By Dr. Richard L. Benkin
Address to Bidhan Chandra College Dept of English Rishra, Hooghly District, West Bengal, 16 July 2020
Good morning from the United States. Thank you for giving me a chance to speak to you today. Before we get started, however, I want to provide a context within which you should put anything I say here; and I hope it is a context within which you also put what you do after today’s address. The only thing that matters is what we DO; and do and do and do until the carnage stops! As my late father would have said, “don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back for attending a seminar or for simply shaking your fists in the comfort of your home. The atrocities against Hindus will go away only when people care enough to take strong and sustained action. And I hope today’s talk helps us along.
Let’s start with some cold, hard facts. Pakistan’s first census (1951) found Hindus to be about a third of East Pakistan’s population; that is, the number remaining after the massive movement of peoples that accompanied the Partition of India. When East Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1971, they were less than a fifth; 20 years later under a tenth; and reliable estimates put them at about one in 15 today. You don’t have to be Stephen Hawking to figure out that the next number is not going to be higher. Those facts are largely undisputed; the question we have to ask next is “Why?”
Bangladeshi officials have tried to get me off the trail of finding that answer with an array of nonsensical excuses. It’s also important for you to know this so you will be prepared—so you will be able to respond quickly and effectively—when they try to get you to forget about these poor people:
1. There’s no problem, Dr. Benkin, because there are more Hindus in Bangladesh today than at the time of Bangladeshi independence. In terms of raw numbers, that’s true enough. The number of Hindus has grown by 3,000,000 or about 30 percent. Consider, though, that Bangladesh’s total population in 1971 was about 70 million. Today it’s 165 million or about one out of every 47 people on the planet. At the same time, its Muslim population grew by 92 million or about two and a half times, pretty close to the national growth, and far more than Hindus’ 30 percent increase. Are we to believe that’s a coincidence? Fortunately (or unfortunately) we do not have to depend on “belief.” We have data.
The other part of their argument is that any change is due to higher birth rates among Muslims; something their apologists never seem to tire of telling me. Yet, according to Mehtab Karim, a senior research adviser and senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and World Affairs, that assumption about birth rates might have been the prevailing wisdom in the 1960s and 1970s, but Bangladeshi Muslim birth rates have been falling since then. Attributing the slow death of Hinduism in Bangladesh to Muslim birth rates is merely an attempt to excuse ethnic cleansing by appealing to bias contrary to fact.
Throughout that entire period, however, we have seen an unbroken string of anti-Hindu atrocities that continue to this day with the tacit approval of successive Bangladeshi governments, including the current one. This is well-documented in a lot of places, including in my 2012 book, A Quiet Case of Ethnic Cleansing: the Murder of Bangladesh’s Hindus, which you can get from a number of sources, including the publisher, Akshaya Prakashan, Amazon, and my web site. The web site also has a great many articles that also document this “quiet case of ethnic cleansing.” It is that human rights tragedy, and not some presumed disparity in birth rates, that accounts for the destruction of Hinduism in Bangladesh.
2. I’ve had many Bangladeshi officials react with anger, denying that any problem exists, and referring to “guarantees” in their constitution. Yet, they cannot tell me why reality so tragically diverges from their constitution’s flowery words. This happened as recently at this year [2020] when one official said he considers opposing these accusations as “the duties of a patriot.” That’s a strong motivation, and I told him I appreciate his love of country—even respect it. As patriot myself who never shrinks from standing up for the United States, however, I expect patriots to listen to our opponents and adjust our beliefs if facts dictate it. True love of country should make us strive continuously to keep improving, developing. The most memorable of these many incidents was a very public and loud argument I had in 2013 with the man who then was Bangladesh’s Home Minister, Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir.
The minister tried to patronize me and do nothing, acting as if my being in his divine presence was all I needed; as if sipping tea with him was the reason why I regularly disrupt my life and come to a land so far and so different from my own. Of course, it did not have the effect he wanted, at which time he got very angry and launched in a ‘who-the-hell-are-you’ rant, and tried to seize the agenda by criticizing the US for a number of real and imagined sins, from the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans to mass shootings to lower union membership. I asked him if he seriously was equating low union membership with ethnic cleansing and thanked him for proving my point, by offering no rebuttal to the substance of my accusations.
He finally said something I hear from internet moles and apologists, that all Bangladeshis “live in communal harmony,” but added I should send him any evidence to the contrary if I encounter it, and he would “take care of it personally.” Was he actually serious with that? My response, and this is an exact quote: “You mean to tell me that here you are the Home Minister of the country and you’re dependent on some guy from Chicago to bring you evidence? I think you have much bigger problems than we thought.” That night, after meeting with a Bangladeshi Hindu family whose daughter had been abducted with police involvement, I nonetheless did as he asked and sent him pages of documentation. He did nothing. Shame on me for acting as if he was seriously concerned about all citizens of Bangladesh!
3. Here’s another one: The number of Hindus have dropped because of “voluntary” emigration. Notice how they keep changing their story: first, there’s no problem, then the problem is due to something other than what caused it. That’s a very obvious “tell” when someone’s lying, and worse in this case, knows the truth. That’s tantamount to saying that a person running away from a hungry tiger is doing so voluntarily. Yes, the person decided to run, but only because remaining in place—no matter how much they wanted to remain—was filled with imminent danger. Several years ago, I interviewed a Hindu family in Northern Bengal only 22 days after they fled Bangladesh with little more than the clothes on their backs. Neighbors invaded their farm, murdered an uncle, beat the father, and gang raped the 14-year-old daughter raped. No one drove them to the border and physically expelled them. Did they leave voluntarily? Even now, still, influential people and their minions with track records of violence continue to threaten Bangladeshi Hindus with death or “dire consequences” if they do not leave the country. If they decide to leave rather than risk being killed, often “advised” to do so by police, will their flight be voluntarily? And while it sounds silly to ask that, not doing so allows the guilty to blame the victims by calling their flight “voluntary.”
4. One of their newer excuses is that anything we document plain old criminal activity and nothing directed as Hindus per se. ‘The majority community faces the same thing,’ they say. This happens when I address anti-Hindu actions on the spot, whether in cities, towns, or villages. It’s a stupid excuse easily dismissed when I asked them to tell me the last time Hindus destroyed a mosque or when Hindus forcibly converted Muslims. Or this 2019 incident. I was speaking at Dhaka University when I got phone call and had to offer my apologies and leave immediately with my friend, colleague, and human rights giant, Rabindra Ghosh who founded the Bangladesh Minority Watch. A Hindu family had been terrorized for four and a half straight hours in broad daylight (between about 11am and 3:30pm). And I want to emphasize that this happened in the capital, Dhaka, and not some remote location hours away from the police.
When we arrived, their home and temple were in shambles. Family members—who fled for their lives when the attackers started overwhelming them—were on the floor picking through the wreckage trying to salvage any of their possessions or religious artifacts. Hearing that we were on our way, the police made a show of their presence. More to the point, we asked them what they were doing about this, and their response was—yep, you guessed it—that it was a “simple crime” that the majority community faces, too. I responded as noted above, then turned around as I was leaving, and said, “One more thing. I noticed two members of your intelligence service at the scene [something they figured I wouldn’t recognize]. Tell me, is your policing so bad or your government so oppressive that you can’t even solve ‘simple crimes’ yourself?” They admitted that intelligence does not come for every simple crime, and told us they were only saying what they were directed to say (of course adding ‘please don’t tell anyone’).
5. But my favorite idiocy award goes to one Bangladeshi ambassador to the US who once tried to “calm me down” by saying that Hindus do not have any problems in Bangladesh. “They cannot find suitable matches for their children [in Bangladesh] so they go to India where there are more Hindus.” I’ve interviewed hundreds of Bangladeshi Hindus refugees in India and not one told me that they left Bangladesh to find a marriage partner for their children.
Ethnic Cleansing during Lockdown
The sad history of Hindus in Bangladesh has been rehashed again and again. The litany of atrocities should not be news to any of us. Recently, however, I wanted to see just how deeply-rooted this “quiet case of ethnic cleansing” is in Bangladesh by looking at anti-Hindu incidents during Bangladesh’s initial COVID-19 lockdown from 23 March through 30 May. I spent much of the spring gathering data from various sources inside Bangladesh, and most of this month vetting them. I figured that if people would risk infection and possible death to attack Hindus and Hinduism, they’re probably pretty rabid about it, certainly committed to it. I also figured that if Sheikh Hasina’s government was passive about it, even during this time when their actions might threaten the health of all Bangladeshis, it’s probably equally committed to letting it happen. And I want to be clear that these incidents took place throughout the country, in Dhaka and other major cities, as well as small towns and villages. Search as you might, however, there is not a single example of the government condemning these actions or a single person being warned not to repeat them or face sanctions if they did. So, how strong is their commitment to ethnic cleansing? Before I proceed with what I found, know that I have not finished third stage vetting of some, so to an extent findings are subject to some change. The overall trend will remain the same, however, I’ve confirmed enough for that. The vetting might even reveal more crimes against Hindus.
The study found 77 anti-Hindu incidents during those 69 days; more than one every day. All of them were specifically anti-Hindu, or they were crimes committed against Hindus because the perpetrators knew they could do so with impunity; and they were incidents in which the government did not take action to save victims or arrest and punish perpetrators, including the well-connected and powerful individuals who fund, plan, and organize them. These 77 incidents involved at least the following: 36 incidents of assault; 31 cases of home invasion; 27 acts of serious vandalism; 22 incidents of land grabbing—a process by which armed assailants invade a Hindu home and seize it, claiming it for themselves with the police and government supporting their illegal occupation of the property; 27 act of religious desecration, including the destruction of temples and deities; 11 acts of robbery; eight death threats; eight incidents of false arrest; three of extortion, and many more attempts at it; and at least three murders, four rapes, two child abductions, three forced conversions; a number of other crimes; and three incidents that can be described only as anti-Hindu pogroms (organized attacks on the entire community with government complicity). All involved Hindus being denied equal protection under the law, something that numerous international jurists have identified as endemic in Bangladesh; and all involved armed perpetrators, often firearms.
If this can happen when everyone is supposed to be sheltering in place, imagine what life is like for Hindus in Bangladesh when there are no such restrictions! I still have to complete the third stage vetting of many incidents, which could change some specific numbers up or down, but the message is clear and unequivocal. And because the veracity of information is so terribly important, especially when making such serious allegations or requesting action; I will not include any incident that has not passed specific standards. Obviously, they are confirmed if I witnessed the incident myself, which does not apply in this recent study. (I left Bangladesh on 27 February and have been confined by our COVID-19 lockdown since about a week after that.) If I did not, they must be confirmed by at least two independent eyewitnesses. And I want to again emphasize that the witnesses must not be independent; I’m not doing this to help anyone further their own agenda.
Once I have completed the vetting, I plan to get this information to key Senators and Members of Congress I know and with whom I have discussed this matter already. They are expecting my intervention and some direction on what they can do to use the power of the US government to stop this human rights tragedy, that’s pretty much ignored by much of the world. And why is this a quiet case of ethnic cleansing?
1. Most people pay little attention to events in Bangladesh. It’s a small country with a reputation for natural disasters, poverty, and pleas of helplessness, but few natural resources or geopolitical power.
2. The investment of international elites in maintaining the fiction of Bangladesh as a “moderate” nation; and it would be tough to maintain that moniker for a country that is complicit in the systematic ethnic cleansing of its minorities.
3. The fact that these atrocities are not carried out by the Bangladeshi government, but merely enabled by it, which generally pushes the issues to the back of the human rights line. It’s a lot easier for someone sitting in Chicago, for instance, to see the carnage that occurred in Sri Lanka and Rwanda, to take two of many examples. Or focus on this when the Chinese government is actively persecuting its Uighur Muslims and forcing them into hi-tech concentration camps.
4. The silence and lack of activism from India and the international Hindu community. I recall early on in this struggle when I brought the matter before friends on Capitol Hill, one of them said: “We believe you, Richard; we know you’re not going to bring us anything unless you have done a rigorous job of verifying it. But, tell us, if this is as big a problem as you’re telling us it is, why haven’t we heard about it from our Hindu constituents?” That actually happened, and I remember it clearly because I knew that I had to be convincing even if the community did raise the issue. To be accurate, the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), the premier Hindu group in the United States who I’ve worked with in Congress, provides extensive documentation of this quiet case of ethnic cleansing annually. In fact, Samir Kalra, HAF Managing Director, wrote the forward to my book.
What Must be Done?
It always frustrated me when people came to me complaining about things as they were, but did not offer me solutions. That’s been the case here, but the solutions are as clear as the problem is made muddy.
Let’s first talk about India. This is the world’s largest democracy, where there is freedom of expression. I’ve spent one to three months in India every year for the past 13, and I have observed that most restrictions on free speech are generated by individuals internally. The biggest factor is the fear of being thought “impolite” or even worse. The next is a general desire not to offend political leaders; and even if many reserve that only for the side of the political divide they support, others make it general. There are others, but those are the two most impactful. And I find it funny because we can site so many incidents where Indians threw all of that caution to the wind, took bold and successful military steps, and demonstrated a superior ability to get things done. Regardless, this reticence has contributed to India pretending that nothing is happening in Bangladesh; or that the concern of Hindus in East Bengal are not the concerns of Hindus in Punjab, Delhi, or Maharashtra. These observations are only meaningful because, I believe, they have contributed to the Indian government tolerating the persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh.
I have been told by several highly placed Bangladeshis that the nation’s leadership is aware of the persecution and their deliberate hands off approach to it. But, they have told me almost to a person, that Prime Minister and effectively Bangladesh’s strongwoman Sheikh Hasina is adamant in maintaining the stance that there is no culpable persecution. One of her reasons, they have told me, is India’s silence; and that until something comes from India, she will not allow anything to change. Every Indian must raise their voices and let their elected officials know that they will not tolerate Indian passivity towards Bangladesh’s ethnic cleansing of Hindus. Why India? In part because knowing about this and doing nothing is morally reprehensible. In part because Prime Minister Modi already has taken the step to include Bangladesh among nations that persecute Hindus. And in part because India has the world’s largest Hindu population. Do you remember the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that caused such outrage in the Muslim world? When that happened, at least 15 Muslim majority nations felt beholden to issue formal protests to Denmark—not the newspaper or journalist. Bangladesh lodged a formal diplomatic protest. Pakistan’s ambassador urged that Denmark punish the cartoonist. Iran, never one to be rational, recalled its ambassador and blamed it all on a ”Zionist conspiracy.” When will India stand up for persecuted Hindus next door? And if it does not, we will have to blame ourselves for a failure of will and a lack of action.
Do you know that when I first learned about the plight of Bangladesh’s Hindus, many self-styled “Hindu nationalists” and groups, who will remain nameless, told me not to bother with it? They knew that Hindus were being persecuted and systematically eliminated but told me not to make an issue out of it because (and I’m quoting again), “no one cares, no one will ever care.”
Now let’s move to my wheelhouse: the United States of America. We have taken action on human rights issues without regard to whether or not it was in our material interests. We led the international effort to save Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s, and though it was done under NATO, the reality is that it does not happen without US leadership or Americans being the major military force. Earlier in this century, the US provided similar leadership on Darfur and was part of the multi-national force that intervened. In these and other cases, it also issued very strong statements, took diplomatic action, and funded the actions of others. I have become a rather familiar face to many in Washington as I continue pressing the case for US action on saving Bangladesh’s Hindus.
We are particularly well suited for a lead role in this case. Bangladeshis are rightly proud of their country’s economic miracle; and I along with them look for more success. But it all could come crashing down in an instant—if we get serious about stopping the human rights atrocity being carried out against Bangladesh’s Hindus. As noted earlier, the Bangladeshi economy is inordinately dependent on its exports, particularly of readymade garments. And guess who their biggest customer is? That’s right, the United States. What would happen if President Trump imposed tariffs on Bangladesh goods, making them more expensive in a very competitive market? As someone who spent decades working in the US corporate world, I can tell you what will happen. Their customers would look elsewhere for more reasonable prices; and no matter what Bangladesh does to address its problem with Hindus, it will never get that market share back. Add to that the fact that US corporations will be shy about doing business with a country that is guilty of ethnic cleansing (and I’ve spoken with many of their leaders).
The Bangladeshi economy has been hit hard by COVID-19. Like China’s, Bangladesh’s economy does not control its own destiny. It’s dependent on consumer habits halfway around the world; and those consumers have not been spending money as in the past. Moreover, structural changes in the US job scene has more people working at home, which means less need for regularly refreshing our wardrobes.
All Bangladesh has to do in order to avoid a complete economic disaster is to recognize what they already know and get out in front of the issue. In discussions with Bangladeshi officials, I have pointed out that if this one individual (me) can uncover and document their complicity in ethnic cleansing, eventually others will know. Already, most people in Washington recognize Bangladeshi complicity, and some are ready to take action. Yet, in a Congressional briefing on Bangladesh, the government continued to deny what the mounting evidence shows us. The key is unequal application of the law in Bangladesh, and if Sheikh Hasina were to take action that guarantees that for all Bangladeshis, she would neutralize the growing sentiment against current Bangladeshi actions. Will she do it? Tough to say, but it will not happen unless we act, and act with passion.
I’m going to close my talk with the same challenge I usually issue when I close, and I pray that you take this challenge seriously; not just today, but tomorrow, and all the tomorrows that follow:
When you leave this seminar today, what are you going to DO about it? Not what will you say or how you will feel—BUT WHAT WILLYOU DO! Bidhan Chandra College is about a three-hour drive from Bangladesh, and less than 45 minutes from the border to Shatkhira, which has seen a number of anti-Hindu actions. The most recent one that I confirmed was only 48 days ago! So, what are you going to do about it? Unless you don’t think this is important enough to trouble yourself about, you know, disturb your schedule.
In the end, that’s the only thing that matters. What gall it is for us to congratulate ourselves for being part of a seminar while Bangladesh’s Hindus still live in fear and face multiple atrocities daily.
I’ve found that people engage in human rights atrocities most often because they believe that (1) they won’t get caught; and (2) no one will make a fuss over it. Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina feels safe enough to allow this to continue primarily because no one in India cares enough even to say anything. Change her calculations. Make a stink about it—to her, and even more importantly to your own elected leaders. YOU can make a difference in ways I can’t. With sustained effort, YOU can make your leaders accountable for what they do about this. If you really want to do something about this quiet case of ethnic cleansing, then come to me with your proposed solutions. You can get my email address from the organizers of today’s event.
So, one more time, when you walk away from this, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?