BANGLADESH’S HINDU MINORITIES
By:
Chanchal Sarkar
Of the three minority groups in B’desh, the Buddhists and Christians are very small in number – less than 1 percent – they too are victims of discrimination and they have no place to migrate to. The Hindus are still, say expert sources, around 13 million in the land of their forefathers and they live in what one might call a ‘velvet straightjacket’. There are no communal riots in today’s B’desh, there are many people who behave cordially with them not bothering in the least what their religion is but yet if 10 B’deshi Hindus speak confidentially then 7, may be 8, already have relatives or friends across the border and would like to go over if they could. The other two or three often don’t have the means to move, they simply cannot leave what little property or resources they have to jump into the unknown.
B’deshi Muslims, especially liberals, recognize a duality. They admit that Hindus in B’desh do not feel secure or undiscriminated against but they are also regretful and indignant about Hindus who keep a foot on either side, who own houses and property in India, who educate their children in India and look for jobs for them there or abroad, but also milk B’desh for pensions and other facilities, for seats in medical and technical institutions from where they will migrate on graduation, never to return. They have neither loyalty toward nor a stake in B’desh, is the accusation. For either side, it is not a conflict of right against wrong but right against right and the grievances of both have more than a little justification, more for the Hindu minorities, however.
When West Pakistan ruled the East, there were some rules never put down in writing such as that no Vice-Chancellor and no college principal will be a non-Muslim, nor will the chairman of the Kaptai (Chittagomg) hydro-electric project, no one in the air force, no one in national security and intelligence, few officers and never higher than of middle level in the armed services or the police and so on. The West Pakistanis have gone but the rules are only slowly being relaxed. In a part of Bengal where teachers have tradition-ally been Hindus, there is not a single Hindu Vice-Chancellor. There has been but only one Hindu Major General in the Army after a Liberation War where quite a number of Hindu young men and women fought against the Pakistani forces and gave their lives. Some were decorated. Before the assassination of Sheikh Mujib, the Army was awash with conspiracies, internal conflicts and attempted coups.
Books on that period mention the names of many scores of officers and NGOs. One finds not one Hindu name among them.
The distribution of the population ensures that Hindus still predominate in certain pockets and so some Hindus find their way into the Parliament. In the bureacracy things have improved in the last few years and there are several joint secretaries, one even in the Prime Minister’s Office, and perhaps an additional secretary or two but no secretaries yet. There is talk of appointing a Hindu member to the Public Service Commission. There are two Hindu High Court judges but no one yet senior enough to be on the Supreme Court bench. There is no Hindu ambassador. All this, 25 years after B’desh fought free of the two-nation theory.
Rabindranath Tagore is claimed by the intelligentsia as B’desh’s own but – but, there is not a single major institution that I know of in B’desh that is named after Tagore, no University Chair, not a single major road, bridge, lake or anything like that. Part of Rajshahi University’s Kala Bhavan is named after him, that is all. There is not a single Hindu I have met from the middle and upper classes who does not have or want to have, a perch in West Bengal, India or abroad, an unnatural and tragic situation.
Perhaps the single most hurtful reason for the lack of Hindu confidence is a law passed by Pakistan’s president Ayub in 1965 during the Indo-Pakistan war. It was called the Enemy Property Act 1965 and, after Liberation, it was renamed, more or less unchanged, as the Vested Property Act. According to this law, all properties in East Pakistan, owned by ‘enemies’ of East Pakistan could be requisitioned or acquired by the government. This related to property left behind by Hindu migrants who have been leaving East Pakistan and then B’desh at the rate of 538 persons per day since 1964. Getting the facts is not easy but the calculation is that the total number of Hindu households affected by EPA/VPA (Enemy Property Act & Vested Property Act) is 1,048,390.
Initiative to correct the great miscarriage of human rights must come principally from the majority community of B’desh but not much activity is visible. But the Government of India could exert pressure to have the Act annulled. B’deshi academics, journalists and publicists are for ever writing about decay and corruption in B’desh, the slide from the Liberation ideals, the lack of a national identity and so on. Shouldn’t they also write about the plight and fears of the minorities?
