Several days ago, an opposition leader in Bangladesh had termed Hindu holy scriptures as “pornographic”, whereas the government did not take any action against him for such extremely deplorable remarks.
A doctored photo has been repeatedly shared by Islamists in Bangladesh on social media platforms, including Facebook that appears to show Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina receiving Hindu vermillion on her forehead, while the original photo was taken during her visit to India in 2012 and it does not show her taking part in the ritual. The claim was accompanied by two photos, one showing Hasina praying in a black hijab and the other appearing to show her receiving a traditional vermilion mark on her forehead.
Islamists in Bangladesh have altered the original photograph through photoshop, while the caption of the original AP photo reads: “Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina inspects a guard of honor in Agartala, in the northeastern Indian state of Tripura, Wednesday, January 11, 2012. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)”.
A similar photo of Hasina performing the Hindu ritual was circulated online in 2022 – to accuse her of being pro-Hindu and pro-India to secure her rule after Bangladesh’s government refused to condemn comments made by Nupur Sharma, the former spokesperson for India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the Prophet Mohammed in May 2022.
Following Nupur Sharma’s remarks, the French news agency AFP reported that several countries, including Qatar, Iran and Kuwait, described her remarks as “Islamophobic” and summoned their Indian ambassadors to lodge protests.
But despite rallies in Bangladesh demanding the government to lodge similar protests, information minister Hasan Mahmud said Nupur Sharma’s remarks were largely an external issue for Bangladesh and refused to raise the matter with India.
For years, Jamaat-e-Islami and its ideological ally Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) have been continuously branding Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and leaders of the ruling Awami League as “agents of Hindus and India” while in some of the statements Jamaat and BNP had accused Sheikh Hasina for placing Hindus in important positions in government offices, armed forces, law enforcement agencies, and judiciary. They even went further by stating, Sheikh Hasina was turning Bangladesh into a Hindu state or subservient “state” under India. Unfortunately, none of these dangerous remarks was properly countered by the ruling party or state machinery.
Meanwhile, since 2013, Hefazat-e-Islam (HeI) a pro-Caliphate group of madrassa teachers and students have been pushing forward their agenda of stopping the Sheikh Hasina government’s policy of empowerment of women, while they also have been demanding the deletion of texts from the national education curriculum that promotes Hindu religion. Leaders of HeI have also been demanding the introduction of a harsher blasphemy law in Bangladesh with provisions of capital punishment for critics of Islam and jihad.
Sitting in London, Tarique Rahman, acting chairman of BNP and a convicted fugitive with deeper connections with Pakistani spy agency Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) has been issuing video statements (copying the patterns of Al Qaeda kingpins) calling upon his party activists to wage jihad against Sheikh Hasina and ruling Awami League and embrace martyrdom by sacrificing lives to “salvage” Bangladesh from the grips of “pro-India” elements.
He has been spending millions of dollars towards lobbyists in the United States and the United Kingdom with the agenda of buying the sympathy and support of the Western leaders and using such sympathy in ousting the Awami League government from power through unconstitutional means. Islamists want to return to power through the backdoor with the active support from the Biden administration as well as those Islamist-inclined Western leaders, while Pakistani ISI wants to turn Bangladesh into a Hindu-hating nation.
