Hindus are being butchered in Bangladesh after the fall of Sheikh Hasina. In a minimum of 27 districts, Hindu houses, and businesses are being specifically targeted, there are reports of Hindu girls missing, Temples being attacked and men being lynched and hung in the streets for all to see. After the ouster of Sheikh Hasina, the now-former Prime Minister of Bangladesh, the Jamaat-e-Islami gangs are wreaking havoc in Bangladesh.
There are several horrifying tales of brutality against Hindus in Bangladesh which has come to the fore. The carnage started on the 5th of August, just as Sheikh Hasina fled to India. In Sherpur, the house of the president of the Sribardi Upazila Youth Unity Council was attacked, vandalised and looted.
In Khulna, the houses of Shyamal Kumar Das and Swajan Kumar Das in Highgate village of Rupsa Thana area, houses of Biman Bihari Amit, president of the Khulna District Unity Council and Animesh Sarkar Rinku, president of the Youth Unity Council in Tootpara of Khulna city, house of Jayanta Gain in Amtali Banisanta, Dacope, and houses of the minority community in Darpara, Koyra were attacked, vandalised and looted.
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.
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.
There are other visuals of Hindu women crying and pleading, hoping someone would save them. In this visual, for example, a woman wails about Hindu women being gang raped by the Muslim mobs.
Hindu women have faced brutal torture in #Bangladesh.
— Hindu Voice (@HinduVoice_in) August 7, 2024
Listen to what these Hindu women of different areas of the #Pirojpur district said.
On the night of 05/08/2024, Islamists attacked several areas of #Pirojpur Town.
Islamists attacked Hindu houses in Rayer Kathi, Bramhan… pic.twitter.com/I0AZ4oyOI6
In other visuals, a Hindu ASI Santosh Saha was lynched by a Muslim mob and then hung upside down in the middle of the road. There was an X marked on his chest.
This is, of course, only the tip of the iceberg. OpIndia has covered over 70 incidents of such violence against Hindus and the list only keeps growing. Speaking to OpIndia, local Hindus said that as soon as Sheikh Hasina fled, Jamaat-e-Islami started collating lists of Hindu businesses, houses and establishments to then systematically target them. They also told us that Jamaat men were roaming the streets with weapons, restricting Hindus from fleeing to safer places. Some of the Hindus told us that barring a few, most hospitals were refusing to treat Hindus too – those who had been injured in the violence.
The atrocities being committed by Muslim mobs in Bangladesh have been acknowledged and reported by the Bangladeshi media as well. However, for a large section of the Indian media, atrocities against Hindus must be rationalised, contextualised and justified.
The Scroll, a Left propaganda publication, published a shameless justification of the targeted and religiously motivated hate crimes against Bangladeshi Hindus on the 8th of August 2024.
In an article headlined “Bangladesh: Why there must be caution in understanding the violence against Hindus”, Scroll provides three arguments, essentially trying to whitewash the religious targeting of Hindus.
Written by Niladri Chatterjee, Muhammad Asiful Basar and Arild Engelsen Ruud (yes, it took them three people to write this wad of nonsense), the Scroll article starts by rationalising the violence by BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami mobs. “But even after successfully overthrowing the regime, the bottled-up anger against the dictatorial Awami League government continues to spill out in violent episodes. This may not come as a complete surprise, since violence of some kind is the inevitable aftermath of any uprising, Bangladesh is no exception”, the article says.
“Violence of some kind is an inevitable aftermath of any uprising”, the article says, offering a justification for the rampant violence by Jihadi elements. At the very outset, Scroll signals that according to their ‘analysis’ (which took three people), Sheikh Hasina was a “dictator” and therefore, the violent coup against a democratically elected leader was an “uprising”. The ensuing violence was “expected” because it is the aftermath of such an “uprising”.
After justifying the violence by Jihadis, Scroll then, slyly, chooses to blame the Hindus of India, who are trying to shine a light on the atrocities being committed in Bangladesh.
The purpose of casting aspersions is very simple – They want people to believe that all the information being posted by Hindus in India is merely misinformation and propaganda – and that things are not as bad in Bangladesh after all. The persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh, according to Scroll, is a mere figment of the “Hindutva imagination”.
After blaming “Hindutva” for the violence committed by Jihadi mobs, they proceed to paint a benevolent picture of the Bangladeshi Muslims – “They are not that bad as the Hindus want you to believe”, they insinuate.
The usual trope of how Muslims were the ones protecting temples makes a comeback in the Scroll article. Every time there is a religiously motivated attack against Hindus, the Left media seems to find 5 Muslims who form a “human chain” to protect temples. It is almost as if the media develops a selective vision. They use this as an example of brotherhood without really telling their readers what it is that the 5 Muslims were protecting the temple from. They work terribly hard to paint the 5 as the rule and 50,000 as the exception.
After watering down the attacks by blaming the “Hindutva people” and then painting the Muslims going on a rampage as the good samaritans, Scroll proceeds to further contextualise the sectarian violence against Hindus by offering a few explanations.
Here are the three reports Scroll gives, justifying attacks against Hindus
- “There are no instances of revolutions without spillovers”.
- Yes, Hindus are being attacked – but please remember that they are Awami League supporters.
- It’s just loot. They want the land
The first “reason” that Scroll provides to diminish the suffering of Hindus, is simply a dismissal of it as par for the course. The Scroll writes:
Scroll in their first explanation essentially says that when there are uprisings and revolutions, some violence is expected and therefore, insinuates that this religiously motivated genocide against the Hindus in Bangladesh is simply par for the course.
The second reason they provide is parroting the Jamaat-e-Islami line.
Scroll justifies the attack against Hindus by saying that the Muslims are only targeting Hindus because they are viewed as Awami League supporters. Giving a ‘political context’ to the massacre of Hindus is not new. It is a tried and tested modus operandi applied by the Left media, which acts like the ideological backbone of Jihadis.
Rajdeep had also written a moving piece when journalist Shujaat Bukhari was brutally murdered. What is interesting, is that when Hindu Activist Prashant Poojari was murdered, Rajdeep had written a piece trying to whitewash the crime and assert that his murder had a “political context”.
On October 9, 2015, a Bajrang Dal activist, Prashant Poojary was brutally hacked to death for trying to stop illegal cow slaughter by PFI terrorists. Poojary was attacked by six bike-borne men in broad daylight in a marketplace. He died the same day of his injuries.
Interestingly, that article as well was published on The Scroll.
Prashant Poojari was murdered specifically because he was a Hindu activist, by a terrorist group which has, officially, stated that it wanted to commit the genocide of Hindus and establish an Islamic state in India. That murder was brushed away as a “political murder” and not one driven by religious hate. The Muslim man who was murdered for the theft of a cow was the real victim of sectarian violence – not the Hindu who was murdered by an Islamic terror organisation specifically for his Hindu identity.
The Scroll has deployed the same tactic to justify the violence against Hindus in Bangladesh. Their targeting, according to Scroll, is merely political in nature and not driven by religious hate because they were viewed as Awami League supporters. To further justify this, they have already declared Sheikh Hasina as a dictator. Essentially, Scroll is saying that Hindus are being massacred by Muslims because it was the Hindus who are viewed as the supporters of a “dictator” and therefore, there is no reason to really outage about their genocide. To put things into context – while Sheikh Hasina was only marginally better for Hindus – she was explicitly against the Jihadi forces like Jamaat-e-Islami – who are now committing a genocide of Hindus. As is the usual trope of the Left – anyone opposing Jihadis must be a dictator and the massacre of their supporters is simply par for the course.
After claiming that Hindus have come under attack because violence is a part of ‘revolution’ and that the Hindus were supporting a “dictator”, the third reason Scroll provides to rationalise the violence against Hindus is to claim that the Jihadis going on a rampage against Hindus is merely to loot.
In their desperation to downplay the genocide of Hindus by Jihadis, Scroll, in their third reason, say that the attacks are “probably” just incidents of loot. They say that they can’t be sure of the reasons behind individual incidents of violence, but in all probability, the Jihadis are just poor people trying to loot the Hindus.
There are tens of testimonies of Hindus which detail the religiously motivated nature of the violence. Further, it is not like Hindus are being attacked for their religious identity for the first time. In 2021, a rumour of the Quran being desecrated led to Muslim mobs running rampage against Hindus. Almost on a daily basis, Hindus are raped, converted and beheaded in Islamic nations like Bangladesh and Pakistan. But that is simply not proof enough. The pleas of Hindus are not enough. Their testimonies are not enough. Video and pictorial evidence is not good enough. Every incident of violence against Hindus is going to be downplayed and whitewashed by the likes of Scroll – the ideological backbones of Jihadis – the Left rags that give them covering fire while they commit a genocide.
