The Unwanted

WHEN THE SPECTRE OF ‘REVOLUTION’ HIT BANGLADESH EARLIER this month, it suffered from an excess of positivity. The spring, as it was visual­ised and brought in certain Arab nations, had to come to Bangladesh; that it had to come, aided by the Duracell of youth, hardly came as a surprise. Those who endorsed it were glad to see Sheikh Hasina gone who, in the last few years, had turned Bangladesh into a party state. But lurking behind what is now hailed as Bangladesh’s “second liberation” is a malady whose symptoms may have already begun to appear.

After the chief adviser of the new interim government, Muhammad Yunus, took over on August 8, three days after Hasina fled to India, the optics of the overthrow have been carefully handled. The roads have been emptied of mobs; the flags have been shelved, and the chants have gone silent. Yunus made a call to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and assured him of the protection and safety of Hindus who have been at the receiving end of the violence. But even after these assurances and the visible toning down of violence, there are signs that it is not the end of a nightmare for the minority Hindus; and coupled with their fate, there is also apprehension that the direction Bangladesh may take will not be in New Delhi’s interests.

Bimal Chandra Dey, 41, lives in Comilla district, in southeast Bangladesh, about 100kms from Dhaka. He has been in Hyderabad in India for treatment of a liver ailment. Towards the beginning of August, he says, he felt that the situation may turn worse.

Comilla has a terrible history of anti-Hindu violence. In October 2021, a copy of the Koran was found at the feet of a statue of a Hindu deity at a puja pandal here. Even as the district police chief identified a Muslim man behind the act, the news spread like wildfire. Within hours, Muslim mobs attacked Hindu houses, businesses and temples. The violence soon spread to 34 other districts, resulting in loss of life and property.

On August 4, Dey, who owned a Suzuki bike showroom, asked his staff to keep the shutters closed; he feared that it may be looted. A day later, a mob descended upon the show­room, burning it down. Dey has suffered an estimated loss of 2.5 crore Bangladeshi taka (approximately ₹1.67 crore). In the same spate of violence, the old library in Comilla, established in 1885 by the rulers of Tripura, was also destroyed. The vandals burnt down or took away 14,000 out of the library’s collection of 18,000 books, including rare books.

“My family is very scared; they do not want me to return,” Dey said on the phone from Hyderabad. He feels that a local Muslim businessman associated with the Bangladesh National­ist Party (BNP), which had ties earlier with the Jamaat-e-Islami, may have been behind the attack on his showroom. With his showroom destroyed, Dey is distraught and feels that he has no future in Bangladesh. He is now among thousands of Hindus who want to migrate to India. “I am an experienced businessman. If Mr Modi gives me assurance for my business, I can operate from India,” he said.

“There is a sense of dread among the Hindus; they do not know who to turn to,” said Deep Halder, the author of Being Hindu in Bangladesh. According to estimates by minorities’ rights groups, over 400 properties, including around 25 temples were attacked in the recent violence.

That violence may have come down now, but the writing on the wall about how things may unfold in Bangladesh does not look promising. On August 19, a horde of students took Professor Abdul Bashir to his office at the Faculty of Arts at Dhaka University, where they coerced him into tendering his resignation. As he drafted it on his official letter pad, the students recited verses from the Koran. Bashir kept sitting on his chair, his arms crossed, as a tall student almost stood guard next to him, while others in the front and on his side recorded the entire spectacle on their phones.

Bashir had earlier prevented students from taking part in a Koran recitation programme on campus. One of the coordina­tors of the students’ movement, who was also present there, denounced Bashir as being autocratic and he was deemed unfit for holding the dean’s position. The irony of the fact that Bashir holds a doctorate in Islamic history and culture was lost on the mob drunk on their newly acquired power.

A day earlier, as reported by a local newspaper, a village in Sunamganj district has banned music at events such as weddings. The report stated that the members of the Muslim community came together in the village Chiksa and announced the ban. They have reportedly said that anyone defying this ban will face legal action. The Hindu residents of the town did not resist the ban, the report states.

In the last 10 years alone, according to human rights group reports, over 3,600 attacks targeting Hindus have taken place. These, according to a Bangladeshi human rights organisation, ASK, in­clude 1,670 cases of vandalism and arson attacks on Hindu temples.

Eleven members of the Hindu community died in these incidents, and another 862 were injured. Several instances of sexual assault against Hindu women were also reported during this time. In 2016, research conducted by Professor Abdul Barakat of Dhaka University revealed that from 1964 to 2013, around 11.3 million Hindus left Bangladesh—an average of 632 Hindus each day.

After the latest violence, there are reports that several Hindus have been forced to tender their resignation. “The visuals [of violence] may have ebbed, but the othering of the Hindus will continue to happen in subtle ways,” said Halder.

Barely had Hasina left that the Jamaat, banned by her, opened its party office in Dhaka. It has left many despondent in Bangla­desh, even those who opposed Hasina and were hoping for a better future for the country. The American analyst Adam Pitman put it like this in Dhaka Tribune: “One aspect of Jamaat that remains poorly understood is its overseas network. We don’t know where all their money comes from. We don’t really know how their associations work. A real can of worms. It’s sad that Jamaat—who hasn’t renounced the 1971 war crimes and genocide, let alone the past decade of violence against students, free thinkers, and minorities—should influence the interim government that comes, and the democratic government we hope will emerge.”

IN 2017, THE Chairperson of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister Bibek Debroy was in Agartala for a confer­ence, after which he had another conference lined up in Dhaka. Debroy, who was then a member of the government’s NITI Aayog, had plans of flying to Kolkata from where he’d take a flight to Dhaka. But in Agartala that day, Debroy felt a longing for his ances­tral village, which lay north of Agartala, a journey of a few hours. Debroy had been to Dhaka several times, but he had never been to the village where his father was born. The senior Debroy was 23 when the village, then a part of the broader Sylhet region, became a part of East Pakistan. The family shifted to Shillong, Meghalaya, where Debroy was born in 1955. Almost 60 years later, someone from the family was travelling back. But the problem was that Debroy knew very little about the location of his village, which lay in modern Bangladesh’s Habiganj district.

From Agartala that day, Debroy made a phone call to his youngest uncle, 87 at that time. The old man heard him out and offered the following directions: From the Habiganj Sadar (district headquarters), Debroy was to move towards the Kopai River and take the small road going towards Aralia village. The fifth village called Poil would be his destination.

Since Debroy was a gov­ernment official, crossing the border and travelling by road involved a little proto­col. Two days before he was to commence his journey, Debroy posted on X (then Twitter) that he was going to Poil. Minutes later, someone replied to his message in Bengali: “When?” Debroy re­plied: “The day after.” The person replied: “What will you eat?”

By this time, Debroy says, he was convinced that the person he did not know at all was some random follower who was hav­ing fun. In the same jest, Debroy replied: “Shootki” (a Bengali delicacy of dried fish).

The next day, Debroy and his wife proceeded towards Sylhet where they spent their night. Towards the afternoon, the next day, they reached Habiganj, where Debroy discovered that the small road his uncle had asked him to take was a proper metallic road now. Villages in Bangladesh are fairly larger than those in India—Poil’s population is about 20,000 out of which over 5,000 people were on the road that day to welcome them. Children held banners in Bengali that read: “Poil welcomes its son home.”

For the next few hours, Debroy and his wife were treated to a multi-course meal, including shootki. As he ventured out for a round of the village, Debroy noticed about 20 women huddling on the roadside. These, he was told, were women from the few Hindu families in Poil, who wanted to do a traditional welcome of Debroy’s wife, as the village’s daughter-in-law.

Debroy returned to India, his heart full of good memories. But three months later, news came to him from Poil that the handful of Hindus he had met that day in Poil had been wiped out in anti-Hindu violence.

SO FAR, NEW DELHI has not shown any interest in absorb­ing Hindu refugees from Bangladesh. A few attempts made by Bangladeshi citizens to cross into India have been thwarted by the Border Security Force. But it is watching with caution its neighbour’s new avatar that poses significant challenges.

Bangladesh experts are hopeful of India’s continuity as a major player in Bangladesh even in the changed circum­stances. Bangladesh, they say, needs support from India for the supply of foodgrains, electricity and pharmaceuticals. It has no industrial base and continues to remain hedged between agriculture and service industry with readymade garments (RMGs) constituting over 80 per cent of its total exports. It remains a one-product wonder, and for this as well, around 60 per cent of cotton and yarn comes from India. After Covid-19,the apparel industry faced loss­es and a considerable number of its factories, mostly based in the Dhaka suburbs and Chittagong, were shut. This created a massive job loss—about 68 per cent of people lost their jobs in the urban areas of Dhaka and Chittagong. That is one reason why the recent unrest turned into an uprising, leading to the ouster of the Sheikh Hasina gov­ernment. “This story was a miracle standing on one leg,” Avinash Paliwal, a reader at London’s SOAS had told this correspondent in November last year, referring to the readymade garment industry.

The latest violence has created further problems. Facto­ries had to be closed for weeks due to curfews, which caused major disruptions in supply chains and production. Big ap­parel brands like H&M and Zara have been hit badly; deliv­eries of apparel to America and Europe have also been dis­rupted. Some have shifted a portion of their orders to other suppliers in countries like India.

India now waits for further political clarity in Bangladesh after which it will play its cards. A Bangladesh expert who did not want to be named said that a real engagement will only happen after the situa­tion stabilises and an election leads to the formation of a government.

But right now, despite statements from the interim govern­ment and from the main opposition party, BNP, there seems to be a subtle effort to put India into a corner. BNP has sought the extradition of Sheikh Hasina from India. “It is our call to you that you should hand her over to the government of Bangla­desh in a legal way. The people of this country have given the August 20. The extradition treaty between the two countries has been in place since 2013, with some amendments made to it in 2016. The amended clause makes it mandatory for the requesting country to frame charges and that both countries should be satisfied that the offence is punishable. Adding to the choir is Mohammad Touhid Hossain, who is now the foreign affairs ad­viser in the interim government. Hossain, who served as Bangla­desh’s deputy high commissioner in Kolkata in the early 2000s, has been described as a “troublesome creature,” alluding to his anti-India views. After becoming part of the interim government, Hossain said that Bangladesh wants to work closely with India to promote bilateral relations, but added that deposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s public statements from India are “not conducive” towards that.

So, what are the possible scenarios that could play out in Dhaka? The Bangladesh expert this correspondent spoke to feel that Hasina may have been gone, but her party’s cadre is strong. “Think of it as the Congress party in India,” he said. “It may be down, but it is not out. It has the benefit of being the party of Independence, and so has the Awami League.”

Then there is the question of BNP, which is a child of Pakistan. It had severed ties with the Jamaat earlier as it was conscious of being seen as the ally of an organisation that opposed the independence of Bangladesh. But what joins them is their commitment to Islamism; also, after its acting Chairper­son Tarique Rahman spoke to Jamaat, they began to come together in protests against Hasina’s government. New Delhi’s BNP predicament was best described by an Indian government source early this year to The Hindustan Times: “If Hasina fell, it means BNP was back. If BNP was back, it meant Jamaat was back. If Jamaat was back, it meant ISI [Pakistan’s intelligence agency] was back. If ISI was back, it meant China’s security presence was even more intense.”

Yunus himself is old at 84, and faced with pressure from radical Islamists within the establishment, he may not have many long-term solutions to offer. Given this precarious situation, India’s interest is closely tied to how quickly Bangladesh can overcome its wobbliness and how its youth, who fought battles on its streets to bring about this change, perceive their nation. It will take time—perhaps a year or two before the solid ground appears.

BangladeshHindu communitiesIndia-Bangladesh relationsMuhammad YunusPolitical upheavalrefugeeSheikh Hasinaviolence