From: budaraju@cae.wisc.edu (Srinivas Budaraju)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian,soc.culture.pakistan,soc.culture.bangladesh
Subject: Treatment of Minorities in Bangladesh
Summary: it sucks!
Date: 14 Apr 92 03:56:23 GMT
Article-I.D.: doug.1992Apr13.225623.6742
Followup-To: soc.culture.bangladesh
Organization: College of Engineering, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison

Following are excerpts from "Unnatural Disasters" by G.R. Chowdhury,
Cultural Survival Quarterly, Winter 1992, PP 14-17. G.R. Chowdhury, who
was born in Bangladesh, was imprisoned for his participation in the
nationalist movement. He now lives in the United States.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
[T]he countries minorities have long waged one of the world's most
difficult and serious struggles for survival. Successive military
governments-sponsored pogroms have killed thousands of minority 
Bangladeshies outright, while the fortunate ones have become refugees
in India...[T]he Pakistani army has killed three million people in nine
months during the course of Bangladesh's 1971 war of independence. Ten
million refugees took shelter in India. Most victims were members of the
Hindu minority.

...under the [Enemy Property Act] the government can confiscate minority
properties and businesses with no compensation or notice simply by declaring
a person to be an enemy of the state. Between 1975 and 1989, the Bangladesh
govt confiscated 1.5 million acres of land from the nations minorities, in
addition to homes, fishing ponds, shops and businesses. A November 1991
report indicates that 60 percent of minority property may have already
been confiscated...

...In 1946, ... a ghastly pogrom, supported by the the ruling Muslim
League administration in Bengal, occured against poor, rural Hindus
in the eastern Naokhakli district. Estimates of the number of Hindus
murdered varies, from a govt figure of 1,000 to unofficial figure of
tens of thousands...Anti-Hindu pogroms in East Pakistan took place in
1947, 1949, 1951, 1952, 1954, 1956, 1964, and 1971.

...[Mujibur] Rahman, who was considered tolerant and secular, retained
the Enemy Property Act, and he refused to allow the repair of the Ramna
Kali temple in Dhaka city after its desecration and burning by the
Pakistan army. Rahman also gave the famous speech in the Chittagong Hills
in which he asked the hill tribal peoples to give up their identity and
become Bengalis.

...[After Rahman's assaination] minorities could no longer get govt or
semi-govtl jobs...eventhough Bangladesh's minorities are relatively
well educated..

Organized attacks on minorities and their temples, viharas, ashrams,
and churches also increased manyfold in the last half of 1980s, with
large scale attacks in 1987, 1989, and 1990. In 1989, over 400 temples
were destroyed or damaged. This wave reached its height with the destruction
or desecration of perhaps 80 % of Bangladesh's Hindu-Buddhist temples 
and the devastation of thousands of Hindu homes and businesses between
October 30 and November 1, 1990...

Minorities in Bangladesh:

Year		% of population
1941		29.3
1951		23.1
1961		19.6
1974		14.3
1981		13.3
----------------------------------------------------------------------
-Srinivas				budaraju@cae.wisc.edu