
Struggle of Hindus in Bangladesh
With the scheduled date for national elections fast approaching, the Awami League (AL) continues its decades-long courtship of Bangladesh’s minorities. Its 2008 “election manifesto” identifies five “priority issues” and buried as one of seven points under the fifth priority is:
“Use of religion and communalism in politics will be banned. Security and rights of religious and ethnic minorities will be ensured. Courtesy and tolerance will be inculcated in the political culture of the country. Militancy and extortion will be banned. Awami League will take initiative to formulate a consensual and unanimous charter of political behavior.”
To be sure, the AL is on solid ground when it urges minorities to reject the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) with its long history of coddling Islamist radicals. There is nonetheless a real question of the AL’s commitment to these ideals aside from the total befuddlement among all observers about how it would implement these high-sounding principles. AL has yet to say how it will ban “use of religion and communalism in politics.” How does it propose to stop such things as leaflets being distributed in districts with minority candidates, as reported in The Daily Star? The paper notes that leaflets distributed in the Thakurgaon-I district urges voters to reject AL candidate Ramesh Chandra Sen because he is a Hindu and uses verses from the Quran to try and convince voters. Another leaflet was entitled “Al-Quraner-Bani” and asks Muslims not to vote for any non-Muslim candidate. According to an election officer, however, these things already are legal. How the AL would make sure these things do not happen is something they never have spelled out.
Moreover, the AL’s history should not encourage religious minorities. By now, all Bangladeshis recall the AL’s shameful agreement with Khelafat Majlis (KM) in December 2006. In that MOU, the AL discarded all pretense of being a party committed to minority rights when it agreed not only to let the Islamist party into its coalition if it won the election, but it would all the KM to proceed with implementing Sharia Law on all citizens. Fortunately, the elections scheduled for the following month were postponed, but the AL’s action revealed that its members are far more concerned about winning an election no matter what it means for millions of Bangladeshi citizen.
Tags: Bangladesh, election, hindu, Politics
















The
tragedy is that these events could have been prevented. Radical Islam
has been warning the rest of us that it means to re-make our planet in
its own image and kill anybody that threatens to stand in its way. Its
practitioners have vowed repeatedly to destroy India as an abomination
against Islam; yet its leaders act as if they were only kidding.
Despite the country experiencing almost non-stop Islamist attacks, the
ruling Congress Party maintains a strict policy of non-confrontation
with home-grown Muslims who support the radical organizations. It
recently showed far more zeal in prosecuting an alleged “Hindu
terrorist” after a bomb went off in a predominantly Muslim town. The
accused Hindu priest was interrogated several times, despite the fact
that her only tie to the bombing was a car used in the attack, which 38
year-old Sadhwi Pragya Singh Thakur had sold years before. In a policy
of appeasement similar to Britain’s (which was also a target in the
Mumbai attacks), that same government deliberately refrains from
identifying terrorists as Muslim.


