Forty-year roller coaster for Bangladeshi Hindus
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DHAKA — When Bangladesh became an independent nation after a bloody nine month battle with Pakistan that ended 40 years ago Friday, Narayan Chandra Das, a Bengali Hindu, had high hopes for his new country.
As a Hindu, Das had been branded an “agent of India” during the war and fled when the Pakistani army burned his village in the eastern district of Comilla to the ground.
But when the war ended on Dec. 16, he came straight home to the new Muslim-majority nation.
Forty years after independence, creeping Islamization, discriminatory policies and a series of violent attacks on Hindus, have, he says, made him wonder whether it was the right choice..... MORE
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20111218com3.html
1 comment
buti't bumabalik ang secularismo sa bangladesh. buti't pinagpatuloy ng anak ni sheik ang naiwan nito. nakakatakot lang eh baka mapatay din iyang ng mga panatikong fundamentalist muslims.
"But after Sheikh Mujib was assassinated in a military coup in 1975, the new military rulers began amending the constitution — replacing secularism with “absolute faith in Allah,” legalizing religious-based political parties, and making Islam the state religion.
"“It was the beginning of creeping Islamization,” Subrata Chowdhury, a lawyer and prominent Hindu activist, told AFP."
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