An analysis on Hindus’ condition in Bangladesh and Pak

The recent stand that India called at the UNO against 'Hinduphobia' is prophetic as it doesn't confine to India, but all the countries where Hindus reside.

 

The report analyses incidents and persecution throughout 2020-21 on the Hindu community, a minority in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

The trend in Bangladesh is a grim reality of the condition of Hindus. Since 2012 religious minorities have been attacked in Bangladesh after online posts promulgating false allegations. The pattern runs in the following process: rumours begin within a local community that people from a minority background have defamed Islam, and such orchestrated "fake news" quickly spreads online to incite violence against minorities.

Some notorious activities against the Hindus in Bangladesh

301 Hindus were killed in Bangladesh in 2020/21, while 152 were killed in 2021 alone. Gangs attacked the Hindu community 1898 times in 2021, 300 times more than in 2020.

46 Hindu women were raped, and more than 411 Hindu women were molested, physically assaulted in Bangladesh in 2021. 255 people were kidnapped 80% of the kidnapped people were girls or women.

32 Hindu people were forced to eat beef by radicals in 2021. At Least 9000 Hindu families were forced to leave Bangladesh by Muslim radicals in 2021, which is also five times higher than the previous year.

2130 Hindu gods and goddess idols were vandalised in 2021 alone. 2400 attacks on temples were recorded. More than 1 lakh 35 thousand households, temples, and businesses suffered damage in attacks in 2021 alone.

During the Durga puja in October 2021, Muslim radicals attacked Hindu temples, and Durga pandals. The Hindu genocide in Bangladesh is as vicious as the Syrians by ISIS. The widespread and well-coordinated attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh could not have happened without the complicity of ruling Awami League functionaries and leaders.

Top office bearers of the Bangladesh Hindu, Buddhist Christian Unity Council, the apex body of minority bodies in that country, Chittagong and other parts of the country said the involvement of members and leaders of the ruling Awami League and the radical Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami is very apparent.

A Hindu family in Bangladesh's southern Bhola district were under house arrest for more than two weeks over a private Facebook messenger chat, BBC has reported.

On September 15, 2021, a screenshot of a Facebook messenger conversion between two accounts named Jayaram and Gouranga was circulated on social media. Gouranga Chandra Dey was arrested the next day and has been in jail since the incident.

On March 11, 2021, a video of the conversion ceremony of a 13-year-old girl named Kavita Oad from the Kandhkot area of Sindh, Pakistan, went viral on social media. She had reportedly been abducted, forcibly made to embrace Islam.

In the video, the minor girl could be seen sitting on the ground with a mob surrounding her and recording the video of the conversion ceremony. The conversion ceremony was facilitated by notorious cleric Mian Mithoo of the Bharchundi mosque. Mithoo is a hardline cleric and politician and is notorious for systematically carrying out kidnappings and forced conversions of poor Hindu girls.

In March 2021, Ajay Lalvani, a reporter with a private Royal News TV channel and an Urdu language newspaper Daily Puchano, died after he sustained bullet injuries in the stomach, arm and knee. He was sitting at a barbershop in Sukkur city when assailants on two bikes and a car drove by and opened fire. Lalvani was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he died.

September 2020 was a distressing month for religious minorities in Bangladesh, especially for Hindus and Buddhists in the Muslim-majority nation. More than 50 cases of rapes, molestations, murders and physical attacks, looting of properties, desecration of temples, forced conversions, and forcible occupation of lands have been reported this month.

Attacks and Incidents on Hindus in Pakistan

A Hindu temple was attacked in November 2021, Pakistan. While the courts ordered the attackers to pay fine, clerics demanded that the Hindu community pay the fines on their behalf and forced them to do so. This is what being zimmi looks like in an Islamic state.

A Ganesh temple in the village of Bhong in Punjab's Rahim Yar Khan district was severely damaged on August 4, 2021. A mob of about 250 people attacked it after a minor Hindu boy accused of desecrating a local madrassa was released on bail. Not only was the temple vandalised, but most of the Hindu families in the village were forced to leave their homes.

An incident had taken place in Tharparkar, Sindh, on July 26, 2021, in which Abdul Salam Abu Dawood, who worked at the Thar Coal Project, forced a Hindu boy to chant Allah hu Akbar (God is Great) and abuse Hindu deities.

List of temples Attacked in the past 2 years

• 100-year-old temple in Rawalpindi on March 28, 2021;

• Teri Temple in Karak in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on December 30, 2020;

• The Mata Rani Bhatiyani Temple in Nagarparkar, Sindh, on October 24, 2020;

• The Shree Ram Dev Temple at Kario Ghanwar, Sindh, on October 10, 2020;

• the Hanuman Temple in Lyari, Sindh, on August 17, 2020;

• The Krishna Temple in Islamabad on July 4, 2020;

• Mata Rani Temple in Chachro, Sindh, on January 26, 2020.

The construction of a Hindu temple in Pakistan's capital city, Islamabad, was halted in July 2021 after a vehement hate campaign by Muslim clerics and their followers. Officials told a court that the Pakistani government had cancelled the plot allotted to the Hindu community. However, the government came under severe criticism from the liberal section of Pakistan, forcing authorities to declare that they were reversing the cancellation of the plot.

In an ugly display of brute majoritarianism, a widely followed cleric in Pakistan has made a video of his visit to a local Hindu temple where he relentlessly mocks Hindus and their religious customs. The video, uploaded in 2021 on the cleric's YouTube channel with a massive 2.5 million followers, garnered over 18 lakh views.

Farmworkers from a Hindu family in Pakistan's Rahim Yar Khan city had landed in trouble for taking water from a mosque tap. In September 2021, some village landlords tortured and held them hostage for "violating the sanctity" of the place. When the family went outside a nearby mosque to fetch water from a tap, some local landlords and men beat them. After unloading the picked cotton, the landlords held them hostage at their 'dera' (outhouse) and tortured them again when they returned home.

In a viral video on social media, a Hindu girl in Pakistan who was kidnapped and forcefully converted to Islam in February 2021 was seen pleading for help. Reena Meghwar was abducted from Keriogjar, Badin, on February 13, 2021, and was converted to Islam and married to a man. The family had lodged FIR, but the police failed to rescue the girl. In the heart-wrenching video, Reena Meghwar was seen crying and saying she wanted to go to her home. The Voice of some other women can be heard in the video who did not offer any help to the girl.

Pakistan markets Hindu and Christian women as "concubines" and "forced brides" to China. In 2020, according to the US diplomat for religious freedom, Samuel Brownback. It was happening "because there's not effective support and there's discrimination against religious minorities that make them more vulnerable," he said.

A report prepared by Pakistani intelligence in July 2020 on 'trend of conversion of Hindu girls into Islam' concludes that all cases happened by consent as the girls fell "in love with the Muslim boys". The cases included kidnapping-conversion of minor girls. The report says the trend is happening as Hindu girls are "going out for study and for jobs and falling in love with Muslim boys".

An image of a poster in 2020 displayed a Hindu-hate message allegedly pasted across Lahore by Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, which had appeared on social media in Pakistan. "Hindu baat se nahin laat se manta hai" (Hindus understand not through words but through a kick), say the posters featuring in social media posts, written in Urdu.

Out of the uncountable instances against the Hindus in the neighbouring countries, the above instances are just the tip of the iceberg. It suffices the need to protect and raise the voice against the rising radicalisation.

The recent stand that India called at the UNO against 'Hinduphobia' is prophetic. This aligns with the fact that it doesn't confine to India but all the countries where Hindus reside.