The Hindu Holocaust and the ethnic cleansing of minorities in Bangladesh

“The ethnic cleansing of Bangladeshi Hindus is almost unknown in the West and if human rights organizations or the United Nations have some notion about it, they do not realize its extent.” (Dr Richard Benkin in his book, A Quiet Case of Ethnic Cleansing: The Murder of Bangladeshi Hindus, 2012)

The term ethnic cleansing derived its current meaning during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and was also used to describe certain events in Croatia. It is impossible to determine who was the first to employ it, and in what context. As military officers of the former Yugoslav People’s Army had a preponderant role in all these events, the conclusion could be drawn that the expression ‘ethnic cleansing’ has its origin in military vocabulary. The expression ‘to clean the territory’ is directed against enemies, and it is used mostly in the final phase of combat in order to take total control of the conquered territory. In general terms, the idiom ‘cist’-‘clean’ means ‘without any dirt’ or ‘contamination’. The word ‘ethnic’ has been added to the military term because the ‘enemies’ are considered to be the other ethnic communities. Despite the widespread use of the term, it is difficult to ascertain its precise meaning, and witnesses have described the system and methods of ethnic cleansing in different ways. To emphasize its unclear nature, the term ethnic cleansing is often prefixed by ‘so-called’. Further, governments, international organizations and non-governmental organizations have employed diverse terminology. Sometimes ethnic cleansing has been described as a ‘systematic process’, a ‘campaign’ or a ‘pattern’, ‘policy’ or ‘practice’. All this may at first glance seem insignificant, but they may indicate a substantial difference in attitude toward ethnic cleansing. As a practice, ethnic cleansing could mean a set of different actions, directly or indirectly related to military operations, committed by one group against members of other ethnic groups living in the same territory. Mr. Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Special Rapporteur of the Commission for Human Rights, used this description on several occasions. These have included forced removal of lawfully elected authorities, dismissal from work (especially from important public service positions), restrictions on the distribution of humanitarian aid, constant identity checking of members of minority ethnic groups, official notices to the effect that security of the members of other nations cannot be guaranteed: settlement of ‘appropriate’ population (affiliated to the same nation, very often refugees) in the region; discriminatory and repressive legislation; refusal of treatment in hospital, making the departure of one member conditional upon the departure of the entire family; disconnection of telephones, forced labour very often including work on the front-lines of armed conflict, prohibiting women of particular ethnic groups from giving birth in hospital, and ‘voluntary’ transfer of property by forcing people to sign documents stating that the property was permanently abandoned by the owner. A very specific element of ethnic cleansing is rape and other forms of sexual abuse such as castration. Rape has been used most frequently against women of different ethnic origin, and in the case of ex-Yugoslavia it has been committed systematically. It has been connected with military operations, but has very often continued after the cessation of military operations. Women of all ages have been victims, often including very young girls and virgins. It has frequently been committed in front of the victim’s parents, children or other members of the family. The problem with describing ethnic cleansing as a practice is that all these acts could be analysed as isolated violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, thereby fuelling the risk of overlooking the system which underlies each specific case. As the practice of ethnic cleansing does not always include all the elements which have been described above, it is necessary to isolate those which fall within its boundaries. Another possible approach to identifying ethnic cleansing would be to examine conduct by reference to its goal. This method is more systematic and should encapsulate all elements mentioned above, while viewing them as part of an overall system. This methodology is preferable to other alternatives as it emphasizes the existence of an elaborate policy underlying individual events. Therefore, the conduct of various parties should be viewed in the light of motivating policies. (Source- Drazen Petrovic, 1994, Ethnic Cleansing- An Attempt at Methodology).

Epistemic exclusion against ethnic minorities in Bangladesh is rooted in it’s constitution. Although it can be argued that the original 1972 constitution, being founded upon ethnic conceptions of the “Bangalee” identity is indicative of one socio-cultural group taking precedence over others, nevertheless allowed for freedom of religion through Article 41, as well as the secular concept of separation of mosque and state through Article 12. Overt constitutional bias against non-Muslims however can be seen through the discardment of Article 12 and the passing of the 5th and 8th Amendments under General Ziaur Rahman in 1977. The fifth Amendment replaced “secularism” with “faith in Almighty Allah.” The 8th Amendment, which stated that, “absolute trust and faith in the Almighty Allah should be the basis of all actions” was later used by Ershaad during his coup to declare Islam as the state religion in Bangladesh.

This may give the wrong impression that injustice against religious minorities is limited only to exclusion. However, the contextual backdrop of these words is the reality of ethnic cleansing and a long history atrocities comitted against minorities. We have heard of the 20 million missing Hindu lives in Bangladesh between the years of 1941–1991. This mass exodus of Hindus was aided through the weaponization of the legislature and to the benefit of the dominant political and cultural classes. The implementation of the Vested Property Acts after independence is perhaps the best example, with millions of acres of land being confiscated from non-Muslims and given to Muslims. According to reports, the astonishingly high rate at which Hindus seemingly vanished from Bangladesh stood at an average of 703 Hindus vanishing every single day between 1961–1971, 537 between 1971 and 1981 and 439 Hindus per day between 1981 and 1991. (Trivedi, Rabindranath (2007); The legacy of enemy turned vested property act in Bangladesh.). It is further elaborated that, “Professor Abul Barkat of the University of Dhaka conducted a seminal study analyzing the impact of the EPA/VPA on the Hindu community since the inception of the discriminatory laws. The study quantified the loss of both property and population, and specifically found that 1.2 million Hindu families, or 44% of all Hindu households, were affected by the EPA/VPA. Furthermore, it revealed that Hindus were displaced of more than 2 million acres of land, which encompassed 5.5% of Bangladesh’s total landmass, and 45% of all land owned by Hindus in the country. Similarly, according to the US State Department, “Approximately 2.5 million acres of land was seized from Hindus and almost all of the 10 million Hindus in the country were affected.”” (Source- Samir Kalra, Esq. and Arvind Chandrakantan, M.D; A Legal Analysis of the Enemy Property Act of Bangladesh).

The seized lands benefitted every single major political party in Bangladesh- 45% going to BNP, 31% to Awami League 15% to Islamist parties and the rest to Jatiya between 2001 and 2006. Another common method of land-grabbing was for local Muslims to use the existing Hindu-Muslim tensions to coerce land from Hindus for the lowest price possible in exchange for protection. Both Awami League as well as BNP benefitted equally from the VPA. Despite the repeal of the VPA at the end of the Awami League’s term in 2001, this was a hollow gesture- no lands or property were returned or was intended to be returned. (Source- Richard L. Benkin, 2009, Ethnic Cleansing in Bangladesh, Journal of Himalayan Research and Cultural Foundation, p.79–84). In fact, Dr Benkin writes, “The VPA is critical to maintaining the system that supports the social acceptability of ethnic cleansing because it provides a legal reward to those who implement it. The Sutrapur attackers were granted title to land they otherwise could not seize legally. Those who attacked the Bangladeshi refugees, I interviewed in India, were rewarded with the victim’s family farms. That is, even though Bangladesh governments in theory support minority rights, they and the police in reality undermine them by enforcing (and benefitting from) this deliberately discriminatory law that applies only to minority communities.” (Benkin, 2009, p.82).

Prevalent amongst Muslims was the notion that minorities such as Hindus were not Bhumiputra (son of soil), and this was an idea promoted by pseudo-intellectuals in the course of rhetoric. The Hindu subject in Bangladesh was constructed as the Other, as the contrasting, cultural image of an idealized, Islamic Bangladesh, that allowed for the displacement of Hindus through land-grabbing, which was institutionalized through the legislature and legitimized by the government (Source- Shelley Feldman, 2016, The Hindu as Other: State, Law, and Land Relations in Contemporary Bangladesh). Professor Feldman further elucidates on the relatipnship between “Othering” in the context of ethnic cleansing through the VPA, “to understand the institutionalization of land grabbing, in other words, requires attention to the ways in which relations of rule minoritize, subjugate, and create fear among selected members of a social formation and how such fear is deployed to legitimize their subjugation. In some instances, they enable removal, extermination, looting, burning, eve-teasing, and other forms of violence, or what Appadurai (1998) perceptively reveals in his discussion as ethnic violence in the era of globalization. The third point, then, is that while all vulnerable people are potential targets of land grabbing, only the construction of particular others from whom such grabs can be legitimated will secure popular support and not spark general unrest amongst the majority. In showcasing these points I have emphasized the criticality of viewing land grabs as an ongoing process that is reproduced under changing circumstances, where tensions of property ownership are not claimed once and for all, but rather, are constituted through continual, if changing, processes of rule and the creation of difference” (Feldman 2016 p.14). The disenfranchisement of Hindus through the VPA can thus be categorized as an act of communal violence carried out by the Muslim majority. As Benkin (2009) asserts, “it was the common people, not a Gestapo that carried out the actual violence, which is the modus operandi for ethnic cleansing in Bangladesh,” (p.14). Furthermore, “the construction of Hindus as the other legitimates state appropriations of their property and, by challenging their rights to land ownership as a right of all citizens, constructs Hindus as a threat to national security,” (Feldman 2016 p.1). Despite the amended Property Repeal Act of 2013, as of 2016, it “has yet to be implemented, further contributing to Hindu insecurity and affecting forms of adaptation and avoidance,” (Feldman 2016, p.11). No land was returned or can be expected to be returned.

The Hindu Holocaust can be described as an ongoing process, backed by the government as well as the law, existing in the collective socal consciousness as the intent to wipe out an entire group. The Hindu Holocaust in Bangladesh can be traced back to the Noakhali massacre of 1946, where 10,000 Hindu homes were burned and over 2,000 Hindus forcibly converted to Islam (Source- Roy, Tathagata (2007); A Suppressed Chapter in History. The Exodus of Hindus from East Pakistan and Bangladesh 1947–2006). Hindu women were particularly targeted and victimized as a result of communal violence. As recently as October 2001, 200 Hindu women were raped over the course of 24 hours following electoral triumph of the BNP-Jamaat alliance (Source: The Daily Star, Nov.16, 2001). Hindu widows were often forced to kill their cows, and cook and eat it’s meat. (Roy, 2007). Hindu religious institutions have always been the subject of attack and systematically destroyed (352 temples destroyed in 1992 alone) such as the Ashrams in Goalpur (Source: The Daily Star, June 3, 2003) and the confiscation of the lands of Sarasta Samaj, (the Sanskrit and Hindu Religious University). Meanwhile, millions of dollars are to this day, being spent on the construction, upkeep and maintenance of Islamic madrasas. The purpose of all this was cultural and ideological homogeneity, which served the status quo of the dominant Islamic classes. Apart from organized violence against Hindus, there also existed a widespread pattern of individual instances of civil violence against the Hindu minority within Bangladesh. For example, Dr Benkin in his paper Ethnic Cleansing in Bangladesh, records the Twelve Incidents between just January and February of 2009 to highlight the synbolic interactionist nature of minority violence, accumulating to construct the systematic process of minority oppression-

“On 1 January 2009, 14-year-old Subarna Karmakar was on her way home from school in the Barisal district when several Muslim males grabbed the girl, forced her onto a motorcycle, and carried her off. The girl cried out for help while being abducted, but no one came to her aid. Her father, Paran Chandra Karmakar, complained to the police, who have taken no action to date either to locate the girl or prosecute the alleged perpetrators. To this date, the girlís whereabouts remain unknown.

On 15 January 2009, nine Muslim males kicked in the door of a family home in the Khulna district, and forced their way in the house. They seized eight-year old Choyon Bairagee and when his mother Aduri begged for mercy, the kidnappers threatened to kill her and the child if she reported the matter to anyone and also demanded a 20 million taka ransom. The officer-in-charge of the Dumuria police station told the press that there was no case for the police to pursue. To this date, the boy’s whereabouts remain unknown.

On 24 January 2009 in Khulna, five or six Muslim fundamentalists attacked Thakur Das Mondol, a member of the Hindu Union Council and Chairman of Magur Khali Union Jubo Dal. He was returning home when attacked. Locals found him in a “senseless condition” and carried him to Khulna Medical College Hospital. Police have taken no action despite numerous appeals.

On 26 January 2009 in Faridpur, a group of local, heavily armed Muslim fundamentalists, led by Mohammed Siraj, former Banesordi chairman, attacked a Hindu funeral site and a nearby Kali temple, which they destroyed completely along with its deity. When locals tried to save the temple, the fundamentalists threatened them with arms. Since then, the attackers have claimed the temple land, and police have taken no action as of this date despite numerous appeals.

On 28 January 2009, a madrassa was built on the land of a Hindu temple to the Goddess Kali in Dinajpur. Police have taken no action despite numerous appeals, including one to the Prime Minister through Zahid Hasan.

On 30 January 2009 in the Chittagong district, 10–15 Islamists attacked the Swaraswait Pandal, destroying the temple and a deity. They also physically attacked several worshippers leaving at least ten seriously hurt. Police have taken no action despite numerous appeals, including one to the Prime Minister through Zahid Hasan.

Also on 30 January 2009, in Dhaka district, Md. Hasan Habib, a local Awami League official, taking advantage of his position in the new government, forcibly occupied land belonging to Monindra Nath Mondal and threatened the victim should he report the infraction.

On 13 February 2009, in the Dhaka district Muslim fundamentalists attacked the Sidditala Durga temple, destroyed at least ten Hindu deities, and demolished a Kali Temple, Shitala Mandir, and Manasha Mandir. Locals caught one attacker whom the police termed a ìmental patient, thus preventing the charge of this being a religious crime, even though the other perpetrators were all part of the Islamist party, Jamaíatul Mujahideen Bangladesh. Police have taken no action or tried to arrest the other perpetrators despite numerous appeals, including one to the Prime Minister through Zahid Hasan.

On 15 February 2009, Awami League operatives stormed a minority- owned home. They still occupy the property, citing their rights under the Vested Property Act. Police have taken no action despite numerous appeals, including one to the Prime Minister through Zahid Hasan.

On 19 February 2009 in the Barisal district, a retired Hindu school headmaster, Adhir Chandra Das was shot and killed by four or five Muslim attackers. Police also declared this not to be a religious crime, citing unidentified ‘previous enmity.’ To this date, no action has been taken to investigate the crime or punish the perpetrators.

On 26 February 2009, 14-year-old Tanusree Roy was abducted by two Muslims, Babul Hossain Zihad alias Zikrul Islam and Md. Razzak Ali and raped repeatedly. The family filed a complaint with the Kotwali police station (Barisal), but the police have taken no action to find the girl or punish the perpetrators. She remains missing to this day. In his report, Tanusreeís father notes that the kidnappers repeatedly threaten to kill him and his family, but the police have taken no action to follow up those charges.

In late February 2009, local Muslims stormed a small family farm in Dinajpur district and ordered the residents to leave, claiming the land for themselves. When the head of the family protested, the attackers beat him and forced the family off their land. Muslims also raped the family’s 14- year-old daughter. Police refused to act and the family fled to India.” (Source- Benkin 2009 p.85–87)

Hindus were not the only minority group that was systematically targetted. Adivashis for example had collectively lost around 80% of their land to local gangs that had political protection (Source- Bhoumic, Nim Chandra; Dhar, Basu Dev (1999); Adivashi Upojatoder Dabee Nae Shongoto). Christian minorities have often been coerced by local Muslims to pay the Jizyah (protection money) under the threat of handing over their wives and daughters as sex-slaves (Source: Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Dec. 13, 2001). Another example is the 2004 attack and mass rape of indigenous Buddhists in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Malachari. This was ofcourse after their population had already been decimated from 97% in the region during 1947 to less than 50% during 2001 (Source: US Department of State’s Country Report on Human Rights Practices, 2004).

If we want to talk about ending the violence of one community against another, we must begin with constitutional change, or implementing better laws or change from the top. However we must not forget that the will of the majority is reflected in the constitution, that the ruling classes are powerful through the civil population, and that they are always in favour of maintaining some kind of status quo. The status quo is enabled through the intentional enacment of a social hierarchy that brings with it privilege for the dominant classes. This is why, if change is to come, it must come from the masses, and through a collective transformation of consciousness from the bottom, and from within ourselves.

References-

Richard Benkin, (2012); A Quiet Case of Ethnic Cleansing: The Murder of Bangladeshi Hindus

Drazen Petrovic, (1994); Ethnic Cleansing: An Attempt at Methodology

Trivedi, Rabindranath (2007); The legacy of enemy turned vested property act in Bangladesh

Samir Kalra, Esq. and Arvind Chandrakantan, M.D; A Legal Analysis of the Enemy Property Act of Bangladesh

Richard L. Benkin, (2009); Ethnic Cleansing in Bangladesh, Journal of Himalayan Research and Cultural Foundation

Shelley Feldman, (2016); The Hindu as Other: State, Law, and Land Relations in Contemporary Bangladesh

Roy, Tathagata (2007); A Suppressed Chapter in History. The Exodus of Hindus from East Pakistan and Bangladesh 1947–2006

The Daily Star, Nov.16, 2001

The Daily Star, June 3, 2003

Bhoumic, Nim Chandra Dhar, Basu Dev (1999); Adivashi Upojatoder Dabee Nae Shongoto

Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Dec. 13, 2001

US Department of State’s Country Report on Human Rights Practices, 2004