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CIHS – Centre for Integrated and Holistic Studies > Articles by: CIHS
Hindus Human Rights
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Bangladesh: Violence against Hindus, Buddhist & Other Minorities

The terrible story of the Hindus in Bangladesh began with the 1947 genocide. It reached a pinnacle during the Bangladesh Liberation War when about three million Hindus had been slaughtered in one of the century’s largest genocides, which continues to this day. Over the years, thousands of Hindu shops have been plundered. Hundreds of Hindu business people have been killed. Acres of land belonging to Hindus have been forcefully occupied. Innumerable Hindu temples have been vandalised. Targeted killings of men, abduction of girls and women with intent to rape and murder have been principal tactics of fundamental Islamists. These fundamentalists primarily belong to the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, its student wings and other radical Islamists, Jihadi groups, political parties and associations active in the region. As a result, thousands of Hindu families have been forced to flee Bangladesh. Since decades, Islamic indoctrination and radicalisation in Bangladesh have been a worry for minorities. Several Hindu families have been falsely accused of insulting Islam. Such accusations have often tragically resulted in looting and plundering of Hindu shops and households.  Two notable examples of jihadi violence based on made-up blasphemy accusations were Brahmanbaria (2016) and Thakurpara (2017). Moreover, the law-and-order agencies of the country have repeatedly failed to take requisite measures to bring peace and stability, indicating their appeasement of the majority Islamic community. Over the last seventy years, the number of Hindus in Bangladesh has been on decline. Figure 1 depicts Bangladeshi population demography trends in percentage based on the Ministry of Planning data and the Bureau of Statistics, Government of Bangladesh. As per data from the Bangladesh Jatiya Hindu Mohajote’s annual report released in 2020, the following figures (2, 3, 4) detail the atrocities against Hindus in the country. Similarly, recent anti-Hindu violence in Bangladesh by Islamic mobs (primarily members of Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh) started on Wednesday, October 13, 2021. It was just hours after falsified images of a copy of the Quran in the lap of Lord Hanuman’s idol at a Durga Puja pandal (makeshift Hindu celebratory place of worship) in Cumilla district were circulated over Internet. Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing (Islami Chhatra Shibir) members have reportedly committed the act. Subsequently, on the dreadful night of October 13, 2021, Muslim mobs stormed the pandal, accusing Hindus of blasphemy and setting off a chain of pre-planned attacks on Hindu pandals and temples across Bangladesh. Update*: On October 20, 2021, one thirty-five-year-old Iqbal Hossain, son of Nur Ahmed Alam from the Sujanagar area in Comilla, was identified as the individual who placed the Quran at the pandal. Bangladesh: Violence against Hindus Timeline Wednesday, October 13, 2021 Cumilla, Chittagong division of Bangladesh On the day of Maha Ashtami, a sacred day for Hindus, thirty-five-year-old Iqbal Hossain, entered the Nanuar Dighir Par Durga Mandir in Cumilla district of Bangladesh and placed a copy of the Quran in the lap of Hindu God Hanuman’s idol. As per local district officials, the individual took photos of the scene before fleeing.  The initial attacks commenced in the evening and were planned, orchestrated by local units of Jamaat-e-Islami and its student-wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir. Over four hundred (400) Jamaat-e-Islami Islamists attacked Hindu men, women and children, torched more than twenty Hindu houses, Durga Puja pandals, and vandalised temples around the area. Chittagong, Chittagong division In Chittagong, the iconic Bura Kali temple in Banshkhali district was attacked along with several other smaller temples. Cox’s Bazar, Chittagong division In Cox’s Bazar, a Puja pandal in Kachharaimura Sheelpara was attacked and Hindu were households vandalised in Mognama. Chandpur, Chittagong division In Chandpur, violent Islamist mob spread communal violence, attacked Puja pandals at Lakshmi Narayan Akhara temple in Hajiganj. Multiple deaths were reported. Lakshmipur, Chittagong division In Lakshmipur, a violent Islamist mob attacked two temples in Ramgati and Ramganj districts. Noakhali, Chittagong division   In Noakhali, a Puja pandal was vandalised by Jamaat-e-Islami mob late at night. Thursday, October 14, 2021 Cumilla, Chittagong division   Violence continued in Cumilla and other parts of Bangladesh. Puja pandals set up on the banks of Nanua Dighi (in Cumilla district) were vandalised, idols burnt and broken. As per reports from local news agencies, a total of nine (9) Puja pandals were razed to the ground. Ghazipur, Dhaka division   In Ghazipur, a group of Islamists armed with sticks vandalised idols at Kashimpur’s Radha Gobinda Temple. Paschim Para and Pal Para temples were also attacked the same night. Bandarban, Chittagong division   In Bandarban, there was a morning attack on peaceful Hindu devotees. Islamist mobs stormed the Central Hari Mandir in Bandarban’s Lama upazila, leading to violence and destruction of Hindu property. When the police intervened to save the Hindu devotees from the violent mob, around fifty police personnel were attacked and subsequently injured in the attack.  Khulna, Khulna division  At around 7:00 p.m. local time, Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and Bomb Disposal Unit (BDU) retrieved 18 crude bombs from main gate of Rupsa Maha Shashan, which contains a Hindu Kali temple. The role of Jamaat-e-Islami and its student-wing Islami Chhatra Shibir again resurfaced during investigations. Friday, October 15, 2021 Chittagong, Chittagong division   After the Juma prayers (Friday prayers) hundreds of Islamists marched out of the Shahi Jama Masjid and attacked Hindus at the Puja venue at Anderkilla. Soon after the incident, they dispersed from the site amidst inaction by the Bangladeshi police. Noakhali, Chittagong division   An innocent Hindu devotee was butchered in Noakhali’s Begumganj upazila after an Islamic mob attacked Hindu residences. According to ISKCON authorities, a 500-strong mob first vandalised a Durga Puja pandal adjacent to the temple before attacking the devotees in the ISKCON temple. Barisal, Barisal division   In Barisal, jihadi mobs vandalised three Hindu temples late in the night at Gournadi upazila. Saturday, October 16, 2021 Munshiganj, Dhaka division  In early hours of October 16, Islamic radicals vandalised six idols of Hindu gods and goddesses at a Kali temple in Sirajdikhan upazila, Munshiganj.  Feni, Chittagong division   Following an ‘Asr prayers’, an Islamist procession begins in front of the

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Human Rights
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Situation Analysis: Coal Capacities in India

Prachi Mishra / New Delhi India is the second largest producer of coal and the fifth largest in terms of coal deposits in the world. India’s coal profile comprises of domestic production of coal and import from other countries. Although, India has reserves that can last up to one hundred years, coal production is inadequate leading to high dependence and expenditure on import of coal. Several states, including, Kerala, Punjab, and Maharashtra have reported forced shutdown of their thermal power plants owing to localised shortage of coal. Reportedly, a shortage of coal was also conveyed by Delhi to the Central government. The governments of these states and the Union Territory have issued advisories to severe power outages if the coal shortages are not addressed by the Centre. Ever since the economy started recovering after the pandemic in 2020, there has been an increase in demand in electricity across the country. A press release by the Government of India stated four reasons for sudden drop in coal production and availability: The release also stated that coal companies in a few states, namely, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, UP, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, are faced with heavy dues and thus these states could witness coal shortage in the fiscal year 2021-22. Installed generation capacity  State governments which have reported shutdown of thermal power plants have attributing shortage of coal to power outages in their states. Drawing up from the current power crisis in China, such claims can be misleading for the general public. As per data from the Ministry of Power, nearly 61% power is sourced from thermal power plants which use fossil fuels as raw materials for power generation. These fossil fuels include coal, gas, diesel, and lignite. Fig.1. shows the share of coal in power generation in India. Fig.1. Power generation capacity in India. Source: Ministry of Power, India, August 2021. * Renewable sources are Hydro, Wind, and Solar energy Coal powered thermal plants account for nearly half of the total installed capacity for power generation in India, followed by new and renewable energy sources. Hence, a shortage of coal, as indicated by few states would not necessarily mean that there will be long, uninterrupted power outages as has been in the case of China. It is important to note here that Fig.1. represents the installed power generation capacity of different resources. The actual utilization of installed capacity varies depending on the availability of raw material and other environmental factors. Is production or shortage of coal a real threat to power availability? As per data from the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), the all India actual production and all India target production figures have been shown in Table 1. As of Oct 7th, 2021, the national production of power from thermal sources was met with a six percent deficit[4]. Table 1. Actuals vs Target production of electricity by different sources All India Target (Oct 7th) in MU Actuals (Oct 7th) in MU Surplus/Deficit Thermal 3,222.38 3,035.46 -6% Nuclear 124.41 138.78 12% Hydro 411.55 549.5 34% Renewable Energy Sources NA NA NA To address this deficit of the coal-fired power plants, a meeting was held under the aegis of the Ministry of Coal (comprising of representatives of Ministry of Power, CEA, Power System Operation Corporation, Ministry of Railways, and Coal India Limited) on Oct 9th, 2021, which affirmed that 2 – The global impact of increased coal prices and disrupted supply chains have led to coal shortages in many nations. However, attributing coal shortages to long power outages can be detrimental to economic growth of the country, industrial production, and recovery post-pandemic. India’s new and renewable energy sources have picked up massively in the last few years and it would be in best interest of states and the central government to mull over reducing coal dependency for power generation. (Prachi is a research consultant at Center for Integrated and Holistic Studies. Views expressed are author’s own.)

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Human Rights
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Kashmiri Community in Fear and Insecurity

Decades ago, when terrorism engulfed the valley, Kashmiri Hindus, an indigenous ethnic-religious group in Kashmir-now a minority, were forced to leave their ancestral home. The growing Islamic extremism transformed rapidly into terrorism. Much of the weapons and trained terrorists poured in by neighbouring Islamic republic of Pakistan. They, along with other Kashmiri Muslims sympathisers called for murder, loot, rape, and abductions of native Kashmiri Hindus. Left with no choice but to save themselves, over 0.4 million Kashmiri Hindus migrated to different parts of the country. In such adversity and betrayal, Makhan Lal Bindroo, a Kashmiri Hindu pharmacist in Srinagar, chose to stay back and serve his homeland Kashmir. On Tuesday, however, he was paid for his service and trust by The Resistance Front (TRF). Terrorists of the Resistance Front (TRF) shot and murdered Makhan Lal Bindroo. TRF is a Lashkar-e-Taiba front organisation (LeT). LeT an international terrorist group designated by the United States and United nations which is backed and supported Pakistan. The trigger? He was a Hindu, a reminder of Kashmir’s indigenous non-Islamic history that the Islamists desperately want to erase. Seemingly inspired by the recent cleansing of Hindus and Sikhs in Afghanistan. TRF has began a gory repetition of the 90s massacre of Hindus in the valley. In sixteen days, eleven civilians, a majority of whom belong to the Hindu minority communities have been butchered in the Valley of Kashmir by Pakistan backed Islamic terrorists. In the recent spree of killings. Terrorists targeted Hindus, Sikhs and government employed muslims. In addition, non-locals workers a d wagers from the rest of the country, who have built and sustained Kashmir crisis after crisis were targeted. Evidence suggests that these organised killings are planned and organised by Pakistan backed terrorist groups, following the footprint of the 1990s genocide of Kashmiri Hindus. The revival of Kashmiriyat- Kashmir’s distinct pluralism- after recent sustainable development in Kashmir, has been a sore in the sight of Pakistan-sponsored Islamic terrorists in Kashmir. The roots of this planning lead to Pakistan as is evident from the series of events that replicate the 90s genocide. The day TRF’s Pakistan-sponsored terrorists killed Bindroo, two others were also killed, a poor Dalit street food hawker, Virender Paswan who was killed within an hour of Bindroo’s shooting for being a harmless non-Kashmiri, and a Muslim resident that terrorists killed because of suspected links to security forces. All these people were killed for not adhering to the terrorist ideology against Hindus. In fact, it did not stop there. Three days later, terrorists murdered two educationists: Supinder Kour- the Kashmiri Sikh principal at a school in Srinagar and Deepak Chand- the Kashmiri Hindu teacher at the same school. The terrorists singled them out from the staff, ordered the Muslims to go out and shot those two. If this isn’t ethnic cleansing and genocide, then what is, ask the minority communities in Kashmir. The terrorist attacks and killings have launched the minority community in Kashmir into a hysteria of fear and insecurity. Many have fled their homes overnight, in a horrifying repeat of events of the late 1990s. After the last great exodus of the Kashmiri Hindus in 1999, there are barely any Hindus left in the valley, many of whom were those who returned after government’s efforts to resettle them back in their homes. However, clearly, nothing has changed for Hindus and other minorities of Kashmir and it likely won’t as long as Pakistan-sponsored terrorism continues in the valley. There is no doubt that a large part of this renewed genocide of Hindus in the valley also stems from the international aid that is given to Pakistan that it pumps back into its terrorist operations in Kashmir. While India scrambles to take control of security in Kashmir, international community can step up and support by immediately sanctioning Pakistan so that another irreversible genocide of a minority doesn’t happen on our watch.

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Disinformation Media Misinformation
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Unravelling NYT Journalistic Ethos

Prachi Mishra / New Delhi Introduction   Famed American daily, The New York Times (NYT), has been gripped in controversy once again. On July 3rd, 2021, the newspaper posted a job opening for their South Asia Correspondent to be located in New Delhi. The advertisement states, “India’s future now stands at a crossroads. Mr. Modi is advocating a self-sufficient, muscular nationalism centered on the country’s Hindu majority. That vision puts him at odds with the interfaith, multicultural goals of modern India’s founders. The government’s growing efforts to police online speech and media discourse have raised difficult questions about balancing issues of security and privacy with free speech.”   The Times, which claims to adhere to their mission of making the lives of their readers richer and fulfilling, and making the society just, has now stooped to a new low of launching ad hominem attacks on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The LinkedIn post which slams Modi for propelling Hindu nationalism and creating cultural, social, and religious divides, makes it clear that the newspaper has dropped all pretense of catering to audiences on a diverse political spectrum.   A quick analysis of hundred latest articles of the New York Times on India provide evidence about their propagandist content and intent. All of these articles are laden with anti-India, anti-Modi, and anti-Hindu themes.  It is time readers and followers of the much-cherished newspaper of independent America become cognizant of their toxic journalism.   The death of unbiased journalism   In an attempt to unravel NYT’s pretentious journalism, we analyzed its publications on India for the duration of June 1st, 2020 to June 30th, 2021. The total corpus of our study comprised of one hundred unique opinion pieces, videos, and articles. From our analysis, we could garner the following insights: Three themes are ubiquitous in the sample. These are anti-India, anti-Modi, and anti-Hindu. Whether the coverage is of India’s COVID-19 caseload surge, farmers’ protests, vaccination, state elections, judicial activism, or economy, one or more of themes are prevalent. The percentage split of these themes in our corpus can be found in Fig.1. Fig.1. Percentage split of themes found in the NYT corpus. Each item in the corpus has been counted only once for the analysis. Source: The New York Times; Centre for Integrated and Holistic Studies (CIHS), 2021. NYT’s smear campaign against India and Modi is based on just a handful issues. Interestingly, most of them are India’s internal matters that have been used to spread misinformation and manipulate global masses. These are depicted in Fig.2. Fig.2. Issues covered in the NYT corpus. Over the span of one year, these issues made up the dominant coverage focus. Source: The New York Times; Centre for Integrated and Holistic Studies (CIHS), 2021. The frequency of coverage of these issues greatly varies. Of the 47 publications in the year 2020, 72% of them were in the months of September to December, with dominant issues of farmers’ protests, COVID-19 caseload, suppression of freedom of expression, and anti-India propaganda. In 2021, a total of 53 publications were analyzed. In January 2021, 6 out of 9 articles were about farmers’ protests. The trend carried on for February as well, with more than 50% publications centered on Indian farm laws. When the second wave of COVID-19 struck India in April – May, nearly all publications were targeted towards generating anti-India sentiment against the leadership and the state to manage the crisis and inoculate its citizens. The Bengal elections also got a little airtime. For the month of June 2021, all of the publications were focused on the pandemic and its associated facets. There are many publications which falsely portray facts, like the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir has been noted as India controlled Kashmir, or the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 has been shown as an escape mechanism for Sikhs and Hindus in Afghanistan to avoid persecution, or protests by Hindus against Amazon web drama, Tandav, to be fascist Hindu agenda and killing of freedom of expression. A holistic and global view of the issues covered was found lacking. Just a handful authors, who are not subject matter experts have covered everything from India’s vaccination policy to Indo-China conflict, to the Ramajanmabhoomi verdict, to abrogation of Article 370. Indeed, a lot of throat clearing, propaganda, and misleading content has been observed. What can be said about NYT’s journalistic ethos?   NYT readers from global religious communities, including Hindus, have started to fear that India is not safe for Muslims. The NYT makes tall claims that religious persecution, unwarranted arrests, and fabricated narratives are the modus operandi of Modi and his government. There is no scope for unbiased journalism left in the NYT newsrooms. The US daily has successfully managed to leverage the unrecognized prevalent psychological biases of the common masses. This has not only afflicted their ability to pause, reflect, and think rationally, but has also created massive socio-cultural and ethno-religious divides among the readership. No wonder their mission and vision has no mention of honesty, the supreme-most of all journalistic ethos. Note: The advertisement has been taken down from LinkedIn by the news agency. (Prachi is a research consultant at CIHS, focusing on technology, national security, and society.) References Prasar Bharti News Service, “Anti-India sentiment: A Prerequisite at NYT?”, July 3, 2021, News on Air, https://newsonair.com/2021/07/03/anti-india-sentiment-a-pre-requisite-at-nyt/, accessed on July 3, 2021. Mission and Values of The New York Times, https://www.nytco.com/company/mission-and-values/, accessed on July 4, 2021. A Handbook of Values and Practices for the News and Editorial Departments, https://www.nytimes.com/editorial-standards/ethical-journalism.html#, accessed July 6, 2021.

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