POGROMS, KILLINGS, AND OFFICIAL DISCRIMINATION
In Bangladesh, I have often asked people,
"How are minorities doing?" For many years, the same answers came
over and over - villages and cities, from rich and poor, from Muslims and
Hindus, Christians, and Buddhists: "Barely surviving." "Back
against the wall." "On our way to destruction." "We will
not be able to maintain our identity." Until a few years ago, I also
heard, "A lot better than before Pakistani rule." Recently, however,
people say, "Even Pakistani days were better than now."
This is saddening and sobering. For a new
years after independence, large-scale killing of minorities disappeared. It
even seemed that the majority-minority, Muslim-non-Muslim communalism might
end. After all, minorities had paid a heavy price for Bangladesh's independence.
However, minorities soon started to feel pressure
for several reasons, including the decision of Bangladesh's first Prime Minister
Mujibur Rahman to issue a blanket pardon of murderers after independence.
In addition, Rahman, who was considered tolerant and secular, retained the
Enemy Property Act, and he refused to allow the repair of the Ramna Kali temple
in Dhaka city after its desecration and burning by the Pakistan army. Rahman
also gave a famous speech in the Chittagong Hills in which he asked the hill
tribal peoples to give up their identity and become Bengalis.
Attacks on minorities and their festivities
started to become routine, and after Rahman's assassination, official anti-Hindu
acts intesified. Minorities could no longer get government or semi-government
jobs - such as with the police, the military, or the bureaucracy - even though
Bangladesh's minorities are relatively well educated (see table below). Minorities
complain that after passing civil-service tests they are dropped from consideration
once their identity becomes known. They are also barred from overseas assignments
at Bangladeshi embassies or the United Nations.
Of this situation, Matiur Rahman and Syed
AzizulHaq, two well-known Muslim intellectuals of Bangladesh, have written:
Even though there's no legal restriction on
hiring [Hindu] minorities at higher levels, in reality we find there's neither
a Hindu Secretary nor an Additional Secretary. There's only one at the [next
lower] level of Joint Secretary and only a few Deputy Secretaries. They don't
expect any promotion.
At this moment there are only six Hindu District
Commissioners [out of sixty-four]. Although Hindus may be appointed in the
police at the lower level, it will be hard to find [them] at the Police Super
level. There are none at the foreign service. Judiciary has a similar picture.
There's only one judge at the High Court level. In the Bangladesh Army, there
are only six Hindu commissioned officers. The highest ranking officer is a
colonel, and rest are majors.
Organized attacks on minorities and their
temples, viharas, ashrams, and churches also increased manyfold in the last
half of 1980s, with large-scale attacks in 1987, 1989, and 1990. In 1989,
over 400 temples were destroyed or damaged. This wave reached its height with
the destruction of desecration of perhaps 80 percent of Bangladesh's Hindu-Buddhist
temples and the devastation of thousands of Hindu homes and businesses between
October 30 and November 1, 1990. The Disgrace, edited by Debashis Nandi in
Bangladesh, lists 150 temples totally or partially destroyed or desecrated
in the city of Chittagong alone. In February 1991, the Bangladeshi journal
Parishad Barta listed thousands of temples, churches, homes, and businesses
destroyed between October 30 and November 1, 1991. It also listed Christian
churches, schools, hospitals, and homes attacked in January and February 1991
at the beginning of the Gulf War. Anjali, a book published in Dhaka in 1991,
lists another several hundred temples destroyed, damaged, or desecrated.
(Barbara Crosette, a New York Times reporter,
wrote a glowing report on minority security soon after the November 1989 events.
Again, in March 1991, she visited Bangladesh and wrote a similar story in
essence supporting the pogroms while temples, homes, and businesses were still
smoldering.)
BANGLADESH TODAY
Bangladeshi minorities have begun organizing
themselves under various banners to protect their human rights and document
many of these atrocities. There are committees organized to push for the repeal
of the Enemy Property Act, to organize Puja festivals, to protect against
settling Muslims in tribal lands, and to protect Christian and Buddhist institutions.
The most important among these groups is a
non-party organization, the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council.
Headquartered in Dhaka, with branches all over the country, the council has
high-lighted the destruction of churches and temples and the forced eviction
of minorities to India. It has also brought attention to the abduction, rape,
and forced conversion to Islam of women. In parts of Bangladesh, fear of this
has made many minority families reluctant to send their daughters to college
unmarried. The Unity Council documents such offenses in its journal, Parishad
Barta, but more important than the absolute number of incidents is the fear
that has griped the minority community. As a result, fewer girls may be going
to college, despite a long tradition of higher education among Hindu and Christian
girls in Bangladesh.
Besides the Unity Council, a Bangladesh Women's
Organization and a Bangladesh Human Rights and Legal Institute have been formed
in Dhaka. Other important organizations include the Chittagong Hill Tracts
Peoples Action Committee and several local Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and
tribal organizations that protect the rights of each group on a local level.
The task of these organizations is immense.
The plight of Bangladesh's minorities can be summarized in a news report that
appeared in September 1989 about a dirt-poor Hindu of the Nadirabad village
in eastern Bangladesh. In 1987, Mrs. Birajbala Debnath's husband was kidnapped
and cut to pieces when he refused to give up his tiny homestead free of charge
to a Muslim and migrate to India. A Muslim boatman, Abdus Shahid, described
what happened next to Mrs. Debnath and her five children:
I had my boat docked at the Nadirabad village.
It was in the middle of the night, around 1 a.m. All of a sudden, I saw a
group of 15 to 20 people force Mrs. Birajbala and her five children [into
my boat]. They were scared to death. They couldn't even cry. Some had their
clothes on, others didn't. The kidnappers asked me to row the boat. I got
scared, too. The boat arrived at the Dhopajhhuri Bill [river bank]. [The kidnappers]
had already brought drums [empty oil barrels], salt, and lime. The killers
unloaded [the family] at the edge of the bank. I remained at my boat. All
of a sudden, I saw that they were about to slaughter Mrs. Birajbala. She cried
at the top of her voice. She was begging again and again by clutching the
legs of the killers. The killers then cut her into pieces and stuffed her
into a drum. After that, they cut into pieces the elder daughter. From a distance,
I watched the younger children begging for their lives over and over again.
[They were also murdered.] I can't express that in words. Tears came out of
my eyes. I called for God. Oh Allah, why did you bring me here? I was feeling
dizzy. There was nothing that could be done. The killers buried both the drums
in the river bed and asked me to row the boat.
While several organizations expressed their
outrage at these gruesome murders, protests have done nothing to stem nationwide
attacks on minorities. And one of the first things that the newly elected
government of Khaleda Zia discussed in April 1991 was whether minorities should
be allowed to vote for the Muslim majority or not, potentially creating a
separate electorate. In the summer of 1991, two low-caste Hindu villages in
the Kotalipara area were burned to the ground on the basis of a false rumor.
Mo one has been prosecuted. Unless the world takes note of their plight, Bangladesh's
minorities and their cultures will follow either the path of Mrs. Birajbala
or that of millions of refugees in India.
BANGALDESH'S REFUGEES
Bangladesh's minority population has declined
drastically since the 1947 partition of India (see table). Where have these
people gone? All have headed to India. The 1946 Noakhali riot made it clear
that Pakistan wouldn't protect minority life and property. Thus, the riot
marks the start of Hindu migration to West Bengal and Tripura in India, which
remained secular after partition, as well as a general diaspora of Bangladeshi
Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, and tribal groups. Tripura is now 70 percent
Bengali refugee, including the state's chief minister, a member of the Congress
Party, and his Communist predecessor. A third of West Bengal's 67 million
people are of Bangladeshi origin, including the chief minister, a member of
the Communist Party, and his Congress predecessor.
Estimates of the total number of Bangladeshi-origin
Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and tribals in India vary between 26 million and
38 million. Bangladeshi Buddhist refugees make up the second largest ethnic
group in Arunachal and Mizoram states. Refugees make up the largest group
in the Andaman Islands, the central Indian Dandakaranya Forest area, and parts
of the Indian states of Bihar, Assam, Meghalaya, Orissa.
Over 50,000 Chakma refugees - Bangladeshi
Buddhist tribals from the Chittagong Hills - have been camped in the Tripura
State of India for several years. Despite their decade-long armed autonomy
movement, these tribal peoples continue to be displaced from their homeland.
In 1947, at the time of partition, the Chittagong Hill Tracts were almost
100 percent non-Muslim, but by 1981 Muslims were over 40 percent of the population
in its Bandarban district and over onethird in the rest of the area.
In the wake of 1964's reign of terror alone,
over 1.1 million refugees went to India. According to government statistics,
the number of Bangladeshi refugees going to India each year varied from about
4,000 to a high of over 660,000 in 1964. However, not all refugees register
with the Indian government to be counted in statistics.
Not surprisingly, this vast wave of refugees
has led to a backlash, and anti-Bengali, anti-refugee incidents have occurred
in Assam and Tripura.
Minorities in Bangladesh
Year Total Population Minorities
1941 41,997,297 29.3%
1951 44,165,750 23.1%
1961 55,222,663 19.6%
1974 76,389,000 14.3%
1981 89,921,000 13.3%
Minority Hiring in Bangladesh
Administration (officers) 5%
Administration (lower rank) 3-5%
Administration (secretaries) 0%
Customs and excise 0%
Income-tax officials 1.5%
Military officers 1.5%
Military soldiers 0%
Border security 0%
Police, officers 6%
Police rank and file 2.5%
Major bank managers 0%
Embassy & Consulate staff 0%
Foreign assignments 0%
Home Ministry 0%
Judiciary 0%
Ministry of Defense 0%
Industry managers 1%
Industry laborers 3-4%
Recent bank loans 1%
