Ramlalla’s Pran Pratishtha marked a historic event for not only the Hindus of India, but also for those living all across the globe. After a 500-year long struggle, Hindus in India finally reclaimed what was always ours: our mandir, our right to worship, and the rightful abode of our deity, Prabhu Shri Ram. But while Hindus’ joy knows no bound after this mega event took place in Ayodhya, not every Hindu is getting to enjoy to the fullest, without the shadows of fear and gore lurking around them.
The Hindu minority in the neighbouring country of Bangladesh is living in constant terror and helplessness in the aftermath of the Pran Pratishtha in Ayodhya. The fear was fanned during the elections which were held in the country recently, when it witnessed cases of violence around a number of areas. After Ramlalla’s Pran Pratishtha, many Hindus from Bangladesh wish to visit Ayodhya, India, but they do not have the courage to leave their family members behind in their home country, in order to do so.
The families of Hindus in Bangladesh say that they do want to visit India to have a darshan of their deity, but they opine that there is no certainty of the condition in which they will find their family members living, upon their return to Bangladesh in one week. As per the Hindus of Bangladesh, it is nothing new for the Muslims to burn the former’s houses or to desecrate their mandirs.
As per the General Secretary of the Dhakeshwari Mandir in Bangladesh, Ramen Mandal, the number of Hindus in Bangladesh is extremely low, who always live with a sense of insecurity. Student Union Activist, Megh Malhar Basu, many Islamic radicals have been issuing threats to the Hindus of Bangladesh, warning that if they come to power in the country, they will break the mandirs and construct mosques on the same spots. The government of Bangladesh has maintained a stony silence while all this is taking place.
President of the Raman Kali Mandir Board, Dhaka, Bangladesh, Utpal Saha, said that when the Pran Pratishtha mega-event was going on in Ayodhya, India, the maulanas in Bangladesh had not let Hindus organize processions. And the Hindus felt the constant fear of their homes and mandirs getting burned. Saha added that the Jamaat Party of Bangladesh has the most angst towards the Hindus in the country, and for them, it is regular affair to break down Hindu mandirs.
Ruhidas Pal, a worker at the Dhakeshwari and Ramanlal Mandirs for the last 15 years, stated that the situation in Bangladesh has been risky right from the inauguration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. Pal mentioned how he was worried for the safety of his wife and daughter, and the situation in the country is such that they cannot even travel to Kolkata, West Bengal, India, in order to meet their kin.
And while there is a sense of fear looming large for the Hindus in Bangladesh, they could not help but celebrate the Pran Pratishtha ceremony on January 22, and while they were busy celebrating, the mainstream news media were engaged in spewing hate against the Hindus, showcasing, through news reports and articles, how the Ram Mandir was built in Ayodhya after the demolishing a mosque.
Recently, on the morning of January 31, locals in the Raypur Municipal Area of the Laxmipur district in Bangladesh found out that a Kali Mata mandir, part of a Hindu crematorium ground, had been vandalised. The murti of the deity was broken and thrown away outside, along with the puja paraphernalia. The clueless locals added that not only the Vigraha or the puja items were broken and thrown away, even the furnace which was used to cremate dead bodies had been shattered, and several trees planted on the ground had been cut.
Amidst all this, it has also been reported that a prominent Hindu rights activist from Chittagong, Professor Kushal Baran Chakraborty, was threatened to be beheaded by a Bangladeshi Jihadi, Zulkarnain Saer Khan.
In such a situation, the Hindus of Bangladesh cannot help but mention that they still remember the kind of violence and persecution they had to face back in 1992-93 after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in India; and if the current circumstances are so horrible, what exactly will happen if the radicals in the opposition form the government in the country?
Back in 1992-93, in the wake of the demolition of the Babri structure, the Hindus in Bangladesh had to face the heat when they were attacked by the Muslims, tortured, killed, raped, forcibly kidnapped and converted to Islam. It is indeed a pattern of sorts- whenever something supposedly ‘wrong’ happens with members of the ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ or ‘Ummah’ in one part of the world, the Muslims in some other part react, and their reaction predominantly is to abuse and persecute people of other religious faiths.
After the demolition of Babri, the torture on the Hindus of Bangladesh continued till March 1993, and it is noteworthy that a similar plight was faced by the Hindus of Pakistan during the same period, right after the demolition of the Babri, as told to GoaChronicle by the Hindu refugees from Pakistan, living in Jodhpur, Rajasthan. There too, the Hindus were attacked, killed, driven away from their homes, looted, and the Hindu girls and women were abducted, forcefully converted, and married to Muslim men.
Similarly, the effect of the Pran Pratishtha at Ayodhya is being seen not only in Bangladesh currently; while in India too, Muslims have been threatening the Hindus of ‘revenge when their time comes’, the recent issue of the ISIS magazine, Voice of Khurasan, states that, ‘We will come with swords in our hands to slaughter you collectively.’, after the Pran Pratishtha ceremony in Ayodhya.
With this hatred brewing among the Muslim ummah for the Hindus after the Pran Pratishtha, Hindus in Bangladesh continue to fear the repetition of the horrific events they had to face in 1992-93.
