The horrific onslaught against Hindus by Islamists since the 5th of August 2024 after Sheikh Hasina’s undemocratic ouster in Bangladesh from power left the world shocked. Hindus houses were marked by Jamaat-e-Islami to attack and plunder, Hindus were forced to offer money and jewellery [read Jizya] to save their lives, temples desecrated, idols of Hindu gods broken, Hindus forced to resign from their government posts, women raped, and mob lynching became a ‘normal’. All this continued unabated as the police and the Bangladeshi Army took a backseat, while Islamist mobs wreaked havoc against Hindus for simply existing.
Since the 5th of August, Hindus have been suffering unspeakable atrocities at the hands of Islamists while the Western and Indian leftist media contextualised and downplayed the anti-Hindu violence joined by Mohammad Yunus who is leading the interim government in the unrest-hit country as the Chief Advisor. Yunus has been pandering to Islamists ever since he assumed office as evident in his decision to lift the ban on Jamaat-e-Islami which has been historically involved in persecuting Hindus in Bangladesh.
While such large-scale persecution of Hindus shocked the world, this is not new in Bangladesh. The Muslim-majority country has a history of tormenting Hindu minorities in all the ways possible due to their Hindu religious identity. Attacks on Hindu houses, temples, Hindus being attacked and raped in Bangladesh is a widely known pattern of Islamists demonstrating their hatred for Hindus, however, the Bangladeshi governments over the decades have also orchestrated conspiracy to deprive Hindus of the ownership of their lands and properties. It is thus, pertinent to delve into how right from its inception, Bangladesh, has never truly been ‘secular’ even as its creation culminated from the perpetual oppression based on ethnic, religious and linguistic lines unleashed by the Pakistani Islamists at the helm of political and military power.
How the Hindus became the victims of perpetual exploitation-distress-destitution-deprivation-inequality in Bangladesh
The Bangladesh Vested Property Act, originally referred to as the Enemy Property Act, has a long history of systematic marginalisation and dispossession of the country’s Hindu communities. The chronology of previous Acts when Bangladesh was still East Pakistan can traced from the East Bengal (Emergency) Requisition of Property Act (XIII of 1948), the Enemy Property (Custody and Registration) Order of 1965, the East Pakistan Enemy Property (Lands and Buildings Administration and Disposal Order of 1966), the Enemy Property (Continuance of Emergency Provision) Ordinance No. 1 of 1969, to Bangladesh (Vesting of Property and Assets) President’s (Order No. 29 of 1972), the Enemy Property (Continuance of Emergency Provisions) (Repeal) Act (XLV of 1974), and the Vested and Non-Resident Property (Administration) Act (XLVI of 1974).
Led by President Ayub Khan, Pakistan enacted the Enemy Property Act following the 1965 war against India. The government took the properties of people who were considered “enemies” of the state, mainly Hindu minorities fleeing to India. Due to religious persecution, rioting, or the war, the majority of those impacted were Hindus who had fled East Pakistan (modern-day Bangladesh) for India. According to the law, the property of any person who had left for India could be taken over by the state as “enemy property” since India was declared an “enemy”.
Instead of scrapping the act upon Bangladesh’s independence in 1971, the newly formed government renamed it the Enemy Property (Continuance of Emergency) Provisions (Repeal) Act (Act XLV of 1974), commonly known as the Vested Property Act, repealing the Ordnance 1 of 1969. This legislation authorised the government to take control of the properties of those deemed to have left for India to escape persecution at the hands of Hindu-hating Jihadis, again targeting the Hindu minority community disproportionately.
Bangladesh's Enemy Property Act/Vested property act-one of the biggest legalised land grab projects in the world, where the entire state machinery is complicit- achieving a slow ethnic cleansing of hindus in effect- from 22% in 1951 to ~8% currently. A ?, sources at the end.
— शेषनाथ (@vaisvamitra) September 21, 2024
In his noted book “Deprivation of Hindu Minority: A Story of Perpetual Discrimination”, Bangladeshi economist and professor Abul Barkat writes that the implementation of the Enemy Property Act and its continuance as Vested Property Act finds roots in the religion-based statecraft of Pakistan’s feudal-military autocratic rulers. These autocratic rulers, in their pursuit of “Pakistanisation” or simply the absolute Islamisation of Pakistan wanted to get rid of both, the Bengali people and their culture.
Barkat wrote that the implementation of the Enemy Property/Vested Property Act between 1965 and 2006 directly impacted 12 lakh households and 60 lakh Hindus, resulting in the loss of their properties. The Bangladeshi Hindus lost over 26 lakh acres of land, and many families were financially destitute. The research found that this has institutionalised communalism and a “feudal mindset” in the society.
Despite Bangladesh’s attempts to portray itself as a secular state, this law adversely affected the Hindu minority as evident from the above discussion. The Hindu families already grappling with the hostile situation in the Muslim-majority country were left with no way to retrieve their land, even if they had never left Bangladesh.
Notably, most of the property of the slain Bangladeshi Hindu politician Dhirendranath Datta was seized by the Bangladesh government after the country gained independence in 1971. Since Datta’s body was never found after being arrested by the Pakistan Army during the Bangladesh Liberation War, an affidavit was filed stating that it could not be concluded that Datta had not voluntarily left the country. A detailed OpIndia report on Datta’s struggle for Bengali, the historic speech in Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly and his forgotten legacy can be read here.
The politics around the Vested Property Act
In 1996, the Bangladesh Awami League government launched steps to return properties to legal heirs and authentic claimants of minorities living in Bangladesh. Nevertheless, they were unable to complete the task even in 2001. In 2001, the Vested Property Repeal Act was passed. However, it contained significant loopholes, and the government retained authority over large tracts of previously confiscated property.
Sheikh Hasina modified the name of the ‘Vested Property Act’ to the ‘Vested Property Return Act’ in 2001, her final year in office. The Awami League government’s decision was intended to give minorities in Bangladesh the advantage of their immovable properties. The goal of this new law was to resolve issues involving minorities’ confiscated properties within 90 days and to grant the petitioners possession of the land within 180 days.
However, in the October 2001 elections for Bangladesh’s Jatiya Sansad (National Assembly), the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) regained power, and Khaleda Zia became Prime Minister. The BNP government repealed the previous government’s provisions in the ‘Vested Property Return Act’ in an obvious attempt to gain support among the Islamists.
Years later, the military-backed government under the leadership of Chief Advisor Fakhruddin Ahmed introduced the Vested Property Repeal (Amendment) Act 2011, which was gazetted on December 11, 2011, with updates in 2012 and 2013. This Act created two schedules of property and established tribunals for disposal. While lakhs of cases were filed to reclaim the seized land, barely one percent of them were resolved by 2013.
How EPA made Hindus “Zaminhara Zamindaars”
Several Hindus who were once the “Zamindaars” [landlords] have been mocked by their neighbours as “Zaminhara zamindaars” [landless landlords] since their estates and properties were gradually taken over by the Bangladeshi government. The UCA News reported the plight of one such Hindu family which lost most of their land due to the Enemy Property Act. Sanjay Kumar Mitra, a resident of Faridpur in Central Bangladesh staying with his wife and daughter is addressed by his neighbours as “Zaminhara zamindar”. Many years ago, Mitra approached the court to stake claim over the properties of his deceased paternal uncle who died without any children. The court, however, denied Mitra’s claim and recorded the said properties as “enemy properties”.
A Hindu resident of Bangladesh is seen as an enemy by its courts and properties over which he has a legal claim are declared as “enemy property” forcing him to fight a years-long legal battle. While Mitra managed to win in the court, he could never really claim the properties of his paternal uncle. Mitra is just one among over 1 million Hindus suffering due to EPA.
According to Rana Dasgupta, a noted Hindu lawyer and secretary of the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, “Introduced under Pakistan Defence Rules Ordinance 1965, the EPA was not a discriminatory law at the beginning. However, within 15 days of the proclamation, the Land Ministry published a circular that said, ‘Enemy property owners are those who belong to minority communities,’ and thus an international law was degraded into a discriminatory domestic law.”
Two years after Sheikh Mujibur Rehman was assassinated in 1975, military dictator Ziaur Rahman came to power and formed the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) which played a key role in magnifying the recent anti-quota protest into anti-Hasina violent protests. After coming to power in 1977, Ziaur Rahman revived the Vested Property Act is alienate Bangladesh from secularism and established it as an Islamic country. Alongside, bolstering Bangladesh’s position as an Islamic nation, the BNP government intended to oust Hindus from their homes and distribute their properties among BNP leaders and supporters.
On one hand, the population of Hindus was decreasing right after the creation of Bangladesh, on the other, their properties, freedom and dignity were being snatched away by the Bangladeshi governments be it the Awami League, BNP, or Jatiya Party. As per Abul Barkat, the political affiliation of direct beneficiaries of the appropriated property was estimated as Bangladesh Awami League at 44.2%, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) 31.7%, Jatiya Party 5.8% and the jihadist outfit Jamat-e-Islami held 4.8% while the rest had 13.5%. Clearly, the land and properties of Hindus were systematically and ‘legally’ usurped by the political parties in power over the years and distributed among their supporters who were Muslims.
The Vested Property Act has been nothing but a cruel mockery of the Hindus suffering atrocities from all sides. The Bengalis who had fled to India from the Pakistani Army’s massacre, which killed 3 million people in the run-up to the 1971 war, were no longer able to return and reclaim their ancestral homes in the newly established state of Bangladesh. The Vested Property Act forced the refugees to remain in India, removing millions of people, mostly Hindus, who should have been citizens of Bangladesh and usurping vast swathes of properties they owned.
As the journal by Mohammad Ikbal Hasan Lecturer, Department of Law, University of Information, Technology & Sciences states titled LAW OF VESTED/ENEMY PROPERTY IN BANGLADESH: AN ANALYTICAL APPROACH, VPA/EPA is unconstitutional and against the fundamental right to equality. These cruel and discriminatory laws have adversely affected one-third of the total Hindu population in Bangladesh. “Hindus were driven to landlessness or marginalization as land owners by a state-mediated seizure under these two laws,” Hasan’s journal reads.
Before declaring the land as vested, the third party usually sought a lease and received a favourable report from the local tahsilder suggesting that the Tahsilder and the interested party colluded to secure the order and remove the real owner from possession. Thus, loopholes in the law and fake documents were used by Muslims to usurp the properties of Hindus. Even during Khaleda Zia’s reign from 1991 onwards, the government tried to sell vested properties to occupants willing to pay a certain premium. This triggered bureaucratic interests in such properties and the land-grabbing mafias thrived.
A research paper by Shelley Feldman titled: “Legal” Land Appropriation as Sanctioned by the Vested Property Act(s) states that the government had conducted a survey of vested properties in 1993 and local officials also listed many properties whose owners were alive and living in Bangladesh. However, violence, desecration of temples, theft of idols, rape of Hindu and other non-Muslim women often accompanied land grabs.
After the Awami League returned to power in 2009, the Vested Property Return (amendment) Bill 2011 was approved, and a district-by-district list of returnable properties was to be published within 150 days, but the act omitted assets vested in 1969 or purchased for ‘public purpose’, thus the land grabbing persisted. The act was repeatedly amended, the deputy commissioners sought extensions to compile the list, and vested land increased dramatically, by 14% in schedule ka (government-controlled) and 58% in schedule kha (not under government control) over three years (2011-14).
Other than Hindus, the EPA/VPA also impacted the Bangladeshi Buddhists. Both the population and ownership of properties among Hindu and other non-Muslim minority groups dwindled over the last five decades. In June 2023, it was reported that the High Court dismissed a petition challenging the legality of sections 9, 13, and 14 of the Vested Property Act saying that it does not contradict fundamental rights and formed a special tribunal to hear cases pertaining to this act. In August this year, the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council demanded that the Yunus administration scrap the Vested Property Act. However, given that the Yunus government is backed by Islamist outfits like the BNP and Jamat-e-Islami, it is highly unlikely that this Act will be repealed. While this draconian act should have been escorted to the dustbin decades back, however, instead of effectively addressing the grievances of the Hindu and other non-Muslim minorities, the political parties perpetuated an environment where such discriminatory laws were allowed to exist for so long.
Conclusion
The Vested Property Act, an ignominious legacy of pre-partition politics of Islamist lunatics, continues to threaten Bangladesh’s Hindu minority. Though some attempts have been made to address the issue, decades of land seizures and state control over minority property have caused significant hurt to the perennially persecuted Bangladeshi Hindus. The Vested Property Act is an example of how the Islamists when at the helm of power used laws to target a vulnerable religious group, contributing to the demographic fall of Hindus in Bangladesh over time. Bangladesh was carved out in 1971 to escape the horrors committed by Pakistan’s military and Islamists during the Liberation War, however, Bangladesh’s history of continued persecution of Hindus and other non-Muslim communities suggests that since its very birth, Bangladesh inherited Pakistan’s Islamist fanaticism reflecting in the country’s anti-Hindu laws and is trapped under the shackles of Islamist terrorism, communal hatred and discrimination.
