Bangladesh Hindu Genocide

The latest in the series of genocides and the idealogy behind it

Not a day goes by when we do not hear any distressing news of another mass massacre of Hindus in their native land that they have nurtured and tended from time immemorial. This recent wave of the extermination campaign that was unleashed, started from the deserts of Arabia almost a millennium and a half ago, reached the hapless community of Hindus during their most festive period of the year in Bangladesh. The community was targeted by rampaging murderous mobs aided by the Jihadi state because of the fabricated fiction of the concocted insult to the ‘word of Allah’. What kind of God is so insecure that ‘He’ needs a bunch of coward Momins to terrorize, kill, rape, and rampage innocent people? The Bangladeshi Hindu community that, until a short time ago, the equivalent of a human life span, was roughly half the population has now been decimated to a single digit by percentage in that country. It is widely reported and projected that there will be no Hindu left in Bangladesh by the middle of this century. This fate is not so different from that of the Hindus, Buddhists, and other indigenous communities that called home the large swathes of geography north and west of the current boundaries of present-day India. Unfortunately, this is the latest but forebodingly not the last such tragedy to befall on Bangladeshi Hindus, in particular, and the native and indigenous communities around the world in general.

It is incomprehensible for people born in Sanatan dharma traditions to understand, analyze and mount an effective response to these genocidal ideologies because of our naïveté about seeing only goodness in others and ignoring the evils prevalent in these fundamentalist faiths. Just as a good doctor looks not only at the symptoms but also the root cause underlying the malaise that afflicts the body, we need to examine the source of hate that has sustained these marauding campaigns for over a millennium.  So, what is the way forward? We should be clear-eyed about fighting not just the manifestations of the disease but also the deep-rooted hate-mongering by the doctrine of annihilation of ‘others’, ‘disbelievers’, ‘polytheists’, ‘kafirs’ and ‘pagans.’ The tool in this fight is our ancient tradition that speaks of ‘Satyameva Jayate’(Truth alone triumphs). We should insist on truth and remove the burqa of petro-dollars that inhibits the self-appointed guardians of righteousness and human rights to vocalize these issues. We must believe in the goodness and dharmic nature inherent in every human being and continue to form alliances to annihilate these diabolic forces instrumental behind such gruesome atrocities.