Amidst the ongoing persecution of minorities in Bangladesh, social media platforms are rife with posts calling for the total annihilation of Hindus. Islamists on Facebook and X are sharing pictures bearing the religious slur TMD or Total Malaun Death, with Malaun being a dehumanising reference to Hindus.
More than 200,000 posts with hashtag ‘TMD’ have already been made in Bangladesh, the South East Asian nation that has been marred with anti-minority violence since the ouster of Awami League leader Sheikh Hasina in August this year.
A raft of Islamists in Bangladesh are calling for the destruction of Malaun, a derogatory slang equivalent to kaafir that Islamists often use to degrade non-Muslims and normalise atrocities against them.
One of the posts going viral on Facebook endorses TMD while insulting the Indian flag.
Not just Facebook, but Islamists from Bangladesh have also leveraged the microblogging platform X, formerly known as Twitter, to trend #TMD and rally extremists against the beleaguered Hindu minorities. As witnessed in the past, social media platforms have the power to mobilise like-minded people towards a common goal and have often been employed by religious bigots to push their ulterior motives.
#TMD or Total Malaun Death. Malaun is a religious slur for Hindus in Bangladesh. Insanely viral Facebook posts in the last 24 hours by Bangladeshi Facebook users. Some screenshots. pic.twitter.com/cfFxyJblvF
— Deep Halder (@deepscribble) November 30, 2024
Many on X have raised alarm over the deteriorating situation in Bangladesh, haplessly exhorting its interim Prime Minister Muhammad Yunus to take concrete action to stop attacks against Hindus and other minorities. But the government, propped up by Islamists themselves, has found little political will to act against its benefactors, turning a blind eye to the predicament of religious minorities as extremist mobs go on a rampage attacking commercial establishments, places of worship, and residential colonies.
But the explicit calling of the annihilation of Hindus in Bangladesh has heightened concerns, especially in the aftermath of the arrest of prominent Hindu leader and ISKCON monk Chinmoy Krishna Das earlier this week. Besides, the Bangladesh government, in its affidavit in the High Court, referred to ISKCON as a “religious fundamentalist group”—providing a grim picture of the plight of Hindus in the country. Das was arrested following his emergence as the champion of minority rights in a nation convulsed by Islamist supremacism.
Unabated persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh
Even as the interim government in Bangladesh has opened a front against ISKCON, the persecution of Hindus has been going on unabated since the ouster of Sheikh Hasina, a leader who had managed to leash the Islamist impulses of the extremists with her strict policing controls. But minorities, especially Hindus, have been at the receiving end of Islamic wrath, with their shops, temples, and houses attacked by fundamentalists who seek to purge the country of its non-Muslim minorities, following her departure and installation of Yunus at the Centre.
On Friday (22nd November), a frenzied Muslim mob attacked Hindus who were en route to the Mahiganj College ground in the Rangpur division of Bangladesh. The victims wanted to participate in a protest rally organised by the ‘Bangladesh Sammilit Sanatani Jagran Jot’, seeking the implementation of 8 demands by the Muhammad Yunus-led interim government. Similar attacks against Hindus have taken place in different parts of the country, underscoring threats faced by minorities in a country where Islamists appear to have established their stranglehold.
Muhammad Yunus-led government releases Al-Qaeda-inspired terror outfit Ansarullah Bangla Team chief Mufti Jashimuddin Rahmani
While Hindus have been an existential threat in Bangladesh, the Muhammad Yunus government had gone into an overdrive to appease the Islamists back home, chiefly with the release of the chief of the Al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist organisation Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) chief Mufti Jashimuddin Rahamani from jail, prioritising appeasement of extremist components over the safety of country’s minorities.
