Hindus in India and abroad are rallying against the ongoing Muslim mob violence in Bangladesh.
Armed Muslim gangs attacked Hindus across Bangladesh after anti-government protests ousted the country’s long-serving prime minister last week. “Hundreds of Hindu houses, businesses and temples have been vandalised since the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina,” Reuters reported earlier this week citing local groups.
Hindus, who make up about 8 percent of country’s 170 million population, “faced at least 205 attacks across 52 districts,” Indian business daily Mint reported Monday.
Along with Hindus, Bangladesh’s tiny Christian and Buddhist monitories — who jointly account for less than one percent of the total population, also targeted by Islamist mobs, social media posts suggest.
Videos circulating on X show Bangladesh soldiers flogging men amid chants of “Allahu Akbar.” Others showed mobs armed with sticks cheering while houses burn around them.
“We seek protection because our lives are in a disastrous state,” Nirmal Rosario, co-president of advocacy group ‘Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council,’ urged country’s newly constituted care-taker government. “We are staying up at night, guarding our homes and temples. I have never seen anything like this in my life. We demand that the government restore communal harmony in the country,” he pleaded.
The nationwide pogrom on Hindus in Bangladesh triggered rallies in solidarity in neighbouring Hindu-majority India. Latest demonstration took place in Kolkata, home to large number of Hindus displaced from Bangladesh in recent decades.
India’s ruling nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is holding deliberations with India’s largest Hindu group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) amid growing fears of Hindu genocide in the neighbouring Muslim-majority country.
The Deccan Herald newspaper reported Monday that “a key meeting took place at Union defence minister Rajnath Singh’s residence on Sunday night where leaders of the RSS and the BJP met to discuss important organisational issues.”
The BJP-led government has amended the citizenship laws to ease the naturalization of Hindus, Christians and Buddhists fleeing Islamist persecution in the region.
Hindus in the U.S. also rallied in support of their beleaguered fellow believers in Bangladesh.
Indian American groups made “[p]assionate plea for protection of Hindu minorities in Bangladesh, urging immediate action from the Biden Administration,” Indian newspaper The Hindu reported Monday.
A vigil was held in Houston, Texas, the New Delhi Television (NDTV) reported Monday:
[O]ver 300 Indian Americans and Bangladeshi-origin Hindus gathered at Sugar Land City Hall in Houston on Sunday morning to protest the horrific acts committed by Islamist extremists targeting Hindus and other minorities in Bangladesh. The air was thick with emotion as attendees united for a cause that resonated deeply with their identities and beliefs.Organizers passionately called on the Biden Administration to take immediate and decisive action to prevent further atrocities and to protect vulnerable minority communities in Bangladesh. The recent surge in violence against Hindu communities poses an urgent and alarming threat to peace and stability in the region, and the time to act is now. (…)Participants raised their placards high, bearing passionate messages demanding an end to the violence and atrocities against Hindus in Bangladesh.The crowd erupted with fervour as slogans like “Stop Hindu Genocide,” “Stand Up and Speak Out Now,” “Hindu Lives Matter,” and “We0 Won’t Run, We Won’t Hide, Stop Hindu Genocide” rang out, echoing their urgent plea for justice.
Similar protests were reported in other U.S. cities.
A demonstration in solidarity with Hindus was also reported in Israel, a country that became victim of a deadly Islamist pogrom on October 7.
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