As Islamic radicals in Bangladesh protest against the biggest religious festival for minority Hindus, will Durga Puja become a tepid affair this year? While the Muhammad Yunus administration has promised protection to pandals and devotees, Hindu community leaders worry that open display of their religiosity may soon become a thing of the past.
Durga Puja celebrations were not safe even in Sheikh Hasina’s Bangladesh. Hardly a year passed without some attack on puja pandals or idols. For the radicals, whom Hasina failed to rein in, idol worship remained an eyesore and the countrywide festivity around Durga Puja a direct attack on their idea of Bangladesh.
In 2021, fake news that some Hindus had allegedly placed a copy of the Quran at a Durga Puja pandal sparked riots in Comilla district, which spread to several districts in Bangladesh. Five people were killed and scores injured as houses and properties owned by Hindus, as well as temples and Durga puja venues, came under attack.
Later, the police arrested a Muslim man named Iqbal Hossain for placing the Quran at the pandal. When the police took him in custody, his family said he was mentally unstable and someone had taken advantage of his condition. The Hasina administration did its best to ensure Durga Puja remained protected from the snare of radicals from the following year on. As many as 794 puja pandals were set up in Comilla district alone in 2022. And in her message on 1 October, the day of Maha Sasthi when Bengali Hindus believe Goddess Durga descends on earth with her four children, Hasina said Durga Puja is not a festival just for Hindus. “It is now a universal festival. All Bangladeshis celebrate every religious festival together and believe in the mantra ‘Religion is personal, festivals are for all’,” she said.
Yet, soon after, on 6 February 2023, unidentified miscreants vandalised 14 idols at 12 Hindu temples in Thakurgaon district. Despite these attacks, Hasina and her party Awami League continued to extend support and greetings to Bangladeshi Hindus during Durga Puja.
With the former PM now ousted and her replacement making similar remarks without any concrete action, Bangladeshi Hindus have little reason to believe Durga Puja celebrations would become safer.
‘Tone down puja, keep Hindu-ness under wraps’
As reports of attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh continue to make headlines after Hasina’s unceremonious exit on 5 August, Durga Puja celebrations have come under a dark cloud. Talking to ThePrint over phone from Dhaka, Manindra Kumar Nath, vice-president of Bangladesh Puja Udjapan Parishad, the apex body for Durga Puja organisers in the country, said Hindus are afraid of celebrating the festival with the same pomp and grandeur as they did before.
“The Yunus administration has assured us protection and we have spoken to the highest authority in the police for security during puja, but there are other voices that are warning Hindus against celebrating Durga Puja,” he said. Nath added that while over 32,000 Durga Puja pandals came up across Bangladesh last year, the community is uncertain what would happen this year.
Nath has reasons to worry. The Daily Star, the largest circulated English language newspaper in Bangladesh, reported that several temples in Khulna district received anonymous letters threatening not to allow celebration of Duga Puja unless they pay Bangladeshi Taka 5 lakh toll each. “The letters, delivered to the leaders of various puja celebration committees, also said failure to comply would result in severe consequences. Hindu community leaders have voiced their concerns and some are considering cancelling festivities at their temples altogether,” the report said.
“Our members are no longer interested. This year we have to stop the puja,” the report quoted Shekhar Chandra Goldar, president of Kamarkhola Sarvajanin Durga Puja Celebration Committee of Dakop, as saying.
An organisation called Insaf Keemkari Chhatra-Janta has also staged a protest in Dhaka, holding placards in Bangla that read: “No worship by closing roads, no water pollution through idol immersion, no worship of idols.” According to a report published in Connected to India website, the group presented a 16-point demand, and argued against public holidays for Hindu festivals like Durga Puja since the community makes up less than 2 per cent of Bangladesh’s population. The group also demanded that no Muslim should be involved in supporting Hindu festivals, as it goes against the tenets of Islam.
“The potters spend sleepless nights kneading the clay and moulding them into shapes while some silhouettes at night barge into the temples to desecrate those idols. This is how they inaugurate Durga Puja in Bangladesh. And we watch as they happen—shocked, silent—because how dare we forget we are not licensed to have our own religious sentiments being oppressed in this country?” Bangladeshi journalist Sharbani Datta wrote in Dhaka Tribune.
A Noakhali-based Hindu rights activist, who has gone underground since Hasina’s exit, told ThePrint while Durga Puja pandals have come under attacks before, this year marks the beginning of a concerted pushback against Hindu-ness in Bangladesh.
“Lynchings, rapes, arson draw too much global attention. The establishment will not want that any more. Through threats, fake environmental concerns, and demand for protection money, the radicals will try to tone down Durga Puja celebrations and eventually take away the incentive for remaining Hindu in Bangladesh. People will be forced to convert or flee, bringing the 7.9 per cent Hindu population down to even less,” he said.
Between Durga pandals and a dark place
Many Bengali Hindus say that the first Durga Puja celebration took place in what is now Bangladesh. Opinion is divided over the venue: Is it the temple of King Kangsa Narayan built in Rajshahi’s Bagmara upazila or at Medosh Munir Ashram, a temple that rests on top of a hill in the Boalkhali upazila? It took a Muslim YouTuber from Dhaka, Salahuddin Sumon, to settle the debate on Durga Puja’s origin story.
“It may seem strange to you, but in the dusty village I was born in, Pushinda in Adamdighi upazila of Bogra zilla, we grew up as one. At home, my parents did not make any distinction between Hindus and Muslims. Not just Hindus, we were taught to embrace Buddhists, Christians, and people of all other faiths,” Sumon had told me.
That was last year. Bangladesh watchers now see a concerted attempt to turn the country into an Islamic republic.
The Jamaat-e-Islami leaders have recently met Bangladesh’s top Qawmi scholars, where the latter voiced support for establishing a country based on Islamic rules under the leadership of current Jamaat chief Dr Shafiqur Rahman. “From now on, we are all for each other. We will all be united like a wall made of lead,” Rahman told the gathering.
“Among other incidents that a section of Bangladesh’s civil society members consider warning signs are the public rallies and poster campaign by the banned terror group, Hizb ut Tahir and the release of Mufti Jashimuddin Rahmani, chief of the Ansarullah Bangla Team, an Al-Qaeda-inspired militant outfit renamed as Ansar al Islam,” journalist Snigdhendu Bhattacharya wrote in The Diplomat.
And it is not just Hindus and their religious beliefs that are facing challenges in new Bangladesh. Demanding a ban on playing music at the shrine of Hazrat Shah Poran in Sylhet, thousands demonstrated in front of the shrine after the Jumma (Friday) prayer on 6 September.
At such a time when Bangladesh grapples with new political reality and social instability, can goddess Durga slay the demon of communal disharmony? The future of Bangladesh’s 1.3 crore Hindus will depend on that answer.
Deep Halder is an author and journalist. He tweets @deepscribble. Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)