Zia Hassan
In July, Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, greenlighted a brutal crackdown on student protests that led to over 1500 deaths, with thousands more reportedly injured. At least 32 children were among those reported killed by UNICEF between July and August, with the Dhaka-based non-profit Ain o Salish Kendra reporting as many as 121 children killed across 10 months of the student-led movement, mostly at the hands of security forces. This was an extension of Sheikh Hasina’s repressive regime, which crushed dissent and political opposition. Bangladesh’s last three elections, all held under the rule of Hasina’s Awami League, had been rigged, and the main opposition, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), often chose to boycott the vote in protest.
For nearly three days after Hasina was ousted, forced to flee the country on 5 August, revenge attacks erupted across Bangladesh. The police, long viewed as enforcers of Awami League repression, became prime targets of public anger. Over 80 percent of police stations were burned down nationwide, and 44 police officers were killed, some of them lynched by mobs. This period marked not only the collapse of the Awami League but also a targeted backlash against its broader apparatus of power – including members of Bangladesh’s Hindu community who had held prominent roles in the party and its affiliates.
As Bangladesh’s interim administration struggles to rebuild Bangladesh’s administration, to restore destroyed police stations and to support those impacted by the violence in the aftermath of Hasina’s fall, data regarding the Hindu community’s suffering has begun to emerge. On 19 September, the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council presented a report highlighting incidents of communal violence after Hasina’s departure. It said that nine Hindus were murdered between 4 and 20 August.
Following the council’s report, Netra News, a reputable investigative outlet on Bangladesh run by journalists in exile in Sweden, thoroughly examined each of the nine reported deaths. It found little evidence to support claims that the victims were targeted because they were Hindu. Rather, it found, the deaths stemmed from political violence, personal disputes or crime, with no clear sectarian motives. Some of the deaths reported even predated Hasina’s departure.
As Netra News recounted, the BNP activist Ripon Chandra Shil and the Awami League councilor Haradhan Roy were victims of political clashes, while two other men’s deaths were tied to extortion and a payment dispute over a motorbike sale. The sub-inspector Santosh Chowdhury died in mob violence following protests around police brutality, which meant his killing could not be described as communally motivated. Ajit Sarkar’s case lacked religious motives as he was affiliated with the Awami League, Mrinal Kanti Chatterjee’s death stemmed from a land dispute, and Pradip Kumar Bhowmik was killed during an attack on an Awami League office. These deaths reflect the terrible realities of lawlessness during political instability and unrest, rather than targeted anti-Hindu violence.
And yet, this crucial context is conspicuously absent from the Indian establishment and mainstream media’s narrative on post-Hasina Bangladesh. Many Indian analysts and commentators have framed the situation in Bangladesh as a binary conflict between Hindu victims and Muslim aggressors. Adding fuel to fire, many of India’s main media outlets portrayed Bangladesh’s student-led revolution as an Islamist takeover, even drawing parallels to the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan.
For instance, the Economic Times published an article suggesting that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and China were behind the protests, with the objective of establishing an anti-India government in Bangladesh. Similarly, the television channel CNN-News18 alleged a conspiracy involving the ISI to topple Hasina and install an anti-India government.
Other Indian news channels made claims of rampant communal violence. A video on the English language Mirror Now news channel, owned by the Times Group, proclaimed ‘Attack on Hindus in Bangladesh? Mass murders, killings by mob’. The narrative of Hindu oppression has even been echoed by the chief minister of the Indian state of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, who is usually a vocal opponent of the Modi government and its Hindu nationalism. Banerjee has called for a United Nations peacekeeping force in Bangladesh and urged Modi to intervene to protect Hindus.
WHAT IS MISSING from this narrative is not just an understanding that the attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh have not sprung primarily from communal hatred, but also that they are in significant part a result of Hasina’s policy of weaponising the Hindu community against her opponents. Notably, she propagated the belief that their survival depended on the continued rule of the Awami League, portraying it as a safeguard against a violent majority as well as opposition forces like the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami. The Jamaat is Bangladesh’s largest Islamic party, and the BNP has a history of alliances with it.
Bangladesh’s Hindus constitute about eight percent of the population and have historically suffered discrimination and persecution. This dates back at least to Partition in 1947, and was particularly vicious during Bangladesh’s Liberation War in 1971, when Hindus were subjected to targeted killings, rape and other violations at the hands of Pakistan’s army. In more recent times, rights groups have flagged attacks on Hindu temples and households as evidence of the country’s longstanding failure to fully protect religious minorities.
For more than a decade, Hasina justified her unrelenting grip on power with a dire prophecy: her fall would unleash an orgy of bloodshed. In a speech in October 2023, during celebrations for the Hindu festival of Durga Puja, she claimed that Hindus had been unable to worship in temples during the regimes of the BNP’s Khaleda Zia, who last ruled in 2006, and the dictator Hussain Muhammad Ershad, deposed in 1990. Hasina emphasised that the Awami League had been instrumental in maintaining law and order, and in the same speech referenced “unspeakable atrocities and persecutions” targeting the Hindu community.
Hasina’s fearmongering was neither benign nor incidental. This narrative weaponised fear as a political tool and served as a justification to continue her undemocratic rule. It also bred a siege mentality within an elite segment of Bangladesh’s Hindu, predicated on the belief that their survival was tied to the Awami League’s continued rule. In exchange for the Awami League’s protection, Hindus were expected to serve as defenders of the regime. This dangerous symbiosis, rooted in mutual exploitation, stoked deep resentment among citizens with democratic aspirations, who saw the alliance as a betrayal of the country’s pluralistic ideals. This context is crucial to understanding the Awami League’s machinery or power, which suppressed dissent and fostered a culture of fear that traumatised the Bangladeshi population.
Secret torture chambers – a grim hallmark of Hasina’s rule – were systematically established across the country. Many police stations and offices of the Detective Branch, a specialised unit of the Bangladesh police, have functioned as torture chambers, with officers also engaging in the extortion of businesspeople and political figures.
These chambers were staffed by regime loyalists both Muslim and Hindu. Notably, Hindu recruitment was disproportionately high in the police, Hasina’s primary tool of repression and control. For instance, when the interim administration that took power after Hasina cancelled a batch of new police recruitments dating to before her downfall, citing breaches of discipline to justify the dismissals, it was revealed that out of 62 ASPs recruited in the 40th BCS, at least 12 were Hindus – amounting to roughly 19 percent of the recruits.
AT LEAST 204 PEOPLE fell victim to extrajudicial killings under the watch of Pradeep Kumar Das during his tenure as the officer-in-charge of the Teknaf Police Station, in the far southern tip of Bangladesh. Despite reports of these atrocities, he was awarded the Bangladesh Police Medal – one of the most prestigious awards that a police officer can receive. This illustrated Hasina’s willingness to recruit and empower Hindu individuals within the police force, granting them impunity and rewarding them with key positions. This strategy consolidated Hasina’s power but stoked communal resentment, adding to the destabilisation of Bangladesh’s social fabric.
During the student revolution, eyewitness accounts and videos posted on social media implicated Hindu officers in several atrocities. Biplab Kumar, a former joint commissioner of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, has been named as a suspect in 27 murder cases filed by the families of people killed across Dhaka as the protests escalated.
Even setting aside disproportionate Hindu recruitment in the police, and assuming representation in proportion to population share, statistically about eight percent of the police personnel targeted in politically motivated reprisals would be Hindu. Of the 44 police officers killed in the immediate aftermath of Hasina’s departure, this would translate to some three or four deaths. Similarly, for every thousand attacks on Awami League members and backers nationwide, an estimated eighty would have targeted Hindus. All these attacks and death are regrettable, and this is not the way to seek justice. However, given the prevalence of such political violence, the only way to significantly avoid Hindu casualties would have been if the backlash following Hasina’s fall targeted only Muslims—an unlikely scenario, considering Hindu officers and leaders were also part of the same Awami machinery of oppression.
Amid the political upheaval following Hasina’s collapse, a significant portion of Bangladesh’s police force remains unaccounted for, with many officers in hiding. The maintenance of law and order rests on an increasingly burdened army, after the interim administration called on the military to step in to temporarily do the police’s job. Fears of a counter-coup loom large as Awami League loyalists in the army, police and bureaucracy resist removal. Leaked calls from Hasina have revealed plans to retake power, while the Awami League has repeatedly threatened mass rallies to topple the interim government – a threat so far thwarted by public resistance and occasional vigilante justice.
The public fears that Hasina’s return could bring catastrophic revenge, especially targeting students and others involved in the protests. This anxiety is compounded by growing distrust of India, seen by many as determined to reinstall Hasina. The Indian media and establishment’s contrived narrative of Bangladesh having become an “anti-Hindu” place is only stoking this distrust and fear.
It is in this context that Chinmoy Krishna Das, a former leader of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKON), has emerged as a polarising figure. The Hindu religious leader formed a movement in Bangladesh after Hasina’s fall to demand justice for violence against the Hindu community, including attacks on Hindu temples. On 13 August, his group presented an eight-point list of demands that included calls for laws on minority protection as well as the creation of a special tribunal and a ministry of minority affairs. Alongside this, it organised large protests and called for a mass event with participants from across the country to culminate in a rally at Dhaka’s Central Shaheed Minar.
In October, Das was arrested on sedition charges for “disrespecting the national flag”. His arrest created a storm of controversy, with clashes between Das’s supporters and the police leading to the death of the public prosecutor Saiful Islam. Indian mainstream media spread misinformation around Das’ arrest, claiming that it was Das’ lawyer who had been killed for representing him after he was denied bail. India Today reported that Hindu protesters participating in rallies after Das’ arrest were ‘attacked by radical fundamentalist groups’. The arrest led to even higher tensions between India and Bangladesh. The recent attack by Indian protestors on the Bangladesh High Commission in Agartala, in the northeastern Indian state of Tripura, highlights the escalation of tensions, with Bangladesh authorities subsequently summoning the Indian envoy in Dhaka to express their displeasure.
Some have speculated that Das’s movement was part of a covert strategy to bring Awami League loyalists into the streets to push for restoring Hasina, with Hindu grievances being leveraged as a rallying cry. These theories are unproven but the suspicion is not without foundation given Hasina’s policy of weaponising the Hindu community against political opponents to her own benefit. In her first speech after stepping down as prime minister, Hasina accused the head of Bangladesh’s interim government, Muhammad Yunus, of perpetrating “genocide” and failing to protect Hindus and other minorities.
India’s political establishment must understand that Bangladesh’s post-revolution backlash and its accompanying violence was not a communal occurrence. After the collapse of Hasina’s government, Hindus linked to the Awami League’s decade-old apparatus of repression faced similar treatment to Muslims with the same political ties. Thankfully, law and order have since been restored, with no broad pattern of attacks reported on Hindus or the Awami League anymore.
However, India’s continued support for Hasina has only deepened tensions and damaged its credibility in Bangladesh. Most Bangladeshi citizens believe India must abandon its outdated strategy of supporting its favoured autocrat and instead support efforts to ensure Hasina is held to account for the brutal crackdown on student protesters, as well as engage constructively with Bangladesh’s new leadership. Most crucially, they want a stop to the disinformation peddled by the Indian media around Das’s arrest and communal violence.
Bangladesh is in a crucial phase, forming not just a new government but also a new national identity. If the Indian establishment persists in its provocations, it risks losing Bangladesh as a friend and instead gaining another bilateral relationship in its neighbourhood characterised by bitterness and defiance against India, not unlike its poisonous equation with Pakistan. The decision rests with India.
source : himalmag