• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
  • HOME
  • ABOUT CHINA
    • NEWS
    • TESTIMONIES
    • OP-EDS
    • FEATURED
    • GLOSSARY
    • CHINA PERSECUTION MAP
  • FROM THE WORLD
    • NEWS GLOBAL
    • TESTIMONIES GLOBAL
    • OP-EDS GLOBAL
    • FEATURED GLOBAL
  • INTERVIEWS
  • DOCUMENTS AND TRANSLATIONS
    • DOCUMENTS
    • THE TAI JI MEN CASE
    • TRANSLATIONS
    • EVENTS
  • ABOUT
  • EDITORIAL BOARD
  • TOPICS

Bitter Winter

A magazine on religious liberty and human rights

three friends of winter
Home / From the World / Featured Global

The Bangladesh Genocide. 7. Eradicating Hinduism

11/02/2021Massimo Introvigne |

One of the goals of the West Pakistanis and their collaborators in 1971 was to exterminate the Hindu community by killing all males.

by Massimo Introvigne

Article 7 of 8. Read article 1, article 2, article 3, article 4, article 5, and article 6.

Hindu refugees from Bangladesh en route to India. From Twitter.
Hindu refugees from Bangladesh en route to India. From Twitter.

The movement for having the Bengali language recognized as an official language of Pakistan together with Urdu, and for autonomy and later independence of East Pakistan as Bangladesh was largely led by Bengali-speaking Muslims. Yet, in the 1971 genocide, no community was targeted more mercilessly than the Hindus. Western Pakistanis continued to slaughter Hindus even after some of their generals had admonished that this would eventually trigger what (West) Pakistan had tried in all possible ways to avoid, an Indian military intervention.

It was not a simple mistake. The roots of the ideology considering the Eastern Pakistanis “inferior” or “bad” Muslim was, as we saw in previous articles, the accusation that they were “crypto-Hindus,” and had included in their religious practices Hindu elements that had tainted their faith.

This was due, it was argued, to the cultural influence of Hindus, and to the fact that Eastern Pakistani Muslims were both “unorthodox” and “secular,” in the sense that they did not have strong feelings causing a rigid separation with the Hindus. Reforming Bengali-speaking followers of Islam into “good” Muslims required the elimination of the Hindus.

Even the Western Pakistani generals were aware of the fact that it was impossible to kill all the Hindus who lived in East Pakistan, who were more than nine million. This was, however, not necessary. It was believed that after a percentage would have been killed, the others would flee to India.

The argument was correct, as in fact two third of the eight million refugees who escaped East Pakistan were Hindus. What the Western Pakistanis did not consider was that, faced with such an enormous influx of refugees, even the Indian politicians most reluctant to go to war would conclude that an armed conflict was an easier solution than accommodating in India the whole Hindu population of East Pakistan.

Hinduism: Another image of Hindu refugees trying to reach India. From Twitter.
Another image of Hindu refugees trying to reach India. From Twitter.

A disproportionate number of Hindus, however, were killed in 1971. In that year, Hindus were some 20% of the East Pakistan’s population, yet it was estimated that they might have been 50% of those killed. American leading scholar of genocides Rudolph Joseph Rummel (1932–2014), whose statistics we mentioned in the previous article, wrote that in the eyes of Western Pakistanis and their fundamentalist Muslim collaborators “the Hindus among the Bengalis were as Jews to the Nazis: scum and vermin that should best be exterminated.”

The parallel with the Nazi persecution of Jews is made even more appropriate by the fact that the Western Pakistani army compelled Hindus to have a yellow “H” painted on their homes, thus designating those who lived there as targets for extermination.

The (Western) Pakistani Army took pride in not killing Hindu women, only men, although when columns of refugees en route to India were attacked, as it happened in the Chuknagar massacre mentioned in the previous article of this series, women and children were killed as well. In addition to the 10,000 victims at Chuknagar, this also happened in Jathibhanga on April 23, 1971, when some 3,000 Hindu refugees were slaughtered.

In the very first days of the genocide, Western Pakistani troops entered the Shankharibazar area of Old Dhaka, where the Shankaris, Hindu jewelers specialized in producing conch shell bangles, lived, and went into a killing frenzy slaughtering more than 200 men, women, and children. Hindu women, however, in most cases were not killed but massively raped, forced into prostitution, or forcibly married to Western Pakistani soldiers and local collaborator militiamen, just as it happened to their Muslim Bengali counterparts.

How many Hindus were killed, and how many Hindu women were raped, depend on the general statistics of the genocide, a matter of controversy. 100,000 Hindu women raped and 700,000 Hindu men killed appear as a reasonable estimate, although the precise numbers will probably never be known.

Other casualties of the genocide included Hindu temples and libraries that were assaulted and looted, leading to the irreparable loss of ancient cultural treasures. One infamous example was the demolition of the Ramna Kali Mandir, a Kali temple in Dhaka that dated back to the Mughal Empire. The ashram of the Hindu saint Anandamayi Ma (1896–1982), who was within the temple’s premises, was also destroyed. 85 Hindus were killed in the attack.

Ramna Kali Mandir before and after the destruction. From Twitter.
Ramna Kali Mandir before and after the destruction. From Twitter.

After the war ended and the independence was proclaimed, the majority of the refugees returned to Bangladesh. They were encouraged by proclamations that, while Islam was the official religion, the state will be secular, religious liberty will be respected, and the fundamentalist Muslim organizations that had sided with West Pakistan in the war will be banned.

Their hopes were short-lived. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1920–1975), the father of independent Bangladesh, believed in the possibility of a “secular Islam.” However, he was assassinated in 1975, and gradually Islamic fundamentalism reasserted itself as an important component of Bangladeshi politics and culture. Although the current Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, is Mujibur’s daughter, she has to mediate between different forces. The escalation of violence against Hindus in Bangladesh in October 2021 proves that the consequences of the genocide are still at work in Bangladeshi society.

Tagged With: Bangladesh, Hindu, Pakistan

Massimo Introvigne
Massimo Introvigne

Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio.  From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.

www.cesnur.org/

Related articles

  • New False Blasphemy Charges in Pakistan 

    New False Blasphemy Charges in Pakistan 

  • The U.S. Department of State 2023 Religious Freedom Report: Excellent on Enemies, Soft on Allies

    The U.S. Department of State 2023 Religious Freedom Report: Excellent on Enemies, Soft on Allies

  • Georgia Becomes First U.S. State to Pass an Anti-Hinduphobia Resolution

    Georgia Becomes First U.S. State to Pass an Anti-Hinduphobia Resolution

  • Parliaments Should Recognize the 1971 Genocide in Bangladesh

    Parliaments Should Recognize the 1971 Genocide in Bangladesh

Keep Reading

  • Pakistan, Imam Threatens to Break the Legs of an Ahmadi School Headmaster
    Pakistan, Imam Threatens to Break the Legs of an Ahmadi School Headmaster

    Qari Idrees, of Ahl-e-hadees Mosque, shared an incendiary video. Unfortunately, the case of Masood Bhatti in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, is just one among many.

  • The Chitrali Case: In Pakistan, MPs Can Insult Religious Minorities and Get Away with It 
    The Chitrali Case: In Pakistan, MPs Can Insult Religious Minorities and Get Away with It 

    Maulana Abdul Akbar Chitrali told the Parliament that the Torah and the Gospel are “canceled” scriptures. He has not been censored.

  • Pakistan: Bishops’ Patience Exhausted After Killings at Catholic School
    Pakistan: Bishops’ Patience Exhausted After Killings at Catholic School

    Two young girls were killed and five injured. “We are targeted both because we are Catholic and because we educate girls,” the Bishops said.

  • A Poem For the Persecuted Ahmadis in Bangladesh
    A Poem For the Persecuted Ahmadis in Bangladesh

    A young Ahmadi Muslim university student from Ahmednagar, Northern Bangladesh, pays homage to the innocent victims of the fanatic enemies of FoRB.

Primary Sidebar

Support Bitter Winter

Learn More

Follow us

Newsletter

Most Read

  • There Are Christian Uyghurs, Too: New Organization Launched in London by Ruth Ingram
  • Hui Muslims Clash with Police Over Mosque’s “Sinicization” by Ma Guangyao
  • Russia: Lunatic Theory that Yellowstone Volcano Caused the War in Ukraine Gains Momentum by Massimo Introvigne
  • Xi Jinping: Beijing’ National Art Museum Is Not Socialist Enough by Hu Zimo
  • Occupied Ukraine: Anti-Cult “Experts” Target Moscow Patriarchate Dissident Priest by Massimo Introvigne
  • Chinese Agents Tried to Bribe U.S. Tax Officer in Anti-Falun-Gong Plot by Massimo Introvigne
  • Hong-Kong-Style National Security Law Comes to Macau by Gladys Kwok

CHINA PERSECUTION MAP -SEARCH NEWS BY REGION

clickable geographical map of china, with regions

Footer

EDITORIAL BOARD

Editor-in-Chief

MASSIMO INTROVIGNE

Director-in-Charge

MARCO RESPINTI

ADDRESS

CESNUR

Via Confienza 19,

10121 Turin, Italy,

Phone: 39-011-541950

E-MAIL

We welcome submission of unpublished contributions, news, and photographs. Each submission implies the authorization for us to edit and publish texts and photographs. We reserve the right to decide which submissions are suitable for publication. Please, write to INFO@BITTERWINTER.ORG Thank you.

Newsletter

LINKS

orlir-logo hrwf-logo cesnur-logo

Copyright © 2023 · Bitter Winter · PRIVACY POLICY· COOKIE POLICY