India remains stable amid global turmoil, from Bangladesh to Ukraine, despite minor internal unrest. In a discussion with Abhijit Iyer Mitra, we explored how external forces attempted to destabilize India, but Prime Minister Modi successfully countered these efforts. The conversation covered various tactics used, from protest toolkits to manipulated economic reports, revealing the complex strategies employed against India and how the government has maintained the nation's equilibrium in the face of these challenges.
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#SaveBangladeshHindus #HindusAttack #IndiaBangladesh #Podcast #Oneindia #Oneindianews
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NewsTranscript
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.