Protecting Hindus In Post-Hasina Bangladesh Is Now Tougher Than Ever: Here's Why

The ouster of Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh brings new challenges for the Hindus living there.

While we need some nuance in understanding the issues thrown up by her exit — both Muslims and Hindus have been targeted by mobs — we still need to be more concerned about the latter.

While the Muslims targeted are largely Awami League politicians and workers, the Hindus targeted are often victims purely because of their religious identity.

As the world’s largest Hindu country, India has a role in protecting the lives and properties of Hindus in Bangladesh, however much “secularists” and Islamists dislike the idea.

So, while it is heart-warming to note that some humane Muslims have stood guard to protect temples and churches, the larger point is this: humane behaviour by some does not cancel out the larger anti-Hindu rhetoric and violence in Muslim-majority Bangladesh. 

Islamism does not operate only through state power, though grabbing state power has always been the aim of Islamists everywhere. Despite over 14 centuries of existence, Islam has never had a strong secular-reformist movement.

So, even if a Muslim-majority country is avowedly “secular”, the word has no resonance in large parts of Muslim society. Islam has never been secular in content or intent.

The Muslim intellectuals who disagree with Islamists or fundamentalists are often unwilling to say so in public for fear of reprisals and physical threats.

At best, they choose to become lapsed Muslims. This is why practically no Indian Muslim liberal was willing to say that the Citizenship Amendment Act was needed to fast-track citizenship to Hindu and other minorities subjected to violence in three neighbouring countries.

Nor are they willing to admit that post-Hasina Bangladesh leaves Hindus particularly vulnerable to intimidation and violence, even assuming some of the stories about attacks on temples and Hindus are overblown.

To understand why, we must understand how Islam has evolved, or refused to evolve, since it was founded by the Prophet in the seventh century CE. 

In the immediate centuries after the Prophet passed, Islamic armies had won victories in large parts of Europe, Africa and Asia. The conquests in Europe brought Muslim intellectuals in contact with Hellenistic ideas and new ways of thinking about god, society and humanity.

But despite this exposure, by the tenth and eleventh centuries, all the gates to reason (Ijtihad) were closed. The heroic rethink initiated by the likes of Avicenna (Ibn Sina, tenth century CE) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd, twelfth century CE), both highly influenced by Aristotle, was erased by a group called the Asherites, who held on to the traditional view that the Quran is the final, immutable word of god.

The Mutazilites, or those who believed that the Quran was not eternal and co-equal with god, were defeated by the Asherites, who maintained the more orthodox view that Islam is only about Allah’s will. The holy book cannot be understood by reasoning out what god may have intended.

By the time of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (al-Ghazali, for short, 1058-1111 CE), Asherite Islam was ready to commit intellectual suicide, as Robert Reilly notes in his book, The Closing of the Muslim Mind.

Notes Reilly: “The fatal disconnect between the Creator and the mind of his creature is the source of Sunni Islam’s most profound woes. This bifurcation, located not in the Koran but in early Islamic theology, ultimately led to the closing of the Muslim mind.” 

Even under Sheikh Hasina’s rule, while the state was theoretically secular, large parts of Bangladeshi society were not quite willing to leave it at that. Many Islamist groups could orchestrate street power to the extent where even Hasina had to accommodate their interests in practice. (You can read about this compromise in a book by Deep Halder and Avishek Biswas, Being Hindu in Bangladesh: The Untold Story.)

These Islamist groups, including the Jaamat-e-Islami and its youth wing, the Chhatra Parishad, which was among the student organisations spearheading the anti-Hasina protests, have the ultimate goal of Islamising Bangladesh and bringing it under Sharia rule. But as Halder and Biswas note in their research, even some Awami League members have in the past participated in anti-Hindu violence.

Islam, as it has been practised after Mohammed, has evolved into a totalitarian ideology, and the thing it most fears is contamination of its core precepts by contact with non-Muslims.

This is why hardcore Muslims, when they are in a minority, choose to live in ghettoes, and when they are in a majority, believe that their ideology can be protected only by aggressive conversions that include coercion and intimidation of the minorities.

This is what is subliminally playing out in Bangladesh, where the Hindu population has fallen from over 31 per cent at the time of partition to less than 8 per cent now.

A Dhaka University professor, Abul Barkat, maintains that there will be no Hindu left in Bangladesh in 30 years.

The de-Hindufication of Bangladesh did not stop during Hasina’s rule, nor will it end with her ouster, despite some secular handles tweeting pictures of Muslims standing guard outside temples. These pictures fail to answer a basic question: why do Hindu properties and temples need any kind of special protection at all? 

For India, there are now new challenges post-Hasina. Here are a few things it should focus on.

One, it must provide protection and sanctuary to Sheikh Hasina as long as she is in this country. The need to focus on a successor regime does not mean abandoning past friends. Who knows, if the political tide turns, she or her party can be sent back to stake a claim to power in Bangladesh.

Two, India must speak up for Hindus in Bangladesh, if not in public then in private. The demand must be to create safe spaces and autonomous Hindu-majority enclaves within Bangladesh (similar to how we have created tribal autonomous regions in some states), if necessary by moving in Hindus from outside and moving out anti-Hindu elements.

Three, as the only significant Hindu majority country in the world, India must think beyond the CAA. There must be a right to return to India for any persecuted Hindu, Jain, Sikh or Buddhist in any country, whether in the neighbourhood, or elsewhere.

Four, India must launch a global outreach programme to explain our views directly to the media, intellectuals, and ordinary people, so that even the Deep State in America and Western Europe is forced to stop hurting Indian, especially Hindu, interests in India and its neighbourhood.

Five, the activities of Islamic elements in West Bengal and the North East must be monitored aggressively, so that their ability to create chaos is minimised.

Meanwhile, we must prepare for the next administration in Bangladesh and engage with it fully to keep anti-India forces at bay.