Bangladesh’s lessons for BJP
Updated On: 12 August, 2024 06:46 AM IST | Mumbai | Ajaz Ashraf
The consequences of the State abandoning secularism both as a principle of policy and in practice can be witnessed in the violence being unleashed against Hindus in our neighbouring country
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Members of Bangladesh’s Hindu community block the Shahbagh intersection in Dhaka on August 10 to protest against attacks on Hindu homes, temples and shops after former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had resigned and fled the country. Pic/PTI
Whenever Bangladesh erupts, I call up Hindus whom I have come to know because of professional reasons. Ascribe my habit to the empathy religious minorities have for each other in South Asia, where the States have now increasingly become caricatures of their original conceptions. And so, when Sheikh Hasina fled Bangladesh and Muslim mobs took to targeting the Hindus, I spoke to Rana Dasgupta, general secretary of the Hindu Christian Buddhist Unity Council. To my shock, he said he had shifted to a friend’s house for safety. A community leader taking refuge is a telling commentary on the Bangladeshi Hindu’s vulnerability.
Next, I rang up a Dhaka-based political activist whom I had last spoken with in 2021, when communal violence scarred the country. He passed away earlier this year, said the lady who answered my call. Are you safe, I asked. She broke down: “We are too traumatised to even sleep.” One of her two daughters participated in the student movement, but her idealism was reduced to ashes as Bangladesh burnt in inexplicable hatred against the minorities.
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