October 2021 Anti-Hindu Violence In Bangladesh - October 25, 2021
Terrible story of the Hindus in Bangladesh, which began with the 1947 genocide and reached a pinnacle during the Bangladesh Liberation War, when about three million (3,000,000) Hindus were slaughtered in one of the century’s largest genocides, continues to this day.
Bangladesh Violence
Over the years, countless Hindu shops have been plundered, businessmen have been killed, land belonging to Hindus has been forcefully occupied, temples have been damaged, and idols have been destroyed. Targeted killings of men, abduction of girls and women with an intent to rape and murder has been a principal tactic of fundamental Islamists that primarily belong to the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh and other radical Islamists, jihadi groups, political parties and associations active in the region. As a result, thousands of Hindu families have been forced to flee the nation.
Over the previous seventy years, the number of Hindus in Bangladesh has been steadily declining. Figure 1 depicts Bangladeshi population demography trends based on data from the Ministry of Planning and the Bureau of Statistics.
Islamic indoctrination and radicalization in Bangladesh have been a constant source of worry for minorities in the country. From the records of the Council, several Hindu families were falsely accused of insulting Islam, resulting in looting and plundering of their shops and households. Two notable examples of jihadi violence on the basis of made-up blasphemy accusations were in Brahmanbaria (2016) and Thakurpara (2017). The law-and-order agencies of the country have repeatedly failed to take requisite measures to bring peace and stability, indicating their appeasement of the majority Islamic community.
As per data from the Bangladesh Jatiya Hindu Mohajote’s annual report released in 2020, the following figures detailing the atrocities against Hindus in the country have been obtained:
Similarly, recent Anti-Hindu violence in Bangladesh by Islamic mobs (primarily Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh members) started on Wednesday, October 13, 2021. This was just hours after falsified images of a copy of the Quran in the lap of Lord Hanuman’s idol at a Durga Puja pandal in Comilla district were circulated over the Internet by Jamaat-e-Islami members.
Subsequently, Muslim mobs stormed the pandal, accusing Hindus of blasphemy, setting off a chain of pre-planned attacks on pandals and temples across Bangladesh.