C T Online Desk: Hindu residents of Digholia village under Lohagara upazila of Narail are living in fear and anxiety following recent attacks on the minority community in the locality.
The village is home to a total of about 300 families, about one third of whom are Hindu. Several Hindu families have fled the area as they were unable to bear the constant threat of attacks or arson.
“The situation is very calm. Only the older ones are living in the locality, while many of the young ones have left the area with their families. We are in fear of further attacks,” said Beauty Rani Mandal, a former union parishad chairman of Digholia.
Following a Facebook post on Friday evening, a mob vandalized a temple, grocery stores and several homes of the Hindu community in the Digholia Bazar area of Lohagara upazila.
Angry villagers took to the streets that afternoon, attacking and vandalizing several homes on the allegation that a youth named Akash Saha had hurt their religious sentiments through a post on Facebook.
They also broke into and vandalized the Saha Para temple, as well as several shops.
“It all happened in the evening. First a mob attacked our houses and looted our valuables. Later a second group came, took out all our clothes and set them on fire,” said Dipali Rani Saha, one of the victims.
Some of the members of the Hindu community have started to rebuild their homes and temples, but most of the houses remain empty.
Peace shattered
Hindu families had been living peacefully in Digholia village for decades, but a tense atmosphere has descended over the village since Friday’s violence.
Despite the presence of security forces and patrols, few people ventured outdoors in the Saha Para and Digholia Bazar areas. A few shops started to open again from Sunday.
The semi pucca house of businessman Gobinda Saha is a grim reminder of what happened that night. All the furniture and even the roof of the house was burnt into ashes.
“If someone commits a crime, they should be punished. I cannot fathom why they would set our homes on fire,” he said.
Despite assurances of safety from the local administration, Gobinda said he still did not feel safe. “How can I forget that night!”
Not a new incident
Attacks on minorities in Bangladesh is not something new. The Ramu attack of 2012, 2016 attack in Nasirnagar, and October 2021 attacks in several districts made headlines, thousands of other incidents did not receive significant attention.
At least 1,642 Hindu houses were attacked, destroyed or set on fire while 456 businesses suffered the same fate between 2013 and June 2022, according to data compiled from news reports by Ain O Salish Kendra.
As many as 1,807 temples, monasteries, and statues were attacked or vandalized.
At least 13 people were killed and 1,037 were injured in different incidents over the same period.
Ain O Salish Kendra in a statement condemning the recent Narail attack said: “This is not a new incident…these keep repeating because there is no independent investigation and no probe in due time.”
Bangladesh Udichi Shilpigoshthi in its statement blamed impunity for perpetrators of communal violence for paving the way for more attacks.
Twenty one eminent citizens in a statement on July 16 condemned the attack and said two incidents of communal violence in Narail within a month had made it apparent that a communal force was rearing its head in Bangladesh.
“Since 2012, the string of communal attacks across the country, including in Ramu-Nasirnagar-Abhoynagar-Shalla-Brahmanbaria-Cumilla-Choumuhoni-Munshiganj-Narail, has been nothing but part of a grand scheme to wipe out the country’s minority communities and turn it into a Muslim-only ignorant nation,” the statement reads.
“The communal mindset has even infiltrated the secular political party to the core in such a manner that they could not take any effective step to prevent such incidents from occurring,” it added.
The National Human Rights Commission in a letter to the Public Safety Department of the Home Ministry directed the ministry to probe whether there was any negligence in the attack on the temples and whether police did its duty.
Mashrafe Bin Mortaza, member of Parliament from Narail and former captain of the Bangladesh Cricket Team, has asked the miscreants responsible for the attacks not to harm the common and helpless people of the district.
“Let the people in Narail live in peace, fight with me if you need,” he said in a Facebook post on his verified page on Sunday. Through his post, he hinted at a political motive behind the recent communal attacks in Narail.
Communal violence through social media
Framing people, particularly those who belong to minority communities, with allegations of hurting religious sentiments and incitement to violence by using social media posts has become all too frequent in Bangladesh.
The violence that was unleashed on Buddhists in Cox’s Bazar’s Ramu in 2012, using a Facebook post that defamed Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) as an excuse, was a chilling example of one such incident. Using concocted Facebook postings as excuses, hatred against minority communities was also spread in Pabna in 2013, in Brahmanbaria in 2016, and in Rangpur in 2017.
In Ramu in 2012, hundreds of people went on a rampage through the area, looting, and setting fire to houses and temples of the Buddhist community. At least 12 monasteries, and 30 households in Ramu, as well as seven monasteries, and 11 houses in Ukhiya and Teknaf, were torched during the attacks.
The acts of vandalism began because of a rumour that an image insulting the Prophet (pbuh), and the Quran had been posted on the Facebook account of local Uttam Barua.
On November 10, 2017, one person was killed when police opened fire to ward off an angry mob that set fire to least 30 Hindu houses at Thakurpara village in Rangpur Sadar upazila.
The mob had been angered by rumours that Titu Roy had put up a Facebook post defaming Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).
In early November 2013, a group of people began distributing photocopies of what they said was a “Facebook page”. They claimed that one Rajib Saha had maligned Prophet Mohammad (pbuh) in a post on the page.
Soon, hundreds of people stormed Rajib Saha’s house in Bonogram. Later, more gangs joined in to attack the predominantly Hindu village, and vandalised about 26 homesteads.
On October 30, 2016, religious zealots attacked at least 15 temples in Brahmanbaria’s Nasirnagar, and vandalised idols. They also vandalised, and looted about 100 Hindu homes, and beat over 100 local Hindus over what was claimed to be a Facebook post with hate speech from the account of Rasraj Das, 27, a resident of Haripur union. Six more Hindu houses were torched in the area a few days later.
In 2014, attacks on Hindu households and on a temple in Homna Upazila of Comilla were carried out after rumours that two youths had defamed Prophet Muhammad were spread through loudspeakers.
