This article, although well written by Jyoti Rahman, suffers from too many theatrics and exaggeration.
Writing about the birth of Pakistan on August 14, 1947, he writes, “That country became an Islamic Republic. Hindus were not equal citizens there. They were dhimmis, under the ‘sacred protection’ of the majority.”
First of all, Pakistan became an Islamic Republic only after 1956 when the constitution of 1956 was adopted, and there, too, there was no mention of so-called ‘Dhimmi’ (lit. protected ones). As we all know too well, the naming did not change the secular character of the new country outside the office of the head of the state, which is held by a Muslim. (Let’s not forget that India did not have a single Muslim Prime Minister who really holds power in the state despite its being a Republican state.)
The insertion of Islam into constitution has been a politically motivated case, which has nothing to do with the faith itself but about popularity contest in a majority Muslim country. It is unnecessary and gives only a bad name to a polity run by utterly corrupt individuals who has no fear of accountability either to people or to God in the Hereafter. As the Jewish Rabbi cautioned, don’t be too excited about the Torah if you are not living a Kosher life.
Salma Ahmed’s observation may not be all correct either when she reportedly claimed that a Hindu worker in Bangladesh might have “faced discrimination and earnt less than might have been expected from their qualification.” Hindus in Bangladesh hold 3 times their share in government jobs. Most of the top-level jobs in administration are held by them, rather disproportionately. A study done some years ago showed that most of the DC jobs and joint-secretary and higher-level positions have a higher percentage of Hindus in Bangladesh.
Within the private sector, many well-placed Hindus (either from Bangladesh, or India or Sri Lanka) earn more money than their counterparts not only in India/Sri Lanka/Nepal but also, surprisingly in the USA and the UK. (E.g., a CAD-CAM designer working on Dohajari-Cox’s Bazar railway construction project, reportedly earns Tk. 15 lakh taka per month with free lodging and food, transportation. He works for my BUET classmate in Ctg. There are many such examples I can cite.)
J Rahman quotes Abul Barakat, a favorite character for all the Hindutvadis. Barakat’s voodoo economic theory has long been debunked by me and many other more credible researchers decades ago. There is little truth to his claims, something that is also claimed by his US-based brother. He has bloated those figures widely and has lost any credibility as a researcher. It is sad to J Rahman quote his unsubstantiated claims in this article.
Barakat and many Hindutvadi pundits won’t tell us about similar land-grabbing Acts within India that allows for grabbing Muslim properties. Why did/could not the Ispahanis recover anything of their vast properties in West Bengal? Why did the richest Muslim man on earth, the Nizam of Hyderabad, lost almost everything? The governments in India, since the time of Patel, took draconian measures to grab all such princely and Muslim estates. Ignorance on such matters can only be a bliss to a novice, and harmful to the credibility of an expert!
India, on the other hand, has been more communal from the day one of its Republican history. India is a de facto Hindu rashtra by any definition although it does not wrap itself with that epithet.
Comparing the genocidal pogroms faced by Muslims in India with the few targeted violence by political hoodlums, often associated with the ruling party, is pitiful. Unlike Bangladesh and Pakistan where the police quickly responded to stop the violence, and government repairs and compensates the victims heftily, Modi has been not only silent, but his silence and encouragement of the BJP leadership have made the lives of some 200m Muslims there unlivable. The Genocide Watch has repeatedly put India under its genocidal watch. And so is the Congressional bipartisan group in the US, despite Obama/Trump/Biden’s kowtowing with Modi.
The writer mentions that of the 300 contested seats in Bangladesh Parliament, 70 are held by Hindus, which is more than 23%, a figure that is higher than 9% Hindu population in the country. Does this figure support the claim: they are discriminated in Bangladesh when it comes to government policies?
In contrast, Muslim representation in India is only a small fraction of their community proportion of 14% not only in government employment but also in terms of the elected members in the Lok Sabha. If India had a true representative government, instead of having just 27 elected MPs, they should have close to 78 MPs who are Muslims. Not a single of them belong to the ruling BJP. Not a single Muslim candidate was fielded for the Lok Sabha election anywhere by the BJP either. There is not a single Muslim chief minister in any of the 28 Indian states. Fifteen Indian states don’t have a single Muslim minister. Muslims have only 3% representation in civil services, 4.5% in Indian Railways, only 6% in police, 4.4 % in health, 1% in the armed forces and 7.8 % in the judiciary. Not surprisingly, compared to all other communities, Muslims have the highest dropout rates at the primary, middle and senior secondary levels. According to the 2021 census, literacy rate of Muslims is 68.5%, which is below the national average. (Ref: my upcoming book on India)
The writer mentions that in the last 10 years, nearly a dozen Hindus got killed during riots in Bangladesh. That is unfortunate and should not have happened. But when one compares such casualty figures with those happening daily in India under Modi’s watch, we can all agree that it is miniscule. (No endorsement though of any crime against anyone!)
In Modi’s India, on the first week of August 2023, an imam was stabbed and shot to death in a mosque that was then burned to the ground. A young doctor, walking home, was thrashed with cricket bats and iron rods, and molested by an armed mob. As she pleaded for help, they laughed and told her: “You can’t do anything, the administration is ours.” A railway officer, boarding a train, prowled the carriages for his targets and shot dead three men. The killer said, “If you want to live in India, you must vote for Modi and Yogi.” These incidents, which all took place in India that week, were seemingly unconnected, yet the victims were united by a common factor: they were all Muslim, and so were the perpetrators - they were all Hindu.
The critics of the Awami League would contest today that every word of G Roy of BNP is erroneous. He lied bigly.
Obviously, all such well known facts and figures are missing from J Rahman’s piece, leaving a bad taste in my mouth.
BTW: I agree with the writer 100% that a fair election is the first step that is necessary to unite a divided and polarized Bangladesh. My book on the subject details the subject at length.
This article, although well written by Jyoti Rahman, suffers from too many theatrics and exaggeration.
Writing about the birth of Pakistan on August 14, 1947, he writes, “That country became an Islamic Republic. Hindus were not equal citizens there. They were dhimmis, under the ‘sacred protection’ of the majority.”
First of all, Pakistan became an Islamic Republic only after 1956 when the constitution of 1956 was adopted, and there, too, there was no mention of so-called ‘Dhimmi’ (lit. protected ones). As we all know too well, the naming did not change the secular character of the new country outside the office of the head of the state, which is held by a Muslim. (Let’s not forget that India did not have a single Muslim Prime Minister who really holds power in the state despite its being a Republican state.)
The insertion of Islam into constitution has been a politically motivated case, which has nothing to do with the faith itself but about popularity contest in a majority Muslim country. It is unnecessary and gives only a bad name to a polity run by utterly corrupt individuals who has no fear of accountability either to people or to God in the Hereafter. As the Jewish Rabbi cautioned, don’t be too excited about the Torah if you are not living a Kosher life.
Salma Ahmed’s observation may not be all correct either when she reportedly claimed that a Hindu worker in Bangladesh might have “faced discrimination and earnt less than might have been expected from their qualification.” Hindus in Bangladesh hold 3 times their share in government jobs. Most of the top-level jobs in administration are held by them, rather disproportionately. A study done some years ago showed that most of the DC jobs and joint-secretary and higher-level positions have a higher percentage of Hindus in Bangladesh.
Within the private sector, many well-placed Hindus (either from Bangladesh, or India or Sri Lanka) earn more money than their counterparts not only in India/Sri Lanka/Nepal but also, surprisingly in the USA and the UK. (E.g., a CAD-CAM designer working on Dohajari-Cox’s Bazar railway construction project, reportedly earns Tk. 15 lakh taka per month with free lodging and food, transportation. He works for my BUET classmate in Ctg. There are many such examples I can cite.)
J Rahman quotes Abul Barakat, a favorite character for all the Hindutvadis. Barakat’s voodoo economic theory has long been debunked by me and many other more credible researchers decades ago. There is little truth to his claims, something that is also claimed by his US-based brother. He has bloated those figures widely and has lost any credibility as a researcher. It is sad to J Rahman quote his unsubstantiated claims in this article.
Barakat and many Hindutvadi pundits won’t tell us about similar land-grabbing Acts within India that allows for grabbing Muslim properties. Why did/could not the Ispahanis recover anything of their vast properties in West Bengal? Why did the richest Muslim man on earth, the Nizam of Hyderabad, lost almost everything? The governments in India, since the time of Patel, took draconian measures to grab all such princely and Muslim estates. Ignorance on such matters can only be a bliss to a novice, and harmful to the credibility of an expert!
India, on the other hand, has been more communal from the day one of its Republican history. India is a de facto Hindu rashtra by any definition although it does not wrap itself with that epithet.
Comparing the genocidal pogroms faced by Muslims in India with the few targeted violence by political hoodlums, often associated with the ruling party, is pitiful. Unlike Bangladesh and Pakistan where the police quickly responded to stop the violence, and government repairs and compensates the victims heftily, Modi has been not only silent, but his silence and encouragement of the BJP leadership have made the lives of some 200m Muslims there unlivable. The Genocide Watch has repeatedly put India under its genocidal watch. And so is the Congressional bipartisan group in the US, despite Obama/Trump/Biden’s kowtowing with Modi.
The writer mentions that of the 300 contested seats in Bangladesh Parliament, 70 are held by Hindus, which is more than 23%, a figure that is higher than 9% Hindu population in the country. Does this figure support the claim: they are discriminated in Bangladesh when it comes to government policies?
In contrast, Muslim representation in India is only a small fraction of their community proportion of 14% not only in government employment but also in terms of the elected members in the Lok Sabha. If India had a true representative government, instead of having just 27 elected MPs, they should have close to 78 MPs who are Muslims. Not a single of them belong to the ruling BJP. Not a single Muslim candidate was fielded for the Lok Sabha election anywhere by the BJP either. There is not a single Muslim chief minister in any of the 28 Indian states. Fifteen Indian states don’t have a single Muslim minister. Muslims have only 3% representation in civil services, 4.5% in Indian Railways, only 6% in police, 4.4 % in health, 1% in the armed forces and 7.8 % in the judiciary. Not surprisingly, compared to all other communities, Muslims have the highest dropout rates at the primary, middle and senior secondary levels. According to the 2021 census, literacy rate of Muslims is 68.5%, which is below the national average. (Ref: my upcoming book on India)
The writer mentions that in the last 10 years, nearly a dozen Hindus got killed during riots in Bangladesh. That is unfortunate and should not have happened. But when one compares such casualty figures with those happening daily in India under Modi’s watch, we can all agree that it is miniscule. (No endorsement though of any crime against anyone!)
In Modi’s India, on the first week of August 2023, an imam was stabbed and shot to death in a mosque that was then burned to the ground. A young doctor, walking home, was thrashed with cricket bats and iron rods, and molested by an armed mob. As she pleaded for help, they laughed and told her: “You can’t do anything, the administration is ours.” A railway officer, boarding a train, prowled the carriages for his targets and shot dead three men. The killer said, “If you want to live in India, you must vote for Modi and Yogi.” These incidents, which all took place in India that week, were seemingly unconnected, yet the victims were united by a common factor: they were all Muslim, and so were the perpetrators - they were all Hindu.
The critics of the Awami League would contest today that every word of G Roy of BNP is erroneous. He lied bigly.
Obviously, all such well known facts and figures are missing from J Rahman’s piece, leaving a bad taste in my mouth.
BTW: I agree with the writer 100% that a fair election is the first step that is necessary to unite a divided and polarized Bangladesh. My book on the subject details the subject at length.
Enough said,
Habib Siddiqui
Philadelphia, USA
I read you article on 'The Wire'. A good read.