Jaideep Saikia
(jdpsaikia@gmail.com.)
The wanton attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh, recurrently being perpetrated, can no longer be tolerated. It is not just the question of India’s majority community being systematically targeted in a country which “boasts” of a Muslim majority, but that it is being engineered by devious radical Islamists who are being empowered by extra-regional powers.
What seems to be clear is not only the purging of the Hindu community but also the sinister objective behind it. One of the obvious reasons is to ensure that the miniscule Hindu constituency inside Bangladesh is so petrified that it would not dare to even venture out of their homes on the day of the elections to cast their votes.
In any event, with a ban on the Awami League, the traditional bastion that comprised the Hindu voters has nowhere to go. Indeed, the only option open to the minority community is to reluctantly shuffle to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) in the hope that they would be accommodated and their interests served. But the fact of the matter is that the BNP in the past—when Sheikh Hasina was in the seat of power—had also oppressed the Hindus. But the atmospherics this time around—in the absence of the Awami League—might alter both perception and strategy.
The BNP has realised that the presently adrift remnants of the Awami League could be encompassed into a “peripheral constituency” in order to shore up its strength. It is becoming clearer that the elections could end up in a hung Jatiyo Sangsod with the Jamaat-e-Islami staking its claim to the reins of power alongside a fractured National Citizens Party and smatterings of like-minded Islamist parties. The strategists of the BNP have fathomed that it must arithmetically do whatever it can do to add to its support base. The Jamaat-e-Islami’s (JeI) growing clout could well throw up a bag of surprises, especially as it is now progressively becoming clear that Pakistan is backing the Islamist grouping, as much as India is attempting to woo the BNP.
Rawalpindi’s stratagem is to construct a radical platform in India’s eastern seaboard which would nefariously nibble away into states like Assam, where demography is precariously poised. The sage words of a former Governor of Assam—Lt Gen S.K. Sinha—could well find pronouncement were the JeI to call for the inclusion of the illegal Muslim majority districts into a Brihot Bangladesh. After all, the quest for lebensraum has not quite disappeared from the sinister sights of certain highbrows in the erstwhile East Pakistan, including the imposter, Md Yunus. Indeed, his statements about the Northeast during his visit to China are still fresh in sundry memories.
The sinister move against the Hindu population grew after the ouster of Sheikh Hasina. The pogroms began in concert with the mass release of the Jamaat-e-Islami cadres from incarceration. Indeed, it would not be unfair to state that the Hindus had a veritable shield in Sheikh Hasina. Even the secular Muslim population of Bangladesh could, as a result of the Hasina foil, stand up to diseased diktats of the radicals. The paradox that continues to disturb students of subcontinental politics such as I is the fact that there continues to be a constituency inside Bangladesh that is unwavering in the cause of Bengali linguistic and sociocultural identity. The population that espouses such strong sentiments is the ready and capable rapier to the advances of anti-India forces. It does not require flamboyant imagination to comprehend that if properly cultivated and aided, such an expanse—however small—would rally behind India and its flagging standards in a country that is being overtaken by a sinister design. After all, the group which had been steadfast to Bengali nationalism was also among the ones that had responded with immense courage during one of the Poila Boisakh (Bengali New Year) celebrations a couple of years ago (before Sheikh Hasina’s ouster) when Islamists threatened them against performing traditional Bengali Hindu practices such as sporting “teep” (bindi, or a small coloured mark that is worn between a lady’s eyebrows).
Sadhana Ahmed, a celebrated playwright, warned the threatening extremists by proclaiming in her Facebook post, “Beshi Hoichoi Korbi Toh Surjo Take Teep Banay Porbo (Don’t shout too much; otherwise, I will wear the sun itself as a teep)!” It is my considered belief that it is this constituency that needs to be meticulously empowered.
Some among many might say that the erstwhile East Pakistan is doing unto its minorities what the Muslim population is being subjected to in India. But that would be an incredibly incorrect reading. The Quam is not in any danger in India, and certainly not in Assam, where (in the absence of censuses since 2011) a decadal projection seems to indicate that the Muslim population has crossed the 40% mark!
In any event, what is most disconcerting at this time is that Dhaka, including the Bangladesh army and the police, is doing nothing to restore law and order in the streets of Bangladesh, where innocent Hindus are being slaughtered on an almost daily basis. In fact, if reports are anything to go by, it seems to be almost a premeditated affair with state complicity! How else could Dipu Chandra Das, the unfortunate victim of December 19, 2025, be snatched away from the confines of the Bhaluka Police Station?
Keen Bangladesh watcher Chandan Nandy, in his article “Bangladeshi Hindu man was in police custody before being lynched and burnt to death on December 19: Northeast News, December 21, 2025”, writes, “Evidence in the form of videos shows that Das was inside the Officer-in-Charge’s (Humayun Kabir) chamber before he was snatched away by the mob, taken to the Bhaluka square, tied to a pole, hanged and then set on fire!” One would have thought that the Bangladesh army chief, Waker-Uz-Zaman, would have intervened. But it seems that he too has begun following the mandate of the illegitimate Yunus, who has been turning a “blind eye” to the atrocities on the Hindus.
It must also be understood that such heinous anti-Hindu crimes are being engineered inside Bangladesh to provoke India, perhaps even to prompt a tit-for-tat outrage against the Muslims of India so that a civil war-like situation erupts in India, paving the way for international criticism. But civilised Indians would never stoop to such abominable aspects.
In any event, Indians watch helplessly, even as the minority community in Bangladesh, bearing the brunt of the radicalised hyenas, pleadingly looks towards India for succour, perhaps even intervention!
India is moulding itself as a regional superpower. It waged an effective war against terror modules inside Pakistan by way of Op Sindoor when 26 holidayers were killed during the course of a few minutes in Baisaran. Today, statistics are being regularly aired about the enormity of the appalling massacres of innocent Hindus in Bangladesh. Gory tales of rape, torture and murder are streaming into the lobbies of every Indian home with impunity and despondent gloom.
The average Indian has only one option left even as she weeps for her Hindu brethren across the borders. She looks towards New Delhi, hoping that it would do something to put an end to the agony that the Hindus are enduring in a land that India had shed blood to liberate. The response may take any hue and shape. It is for the Indian leadership to decide. But it has to be decisive. Enough has been enough.