00:00There has been revenge attacks, if you wish, against Awami League supporters, partly because
00:06of the 300 dead people who were killed in the protests that led to her downfall.
00:12They recognized both the Islamic and the Bengali elements of his culture, that he was both
00:20a believer, a worshiper of both Allah and Kali.
00:24In Dhaka, they've eradicated the Kali part.
00:28There have been attacks on Awami League supporters across the country, both Muslim and Hindu.
00:33So we have a bunch of attacks on Awami League supporters who happen to be Hindu rather than
00:39because of that.
00:40Hello and welcome to this special broadcast on One India.
00:42Well, what is happening in the vicinity of India is something that is concerning not
00:47just for India, but for the whole world.
00:50And to discuss the matters further, how the atrocities on the Hindu community is, how
00:56the breaking down of the apparatus there is going on, how concerning it is.
01:01To discuss that further, we have Pramit Pal Chaudhary, he is head of India Practice Group,
01:07Eurasia Group, and foreign policy and political economy analyst.
01:11Pramit, thank you so much for speaking to One India.
01:17Well, Pramit, how do you perceive the recent reports of Hindu communities being targeted
01:23in Bangladesh?
01:24Are these isolated incidents or do they indicate a broader pattern of religious intolerance?
01:31So this seems to be working at least as far as anybody can see on two levels.
01:37One is targeted attacks led probably by Jamaat or other Islamic groups.
01:42There are a number of them functioning in Bangladesh.
01:47They have been always very clear of their opposition to or of presence of non-Muslim
01:54religious minorities, not just Hindus, but Buddhists and Christians.
02:02And they have had long animosity towards the presence of minorities in the country and
02:08have long made argument that one in Bangladesh should be a fully Islamic nation, both in
02:14terms of its population, its civil code should be Sharia based.
02:19And this has not been nothing new in that sense.
02:22Obviously Sheikh Hasina, who saw the Jamaat not just as ideological opponents, but also
02:30responsible for the death of her family, the murder of her family in 1975, has long had
02:38held them in check.
02:39In fact, in many ways persecuted them.
02:42So there's definitely a set of attacks that have taken place that are based on this.
02:48We also, however, have attacks that were political in the sense that because of the nature of
02:54the politics of Bangladesh, the Awami League, Sheikh Hasina's party, always had very strong
03:01minority support.
03:02And so there was always a disproportionate number of members of the Awami League and
03:07Awami supporters who were Hindu, because obviously it was the only party that at least espoused
03:13a secular political philosophy.
03:18So there has been revenge attacks, if you wish, against Awami League supporters, partly
03:24because of the 300 dead people who were killed in the protests that led to her downfall,
03:30but also because she had an autocratic streak and she did persecute, arrest dissidents and
03:37opponents against her party.
03:39So some of the Awami League, so there have been attacks on the Awami League supporters
03:43across the country, both Muslim and Hindu.
03:46So we have a bunch of attacks on Awami League supporters who happen to be Hindu, rather
03:52than because of that.
03:53It's very hard to distinguish one from the other, however, given the present degree of
03:57confusion.
03:59But we do know that both such attacks have taken place.
04:01Right.
04:02Pramit, if we take a look at one of the commonalities that is coming up is the creation of a list
04:15of Hindus to be attacked in Bangladesh.
04:16I mean, the people who are crossing the border, who are able to speak up and share their notions
04:24are saying, you know, this whole idea beat in 1971, also, that a particular dedicated
04:31targeted killings were done in that respect.
04:35And the historical precedent of the Nazis making lists of Jews during World War II,
04:43any parallel that can be drawn between the two?
04:45Well, I mean, drawing up lists is not uncommon if you're trying to deliberately target a
04:51certain group.
04:52And this would not just be because of their religion, it could also be their ideology,
04:56even because of their wealth.
04:58I mean, pro-social, organized social protests will often draw up lists.
05:02The reason why I would differentiate between the Nazis, Nazi Germany, was Nazi Germany
05:08was designed, eventually, the so-called final solution that Hitler propounded was the extermination
05:15of the entire Jewish population that they would be literally killed off.
05:20In theory, Jamaat or other organizations argue that if you convert to Islam, then we don't
05:27have a problem with you anymore.
05:29Or if you just leave the country, then you don't, you're not part of the Islamic Republic.
05:34Extermination is probably not something that they would espouse.
05:38But conversion, forcible conversion, or deportation would be perfectly acceptable.
05:46But obviously, there's a degree of violence here, and they don't have a problem that if
05:50you resist these arguments, then they will be prepared to kill or otherwise do things
05:55to you.
05:57I think that the real case of the most famous case of the list really was in the 1971 war,
06:03where the Pakistani military drew up long lists of Bengali intellectuals, both Hindu
06:10and Muslim, political leaders arrested and deliberately killed them off literally by
06:16the tens of thousands in the run-up to what led to the 71 war between India and Pakistan,
06:24and the ultimate liberation of Bangladesh.
06:27That was probably the most egregious example and most extensive example of listing people
06:33for targeting purposes.
06:35That was deliberately because the Pakistani military tried to eradicate the entire Bengali
06:40intellectual class of Bangladesh.
06:42Right.
06:43Pramit, looking at it once again from the attacks point of view, there are voices that
06:52have echoed similar sentiments that back in 1971, too, when they were being attacked,
06:58the Hindu families, they were not asked or inquired about their caste, and as you also
07:03mentioned that it was not the only basis on which they were being targeted.
07:08What does it reflect on the nature of the violence, and what does it imply about the
07:13attacker's motive in that scenario?
07:16So, you said that they were asking people what their caste, Hindus, what their caste
07:20was before they were attacked.
07:24That part was missing.
07:25Just because they were Hindus?
07:26Yeah.
07:26Matter what, whatever, yeah.
07:30Well, that wouldn't be a surprise, really, because it was not Hindu on Hindu violence.
07:34Only Hindus concerned themselves about caste issues and caste divisions.
07:39For Muslims, at least in Bangladesh, the caste would be irrelevant.
07:44It would be solely an issue about whether or not you were a Hindu or not.
07:47In many ways, you could argue there's long been a struggle in Bangladesh between its,
07:53should we say, Bengali identity and its Islamic identity, which in many ways are two different
08:00identities.
08:02Nasrud Islam, the national poet of Bangladesh, was, of course, an important pillar of the
08:11so-called Bengal Renaissance, the literary and cultural leadership that produced people
08:18like Monk Imchandra or Rabindranath Tagore.
08:23But Nasrud Islam was interesting.
08:25He wrote poetry about Allah, about his Muslim faith.
08:30He also wrote poetry to Kali.
08:33He wrote poems to Kali because he saw her as the Bengali representation of Bengali culture
08:45and religion.
08:47But Bangladesh, even under Sheikh Hasina, has suppressed the fact that he wrote poems
08:52about Kali.
08:54So if you go to Bangladesh, their books and their texts and their statues and everything
09:00to Nasrud Islam, this is completely eradicated.
09:03In fact, when he died, his widow decided to live in Calcutta, not in Dhaka.
09:09Because, and she famously said, it is because in Calcutta, they recognized both the Islamic
09:17and the Bengali elements of his culture, that he was both a believer, a worshipper of both
09:24Allah and Kali.
09:26In Dhaka, they've eradicated the Kali part.
09:29Right.
09:30So that's what I'm saying.
09:31There was a Bengali identity.
09:33It's still there in Bangladesh.
09:34It's still very strong, especially among the elite.
09:38Some of them will come to Calcutta.
09:40They go to Shantiniketan for education.
09:42They sing Rabindranath Tagore and so on.
09:45But there is also, and Jamaat, I think, is a representation of this idea that, no, we're
09:51Islamic more than we are anything else.
09:54And therefore, a lot of this Bengali element of it, which is obviously partly syncretic
10:00as a large Hindu element, should be suppressed.
10:04And that's a battle that has been going on, arguably, since 1947, if you want.
10:10Definitely since 1971 in Bangladesh.
10:13Right now, with these present political developments, it is now tilted very strongly in favor
10:21of the Islamic identity element.
10:24Right, Pramit.
10:26Indeed, the insights that you share are something that would not just jolt the common conscience,
10:33but also bring a lot of things into light, which primarily get hidden in the rush of
10:38the things.
10:38One final question, Pramit, before I let you go.
10:41What steps do you think the Indian government and the international community on the whole
10:46should take to address and mitigate the rising violence against the Hindus in Bangladesh
10:52as they speak?
10:53Is enough being done to protect the minority communities there?
10:56So right now, it's mainly just about consciousness raising.
11:00India's raised it.
11:01The European, EU ambassadors raised it.
11:04The American State Department has expressed their concern.
11:07So we can see that there's that growing sort of international thing that you need to do
11:12something about this.
11:13The second element of it is, should we, is administrative.
11:17One of the reasons it continues, it's now, I believe, reduced, it's hard to measure,
11:22is simply that there is no real government in place.
11:27The interim government does not have control of a large part of the country.
11:32It has already said that law and order is its first priority.
11:35So a simple example was that because so many policemen were lynched or killed or attacked,
11:43the police went on strike.
11:44They said, we're not going to work anymore.
11:46So the net result is there are possibly still large portions of Bangladesh where there are
11:51no policemen working.
11:52So students took over some of that law and order, but it's not really possible for a
12:00small and disorganized student population to take over the law and order of an entire
12:06nation of 170 million people.
12:08I mean, Bangladesh has more people than Russia.
12:11So you need, so this obviously leads the way for antisocial elements or just anybody to
12:16go out and do what they feel like if they have the muscle power.
12:20So restoring order, restoring, having a stable government would be the second step.
12:25The third step, I think, would then be once you actually have somebody, a government to
12:29work with, it's much easier to apply pressure or persuade them to take action.
12:35Bangladesh, in a, so I would expect from my understanding, looking at the nature of the
12:42interim government that has come to power, that is being processed, other than one Islamic
12:47scholar, and he does come from an extreme Islamic party, all of the others are, and
12:51there's even one of them is a Hindu in the government.
12:55This is not a group that is in any way interested in promoting an Islamic agenda and would,
13:01in fact, take it seriously that minorities are being attacked inside the country and
13:09would like to take action on that front.
13:11The military themselves are actually quite strongly opposed to Jamaat and Islamic groups
13:18or radical Islamic groups in the country.
13:21So then you have somebody to work with, and I think they would probably react to reasonably
13:26strongly.
13:27In an extreme situation, I think not so much with an interim government, but if they, when
13:32they hold elections and bring back an elected government, there's a reasonably good chance
13:39that the next government would be led by the opposition and could be a coalition between
13:46the Bangladesh National Party, the BNP, and the Jamaat.
13:52If the Jamaat then insists on being using the fact that they control the instruments
13:57of power to carry out attacks and so on, then India and the rest of the world can consider
14:02a number of issues.
14:03But one of them is very important to realize.
14:06Bangladesh's single engine of their economy is the exports of garments, and they are exported
14:13to the European Union, to the United States, and about $1.2 billion to India.
14:19You cut that off or you restrict it, Bangladesh's economy goes into free fall.
14:25And that's an extreme posture because that would breed instability, which India wouldn't
14:29be interested in.
14:30But it is something that could conceivably be considered if Bangladesh were to go out
14:35of control.
14:37Pramil Panchodu there, head of India Practice, Eurasia Group, and foreign policy and political
14:43economy analyst.
14:44Pramil, thank you so much for speaking to One India.
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