This year’s festivities ended in widespread anti-Hindu violence—sparked by a rumour shared on social media. And the flames of communal anger show no signs of abating. Here’s a short explainer on the chain of events.
Around 9% of Bangladesh’s 160 million population is Hindu. It has a long history of anti-minority violence—which has been increasing in recent years thanks to the rise of Islamic groups and the popularity of Facebook. Extremist groups have also targeted secular leaders in a wave of assassinations. And anti-Muslim violence in India often spills over, triggering hate on the other side of the border:
Data to note: According to local rights groups, there have been 3,679 attacks on Hindus between January 2013 and September this year. These include 1,678 cases of vandalism and arson attacks on Hindu places of worship—and attacks on 559 houses and 442 shops.
The trigger was a photo/video shared on Facebook that allegedly shows a Quran placed on a Hanuman idol in a temple in the district of Cumilla.
Local officials claim that members of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Jamaat-e-Islam deliberately planted the holy book:
“The miscreants took some pictures of this and ran away. Within a few hours, using Facebook, the propaganda spread like wildfire with the provocative pictures.”
A timeline of violence: Here’s what happened over the past week:
Meanwhile, across the border: The BJP is citing the violence to argue for the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Bengal—a move fiercely opposed by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
A mysterious social media angle: Many Indian news outlets—and international ones like The Guardian—have extensively quoted outraged tweets from a verified handle called Bangladesh Hindu Unity Council (@UnityCouncilBD). It has been continuously sharing images of vandalism and violence, and tweeting things like:
“We cannot publish in a tweet what has happened in the last 24 hours. The Hindus of Bangladesh saw the real faces of some people. We don't know what will happen in the future. But the Hindus of Bangladesh will never forget Durga Puja in 2021.”
And it claims to be the Twitter handle of the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council. But an investigation by the fact-checking site NewsChecker reveals it may be fake. The council’s members say:
“We do not have any Twitter page. The page in reference does not belong to us. We have contacted our local authorities regarding the same and have filed a legal complaint against it.”
And the Twitter handle is very popular with BJP supporters and rightwing commentators. So there may be plenty of social media fakery happening on all sides—all of it designed to fan anger and outrage.
Point to note: We don’t know much about NewsChecker either.
The bottomline: Once again, this is a story about the unchecked power of Facebook—which profits from hate at the expense of the most vulnerable communities.
The coverage on this story is pretty scattered. The Guardian and New York Times have good overviews. Lokmat has the best reporting on the incident that triggered the violence. You can read the original NewsChecker investigation on the Hindu council handle. Indian Express has a good background piece on the tradition of Durga Puja in Bangladesh. India Today has an opinionated piece on the most prominent Hindu who fled East Bengal—Jogendra Nath Mandal, Pakistan’s first law and labour minister.
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