“Global Silence, Local Strife: The continuous struggle of Bangladesh’s Hindu minority”, Swarajyamag, November 17, 2023:

“Compared to the tensions on the western and northern borders, India has had a peaceful co-existence with the Muslim-majority Bangladesh in the east. That does not mean Dhaka has been an abode of peace, but only that Delhi has found it manageable. Naturally, Bangladesh was always considered ‘friendly’. And no one made a bigger sacrifice for this ‘friendship’ than Hindus and other Indic religious minorities, who were under constant attack in this part of the world since the Partition in 1947.

The creation of Bangladesh, marked by India’s military intervention, in 1971 failed to shift the course. The famed Indira-Mujib agreement of 1972 didn’t have a provision for the return of Hindus, who fled East Pakistan until 1970, to survive persecution. Independent Bangladesh took four decades to repeal the Enemy Property Act (later renamed as Vested Properties Act), which was an official tool to chase away Hindus and rob their property, since Pakistani rule. 

In 2011, the incumbent Shiekh Hasina-led Awami League government enacted the Vested Properties Return (Amendment) Act to return the vested properties. But that was too little, too late. There have not been many instances of actual return of properties since. In 2018, Professor Abdul Barakat of Dhaka University famously projected that at the current rate of migration, there will be no Hindus left in Bangladesh in 30 years. Barakat arrived at his estimates from years of research in agricultural land holding…..”

Read the full article at Swarajyamag.com