Bangladesh is a home to a number of not just religious but sectarian and ethnic minorities. Amongst the religious minorities, Hindu population is the greatest, now estimated at approximately 8.5 percent, followed by Buddhists at 0.6 percent and Christians at 0.3 percent. Moreover, certain indigenous groups, including the Mro, adhere to animistic beliefs. Simultaneously, even though the predominant faction of Muslims is Sunni, a minority adheres to Shi’a beliefs, thereby constituting a sectarian minority.
Notwithstanding the assurance of independence in 1971 and the enactment of a secular Constitution the subsequent year, the accompanying years have witnessed a progressively constrictive religious nationalism that has relegated Bangladesh’s minorities to second-class citizenship within their own nation. Thus, while the recent violence has underscored the susceptibility of minorities to assaults, their predicament is also shaped by broader structural challenges inside Bangladeshi society, including as political marginalisation, social bias, and economic exploitation. The range of abuses they endure, including forced abduction, sexual assault, land grabbing, and burning, transpires amid a wider context of impunity. The assaults against minorities in Bangladesh are not solely the direct result of the Hasina Government’s decline, though they have certainly intensified in frequency and severity after August 2024. The status of minorities has never been “secure” since the establishment of Bangladesh or rather the division of Bengal as early as 1905, followed by the immense communal violence of 1947 and 1971, and has become increasingly unpredictable since the latest wave of violence that started as early as 2013.
Despite the initial optimism marked by the adoption of a Constitution advocating for the equality of all religions and the secular nature of the state, the later rise of military governance and a progressively constrictive religious nationalism resulted in the marginalisation of religious minorities within their own nation. Despite the reinstatement of democracy in the 1990s, discrimination has persisted up until AL’s government and beyond its fall. In the conflicts between the dominant Awami League (AL) and its opposition, particularly the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), non-Muslim groups have often been collateral victims of their rivalry and a polarised political climate, with both factions implicated in human rights violations.
Furthermore, official policies have often rendered the rights of religious minorities more vulnerable. In the Chittagong Hills, for instance, the government’s promotion of Bengali settlement since the 1970s has intensified conflicts with indigenous populations, primarily Buddhist and Christian, alongside Hindu and animist groups, resulting in the displacement of many from their ancestral territories. In 1947, the indigenous population in Chittagong Hill Tract, constituted over 98 per cent of the whole population; however, the subsequent inflow of Bengali immigrants resulted in a demographic transformation, with their proportion increasing to 9 percent in 1956, 40 per cent by 1981, and 50 per cent of the local population by 1991. The government’s policy, initiated in the late 1970s, actively expedited the resettlement of hundreds of thousands of Bengali migrants through various incentives.
Significantly, land appropriations were recently facilitated by the Vested Property Act (formerly referred to as the Enemy Property Act during Pakistani governance), a statute that permitted authorities to seize ‘enemy’ land, predominantly owned by Hindus in practice. This resulted in the confiscation of around 2.6 million acres from 1965 to 2006, causing severe repercussions for an estimated 1.2 million Hindu households. Since that time, numerous efforts have been made by Hindus who lost property due to the Act to recover it, especially following the enactment of the Vested Properties Return (Amendment) Bill of 2011, which mandated the government to disclose information regarding properties eligible for restitution to their rightful owners. Nonetheless, implementation has been constrained, as some individuals attempting to reclaim property ownership have allegedly faced intimidation, resulting in thousands of cases stuck in legal limbo, hence leading to a relatively low resolution rate in practice. A further consequence of the Vested Property Act is the exodus of millions of Hindus to India due to land appropriation and displacement from their residences. The reduction of the Hindu population, from over 22 per cent in the 1940s to under 9 per cent currently, is attributable to this exodus.
Parallelly, the persistent inequities confronting Bangladeshi women are particularly severe for minority women, who endure various forms of discrimination from both their own communities and the majority population. The ongoing existence of distinct personal rules governing marriage, divorce, and inheritance renders Buddhist, Christian, and Hindu women susceptible to exploitation and abuse by their spouses and in-laws. They experience social, economic, and political isolation and are frequently subjected to sexual violence amid intercommunal warfare. This is particularly true for indigenous Buddhist, Christian, and Hindu women, who are frequently targeted to intimidate and displace groups from their land.
