In In 1974, the new nation of Bangladesh, through its Parliament and under the leadership of its Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, completed its review of Pakistani laws and determined which Pakistani laws were not in conflict with the values of the new nation and would be adopted as Bangladeshi law. Among those that they determined were in consonance with Bangladeshi values was Pakistan's Enemy Property Act, which Bangladesh adopted in whole as its own, making only a name change from Enemy Property Act (EPA)to Vested Property Act (VPA). Why is this significant? Because the EPA/VPA is a directed anti-Hindu law. Sure, on its surface it sounds non-sectarian: those who leave the country for another state forfeit their property rights and anything they leave behind can be seized by the state. In Pakistan and later Bangladesh, however, it was applied only if the person fled to India. Oddly, Bangladeshis won their independence with the power of the Indian military. So, it is unclear how only a few years later, that same benefactor was called an "enemy" unless we acknowledge the basic anti-Hindu animus underlying it. In fact, according to Dhaka University's Dr. Abul Barkat, one of the foremost authorities on the VPA, the law was used to seize about 70 percent of all Hindu-owned land in Bangladesh by the 1990s. And it still is the basis for illicit seizure of Hindu land, which is then distributed to political cronies who, in many cases, were responsible for the Hindu owners fleeing for their lives. So much for the simplistic notion that Bangladesh was born as a "moderate Muslim nation" that would treat its Hindu citizens better than Pakistan does. And so much for the notion that the father of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was any different than the Pakistani rulers who jailed him, when it comes to eliminating Hindus and Hinduism.
And that goes to the very heart of the book by Dr. Kausik Gangopadhyay and Devavrata. Since gaining independence in 1971, Bangladesh has benefitted from global wishful thinking that has given academic, diplomatic, and other experts an excuse to ignore its brutal ethnic cleansing of Hindus and the fact that it is not the product of any political party or social group. This book's very title tells us that the notion of Bangladesh's break from Pakistan signaling a rejection of Pakistan's oppressive and anti-Hindu nature, is nothing more than a deception a deception that people blithely accept, and which continues to have deadly consequences. Worse, elites still accept the deception rather than work to find out the sad truth.
Shortly after the August 2024 coup that ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, an organization called me and said that they were having a seminar about recent events in Bangladesh, including the situation for Hindus and geopolitical implications. They asked if I would be their keynote speaker, and I accepted. But a couple of weeks later, the same organization messaged me saying that because 'things had calmed down in Bangladesh, they no longer would be having that seminar and move on to other topics instead. World leaders and other elites have swallowed the fiction that Hindus and other minorities are safe in today's Bangladesh; have uncritically accepted the lie that Chief Advisor Muhammad Yunus champions diversity and democracy.
And, in terms of the kind of narrowness of Hindu thinking, it is not reflected in a similar narrowness of Muslim thinking in Bangladesh.
-Amartya Sen
The a new The 1971 Liberation war in Bangladesh is a watershed moment in the history of the Indian subcontinent, with the creation of a nation, Bangladesh, hailed as a Bengali nation, emerging out of East Pakistan based on its demand to use Bangla as their own language. This incident created a great euphoria in India, particularly among the left-liberals who considered (and still do) this liberation war and the consequent birth of a secular nation as proof that people of Bangladesh are secular-minded and rooted in their indigenous culture.
We require a short recollection of the history of the creation of the Indian Republic to make sense of the significance of the story of Bangladesh in the left narrative. The provincial elections were conducted during the last days of British Raj in January 1946 to elect members of the legislative councils of the Indian provinces, under the Government of India Act. Under this Act, there were separate electorates for Hindus and Muslims along with representatives for Europeans and native Indian rulers of the princely states. The Congress emerged the strongest by winning the lion's share of the general (effectively, non-Muslim) seats, while the Muslim League cemented its claim as the sole mouthpiece of the Indian Muslims winning 87% of the Muslim seats. The agenda of the Muslim League was the partition of undivided India into India and Pakistan, to carve out a homeland for the Muslims of undivided India for their being a separate nation, which was contested by the Congress.
The partition itself was a very tragic affair. It is possibly the bloodiest affair in the 20th century that has been normalised. The beginning of this affair started in Kolkata exactly one year before the independence of India, on 16 August 1946, a day on which the Muslim League called for Direct Action. Eventually, this day turned out to be one of the worst orchestrated genocides in Bengal. The Muslim League led by Suhrawardy, amassed criminals from outside and his government paralysed the administration by transferring capable unbiased police officers by the more subservient ones overnight in almost all the police stations of Kolkata. The idea of the genocide was to compel the Hindus of Hindu-majority Kolkata-the most economically prosperous city of the British empire after London-to migrate out of the city and thereby, claim it within East Pakistan. An official estimate reveals that four thousand people were killed, at least ten thousand were wounded, and numerous women were brutally tortured in the first four days. The number of people rendered homeless was more than one hundred thousand. The genocide at Noakhali during October 1946 surpassed the horrors of Kolkata by several norches. However, these dark episodes became simply a trailer for the massive violence and partition horrors that undivided India witnessed in the following year, and continued in Pakistan for several years.
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