The ongoing ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Bangladesh is one of the most important moments in the contemporary history of persecution of Hindus. The political turmoil unleashed after the ouster of Sheikh Hasina on the 5th of August, 2024 quickly morphed into targeted, large-scale violence against the minority Hindus of Bangladesh.
Muslim mobs started burning homes, molesting and raping women, murdering men, looting Hindu-owned businesses and specifically destroying Hindu temples. Hindus were being called ‘Malaun’, asked to pay Jiziya and being fired from their jobs – simply on the basis of their religious identity.
By the 5th, the mobs had overtaken the country. In Feni, the Durga Temple was attacked. In Dinajpur, the Fulthala cremation ground was forcefully occupied. Five temples including Kali Mandir in Parbatipur were vandalised. Minority community houses were attacked and looted in Setabganj Bochakganj and Dhalla village of Chirirbandar Thana area.
House and office of businessman Deepak Saha, leader of Puja Celebration Council in Lakshmipur was attacked, vandalised and looted. The houses of Nakul Kumar and Suhsanta in Agarupur village of Kuliarchar in Koshorganj were burnt. The House of Ujjal Chakraborty in Rauzan of Chattogram was attacked and looted.
In Jashore, three houses in Dhopaidi Palpara village of Abhayanagar were burnt. 22 shops including the warehouse of Babul Saha vandalised and looted in Narikel Bariya of Bagharpara, minority homes were attacked in Keshabpur, Bechpara and Barmanpara.
In Satkhaira, minority shops were looted in Kolaroa, the house of Biswajit Sadhu, president of the District Unity Council was attacked, looted and burnt and the house of Dr Subrata Ghosh, central assistant organizational secretary of the Unity Council, was attacked and burnt.
In Patuakhali, the Radha Govinda Temple in Kuakata was attacked and vandalised. The house of Ananta Mukherjee was attacked, vandalised, and looted. Minority homes in wards 2 and 3 of the Sadar, Panchagarh, were attacked, vandalised, and looted – and the list was endless.
When there is such widespread carnage, tracking individual stories of persecution is a painfully slow process. Hinduphobia Tracker is committed to documenting the ongoing persecution in Bangladesh, however, it has come with certain challenges. Documenting such widespread persecution aided by the state and enforced by mobs is an ongoing effort. Currently, the documentation in the database is by no means exhaustive and the numbers don’t capture the gravity of the situation. The numbers reflected in the Hinduphobia Tracker database do not in any way mean that the number of incidents being reported by Bangladesh Hindu organisations is exaggerated. It only proves that the numbers reflected in the Hinduphobia Tracker are deflated due to several constraints and circumstances.
1. The Hinduphobia Tracker has been a year in the making. We had two paths before us – to simply make a database that added cases to it, or, to invent a dependable model to document, analyse, research and understand Hinduphobia in all its forms. We chose the latter, which meant a lot of time was spent on designing the database to capture the variables of crimes, defining and refining categories and sub-categories and crafting the macro definitions. This slowed the process down substantially which resulted in hundreds of cases pending review, to be added to the database.
2. The Hinduphobia Tracker, for now, is relying on secondary sources. This means we are looking at direct testimonies and mainly, coverage in the media to parse cases of religiously motivated hate crimes against Hindus. In the case of Bangladesh, that has made our task that much more difficult. After the initial coverage of the systematic ethnic cleansing, the local media either became hostile towards Hindus and started whitewashing the carnage, or, went completely silent because of the pressures and threats by the Bangladesh establishment. The secondary sources that Hinduphobia Tracker relied on quickly dried up or started presenting a skewed picture that we had to start confirming from sources on the ground.
The attitude of the media during an ongoing genocide/ethnic cleansing has been similar throughout history. The Indian media during the Kashmiri Hindu genocide and the international media, like The New York Times during the Holocaust are good examples to examine the attitude of the media and how they turn hostile towards the victims. The Indian Media, during the Kashmiri Hindu genocide, was not focused on documenting the atrocities on Hindus, but on furthering the version of the aggressors and an Indian state which had looked away from the victims. There were reports downplaying the genocide, misrepresenting the ongoing Jihad against Hindus as an uprising for the interest of Kashmir and on several occasions, justifying the genocide by blaming the victims. There were reports that attributed the ethnic cleansing to Kashmiri Hindus holding lucrative jobs, thereby, whitewashing the genocide fuelled by religious fanaticism and justifying the ‘anger’ felt by the aggressors.
The New York Times during the Jewish Holocaust was no different. NYT did nothing less than bury the Nazi atrocities against Jews often sticking to reproducing handouts by the Nazi government itself, rather than listening to the cries for help by the Jews. The book ‘Buried by the Times’, for example, documents in painstaking detail how the international media essentially ignored ‘the last voice from the abyss’ while Jews were massacred.
The attitude of the media has not changed. Today, as Hindus get slaughtered and ethnically cleansed in Bangladesh, the media watches on, whitewashing the brutality unleashed on Hindus. The Hinduphobia Tracker aims to change that and will be taking incremental steps in that direction.
3. The hundreds of videos and bytes of information posted on social media too had to be confirmed before being added to the database. There are hundreds of such pieces of information that the Hinduphobia Tracker is attempting to confirm and document.
4. Conflict zone reporting is a challenge far greater than documenting scattered violence. The data gathering and reporting of individual cases of violence, while not without challenges, proves to be easier. To parse cases from a different country where the media has turned hostile towards the victims and sources of information are functioning under extreme threat is an arduous task. It is generally an acceptable norm that indications of the full extent and truth of the ethnic cleansing usually become clearer once the dust settles – a tragic reality. In fact, the actual number of hate crimes and atrocities don’t get documented adequately even after that – because of the victims living in extremely hostile conditions, fear of speaking out, difficulty in reaching victims in remote areas and a strict control that the oppressive regime exercises on the flow of information.
5. For hate crimes in India, despite limited resources, the Hinduphobia Tracker still tries to contact police authorities, the victims and the locals to understand the contours of religious hate beyond what is reported in the mainstream media. In the case of Bangladesh, that has proven to be increasingly difficult. We are still in the process of collecting cases.
6. The Hinduphobia Tracker is in the process of listing cases that have been detailed by Hindu organisations in Bangladesh. It is an ongoing process and every case added to the database is a step closer to documenting the full extent of the ongoing ethnic cleansing.
We are also deeply aware of the ongoing campaign to discredit the plight of Hindus in Bangladesh. We rather take some time to add authentic cases to the database than aid the whitewashing by making mistakes in haste. Documenting the ongoing persecution of Bangladesh Hindus is a priority for the Hinduphobia Tracker and we will be working tirelessly over the next few months to ensure adequate and authentic documentation and analysis.
What the Hinduphobia Tracker is doing to document the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Bangladesh
With the Bangladesh state and street mobs collaborating to ethnically cleanse Hindus the media not only looking away but actively participating in that persecution, the Hinduphobia Tracker has decided to look beyond the mainstream media to document the atrocities against Hindus of Bangladesh.
One of the documents that we are currently working our way through to add cases of persecution is the document prepared by “Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council”. The report has documented several cases of atrocities against Hindus from the 5th of August to the 20th of August.
The document can be read accessed here:
We have also collected direct testimonies of victims, and we are attempting to collate that information. The Hinduphobia Tracker will be incrementally adding cases of persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh to the database over the next few months.
