Sunanda K. Datta-Ray | Delhi, Dhaka need to act as B’desh Hindus face threats

In the glowing aftermath of Bangladesh’s liberation war in 1971, a young Hindu -- from his name tag -- Mukti Bahini fighter in tired khaki fatigues told me on the Jessore station platform that my thinking was archaic and destructive. Hindus and Muslims had ceased to exist as separate entities, he asserted. Everybody was a Bangladeshi. I don’t know how long that dream lasted but I learnt a year later that he had left Bangladesh and sought refuge in West Bengal.

That young soldier comes to mind because of the report by Johnnie Moore, formerly of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, that “there isn’t a minority in the country that doesn’t feel under threat right now”. Hindus made up 22 per cent of Bangladesh’s population at the time of the liberation. Now they constitute about eight per cent of 174 million Bangladeshis, or just over 13 million. Other minorities such as Buddhists and Christians comprise less than one per cent of the total.

Every census since 1901 has indicated a decline in the Hindu population of East Bengal, which became East Pakistan in 1947 and Bangladesh in 1971.

The sharpest fall in numbers was between 1941 and 1974. In four of Bangladesh’s 64 districts, every fifth person was a Hindu. But between 1964 and 2013, more than 11 million Hindus fled East Pakistan/Bangladesh citing religious persecution. The Hindu American Foundation says that some 230,000 Hindus continue to leave Bangladesh every year. Another organisation, the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, claims that more than 200 attacks have taken place against Hindu targets in 50 districts since Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government fell on August 5 this year and she fled to India.

The census claims that the number of Hindus decreased by 0.59 per cent in the last decade, Khulna division registering the highest decline of 1.33 per cent. Two main reasons are officially cited. Firstly, there is out-migration, that is, Hindus are leaving the country. My old friend and colleague from Singapore, the historian Gyanesh Kudaisya, wrote that 11.4 million Hindus (42 per cent of the Hindu population of undivided Bengal) remained in East Bengal after Partition. Sanjib Baruah’s view, expressed in a national newspaper in 2021: was, “The West Pakistani generals had calculated that by forcing millions of East Pakistani Hindus to flee to India, they would weaken Bengali nationalism as a political force.”

The second reason cited for falling numbers is the relatively low fertility rate among Hindus, that is, couples have fewer children. The demographers, J. Stoeckel and M.A. Choudhury, wrote in their 1969 paper, “Differential Fertility in a Rural Area of East Pakistan”, published in The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, that the total marital fertility rate (a lifetime measure of marital fertility) of Muslims was 7.6 offspring per woman compared with 5.6 for Hindus.

Despite a spurt in the economic growth rate under the much-maligned Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh is a poor country with a high density of population and prone to regular devastating floods. Land being in high demand, it stands to reason that Hindu peasant cultivators are vulnerable to various forms of expropriation. There is also a grim political dimension to the problem.

Muhammad Yunus, the octogenarian Bangladeshi economist, entrepreneur, politician and civil society leader, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 and is heading the interim government as its chief adviser since Sheikh Hasina quit, puts it more than a little simplistically.

“When the country went through an upheaval following the atrocities by (Sheikh) Hasina and the Awami League, those who were with them also faced attacks,” he says. “Now, while beating up Awami League cadres, they had beaten up Hindus as there is a perception that Hindus in Bangladesh mean Awami League supporters.” The Nobel Laureate is quick to add: “I am not saying that what happened is right but some people are using it as an excuse to seize property. So, there is no clear distinction between Awami League supporters and Hindus”.

It should be stressed here that the Awami League is Bangladesh’s party of independence. Sheikh Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, revered by many as “Father of the Nation”, was its most famous leader. Luckily, she and her sister were abroad in August 1975 when a group of middle-ranking Bangladeshi Army officers with pro-Pakistan Islamist sympathies murdered the Sheikh, almost his entire family, and some of his closest political associates.

Mrs Indira Gandhi’s Congress government in New Delhi, which had gone to war with Pakistan over Bangladesh in 1971 and which had always been a strong supporter of the Sheikh, stood by his two daughters after the 1975 bloodbath. India has not deviated since then from its support for the Awami League even though its relations with other Bangladeshi rulers like Gen. Zia-ur Rahman, Gen. H.M. Ershad and Begum Khaleda Zia were impeccably proper. But there was a special warmth for Sheikh Hasina, who was Prime Minister from 1996 to 2001 and again from 2009 until she was overthrown in 2024. In return, her government ensured that Bangladesh territory was not used to jeopardise India’s security and that the remaining Bangladeshi Hindus were not subject to any kind of persecution.

Dr Yunus claims that when he meets the minority community leaders, he urges them to protest as citizens of Bangladesh with equal rights and not merely as Hindus. “Even when I met members of the Hindu community, I requested them: please don’t identify yourselves as Hindus; rather, you should say you are citizens of this country and you have equal rights. If someone tries to snatch your legal rights as citizens, then there are remedies,” he said.

As recent events have confirmed, that is not enough for the community’s well-being. Nor is the Citizenship (Amendment) Act’s accelerated road to Indian citizenship since it applies only to those who arrived in India by 2014. An exchange of population was discussed at the time of Partition. Then, the Nehru-Liaquat Ali pact tried to provide a sense of security. Eventually, hardline Hindu elements in India demanded a slice of East Pakistan/Bangladesh territory as a homeland for those who were dispossessed a second time. Overcrowded Bangladesh is unlikely to surrender territory but reduced numbers make a population exchange a less daunting prospect. The 1923 exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey involving at least 1.6 million Christians and Muslims alike under League of Nations auspices provides a precedent.