There are moments in history when silence is no longer neutral. It becomes a verdict. And today, as Hindus in Bangladesh are being lynched, burnt alive, hacked to death, and executed at close range, the silence of the international community has begun to resemble something far more sinister – complicity.
In less than a month, six Hindus have been brutally murdered in Bangladesh, most of them in attacks that bear the unmistakable fingerprints of Islamist extremism. These are not rumours, nor are they politically manufactured narratives. These are names, faces, families, and funerals. Yet global leaders, international media, and influential human rights organisations have chosen to respond with a chilling indifference, as if Hindu lives simply do not qualify for outrage.
Journalist Indrajit Kundu summed up this uncomfortable truth in a short but powerful post on X following the lynching of Dipu Chandra Das:
“Dipu Chandra Das was not an Indian. He was a Bangladeshi citizen. Yet he was lynched and burnt. Because he is a Hindu”.
Dipu Chandra Das, a worker at a local readymade garment factory, was accused of making derogatory remarks about the Prophet of Islam – the familiar and deadly charge of “blasphemy”. In Bhaluka, an enraged mob beat him to death. Even that was not enough. His body was then set on fire, as if to erase not only his life but his very identity.
The US Department of State rightly described the killing as “horrific” and urged an “unequivocal stand against religious hatred”. But such statements lose all meaning when the Yunus regime in Dhaka, propped up by Islamists, jihadist networks, and Pakistan’s notorious Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), treats them as background noise. There was no decisive action, no serious reckoning – only silence dressed up as governance.
What followed exposed a grim pattern
On Christmas Eve, Amrit Mandal, also known as Samrat, was killed in Rajbari’s Pangsha upazila. Instead of acknowledging the obvious communal dimension, the regime hurried to issue a press statement calling the incident “unfortunate”, while insisting it was “not at all communally motivated”. Such semantic acrobatics are not accidental. They are designed to shield extremists and dull the public conscience.
Just days later, on December 29, 2025, Bajendra Biswas, a member of the Ansar force, was killed by his Muslim colleague in the Bhaluka area of Mymensingh. Once again, the authorities appeared more interested in damage control than justice.
Then came one of the most horrifying cases – Khokon Chandra Das, a Hindu businessman from Damudya upazila in Shariatpur district. He was stabbed multiple times in the lower abdomen and then set on fire. He later died at the National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery in Dhaka. This was not spontaneous rage. It was cruelly executed with intent.
On January 5, 2026, Rana Pratap Bairagi, a Hindu trader from Arua village in Jashore’s Keshabpur upazila, was shot in the head at point-blank range. There was no mob frenzy, no provocation story – just an execution. He died on the spot.
That same day, yet another Hindu life was extinguished. Sarat Chakraborty Mani (40) operated a small grocery shop at Charsindur Bazaar in Palash Upazila of Narsingdi District, on the outskirts of Dhaka. According to local residents, unidentified assailants armed with sharp weapons attacked him without warning. Gravely injured, Mani died on the way to the hospital. Even witnesses were too afraid to speak publicly – a telling detail that rarely makes it into official narratives.
Possibly what is most disturbing is not only the violence itself, but the political effort to trivialise it.
Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir ignited outrage when he described the killings of Hindus as “small incidents”. In an interview with CNN-News18, he dismissed concerns over targeted violence as a “media creation”, claiming only “a few small incidents” had occurred.
Earlier, speaking to Press Trust of India (PTI), Alamgir went further still, calling reports of attacks on Hindu minorities “factually incorrect and misleading”.
“There may be some instances”, he said, “but those are more political in nature and not communal”.
When lynchings, burnings, and executions are reduced to “small incidents”, the message to extremists is loud and clear: proceed without fear. And where, one must ask, is the global outrage?
Where are the emergency UN debates, the relentless media campaigns, the international delegations, and the sanctions that appear so swiftly in other conflicts? Why does violence against Hindus repeatedly fail to cross the threshold of global concern? Why does selective empathy remain the unspoken rule of international human rights discourse?
This is not merely a domestic issue for Bangladesh. It is a moral crisis with international implications. The systematic marginalisation and terrorization of Hindus is the result of years of appeasement, ideological denial, and the calculated use of religion as a political weapon – aided by external forces that benefit from instability.
Bangladesh was founded in 1971 on the ideals of secularism and pluralism. Today, those ideals are being buried – quite literally – alongside its Hindu citizens.
History will not remember how carefully worded the statements were. It will remember who spoke when it mattered – and who chose silence for convenience.
For India, for democratic nations, and for anyone who still believes that human rights are not conditional on faith, the time for euphemisms has passed. What is unfolding in Bangladesh is not a collection of “unfortunate events”. It is a campaign of fear, and continued silence will only ensure that the body count grows.
The world must decide – now – whether it will stand with the persecuted, or remain a spectator as one of South Asia’s oldest communities is pushed ever closer to erasure.
