By Dr. Richard L. Benkin
Address to Netaji Subhash Mahavidyalaya seminar on Partition July 12, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_tQwpaiumI&feature=youtu.be
(My part of the video begins at 2:09:51)
Good morning from the United States! First of all, I want to clarify that my talk has nothing to do with partition “literature.” Though a scholar, I’m not an academic. I am an activist. Literature is only important to me as a device; for what it accomplishes rather than for what it is. Far more important are action and results. Whatever I talk about, the burning question always is: What is to be done? So, rather than present a litany of atrocities, which you can get in a lot of places, I will be emphasizing progress, obstacles and—again—what we must do.
For almost two decades, I have been fighting the ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Bangladesh; and for the past five years, I have been working with Baloch, Sindhi, and most prominently Pashtuns in their fight against Pakistan’s human rights atrocities and cultural genocide, which is often a fight for their physical survival, as well. And it is clear that the challenges they all face have been exacerbated, if not created, by the 1947 partition of what was then called “British India.”
There is no doubt that India’s 1947 partition was a bad idea then, and a deadly one ever since. Conceptually, it’s nonsense to believe the ridiculous and retrograde idea that peoples of different faiths—especially Hindus and Muslims—are unable to live together in one nation. Dress it up however one wishes; spew a thousand apologetics; Partition told the West and everyone else at a critical point in history that Third World independence meant tribalism and inter-religious hatred. We all know better than that, but the fact of Partition sent the world that false message anyway. The one to two million people killed in Partition-era violence, and the many times more whom Partition displaced certainly seemed to confirm those biases. And taking the implications beyond South Asia to developing nations in general, religious differences was still playing a prominent role in Sudan’s partition, 64 years after India’s, and in the deadly violence preceding it.
Lord Curzon partitioned Bengal in 1905, largely along religious lines, only to rescind the edict a mere six years later. And while it’s delusional to claim that action caused the enmity between Bengali Hindus and Muslims, it provided communal elements a template for later partition demands. And a deadly template it was!
Twenty years of struggle has not be for nothing, and there has been some good progress. There remains much to be done, and that’s what we need to get to; action. People in Tripura can see what’s happening to Bangladesh’s Hindus close up, but much of the world can’t. They don’t know that Bangladesh’s Hindus face human rights atrocities every day that are never prosecuted. Neither do they know that in Bangladesh you can be killed for helping someone convert from Islam to Hinduism—and the perpetrator will not be prosecuted—at the same time that forcible conversion to Islam is not a crime. And many believe that if there is a problem, it was a problem only under the openly Islamist-loving Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP); but not under the currently ruling Awami League. Wrong, wrong, wrong! The presumed association between the BNP and Islamists more nuanced than the Awami League and its apologists would like us to believe. If anything, it’s worse for Hindus and other minorities under Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League because that party tries to hide behind its no longer applicable reputation.
We also face the following obstacles, pretty unique to this situation:
1. The investment of international elites in maintaining the fiction of Bangladesh as a “moderate” nation;
2. The fact that these atrocities are not carried out by the Bangladeshi government, but merely enabled by it;
3. The silence and lack of activism from India and the international Hindu community.
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. Those clever disguises of this “quiet case of ethnic cleansing,” coupled with the decades-long acquiescence of most Hindus, has allowed people to pretend this just does not exist. But it does!
Pakistan’s first post-partition census (1951) counted Hindus as a bit less than one out of every three East Bengalis; that is, even after the movement of peoples that accompanied Partition, East Pakistan’s population included that high a proportion of Hindus. That is, if we apply the same proportionate number to Bangladesh’s current population of 165 million, it would equate to 49.5 million Hindus. For some perspective, that would make Bangladeshi Hindus the world’s 30th largest country: bigger than every Middle East/North African nation except Egypt; larger than all but three Central or South American countries; and bigger than 24 of the 27 countries in the European Union.
That’s a lot of people! Unfortunately, today’s Hindu population of Bangladesh is not 49.5 million. Depending on whose information you believe, it is between 12 and 14 million. What happened to the rest of them?
From that 1951 census until East Pakistan became Bangladesh, the percentage of Hindus dropped from under a third to under a fifth; but the decline did not just happen under Pakistan. Bangladeshi leaders like to contrast their country with the one from which they revolted in 1971; but this is at least one area where the contrast is anything but convincing. For after only 30 years of living in Bangladesh, the proportion of Hindus dropped to less than a tenth. Today, they are seven to eight percent of the population, around one in 15.
Over the years of my fight, Bangladeshi leaders have tried to get me off this human rights effort—to ignore it as most other people do and as they prefer it. Their futile efforts involved giving me any number of “reasons” for this significant decline in Hindus, having nothing to do with the unbroken string of documented atrocities against Hindus without the government’s objection. Since successive experts in Washington, New Delhi, Europe and the international media bought them, I guess they figured I would, too. Well, they were wrong.
1.There’s no problem because there are more Hindus in Bangladesh today than at the time of Bangladeshi independence. That’s often coupled with the assertion that the decline in the Hindu proportion of the population is due to the Muslim birth rate. That the raw numbers of Bangladeshi Hindus have increased since 1971 is true enough. But consider that in 1971 Bangladesh’s total population was about 70 million, and it has grown to about two and a third times that size. Since then, its Muslim population has increased by 92 million or about two and a half times, pretty close to the national growth; but Hindus have increased by a little over 3,000,000 or about 30 percent. Are we to believe that’s a coincidence? Fortunately (or unfortunately) we do not have to depend on “belief.” We have data.
a. 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 an attempt to excuse ethnic cleansing by appealing to bias contrary to fact.
b. Throughout that entire period, we have seen an unbroken torrent of anti-Hindu atrocities that continue to this day with the tacit approval of various Bangladeshi governments. That human rights tragedy, and not some presumed disparity in birth rates, accounts for the destruction of Hinduism in Bangladesh. I have vetted the data and seen it for myself.
2. I’ve had many Bangladeshi officials react with anger and feigned insult. They refer to the flowery words in their constitution about equality but cannot answer why the reality is anything but that. This happened as recently at this year [2020] in Dhaka when one official said that he considered opposing these assertions about persecution as “the duties of a patriot.” 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. Love of country should make us strive to keep improving, developing; not ignore the things we need to fix. 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—as if having 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. When I refused to relent, 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. He was silent.) He offered nothing other than angry accusations, and for that, I thanked him for proving my point, by dissembling rather than addressing it head on.
He finally said that all Bangladeshis “live in communal harmony,” but that I should send him any evidence to the contrary if I encounter it, and he would “take care of it personally.” 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, by the way, after meeting with a Bangladeshi Hindu family whose daughter had been abducted with police involvement, I did as he asked and sent him pages of documentation. He never did anything about it.
3. Here’s another one: The number of Hindus have dropped because of “voluntary” emigration. My response to this excuse is that it is 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 after they fled Bangladesh. Their small farm was invaded, an uncle murdered, the father beaten, and the 14-year-old daughter raped. No one drove them to the border and expelled them. Does that mean they left voluntarily? I’ve confirmed that even during the past months, influential people with track records of violence have threatened Bangladeshi Hindus with death or “dire consequences” if they do not leave the country. If they decide to leave, often “advised” to do so by police, will their flight be voluntarily? I know, I know, it sounds silly to call it that, but this is what Bangladeshi officials do by calling Hindu flight “voluntary.”
4. During the past year, as I witnessed anti-Hindu actions in the capital and the hinterlands, police often said that they were not directed at Hindus, that the “majority” community faces the same thing. A stupid excuse easily dismissed when I asked them for the last time Hindus destroyed a mosque or when Hindus forcibly converted Muslims. More than once, they ended up admitting the problem and telling me that is what they are directed to say.
5. One Bangladeshi ambassador to the US 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.
Enough said about that idiotic excuse—except for asking why Bangladeshi officials would make such foolish excuses. Good question, and there are several reasons.
Let’s be honest, Bangladeshi officials try to dismiss my accusations because they assume that Americans get all their information from TV and movies—or at most a Google search. And it’s not just Bangladeshis. We know that, don’t we? We also know that the bias has some kernel of truth—like most biases and stereotypes—but the problem with such biases is that they take observed phenomena and generalize them based on the viewer’s prejudices. That’s why biases don’t hold up. This particular bias leaves those Bangladeshi officials without recourse when I counter their objections with sound analysis and rigorous confirmation. That is, I get a lot of these things first-hand (which could be a reason why the Bangladeshis barred me from the country for several years, no more though); and to include an incident I haven’t seen myself I require at least two independent witnesses. Anything I allege today or otherwise I have confirmed with either of those two methods. So feel free to challenge me if you want.
By the way, I have to emphasize that before confronting anyone, I needed to be skilled and rigorous in making sure my analysis and data were flawless—because you want to be prepared to overcome denials, and you want to make sure you are fighting for a just cause.
More significantly for what follows is that they toss off these stupid excuses because no one requires to do any better. In other words, Bangladeshi officials do not take these accusations seriously because no one has required them to do so. To be sure, Sheikh Hasina has a large number of problems and positive goals that she’d rather spend time addressing. Unfortunately, the excuses also show contempt for the accusers and, more importantly the victims. The intensity of their anger shows just how frightened they are of being revealed for who they are.
We have made some significant progress. Still, there remains much to do. And every day that we don’t do it means another Hindu murdered, another woman or girl raped, another child abducted, another temple destroyed, and another day closer to the extinction of Hinduism in East Bengal.
A Recent Study
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. (And if you are unfamiliar with it, I urge you to read my 2012 work, A Quiet Case of Ethnic Cleansing: the Murder of Bangladesh’s Hindus, and to read any number of my articles on my web site, www.interfaithstrength.com. ) Recently, however, I have been gathering data on current attacks on Bangladeshi Hindus, and have spent most of this month vetting them. My focus was the Bangladesh’s initial lockdown to prevent the spread of COVID-19, 23 March through 30 May. I figured that if people would risk infection and possible death to attack Hindus, they’re probably pretty rabid about 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. 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, though the overall trend will remain the same; I’ve confirmed enough for that. The vetting might also reveal more crimes against Hindus.
I 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. The 77 incidents involved at least the following: assault 36; home invasion 31; vandalism 27; land grabbing 22; religious desecration 17; robbery 11; death threats 8; false arrest 8; extortion 3; and at least three murders, two child abductions, three forced conversions; at least four sexual assaults; 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 unequal protection under the law, something that numerous international jurists have identified as endemic in Bangladesh; and all involved armed perpetrators.
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!
Once I have completed the vetting, I plan to get this information to key Senators and Members of Congress I know and have discussed this matter with already. They are expecting my intervention and some direction on what they can do to use the power of the US government to stop the atrocities.
Progress
There has been some progress, and we only can hope that it’s responsible for stopping some anti-Hindu actions. For decades, most of the international community, like Bangladesh itself, was invested in maintaining Bangladesh’s brand as a “moderate Muslim country,” democratic, and hospitable to minorities. A couple decades of facts to the contrary has led to that. There even have been serious concerns expressed in the European Parliament, a body not known for taking an aggressive posture on this matter. India’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) was also an important step in recognizing Bangladeshi culpability. The CAA’s inclusion of Bangladesh, along with Pakistan and Afghanistan, as a nation whose minorities can find safe haven in India, represented the first official statement by India acknowledging that Hindus and other religious minorities are not safe in Bangladesh and face human rights abuses sufficient to allow them sanctuary in India. As someone who has seen those human rights abuses in Bangladesh for two decades, I applaud India and the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for recognizing that Hindus and others face ongoing atrocities in Bangladesh, and for providing a safe haven where they can flee until the Bangladeshi government lives up to the ideals that were supposed to undergird their national life.
The conversation has changed in Washington, too. Members of Congress, the Senate, and the Administration, all recognize Bangladeshi government complicity in the ethnic cleansing of Hindus there. Many of them have laughed with me when I told them how Bangladeshi officials tried to dismiss these serious allegations. And in 2016, a high Bangladeshi official admitted to me and, more importantly, Congressman Bob Dold, that yes, they have a problem with anti-Hindu persecution. Significantly, this happened in a meeting room of the House Committee on Ways and Means, of which Dold was a member. Ways and Means is one of the most powerful committees in Washington because it controls all legislation about funding and trade—two issues critical to the Bangladeshi economy. Bob Dold has left Congress, but several current Ways and Means members also see Bangladeshi culpability. One of them is Congressman Brad Schneider, like Dold from my own Chicago area, who was in the process of taking an unprecedented step and going to the Bangladeshi embassy to address the ethnic cleansing of Hindus directly and forcefully. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 process has delayed that, but not stopped it.
By the way, I am not focusing on the US because I see us as the new British Raj; God forbid! I do so for three reasons. One, the United States has the economic and geopolitical resources to do something about this. Two, the Bangladeshi economy is inordinately dependent on exports to the United States and receipts from UN peacekeeping, of which US taxpayers are the greatest funders by far. Three, current US foreign policy is perfect for addressing Bangladesh’s ethnic cleansing of Hindus.
The administration of President Donald Trump has not hesitated to use tariffs in its international diplomatic efforts, and the prospect of that has to scare the daylights out of the Bangladeshis. Moreover, despite the assertions of its detractors, there is indeed a unifying foreign policy philosophy, or Trump Doctrine, and a rather effective one. Rather than use our military might, this administration has decided to use American economic might and good negotiating skills to project American power and interests without putting young Americans in harm’s way or engaging in wars of nation building. We have seen this time and again, most notably with Iran. Regardless of our own views, we all can agree that the US and Iran follow antithetical paths and in prior centuries might already have fought it out on the battlefield. While there have been military actions, most notably the US killing of Qasem Soleimani for his murder of Americans and continued terrorism activities, the key in this battle has been US economic sanctions, which are contributing to negative development in that country and a lack of resources to its terrorist proxies. Venezuela is another example whrere sanctions have contributed to a 2018 inflation rate of 1.7 million percent! We also have been seeing it in the US-China struggle. They have strained elements of the Chinese economy and make it increasingly difficult for China to sustain the amount of foreign debt to it through its Belt & Road Initiative. Now, more countries are looking to work with the US after the COVID-19 crisis has led developed nations to look for new supply chains that will prevent the Chinese economy from reaching the heights its leaders expected.
Contrary to how it might appear, I actually have a great deal of affection for the people of Bangladesh. While some Bangladeshis have tried to make my life difficult, or even tried to do worse, I generally find Bangladeshis warm and hospitable; and appreciative of others. Good example. Once when I landed in Dhaka, an individual officer recognized me and my efforts, attempted to get information out of me, and detained me at the airport for over two hours. Yet, ultimately, he was told to stop his harassment by those above him in the food change and even apologize for the trouble he caused. Some Bangladeshis are really nasty to me—even worse to minorities living there—but the general tenor is quite the opposite. So, I want the best for the people there and the country. I remember learning with pleasure about Bangladesh’s economic rise out of the category of “less developed” and can get the country some help with other issues. But I will not do that as long as the government continues to allow the oppression of Hindus and others; and until they do, I will use whatever influence I have to bring them to the negotiating table.
That said, there are some very specific things we can do to save these victims of government approved human rights abuses. In order to do them effectively, we need to recognize the following principles and act by them: (1) This is a moral quest in which we are fighting to save lives; if we do what’s convenient and abandon our effort, we are no better than those who carry out these acts. If we know about them and do nothing, we are no less guilty than the perpetrators. (2) The Bangladeshi government will not do the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do. Know that! But it likely will do the right thing if we make it in their interests to do so, including making continued oppression harmful to their concrete interests. (3) Never exchange action for words; it’s a bad deal. Do not accept promises until you see the action. Words themselves are meaningless.
What Must be Done
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. So, their economy will face new challenges that demand even more so that they take action on matters they can control, like this one.
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.
What do we have to do? I want to provide an example of that. If you were in the United States in the 1970s or 1980s, you would not have been able to pass a Jewish synagogue without seeing a large banner reading “Save Soviet Jewry.” Our co-religionists were being persecuted in the USSR, and the American Jewish community knew that if we did nothing about it, no one would. So we mobilized a community wide response. Average men and women, who you might see at the market or in the office took the perilous journey to the Soviet Union to smuggle in religious books and artifacts, at considerable risk to themselves, so the persecuted Jews there would know they were not alone—something very important that has been a big factor in what we do for Bangladeshi Hindus. We lobbied our political leaders, and because we knew this was a moral issue, not a specifically “Jewish” one, we got other religious groups to lobby theirs, too. It was the first question President Ronald Reagan would raise with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and played a role in the US boycott of the 1980 Moscow olympics. In the end, we got over 1.2 million Jews out of that Soviet hell hole; and you can do the same for Bangladesh’s Hindus.
Will Sheikh Hasina finally do what’s right and necessary? At the moment, she seems stuck on nothing but blanket denials that no one believes any more. We can help her decide to do the right thing by remaining strong in lobbying our governments—all Indians, not just Hindus—make sure they do the right thing and save Hinduism in Bangladesh. Thank you.