Dr. Richard Benkin recently made a United States Parlaimentarian aware of the 49 million Hindus that have turned up missing since 1947 in Bangladesh to the present day. This awareness has sparked the drafting of a Bill that will pass through the US government to ensure Human Rights to be applied in areas where religious minorities face viable threats such as rape, abduction and murder. The current events that have swept across India and Pakistan should surely open the eyes of a public that still remains sleeping in the wake of terror. We see these events occurring in Mumbai, Bangladesh, Sindh, Islamabad and several other areas in the region. Dr. Benkin, along with Hindu communities in the United States have made a breakthrough that would seemingly be impossible with so many of the world leaders remaining silent on these events. Dr. Benkin has written an outstanding article which I feel must be shared with the world. I have also shared a link that mentions Dr. Benkin's personal verification of the validity of the current events in Bangladesh. Please see the following link:
One of the most difficult tasks of the advocate for Human Rights is bringing awareness to a public who shows no interest in learning. Our greatest success is the ability to open the hearts of those who see Hindus as less worthy than Christians to have their events shared. Hindus struggle daily with terror in their midst. This is a greater reality than many other nations can attest. The life of a Hindu is held in little regard to the opressors in their region. Understanding about Hindus in the Western nations is lacking and often shrugged off as an issue that is of little concern to the populace. The time has long passed as issues of concern. Now we must ACT and be Pro-active to secure the dignity of all peoples and their right to be free from terrorism in any form
Ethnic Cleansing of Hindus in Bangladesh,
Why We All Should be Worried, and What We Can and Must Do about
It
Hindu Mahasabha of America (Hindu Congress
of America)
Dr. Richard L. Benkin
Houston, Texas
August 11, 2012
Namaste.
I have been asked to explain how I—a non-Hindu became so passionately devoted
to the cause of saving Hindus from ethnic cleansing in Bangladesh.
Several years ago, I was able to free a
Bangladeshi political prisoner—actually a Muslim journalist—who was arrested and
tortured for exposing the rise of radical Islam in Bangladesh and urging
Bangladesh to open relations with Israel.
I was in Bangladesh in 2007, and when I returned I received a fax.
It said roughly, ‘My name is
Bikash, and I live near Kolkata.
I am a Bengali Hindu. My parents fled
Bangladesh when I was eleven.
My people
in Bangladesh are dying.
Please save
us.’
Well, you cannot just turn away, and I had heard some things about anti-Hindu
persecution in Bangladesh but determined to really learn about it after
receiving
Bikash’s fax.
And once I did, I knew that I had to do
everything in my power to stop the atrocities.
In short, why did I become involved?
Because someone asked. Because Bikash could not stand by and do nothing in the face of
these atrocities against his brothers and sisters. So because I had gotten the Bangladeshi
government to do things it did not want to do, he was hoping I could do it again
for his people.
He asked.
He took action.
He did not remain passive.
And his action is a good segue into two stories that say a lot about what we
have to do and why we have to do it.
Here’s the first.
Before publishing
my book about the Bangladeshi Hindus, I spoke with a New York literary agent who
was very taken by the material I presented; so taken, in fact, that she wanted
to help get the information to others.
As someone who knows the American publishing and book buying world very
well, she found it very compelling and said that all the elements were there for
a successful project—all the elements except one, that is.
And remember this person is a friend, an
ally, one of the “good guys,” someone who
does care and wants to help.
The problem, she said is that ‘I just don’t
see people getting real excited over a bunch of Hindus being killed.’
Think about that for a moment and substitute
words like “Jews,” “Blacks,” or “Women” for Hindus.
Would people get “excited” about their
murders?
Why not Hindus?
This should make everyone in this room
furious; and if it does not make you furious, you better ask yourself why;
because it hit me—a non-Hindu—immediately.
Now, hold that thought as you hear the second story.
I do a lot of traveling and was in India this past February talking about the
ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Bangladesh.
While I had the chance to do this at several universities, much of the
time, I spoke to groups calling
themselves “pro-Hindu.”
But they must have been calling
themselves pro-Hindu in private because in public they always did the same
thing.
In every case, I would begin my
address by indicating the banner behind me and saying that contrary to what it
said, “I did not come here to speak about ‘Ethnic Cleansing in South Asia.’ I
came here to talk about the ethnic cleansing
of
Hindus.”
Unfortunately, it seems that I was the only
person in the room willing to say that, to use the word Hindu.
Do other groups suffer from this same
ailment?
One more thing: after I returned to America, I received several
communications from colleagues in India who were “visited” by individuals from
the local police, asking them about me and the purpose of my visit.
One of them even wanted to know my passport
number, and my colleague emailed me for it.
My response?
“You can tell the
officer that if he wants my passport number, he will have to fly to Chicago for
it because I do not give out that information over the internet.”
And that was the end of it.
I understand why the Bangladeshi refugees I know are intimidated; they have
reason to be.
But I cannot fathom why
citizens of a free society do not have the balls (yes, I did use that word), to
simply exercise their right to free speech or tell a petty official to get
lost.
So my question to you is:
Do you
really think these things are unrelated?
This is not an academic question.
Just last month, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission (TLHRC) in the
United States Congress held hearings on “Human Rights in Bangladesh.”
They talked a little about “minorities,” they
talked more about labor unions; but they did not talk about
Hindus; they did not even address the
issue under some other name.
And why
should they?
If India—
the Hindu nation—doesn’t care why should
they?
If Hindu Americans do not care,
why should they?
In fact, when I raise
the issue, I am often confronted with those very questions.
So, I want us all to think about our personal responsibility for allowing
Hindus to be brutalized in Bangladesh and elsewhere, for shrugging our shoulders
when Hindu children are abducted and forced to convert to Islam, for looking the
other way when Hindu girls are gang raped, for not feeling personally affected
when gangs of Muslims desecrate
Mandirs
and destroy deities; for the fact that even if we are outraged, it seems
we’re willing to hold on to that anger without really doing anything to stop
these things from happening.
I don’t
know.
Maybe people are too busy watching
the Olympics or attending seminars.
Well, I can't let that stand, and I hope you can’t either.
I’d like us all to keep these things in mind as we move forward with my talk
here, which I have broken into three sections:
the first about what’s happening to Hindus in Bangladesh; the second
about why it should scare the pants off everyone here; and the third about what
we can and must do about it.
Hindus in Bangladesh
Some of you have heard me say this before, but I’m going to say it again and
again and again until people start taking action:
After India’s partition, according to the
Pakistani census, Hindus made up about a third of East Pakistan’s
population.
When East Pakistan became
Bangladesh in 1971, they were less than a fifth; thirty years later less than a
tenth; and according to reliable estimates a bit over seven percent today.
According to Professor Sachi Dastidar of the
State University of New York, over 49 million Hindus in Bangladesh are
missing.
If anyone is having trouble
figuring out where this is headed, just take a look at Pakistan where Hindus are
down to one percent or Kashmir where they are almost gone.
Not only has no one explained that, but no
one has even
tried to explain it; at
least not credibly.
Let me give you an example.
On May 25
of this year, I met with Bangladeshi Ambassador Akramul Qader at his country's
embassy in Washington. It was not my first trip to the embassy, but it was my
first conversation with Mr. Qader. I went there to remind the Bangladeshis of
their request for my help; that I can provide what they need, but that I will
not do so as long as Bangladesh refuses to protect
all its citizens and specifically its
Hindus.
(See, I have no problem using
that word.)
The meeting went pretty much as I expected, with the man representing 150
million Bangladeshis answering my charges with the most ridiculous denials.
Reality
be damned,
he insisted again and again that there was “no persecution of Hindus in
Bangladesh,” the same thing a cabinet minister nervously said to me in Dhaka a
year earlier.
First,
Qader denied that there had ever been
any problems since 1971. Then, he
admitted that, yes, there "were some incidents at the time of [the 2001]
elections"; but he said that "all the perpetrators had been punished [and that]
I know of no other incidents since then."
Can you believe he said that?
Usually, participants in ethnic cleansing at
least
try to make their denials seem
credible; evidently, the Bangladeshis see no need for that.
“Well then let me enlighten you,” I said and started hitting him with
evidence to the contrary.
Okay, okay, he
relented.
He told me he could think of
“one incident” that occurred but dismissed it as the work of a few "religious
fanatics.”
He was referring to riots in
Satkhira earlier this year, which were well publicized in the Bangladeshi media
and sent hundreds of protesting students into the streets of Dhaka.
So I told him he did not get much credit for
admitting that.
His mantra, however, was
that
if there are incidents, we
should blame a small number of extremists who are not supported by the
Bangladeshi government.
That is simply
untrue, and I told him that.
His
supposedly “moderate” Awami League government is as much in bed with Islamist
radicals as was the previous BNP government; and their support is what allows
them to operate.
I told him that his denials did not even make any sense.
“Look,” I said, “you don't go from a third of
the population in 1965, to a fifth in 1971, to between seven and eight percent
today simply through 'voluntary emigration,'" which is what he was claiming; but
he persisted.
“Oh, yes,” he said.
“This is happening because they [Bangladeshi
Hindus] cannot find suitable matches for their children, so they go to India
where there are more Hindus."
"You're kidding, right?" I said
No, he insisted; and he expected me to believe that he was serious.
Would anyone buy that nonsense if he was
trying to explain why a Muslim population was disappearing; or a Christian
one?
And it became clear that the
Ambassador was ready to say pretty much anything, no matter how ridiculous.
He knew that the absence of even the
semblance of credibility would not stop people from giving him a pass and
allowing Bangladesh's ethnic cleansing of Hindus to continue because no one was
going to object—or even care.
Ambassador
Qader can say such things in part,
because it is an article of faith among diplomats, the international human
rights industry, media, and other so-called experts and elites that the current
left-center Awami League government under Sheikh
Hasina Wajed represents some sort
of real break from its BNP and military-backed predecessors; that its
self-billing as “pro-minority” reflects a commitment to actually
being pro-minority.
To make matters worse, Hindu leaders trumpet
this fiction.
Shortly after the Awami League was swept into office, I was asked to advise
minority groups there on how they should approach the new government, which I
did on January 9, 2009.
My opening
advice was:
“The worst thing you can do
right now is to go back to sleep.”
Yet,
that is exactly the course that these community leaders had charted.
The overwhelming consensus was that the Awami
League would recognize the role of religious minorities in crafting its
landslide victory and secure their protection and rights.
I tried to present them with evidence of
Awami League lies—for instance, that it continues to benefit no less so than its
BNP rivals did from the Vested Property Act, which has enabled more than 75
percent of all Hindu land to be seized by the government and distributed to
Muslims; or it alliance just prior to the aborted 2007 elections with one of the
most radical Islamist parties.
They
still felt that the best policy was not to upset the new leaders.”
“I would not be as optimistic as some of the other callers,” I said.
“Ending the persecution of minorities must be
considered one of the first priorities.
What is more important than that?
[And besides] this attitude of passivity and let's give them a chance;
how well has that worked for the minorities and the victims in the past?
Not well.
We are sitting by while people are being killed and tortured!
So, yes, we must give them some time—but not
much or we will see that their words are nothing more than words.”
Let’s look at the record and see who was right.
The first thing you have to recognize is that the Bangladeshis are full of
crap.
That is, when negotiating with or
assessing them, you cannot focus on their words, on what they
say.
Whether it is the Islamist-friendly BNP or the make-pretend liberal
Awami League, Bangladeshi leaders will say almost anything to get whatever
goodies they are looking for you to give them.
If you focus on what they say, you will be lulled into a stupor in which
you can believe that up is down and let me know, because there’s a bridge in
Brooklyn I want to sell you.
Focus
instead on what they
do.
Take this example of our “moderate Muslim” nation.
On April 30, 2009, Sheikh
Hasina told the visiting French Vice Admiral Gerard Valin,
Joint Commander of Indian Ocean forces, that her government would repeal all of
the country’s “anti-minority” laws.
That
is documented fact that you could have read about it in Dhaka’s major
dailies.
The statement’s most striking
aspect is that she admitted openly that her nation in fact has anti-minority
laws—a pretty big admission for a country that depends on its image as a
“moderate Muslim nation.”
Why did she
say that without it seems a care in the world?
First, she felt she was really trashing her BNP and military-backed
predecessors rather than her country because Bangladesh has what many have
called a “zero sum political climate” in which the two major parties (and
especially their two leaders) will do almost anything to sabotage the
other.
I saw this for myself in
2007.
When I arrived in Dhaka on January
7, I was greeted with the sight of widespread unrest in the streets of the
capital and soon the sound of Sheikh Hasina enjoining her followers to “close
down the country,” completely ruling out a peaceful resolution to the nation’s
electoral crisis.
Three days later, she
got her wish when the military stepped in and shut down Bangladesh’s ersatz
democracy for two years.
The more important reason she was okay with her admission—which is a deadly
one for Bangladeshi Hindus—is that she knew she would not be held to her
bravado.
She could repeal those laws or
not; either way, it would not change her nation in the eyes of the world.
And, of course,
she has not been true to her word.
Today, the laws still stand.
Again, focus on what they do, not on what
they say.
Were that the only example, there might still be hope for the Bangladeshis;
but there is more evidence of the Awami League’s Islamist base.
You remember my earlier mention of the Vested
Property Act (VPA)?
Just before the 2008
elections, Bangladesh’s Supreme Court issued a
rule nisi, asking the government to
explain why that racist law was not contrary to the Bangladeshi
constitution.
The military leaders at
the time told me that they were not going to provide a response as it exceeded
their mandate to do so, and because a newly elected government would soon take
power.
So when the Awami League took
office, they had the ability to tell the Supreme Court that the VPA contradicted
the constitution, and that would have been the end of it—no political
repercussions and a tremendous blow for the cause of justice at the same
time.
Is that what they did?
Of course not; they not only let it pass, but
they also have allowed their minions to use it to continue dispossessing Hindus,
and they have strengthened it as the economic engine that drives ethnic
cleansing.
Then in 2011, the Supreme Court tried again to move the country forward by
identifying several constitutional amendments passed during the
Ershad dictatorship of the 1980s, and asking the government
to submit replacements that were in line with basic notions about justice.
The government complied, submitting
substitutes for all of the elements the Supreme Court identified except
one:
the notorious Eighth
Amendment.
The Eighth Amendment was
passed to declare Islam the official state religion.
It also mandated that no law begin without
homage to Allah, and it awarded special privileges and funding to Islamic
institutions, while providing disabilities to those of other religions.
These things all support ethnic cleansing, but we also have verified actions
of ethnic cleansing, terrible atrocities, for which the Awami League gives its
tacit support.
We know that minorities
face attacks pretty much everywhere.
The
critical question is whether or not the government supports these actions.
Does it prosecute the perpetrators making it
clear that such things are intolerable; or does it send a message that attacks
on minorities can proceed with impunity?
Every single Bangladeshi government has sent the latter message.
This is
how, by the
way, you respond to the dodge that ‘minorities were attacked in the United
States. Don’t single out Bangladesh.’
When minorities are attacked here, it is prosecuted as a crime, unlike
the situation prevailing in Bangladesh.
Because of the Awami League’s phony pro-minority image, I decided to uncover
its role in the ethnic cleansing of Hindus.
There I go using that word again. In order to appear in my book and
subsequent writings, all of these incidents had to meet four criteria:
•
They had to occurred under the current, Awami League government
•
They were not prosecuted by that government. In fact, we uncovered many cases in which
government agents actually participated in the attacks and subsequent
covers-up
•
They had to be verified by two or more independent sources
•
They had to be specifically
anti-Hindu and not random
Let us also be clear that these are incidents that I have been able to
confirm with my limited resources; many more have been reported that probably
meet the above four criteria.
Samir
Kalra, Director and Senior Fellow for Human Rights of the Hindu American
Foundation (HAF), noted “nearly 1,200 incidents of violence directed against
religious minorities (mostly Hindus) between 2008 and 2011.”
The HAF’s annual reports have consistently
cited a clear pattern of anti-Hindu actions going unpunished in Bangladesh.
Here is some of what we have verified:
• As
documented in my book, A Quiet Case of
Ethnic Cleansing: The Murder of Bangladesh’s Hindus,
which is available here; during the Awami League’s first year in office,
major anti-Hindu incidents occurred at the rate of almost one per week. They included murder, rape, child abduction,
forced conversion to Islam, physical attacks, land grabs, religious desecration;
and at least one three-day pogrom that occurred immediately behind a Dhaka
police station.
• My
book also documents one 26 day period in 2010, when there were seven major
anti-Hindu actions or almost one every three days.
•
Since then, I have confirmed at least 15 similar incidents during the
first quarter of 2012; almost one and a quarter every single week. In at least two cases, local or other
officials subsequently warned human rights activists that they better stop
investigating the matter or face serious consequences. And I have the latter’s testimony regarding
that.
And since then, I have received allegations of
more incidents; for instance:
•
According to the Daily
Purbaanchal and my own sources, several Muslim males repeatedly raped a
child on her way to a Hindu festival on May 25.
• As
reported in the Daily Kaler Kantha and confirmed by
my associates, Muslims murdered Samrity Rani in Vingravo village on May 20
while her husband was away. This
involved a home invasion in broad daylight, which indicates how safe the Muslim
attackers felt; and according to video testimony, Hindus have been threatened
not to continue their demands for prosecution, even though the police have taken
no action.
• As
confirmed by Bangladesh Minority Watch, Sanju Rani Dev (28) was gang raped on May 27 at night in Golapgonj Upazila of Sylhet.
•
Julie Sinha (23) was abducted on May 18 at
about 11am as she was on her way to class at Sha Jalal University in Sylhet, and
has not been seen or heard from since.
These four incidents took place within a nine day period in late May, and the
police have done nothing to capture the
known perpetrators.
Then just one week ago today, according to
Bangladesh Minority Watch and a fact finding team that included a former cabinet
minister, thousands of Muslims attacked Hindus in
Dinajpur when a Hindu landowner opposed their attempt to
forcibly erect a mosque on his land.
A
number of women were raped, others humiliated by being unclothed publicly; 50
homes were destroyed; hundreds of livestock were looted, and scores of Hindus
were sent to the hospital.
Dinajur is an area from which so many of the victims that I
meet flee; and we have evidence that the entire attack was instigated by a local
government official.
Do you think you
will be seeing that on CNN any time?
I could regale you all day with examples like these, but you probably get
them through the mass emails we all receive.
We know what is happening; and there is no use ranting about it and
shaking our fists if we are not going to stop it, which is the real aim of this
talk.
But before moving on, I want to relate one final incident, that perhaps
because I am a father, it hit me particularly hard.
In 2009, I was in Northern Bengal and was
told about a family of Bangladeshi Hindus who had crossed into India only 22
days earlier.
When I went to meet with
them, they told me how their little patch of family land was overrun by Muslims
and how they were thrown off their property while the invaders enjoyed the few
creature comforts they had in their home.
They told me about the father being beaten, an uncle killed; but the part
that got me was about their 14-year-old daughter.
She kept trying to speak but her mother kept
pushing her away. Finally, she was able to start talking—only after I agreed to
point my camera toward the ground so she could not be identified.
She kept telling me that “the Muslims chased
[her],” all the while looking away, not wanting to meet my eyes, when I asked
her what she meant by that and did they catch up to her.
Only when I turned off my camera did she tell
me that they caught here and “did bad things to me.”
Do I need to be any more specific?
Since then, I have met with many Hindu women who were gang raped—heard the
most horrible things—but that girl in particular continues to haunt me.
Is Moderate Muslim and
Oxymoron?
This is a serious question that plagues us as members of a free society.
On the whole, we have a tough time condemning
all members of any group; and the suggestion that there is a problem with the
group itself brings cries of “bigot,” “racist,” and “Islamaphobe.”
Even if that is nonsense, it is a reality we
have to acknowledge; and it stops us from speaking the truth, even if going
along with the fiction means allowing the death of millions.
So, let’s talk specifics.
That 14 year-old rape victim I interviewed in
northern Bengal was not raped by random miscreants and, oh yes, she happened to
be a Hindu.
She was raped
because she is a Hindu.
And the rapists did not savage that child
and, oh yes, they happened to be Muslim.
They savaged her
because they
are Muslim and recognized their legally favored position in Bangladesh.
The perpetrators’ and victims’ religion
should be an inconsequential matter that does not concern us.
Their religion should not be important, but
the perpetrators—not we—have made it important.
And again let’s be clear.
She was
not raped by members of
al Qaeda or
Jamaat, but by her
neighbors—ordinary, everyday Muslims, the same sort who carried out that three
day pogrom in Dhaka under the protection of the local police.
Any attempt to understand and stop what is happening in Bangladesh—and what
is spreading from it—without talking about Islam is destined to be incomplete
and ineffective.
The fact is that no
matter how much they dress it up, Islam divides the world into two distinctive
categories:
dar al Islam (the abode of Islam) and
dar al Harb (the abode of war).
Dar al
Islam refers to all places where Islam thrives, most frequently defined as
places under Muslim rule, preferably Sharia; that Islam reserves the term abode
of war for everywhere else gives us a pretty good idea of what Islam enjoins
Muslims to do.
Moreover, the dichotomy
also has been explained as land where there is submission to Islam vs. land
destined to submit to Islam.
No matter
how you slice it, the distinction is premised on the belief that Islam and
Muslims are superior to other faiths and non-Muslims; and the belief that it is
a Muslim’s duty to bring the others under Islam’s rule.
There have been those apologists who try to
obscure that by alleging that that as long as Muslims can practice their
religion in peace, where they live is not
dar al Harb,
regardless of who rules it.
That is
also absolute nonsense.
Just ask the
Israelis whose Muslim citizens enjoy full freedom of religion and more rights
than Muslims living in “Muslim” countries.
Islam is thriving so much in Israel that the Muslim agency which
administers
al Aqsa mosque on
Jerusalem’s Temple Mount had to carve out additional mosques under the Mount to
accommodate the large number of free worshippers—something it never needed to do
when the Mount was ruled by Muslim Jordan or Muslim Turkey.
And we continue to obscure the real issue of what we face by calling places
like Bangladesh “moderate Muslim” countries with very deadly consequences.
Take this example.
Bangladesh has recently arrested a Muslim
author, Salam Azad, and charged him with blasphemy for a book he wrote in
another country nine years ago.
His life
is in danger, and the government refuses to provide him with any sort of
protection.
Now, does any of that sound
like the actions of a “moderate” country?
As we just saw, Bangladesh maintains Islam as its official religion, begins
every law with “in the name of Allah the Beneficent,” and funds
madrassas and other Muslim institutions,
but not those of any other faith.
What
intellectual gymnastics make that moderate?
And while this “moderate Muslim” nation helps
build Muslim
madrassas, it supports the
destruction of Hindu
Mandirs by not prosecuting the
perpetrators.
My God, the country has a
law that enshrines the seizure of Hindu property and its transfer to Muslims—a
law that this allegedly moderate government could have annulled when it took
office!
What sort of topsy-turvy world is this when nations can do these things and
smile while the rest of us call them moderate?
What sort of upside down place is this when Muslims are allowed to carry
on by one set of standards that the rest of us would find objectionable in
ourselves, let alone in those who steal our children and our history?
And that’s why it should scare the pants off us; not because of them, but
because of us; because of this blindness we carry around like it is some sort of
badge of honor.
The fact is that no one
with the slightest bit of discernment could possibly believe that if we keep
letting these things happen that they would stop at the borders of
Bangladeshi.
They are already making
their way through India’s northeast.
My
colleague in Kolkata, Bimal Primanik, has tracked this for decades and has
documented not only the population shift but also its deliberate nature.
An exhaustive study by the South Asian Research Society noted that “In the
days of Pakistan, nearly all refugees coming to West Bengal were members of the
minority communities in East Bengal….In the Bangladesh era, however, in addition
to the forced migration of members of minority community (the overwhelming
majority being Hindus) to West Bengal, there has been large-scale voluntary
infiltration of Bangladeshi Muslims… to West Bengal and other parts of
India.”
Primanik’s own study from 1951 to 2001 showed that in Bangladesh, the Hindu
population grew from about nine to eleven million, or 23.16 percent; while the
Muslim population grew from 32 to 111 million, or 244.68 percent.
Some of the academics and government
officials with whom I have discussed this disparity have attempted to explain it
by saying that many Hindus simply decided to move to India as it is a
Hindu-majority country with greater economic prospects than Bangladesh; in other
words, that the population shift has been driven by “economic refugees.”
Even if we accept their premise, however, the
Hindus’ economic dislocation was in many cases brought about
deliberately through illicit seizure of
assets under the Vested Property Act, religious discrimination, persecution, and
so forth.
Perhaps
they might then move
to Ambassador
Qader’s mind numbingly stupid theory
that Hindus are leaving Bangladesh to find matches for their children.
Moreover, if this was simply a voluntary population transfer, we would expect
it to be reflected in population figures for the Indian state closest to
Bangladesh and whose population is composed of the same ethnic group, namely
West Bengal.
So what do we see?
West Bengal had about 19 million Hindus in
1951 and 58 million in 2001, an increase of 198.54 percent.
Its 1951 Muslim population of approximately
five million Muslims grew to more than 20 million in 2001 or by 310.13 percent.
Moreover, Pramanik’s study indicates
that during this period the Muslim growth rate exceeded that of Hindus in each
individual district of West Bengal, even those that receive the lion’s share of
Bangladeshi Hindu refugees.
I saw the results of this in the
Deganga region
where three days of anti-Hindu violence raged in September 2010, only 40
kilometers north of the West Bengal capital. And contrary to what you might have
read in the media, people were attacked, and many fled their homes and huddled
in terror.
I know; I spoke with too many
of them for them all to be making up the same story.
Beyond that, with my own eyes, I saw how
terrified the Hindu population is, how women and girls are not allowed to go
anywhere unaccompanied now because of what will happen to them if they do; and I
saw several
Mandirs destroyed or
desecrated.
West Bengal BJP member
Tathagata Roy visited the area twice since the violence began and noted, "This
was a well-thought-out, well-executed pogrom whose objective was to terrorize
the Hindus no end….The ultimate intention can only be to cleanse the area of
Hindus with a view to totally Islamize the area." While Indian troops ultimately
stationed themselves on the area’s main road, they did not follow pogromists
into the nearby Hindu villages and settlements that I visited and where they
were able to do a great deal of damage with impunity.
I saw them again in the village of Norit, also in West Bengal, where a mother
plaintively begged me to help retrieve her daughter who was abducted by Muslims
some weeks before and not seen since.
I saw them in a tiny village further north, where Muslim men and boys from
the area have set up perches where they watch the Hindu women while they bathe
undressed. And when confronted, they said that all Hindu women are “there for
our amusement.”
When elders from the
Hindu community asked the police to help, they said that it was up to the two
communities to resolve the matter.
Any
guess how that turned out?
And all of us are still seeing the consequences of this in Assam.
So what is it about these blatant atrocities that people still like to
pretend that there is no human rights crisis for the Hindus of Bangladesh?
I have a theory.
Even if the world turns away when we talk
about anti-Hindu actions in Pakistan, they still react, ‘well, you know,
Pakistan is one of those radical Muslim countries.’
Or if we raise the issue of Saudi Arabia,
people will shrug their shoulders and say, “oh, those nasty
Wahabis!”
But when
we make them face the facts of ethnic cleansing in Bangladesh and its support by
every one of its governments, we are attacking their cherished assumptions and
their world view.
They cannot admit that
Bangladesh could be doing these things because the more we investigate the more
we see that the only thing moderate about Bangladesh is that people call it
moderate.
If Bangladesh is engaging in the ethnic cleansing of non-Muslims, if it
maintains laws meant to discriminate against Hindus and others, if it refuses to
do anything about it, and if it supports radical Islamists; can it be called
moderate? And if Bangladesh is not moderate, is any Muslim country?
Acknowledging that might force them to wake
up and stop leading us all into the next Dark Ages!
Acknowledging that might cause them to wonder
if there is anything to this silly dichotomy of moderate and radical Islam.
Dar al
Islam and
dar al harb—now that’s
a useful dichotomy; but moderate vs. radical means nothing, our hanging on to
that fiction certainly will doom Hindus in Bangladesh.
While people can advance several good reasons for the lack of action to stop
the ethnic cleaning of Hindus in Bangladesh, I believe that is the biggest
one.
Just to be clear, many of us know moderate Muslim individuals; I can think of
two who have been arrested for blasphemy and put their lives in danger.
They’re not only moderate, they are
heroes.
While that might be true,
however, as applied to countries, the phrase “moderate Muslim” is indeed an
oxymoron—impossible to maintain outside the world of theorists, ideologues, and
ostriches with their heads in the sand.
And as long as people like us sit quietly while this deadly lie is
perpetrated, we better be scared, and we might fit our daughters for a
burqa while we’re at it.
What we must
do
So what do we do about it?
If something is done to save Bangladesh’s Hindus, it will come from here, the
United States of America.
Bangladesh
will not change; they have shown themselves immune to cries for justice and
appeals to decency.
Europe?
Don’t make me laugh.
And India? While I love that country, political
correctness and pseudo-secularism rule out that country unless it can be
motivated differently.
So, it is up to
us.
First of all, I cannot be the only one angry enough to do something.
All of us should be furious—with the same
furor our troops have as they fight tyranny.
I mean, really angry; angry enough so we cannot stand it and cannot sleep
soundly at night knowing what could be happening to a Hindu child as we lay
comfortably in our warm beds.
Let the
images attack you every time you decide to relax and watch TV.
Because remember what the Dalai Lama
said:
“It is not enough to be
compassionate.
You must ACT.”
Secondly, we have to call out our religious and community leaders who always
run away from controversy; who tell us that they do not want “to be
political.”
No matter who delivers the
message, this is not political.
It is
moral; it is, in fact, a moral imperative.
If some self-styled leader stands in the way of saving lives, call that
person out as a moral coward, for being more concerned with his or her own image
than those Hindu women and children who were raped.
And, by the way, why is this not an issue
that the feminist movement is all over?
Temples should take the lead and lend their moral authority to community
outrage and action.
Those of us who were
around in the 1970s and 1980s,
who were
around in the 1980s will remember that back then, you could not pass a synagogue
without seeing a large banner proclaiming, “Save Soviet Jewry.”
Our people were being persecuted in the
Soviet Union, whose leaders wanted to eradicate their Jewish religion and
identity.
A few, like
Natan Sharansky who later became
an Israeli Cabinet Minister, got some attention, but most suffered
silently.
The American Jewish community
saw their persecuted brothers and sisters and recognized their obligation to
save them.
Moreover, it acted on that
obligation.
We lobbied Washington and our local officials; prevailed upon other religious
bodies to recognize the atrocity and let Washington know their position.
Average Jews who you might see at the office or in the supermarket—people
just like you—went to Russia at their own expense to smuggle in religious books
and other Jewish artifacts at considerable peril to themselves.
Jewish children reaching their Bar and Bat
Mitzvah were “twinned” with Soviet children who did not have the freedom to
celebrate this most important rite of passage; we did it for them.
And before it was over, we helped get 1.2
million Jews out of that communist hell.
It strengthened our identity, and every Jewish child who was part of that
effort never forgot it or their own sense of Jewishness.
We also realized that we could in fact stand
strong for our people, that the only thing that could stop us is ourselves.
Let the Bangladeshi Hindus be your Soviet Jews.
Recognize what is at stake and mobilize
around your
Mandirs.
Bangladesh is a pretty lame country.
It is not like we have to force a change in China or Iran.
This is Bangladesh, a country known for two
things: overcrowding and natural disasters.
If we cannot do something about Bangladesh, what hope have we against
countries like China and Iran, or even North Korea and Venezuela?
Bangladesh is also a country inordinately dependent on two things for its
economic viability:
exporting readymade
garments and providing peacekeeping troops for the United Nations.
That’s right; Bangladesh and Pakistan keep
trading places for the most and second most UN peace keeping troops—even while
neither can keep the peace at home.
In fact, while in Bangladesh during the 2007 coup, I was told by impeccable
sources that concern over the UN pulling these peacekeeping troops is what
finally caused the military to move.
Besides losing the money, they also had to think about having thousands
of angry, unemployed,
and armed young
men flooding their already volatile country.
Can you blame them?
Also, the only significant lobbying group in Bangladesh is the BGMEA or the
Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association.
They have influence on the government, and
what happens to their industry will affect the lives of most of those 150
million people.
A drop in exports of
only several percent points means millions out of work—also angry and in need of
government assistance.
Now, guess who is their second largest customer?
The US.
And guess who funds those UN peacekeepers to a large degree?
US again.
If we get our elected leaders to act, Bangladesh will have to stop the
ethnic cleansing of Hindus and get rid of their terrible laws; or face
disaster.
About a year and a half ago,
by the way, the current government told me how bad they need to make a good
showing for their people if they want to get re-elected in 2014.
We have a terrific opportunity to put them in
a bind whereby they have to stop the atrocities or lose the election and a lot
more.
So let’s start thinking strategically.
In 2010, I began working with the Hindu community in the Chicago area to
support a few specific candidates for Congress and the Senate.
While no one would suggest that we were
responsible for their victories, the candidates and their staffs knew that we at
least contributed to them.
Our goal was
to show our elected officials that the Hindu community here is a significant
electoral force whose concerns need to be taken seriously.
And I think that worked.
These were good people; people who supported us before and whom we would
want to see elected.
But we might want to take just a little pride
in the fact that one of the individuals we supported in 2010 and are working to
elect again is Congressman Robert Dold who very early in his first term raised
the issue of the Bangladeshi Hindus from the floor of the United States
Congress—and did so without burying it in words like minorities.
He identified it clearly as
anti-Hindu and demanded we do something
to stop it.
I know Bob well and can tell
you that he really feels the pain of the Bangladeshi Hindus and will do
everything he can do to help us stop that pain.
Now we are in another election cycle, and several people are engaged in this
sort of effort.
I understand you are
seizing the initiative as well.
Quite a
few Congressional candidates have come to recognize the importance of the Hindu
vote. While our modest effort focused on three candidates in the Chicago area,
Representatives and would be Representatives nationwide now are courting the
Hindu vote.
Consider the following.
There are
perhaps a million less Hindus in the United States than Muslims, and in many
districts the Hindu population outstrips the Muslim.
But think of how our lawmakers react to CAIR,
the Congress on American Islamic Relations, compared to how they would react to
the Hindu American Foundation.
Or think
of how many Washingtonians who were silent about the anti-Hindu stereotypes in
schoolbooks and elsewhere would make outraged speeches if they were made aware
of similar anti-Muslim stereotypes.
Shalli Kumar, who founded the National Indian American Coalition, has
been doing this sort of thing longer than I have and is having a real impact
now.
He often points out that the Hindu
population is about half that of the American Jewish community and that Hindu
Americans should be active enough to command half the attention of our elected
leaders that my own Jewish community does.
With that sort of political power, we can accomplish a great deal in the
next Congress.
And that’s one big key:
once we get
people to recognize that we cannot be ignored, what do we do with that
power.
Well, there’s a lot we can do;
and the limits of that depend on us and us alone.
We
can contribute to electoral success and then go back in our shell, the way
those Bangladeshi Hindu groups did after they helped elect the Awami League; or
we can press our advantage with a
Congress (and perhaps an administration) that recognizes the justice of our
claims, large and small.
For instance,
if you are a Muslim and your child receives a school lunch, you can get a
halal meal; if you are an Orthodox Jew, you
can get a kosher one.
But if you are a
Hindu requesting a vegetarian meal, you might be told to just take the hamburger
that is, beef, off the plate with no understanding of the offense that is being
committed.
So recently, we began working
with Congressman Dold to change that in Illinois schools.
It’s a matter of civil rights and justice; a
small victory but one that recognizes Hindu power in this society.
We also can push for
real human
rights hearings about the Bangladeshi Hindus, not the sort of hearings by the
TLHRC that have been flaccid at best, anti-Hindu at worst; and we can lobby
(with facts) to have the US Commission on International Religious Freedom
downgrade Bangladesh’s status to a nation we identify as one that does not
support its citizens’ religious freedom.
Many of the Congressmen we know are on committees that have power over
trade and tariffs.
That would be an
incredibly productive area to work on next year.
Let’s see how many elected officials want to
go on the record of supporting ethnic cleansing and the gang rape of young
girls!
If we have the will, we can make
it that sort of choice.
The other big key is to make people realize that ultimately, this is a
problem for us—all of us Americans—not something that is just a faraway
problem.
When you start talking to
people about Bangladesh, they start looking at their watches; but if they hear
about what we are seeing already in India, we will indeed grab their attention;
and if they see this as part of a larger problem threatening all of us, they
will take action.
At least a lot of
people will.
Again, make it clear that this is an
American problem, not something remote
and unrelated to us.
Right now, there is a lot of anti-UN sentiment in this country—and for good
reason as it so often seems that the UN represents interests in direct conflict
with those that we hold dear—like ethnic cleansing.
I do not think we would have too much trouble
conditioning some of our taxpayer dollars on keeping Bangladesh off peacekeeping
missions.
In other words, if we are recognized as having the power of the vote, our
human rights arguments become things that can no longer be ignored.
The question is how we make the most of it in
each district.
We’re working non-stop in
Illinois.
And we can push our agenda
forward tonight when we have dinner with the Member of Congress whose district
has the nation’s highest percentage of Indian Americans.
And I promise you that I will make sure
Congressman Pete Olson leaves with an understanding of what is happening to
Hindus in Bangladesh.
There is so much more we can do even without the government:
tell companies who buy Bangladeshi goods that
they are supporting the rape of children and the murder of innocents.
I do not like the word boycott and believe
they are in the end self-defeating; but everyone knows it is not good business
to associate oneself with ethnic cleansing and gang rape.
Some of Bangladesh’s biggest customers in the
US include Wal-Mart, Hanes, GAP, J.C. Penney, Nike, Levis, and Tommy Hilfiger.
The thing to remember is that there are a lot of countries that sell the same
products, and if Bangladeshi goods become too expensive—whether through higher
tariffs or bad publicity—there are several countries standing in line to gobble
up the market.
And the Bangladeshis know
from experience that once that market segment is lost, they are unlikely to get
it back when they later decide to join the community of decent nations.
There are ways to publicize that, to start letter writing campaigns, meet
with executives, and if necessary, demonstrate in front of the stores.
We also can organize monthly, weekly, or even
daily demonstrations in front of the Bangladeshi embassy in Washington, charging
those inside with murder.
I ask
Mahasabha leaders to work with me and help us get numbers of people for these
efforts.
We have contacts ready to move
nationwide, and the Houston community should be one of the leaders.
Street theater, legal cases, protests, and on
and on.
When all is said and done, however, it all comes back to that 14-year-old
girl I met in North Bengal and the millions of other victims.
Every day we delay, every excuse we make
brings Hindus in Bangladesh that much closer to extinction; and it brings their
murderers that much closer to our own homes, our streets, and our children.
I’ll be fighting this fight in Washington and anywhere else I have to
regardless, but we will have a better chance of succeeding in time if we are
hundreds strong.
And if we do not act,
if we are content to allow these things to continue can we really call ourselves
decent human beings?
Dhanyavaad.
Zemira Eli Natan
Executive Director
International Unity for Equality
