ALTHOUGH there were indeed some attacks on Hindus – many of them active in the Awami League – and their establishments in some areas soon after the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s authoritarian rule, these have now been contained. Muslims, along with Hindus, immediately began guarding Hindus and their establishments in many areas. Moreover, the attacks, which took place in the political vacuum from August 5 until the installation of the interim government on August 8 and the cessation of police action for several more days, are hardly sectarian in nature. They are politically motivated, and some Awami League members, both Muslim and Hindu, and their establishments are reported to have been attacked by their political opponents – who have been oppressed, harassed and tortured for years – and apparently by some opportunists. Immediately after the first attacks, Muslims guarded the places of worship of religious and other minorities, especially at night. Most people are well aware of the rights of minorities. But the angry campaigns by many in the Indian media and some quarters in Bangladesh claiming that religious minorities are being indiscriminately killed, attacked and harassed in a fit of sectarianism are awful.
Many, perhaps most, news reports and video clips of attacks on Hindus, fact-checkers claim, are fake or fabricated and are intended to destabilise the situation in Bangladesh. Two persons allegedly detonated homemade bombs at the gate of the Sri Sri Radhagobinda Temple at Sirajdikhan in Munshiganj at around 11pm on August 9. The arrested man admitted to carrying out the act on the instructions of the general secretary of the Awami League trade union unit, although the Awami League leader denied the allegation. In another incident, on July 24, when the chaos resulting from student protests for reforms in public sector job reservation was at its height, police arrested a leader of the Baizid Bostami unit of the Sramik League along with another in Hathazari in Chattogram. He was accused of setting fire to a Road Transport Corporation bus. This is an example of the Awami League’s involvement in at least some of the incidents. In another incident, an eight-second video clip that first surfaced on August 8 on an X-account attributed to a Hindu group shows a group of people carrying a girl seemingly by her hands and legs into a minibus, allegedly in Senbag in Noakhali. The video surfaced the next day on an Instagram account and the day after that on a website called Sanatan Prabhat, which aims to establish “the Hindu Rashtra.” The incident is being portrayed as the abduction of a Hindu girl by Muslims, without any credibility.
The government, society and Hindu leaders know that thousands of Muslims have protected Hindus and their establishments to ensure the rights of Hindus as citizens. The government has already declared that it will bring all Hindu attackers to justice. The Hindutvadadi media sections in India and some sections in Bangladesh must therefore stop playing the Hindu minority card and stay out of the game of disinformation even when it is in the genuine interest of the minority communities.
