The title of the book, Deprivation of Hindu Minority in Bangladesh: Living with Vested Property, written by Abul Barkat, S. Zaman, S. Khan, A. Poddar, S. Hoque and M. Taher Uddin, is most meaningful, as it relates the stories and events that actually took place to deprive the minority community of its rights and titles of property ownership. A research based book it is outstanding in nature as it provides an account with facts and figures of how the protective security of the minority has been ignored for years together and how the minority community has been unable to enjoy the property handed down to it from one generation to another.
It is perhaps for the first time that such a book has been published, based as it is on authentic findings and in-depth studies of the historical discrimination that has compelled a large number of citizens to leave the country and so leave their ancestral home and belongings behind. Professor Abul Barkat and his co-authors have accurately projected the economic history, lapses in the land laws, willful negligence of the bureaucracy and greed of the politicians for property.
About 1.2 million households and 6 million people belonging to the Hindu community have been directly and severely affected by the Enemy/Vested Property Act. The community has lost 2.6 million acres of its own land in addition to other movable and immovable property.
The approximate money value of such loss (US $ 55 billion) would be equivalent to 75 per cent of the GDP of Bangladesh (at 2007 prices). The EPA/Vested Property Act has compelled Hindus to break family ties. Stress and strain, mental agony and a fuelling of religious fundamentalism have been the offshoot. The deprivation led to the growth of a communal mindset in what had been a historical secular climate and context.
The methodology adopted to collect information is appreciable. With primary and secondary data verified on the basis of documents relating to EPA/VPA and land survey, data from BSS and reports and journals, the work makes compelling reading. Besides, a number of eminent individuals have been interviewed to arrive at an understanding of the extent of the effect of the law on the deprived community. Sample districts taken under the study were sixteen but they covered the whole of Bangladesh in 1997-2006. Assuming the 1961 population share of the Hindu population was 18.4 per cent, the absolute size of this population in 2001 would have been 22.8 million rather than the 11.4 million reported in the census. In other words, the actual current (2001) figure is half the expected size. Thus the missing Hindu population was estimated to be 50 per cent with the mass outward migration from the mid-1960s onward as an effect of the EP/VP Act (elaborated in Chapter 3 of the book). Chapter 6 deals with case studies and Table 21 shows six broad categories of cases relating to loss of Hindu property.
One cannot but agree with Justice Mohammad Gholam Rabbani when he observes in the foreword that the authors have done a historical job. The book, in fact, upholds the spirit of liberation and Articles 27 and 28 (1) of the Constitution. It re-emphasises the idea that ?all citizens are equal before law and are entitled to equal protection of law.?
(The writer is former adviser, caretaker government of Bangladesh, Courtesy: The Daily Star)
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