The minority report

Afsan Chowdhury
Published : 21 Nov 2010, 03:56 PM
Updated : 21 Nov 2010, 03:56 PM

Seven years after 11 members of a Hindu family were murdered in Chittagong; the family still awaits a trial. In a country where the legal system is disabled and politics influences the verdicts, few can have confidence in the system to deliver. If you are a Hindu, the chances of getting redress are almost nil. We may not want to face it but we have effectively produced an anti-minority state, not just through omissions but commissions as well.

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Before 1971, the only people who were militantly anti-Hindu in Bangladesh/East Pakistan were the Urdu speaking supporters of Pakistan. For most Pakistanis, state ideology was understood through Hindu-hatred which was equal to hating India, Pakistan's reason for existing. The Urdu speakers living in East Pakistan were involved in two major riots, one in 1950 and then in 1964 and constituted Pakistan's communal face in Bengal. But with 1971, the mantle of hatred and politics of communalism were passed into Bengali-Muslim hands.

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Looting was a common event in 1971 and the documentation of that is quite extensive. Many Hindus went to India leaving behind their property in their neighbour's custody or after a fire sale. The mass departure also meant that many of the trades in which Hindus were active particularly at the sub-national level became vacant and the Muslims stepped in. When Hindu refugees returned to Bangladesh, the equation had changed dramatically. A new group had emerged which saw Hindus as a threat to what they had acquired in 1971 and what they felt Hindus might achieve in the post-independence Bangladeshi commercial world, particularly with Indian help. So the material causes of anti-Hindu feelings were laid.

To this was added property grabbing of the vulnerable Hindus, a process documented by Professor Barkat and others quite lucidly. It shows how this has become integrated into the larger social structure of power providing a system of appropriation that can be accessed by the powerful anytime. This has definite cross-party structure and is evident in both rural and urban world. The Hindus, can't fight back so it's easier to grab what belong to the Hindus.

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Nothing has provided anti-Hindus — both ideological or the opportunists type — greater strength or assurance about the anti-minority stance of the state than our two military rulers. What Zia did to hang on to power after 1975 was to invite and introduce the same forces which fought against the birth of Bangladesh, led by Jamaat-e-Islami, Muslim League, etc. He literally made all that the collaborationists did — murder, rape and looting — halal. By accepting their politics, their acts were legitimised. The very people who were at the forefront of anti-Hindu politics now shared state power. By fiddling with the constitution and inserting Islamic elements, he betrayed his own war, his own faith and his amanat.

Ershad's declaration of Islam as the state religion was a cynical small-time act compared to Zia's actions but he cemented the process and by declaring it a state of the Muslims, he ensured the process of Hindu marginalisation to the fullest degree and within the framework of official legitimacy.

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Most Muslims have no idea what it feels to be a Hindu in Bangladesh because one doesn't even know too many Hindus. Middle-class Hindus have almost totally gone and the rest that remains wait for a chance to flee. This is not a happy decision. The pain of leaving one's home is so intense and brutal that it can only be understood by those who leave. Coming from a family that was forced to leave ancestral homes due to communal politics, I know exactly how it feels. I know these shadow people, permanently refugees in their head and never belonging to any home. In Bangladesh we have caused this to Hindus and created new refugees.

Hindus in Bangladesh are left without leaders and an educated leadership loyal to the community. Instead, there has grown a small group of Hindu facilitators and middlemen who now negotiate with the ruling class in the name of community and fatten themselves. The Hindu population of Bangladesh are marooned in a state where they aren't equals and in a society without guardians.

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Any discussion on Hindu repression in Bangladesh automatically generates a burst of anti-Indian expletives and plight over the fate of Muslims there. Muslims are much better off in India than Hindus are in Bangladesh, particularly the middle-class and there is very little out-migration but the situation of Muslims should have been much better in India compared to the development of the state. Movies like Chak-de India are Bollywood fantasies but they reflect the essential sense of Indian Muslims feeling left out, marginalised, having to continuously prove that they are loyal Indians and won't sell Bharat Mata to Pakistan.

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It's the same all over South Asia and every state has constructed the enemy of their minorities who in most cases are accused to be more loyal to the antagonistic neighbour state. The one exception is Pakistan where everyone is everyone else's enemy and minorities have in effect ceased to exist.

In India, Muslims are considered pro-Pakistani, in Nepal the terrain/plain land people are considered pro-Indians, in Sri Lanka the Tamils were/are considered pro-Indian while plain-landers of Bhutan were called Nepalese and thrown out to become refugees.

The state system in South Asia works only for the majority population.

However, there are degrees and we are certainly one of the worst performers. I have never cared what the situation is elsewhere. I know the situation for the minorities is bad in Bangladesh.

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Bangladesh had the potential to be the most humane society in South Asia because its linguistic nationalism was inter-faith based. But after victory, it has become mono-faith nationalism making the state inevitably repressive. Laws, rules, constitutional changes, a disabled judiciary, dominant idea of the state about its protectionist communal status, fear of the big neighbour and plain racism make Bangladesh a place where Hindus and other minorities will never find a happy residence.

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Tajendra Sheel died with 11 of his family members and his two surviving sons — Bimal Sheel and Nirmal Sheel — must wonder if through the failure to try the murders after all this time the face of Bangladesh was also being described.

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Afsan Chowdhury is a journalist and researcher