Bangladeshi Hindus have fallen victim to the ‘Man Bites Dog’ syndrome in the Indian media and apathy in the local press. Over the past year, so much has been written and tweeted about the attacks on the minority population that fresh attacks hardly make it to the news cycle anymore.
A former colleague who works with a topline Indian news website told me that his editor baulked at the idea of running a news copy on Durga Puja associations in Bangladesh struggling to get sponsors for puja pandals due to threats from Islamists.
“Readers know this has been happening. There is nothing new we could possibly write to get their attention. It would be a story if Hindus attacked Islamists instead,” the editor said. I can’t blame them. Having written a book on Hindus in Bangladesh and reported on their plight for two years, the issue brings no novelty to my reportage anymore.
However, there is now a new dimension to the story. The Indian government has extended the deadline for persecuted minorities who arrived in India from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan to reside lawfully in the country without valid travel documents. Individuals who arrived in India before 31 December 2024 will be allowed to stay.
The extension is a lifeline for Bangladeshi Hindus since all they have waiting for them at home is lynching, forced conversion, or jail under the blasphemy law. But why have you not heard from them on this issue yet?
Can the Bangladeshi Hindu speak?
Short answer? No, they cannot. Religious and community leaders among Hindus are either in jail or in hiding. And some Bangladeshi journalists who tried to report their continued persecution—which intensified after the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government on 5 August 2024—have either lost their jobs or mysteriously died.
Ranjit Roy, a Bangladeshi Hindu activist who has been residing in India on extended medical visa for the past few years, told ThePrint that the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) extension will probably save his life.
“I have been vocal about atrocities against Hindus in my country before the fall of the Hasina regime as well. But after her fall, it is untenable for me to go back to my country, given the naked Islamist violence on display on an almost daily basis. I am a marked man in Bangladesh,” Roy said.
Roy added that the CAA is the future of India’s geostrategy. The failure of the Liaquat-Nehru Pact—a bilateral agreement signed in 1950 between India and Pakistan to address the issue of minority rights—makes it a “moral obligation” for the Indian state to take back persecuted Hindus from neighbouring countries.
“Bangladesh was not Pakistan. In 1971, it chose a different path, and East Pakistan became Bangladesh. Today, the same country has turned back the clock. We expect almost 2 crore Hindus to avail the benefit of the CAA extension by May 2026,” Roy said.
According to Roy, the Hindus in Bangladesh are not just defenceless; their voice has been choked. The body of veteran Hindu journalist Bibhuranjan Sarkar was recovered from the Meghna River in Char Balaki area of Munshiganj’s Gazaria on 22 August, two days after he went missing.
On 21 April, Kongkon Karmaker, The Daily Star’s Dinajpur correspondent since 2006, was informed of his dismissal via email and WhatsApp. Karmaker had reported on the abduction of Bhabesh Chandra Roy, a 55-year-old Hindu leader affiliated with the Puja Udjapan Parishad, on 17 April. Bhabesh Chandra Roy was later found dead.
Karmaker’s report on the case was soon cited by multiple media outlets, including in India. Randhir Jaiswal, Official Spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs of India, had tweeted on 19 April:
“We have noted with distress the abduction and brutal killing of Shri Bhabesh Chandra Roy, a Hindu minority leader in Bangladesh. This killing follows a pattern of systematic persecution of Hindu minorities under the interim government even as the perpetrators of previous such events roam with impunity.”
On 3 May, TheHindu put out a report quoting the New Delhi-based Rights and Risks Analysis Group that documented cases of journalists being targeted in Bangladesh. The Group released its report to mark World Press Freedom Day 2025, stating that the interim Bangladesh government headed by Muhammad Yunus targeted 640 journalists in eight months, throttling media freedom.
Bangladeshi atheist blogger Azam Khan told ThePrint that it is not just mainstream media that has been curtailed in Bangladesh. Social media users are also being targeted. Khan, who has 95,000 followers on his Facebook account, said that posts critical of the Yunus administration and about communal violence against Hindus are being restricted.
“I recently posted against the communal violence against Hindus in Rangpur and was banned by Facebook. This is not a single incident. Whenever I have requested a review, Facebook has upheld the ban and accused me of mentioning or supporting ‘dangerous organisations’, when in fact my posts are against those very organisations that want to destroy all liberal values in Bangladesh,” Khan said over the phone from an undisclosed destination in Europe, where he is in hiding.
Former Ambassador of Bangladesh to Morocco, Mohammad Harun Al Rashid, said that with the restrictions on press and social media, lynchings, rapes, arrests under the blasphemy law, and forced conversions have become rampant in the past year.
“You will get tired of noting down the number of cases where Hindu Bangladeshis have been wrongfully arrested under the blasphemy law for hurting religious sentiments of the majority community. This is just a way of extortion and intimidation,” said Rashid over the phone from Ottawa. He left his job as a career diplomat after posting against the Yunus government on Facebook.
One of the most credible Bangladeshi voices on the issue of minority rights, Rana Dasgupta, has been in hiding within the country. Over 70 years old and battling terminal cancer, Dasgupta is a lawyer in the Supreme Court of Bangladesh and also served as a prosecutor in the Bangladesh International Criminal Tribunal.
More importantly, he is the general secretary of the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, a non-profit established to protect the rights of religious minorities of Bangladesh.
Since the fall of Hasina, Dasgupta faces two murder cases and two cases of attempt to murder, among others.
A senior office bearer of the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council told ThePrint on the condition of anonymity that the cases against Dasgupta are false and politically motivated.
“The Yunus administration wants to send anyone who dares to speak on the issue behind bars on trumped–up charges, like they have done with Hindu monk Chinmoy Krishna Das. Even Muslims cannot stay in Bangladesh today. How will Hindus stay? The CAA extension has come as a big hope for us. The Yunus administration should do all it can now to stop Hindus from exiting Bangladesh,” the senior official said, warning that the interim government may instead force some Hindu leaders in Bangladesh to give statements against the CAA extension.
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Opposition in India
The extension of the CAA deadline has met with opposition within India. On 3 September, the Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP) staged protests against the Centre’s decision to extend the deadline, terming it the “biggest crime”.
“The BJP leaders know very well that the number of Assamese speakers is shrinking year by year. In every decade, the proportion of Assamese-speaking people has dropped by around 5%. According to the 2011 Census, only 48% of Assam’s population spoke Assamese,” AJP president Lurinjyoti Gogoi and general secretary Jagadish Bhuyan told the press. The Assam unit of Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party also condemned the Centre’s decision.
In the neighbouring West Bengal, too, CAA has led to fierce debates. While Bengal BJP has welcomed the move, Trinamool Congress spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said: “It is nothing but a diversion from the issues because BJP wants to fulfil its agenda by misleading people on the pretext of the CAA, NRC and SIR ahead of the polls here.”
For the Bangladeshi Hindus desperately clutching at straws to stay safe, the debate has long ended. At the launch of my book, Being Hindu in Bangladesh, on 23 November 2023 in Delhi, writer-economist Sanjeev Sanyal had said that Bangladeshi Hindus are Indians we had left behind.
It is time to bring them back.
Deep Halder is an author and journalist. He tweets @deepscribble. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)
Azam khan is my Facebook friend from many years, he says real incidents on Bangladeshi Hindu. If you write for bd Hindu, your id is reported. My FB 🆔 is 10+ years old. I don’t share my activity, photo and address ,😑Bangladashi Hindu going on 1% like Pakistan.