In a recent public speech, Shabab Ahmed, the senior political leader of Sheikh Hasina’s party Awami League, called the Bangladeshi Hindus “inferior insects”. The Hindu activist Voice of Bangladesh shared a visual of this derogatory speech on Twitter (archived tweet). Ahmed attacks Hindu MP Pankaj Debnath and states that “these inferior vermin like Pankaj Debnath have stayed back in Bangladesh.” He further incites his followers by saying that these people (Hindus) should be dealt with firmly.

To assume that these hateful statements were inspired by political rivalry will be misleading as both the politicians are from the same political party led by the ruling Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The hate showcased by Ahmed is purely religious and exposes the bigotry that has seeped into the ruling party.

The Bangladesh Awami League (BAL) had enjoyed the status of being relatively secular as compared to Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party. BAL has been in power since 2009. As opposed to the party’s secular image, there has always been a strong current of anti-Hindu sentiment in both Awami League and the Islamic nation.

Politically connected, highly influential people have been regularly targeting the Hindu Bengalis. The cases of Land Jihad by prominent political and religious leaders have also become rampant. Hindu teachers have become the latest targets of Islamist violence and are regularly framed in bogus cases of blasphemy. Sheikh Hasina has not only stayed silent about the attacks on the Hindus but has also empowered the Islamists through her warnings to Bharat.

During the deadly anti-Hindu riots of October 2021, instead of curbing the violence, Hasina issued a threatening statement toward Bharat. She warned that if the Hindus in Bharat retaliated against the riots in Bangladesh, Islamists in Bangladesh would attack the Hindus more severely. Her foreign minister trivialized the mass violence which claimed multiple lives and damaged hundreds of Hindus temples, home and shops, and termed it a ‘conspiracy to malign Bangladesh’s government’.

Sheikh Hasina is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangladesh who was assassinated in 1975 during an Army coup. Today, media in both Bangladesh and India sings praises of Mujib, widely known as Bangabandhu aka friend of Bengal, as a ‘secular’ Bengali hero. But unfortunately, history tells a different story. Mujib had worked for the Pakistan cause before partition, and worked directly under Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, the ‘butcher of Bengal’ who engineered the killings, maiming, rape and molestation of tens of thousands of Hindus in Calcutta in 1946 after Jinnah called for Direct Action Day. After Bangladesh was formed with Bharat’s help, Mujib denied recognition to indigenous minorities and his Army continued human rights violations against them. Instead of rebuilding the 14th century Ramna Kali Badi temple that had been destroyed by the Pakistani Army, Mujib confiscated that land and later gave it away to the Dhaka club.

So, in a way, Hasina is only carrying forward the same ungrateful, anti-Hindu legacy of her father. Her party leaders abusing Hindus, calling them ‘inferior insects’, is just a manifestation of what the so-called center-left political party stands for. That Awami League fares slightly better than the brazenly anti-Hindu Jamaat-BNP opposition, offers cold comfort at best to persecuted Bangladeshi Hindus undergoing a gradual genocide.