After Hasina’s fall, Hindus in Bangladesh on edge

On the night of August 5, hours after the Sheikh Hasina government fell in Bangladesh, a 28-year-old Hindu government employee got a call from his elder sister.

A mob had gathered outside her home in a village in Kurigram district, she told him, and tried to attack it.

“They managed to resist the attack,” the government employee told Scroll.

Kurigram, which is a two-hour drive from the Indo-Bangladesh border, has a sizeable Hindu population.

Though few other incidents have been reported from the district, the government employee was apprehensive. “We are living in fear at this moment,” he said. “I don’t know what to do. Should I move to India?”

In the aftermath of Hasina’s dramatic flight from Bangladesh on August 5, the Hindu community was on edge, with sporadic reports of mobs turning on homes and religious places of minorities.

“Right now, minorities and those who were associated with Awami League are not safe at all,” said the government employee from Kurigram. The leaders of Hasina’s party Awami League have come under attack in several places, the Bangladesh-based newspaper Prothom Alo reported on Tuesday.

The Kurigram resident said he had few options if the violence escalates. “I have only one request to the Indian government – they should open the gates in the states which share a boundary with Bangladesh,” he said. “A huge number of Hindu Bengalis will go to India right now.”

Another resident of Chattogram district told Scroll that his ancestral home had come under attack on Monday night.

Tapos Kanti Dutta, the 53-year-old resident of Satkania, and his family were away when a mob of 500 people attacked his ancestral home in Govindpur.

He alleged that the attackers were members of the radical Islamist group, Jamaat-e-Islami. “They entered the building with sticks, rods, and daos,” Dutta told Scroll from Chattogram town. “They have broken the furniture and destroyed our belongings.”

Around 50-odd women in the neighbourhood fled their homes after the attack. “They are still hiding,” he said.

Conflicting reports

In a press release issued on Tuesday, the Bangladesh Hindu Bouddha Christian Oikko Parishad listed nearly 100 incidents of vandalism, loot and arson in Hindu temples, and homes and shops owned by Hindus since Monday. “Several homes and shops have been vandalised,” said Dipankar Ghosh, a member of the Parishad. “Even now the situation is dangerous.”

However, there was no independent verification of the claims. “We are checking the Oikko Parishad list but there do not seem to be any major attacks,” the Dhaka-based bureau chief of a foreign news agency told Scroll. “There are some attacks on Hindu properties and homes, torching and vandalism in many places but we still have not heard of anyone being killed.”

The largest number of attacks against Hindus have taken place in Dinajpur, Jessore and Chattogram districts, the Parishad’s press release said. At least 11 temples, including five in Dinajpur, have come under attack since Monday, the press release said. The Ramakrishna Mission and Iskcon temples in Netrakona district were attacked on Monday, it said.

According to Biren Adhikary, a Dhaka-based professional who took part in the 1971 freedom movement, Hindus are being targeted as they are seen as supporters and voters of the Awami League. “The attackers think that Hindus are also responsible for the misrule of the outgoing Awami League government,” Adhikary told Scroll over the phone. He said that most Hindu residents are apprehensive about travelling around in Dhaka.

Other members of the Hindu community were cautious about ascribing communal motives to the attacks. “Common Hindus have not faced any violence, but there have been some attacks on Hindus who are supporters and functionaries of Awami League,” said Gobinda Chandra Pramanik, general secretary of Bangladesh Jatiya Hindu Mahajote and an advocate based in Dhaka.

He said that leaders of the Opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Jamaat-e-Islami have assured Hindu leaders of their safety. “Since yesterday evening, BNP and Jamaat functionaries have been guarding major Hindu temples due to which none of them have come under attack,” Pramanik said. “They do not want to malign this victory by attacking Hindus.”

Spreading misinformation

Several social media posts about purported attacks on Hindus have also proved to be misinformation. On Tuesday, fact-checker Mohammed Zubair debunked a viral video posted on social media by a Hindutva supporter claiming that a Dalit Hindu woman had been gangraped in Bangladesh. However, Zubair found that the video was of an incident from 2021 where a Bangladeshi woman had been raped in Bengaluru.

In another viral post, many social media users claimed that the home of Bangladeshi cricketer Liton Das had been set on fire. However, media reports from Bangladesh said that the home shown in these posts belonged to former cricketer Mashrafe Mortaza, who is also an MP of Hasina’s party Awami League. A number of other claims, including those about a Hindu temple being burnt and a Hindu man being killed have also been debunked.

Tesponding to Zubair, R Jaganathan, the editorial director of pro-government publication Swarajya asked the fact checker on X to confirm what had happened “instead of just trying to suggest that all stories of attacks on Hindu temples are fake”. Jagannathan also posted a link to a media report on arson in a temple in Khulna district in his tweet.

A community divided

Even before Hasina’s fall, the widespread anti-government protests in the country had left the Hindu community divided. “The younger generation of Hindus wanted accountability, and then Hasina to resign,” said a resident, who declined to be identified. “The older generation wanted a negotiated settlement, and then security.”

However, the atmosphere of uncertainty after the fall of Hasina’s government has left many rattled. “Yesterday, after Hasina resigned, everyone was calling each other checking on their safety, and reporting violence [against Hindus], often in ancestral villages,” this person said.

Many are locking themselves up in their homes in fear. “Hindus out in the villages perhaps have it the worst, and Hindus in the cities are worried they will become targets,” this person said.