The War on West Bengal’s Hindus

Dr. Richard L. Benkin

Hindu Existence recently published an article about an anti-Hindu pogrom in Medinipur Town, West

Bengal, India. Over 200 Muslims destroyed an idol of the goddess Kali earlier this month and engaged in

other acts of hooliganism against individual Hindus and Hinduism. Instead of protecting its Hindu

citizens, the West Bengal police and government attacked them and arrested several of the victims.

While Hindu Existence published this piece of news, the major media, Indian and foreign, were silent; as

they have been time and again about cases of anti-Hindu persecution. Smaller but potential outlet

likeHindu Existence and my web site, InterfaithStrength, are almost alone in their efforts to educate

people about the ongoing brutalization of Hindus in Bangladesh and even in the world’s largest Hindu

nation, India. Are my resources and those of Hindu Existence and itseditor, UpanandaBrahmachari,

greater than those of CNN, The New York Times, The Times of India, Reuters, AP, and others? Obviously

not. Yet, with our limited resources, we will continue to unearth incidents like this even while

recognized journalists do not.

Clearly, the anti-Hindu pogrom in Medinipur Town was an isolated incident. It would be tragic enough if

it was. But it is not isolated, not a function of individuals, or one of individual officials. And it will get no

response from either the West Bengal government or other authorities.

Yes, jihad has come to India, and the world better wake up to that fact, and soon.

Here is something else the major media studiously ignored. In February, AnimitraChakraborty, one

Rights Activist of Bengal linked with Hindu Samhati and I visited several places under the Diamond

Harbour police station in West Bengal including the home of 18-year-old “Bharati.” For her security, we

are using a pseudonym that reflects this young woman’s fidelity to her people. Bharati lives with her

disabled brother and aged parents in one of her village’s last Hindu homes. Local Muslims have been

buying up or seizing Hindu lands. They harass, abuse, or otherwise intimidate those who will not

cooperate into fleeing the area. One of their favorite methods is to assault Hindu women and girls and

make them fearful of moving about in their own communities. About “six or seven months” before we

arrived, they tried to rape Bharati. It was not the first time local Muslims assaulted this petite young

woman with a childlike laugh, but it was the final straw. She and her disabled brother went to the local

police for help and even traveled to Kolkata where they petitioned Chief Minister Momata Banerjee’s

personal assistant; but neither provided them with any effective help. Not to give up, they filed a civil

suit and secured an injunction; but the miscreants were able to ignore it because the police refused to

enforce it. Things got even worse, and the threats became more violent. Bharati’s abusers cut down

fruit trees on the property and dried up the pond where they raised fish in an attempt to starve them

out of their home; but they still stood tall and refused to drop their lawsuit or flee.

Seeing that the police would not stop them, the Muslim thugs grew even bolder and invaded the family

home. In November 2012, they tried to steal the legal papers and rape Bharati, who escaped only after

her aged mother’s screams started drawing attention. In December, they tried to abduct the young

woman from her home. Fortunately, she struggled and fought until others came and the invaders ran

off. After the November attack, Bharati and her brother went to the local administration, but it refused

to acknowledge any case except simple burglary. So, they again traveled to Kolkata. Police there did

accept a wider case but have taken no action on it. She again went to the local police after the

December home invasion, offering extensive evidence including eyewitnesses, but the police did not

want any. She soon heard back from them; they made an arrest: Bharati herself! The accused men

summarily denied the allegations. The police accepted the Muslims’ denials without any investigation

and went after the young Hindu girl. “What more can they do,” she said to us, “besides kill me?”

Bharati’s case is unique only in the details and in the strength and courage she and her brother have

shown—strength and courage that has not found support from other Bengali Hindus outside of brave

individuals like PintuMahish, PratapHazra and some others linked to Hindu Samhati. Throughout the

Diamond Harbour area, we encountered Hindus who complained of attacks, intimidation, and Muslim

demands that they get out and do so quickly. Without exception, they told us that Hindu women and

girls are afraid to move about because of insulting catcalls, molestations, threats, and the knowledge of

what happened to other women. They fear being raped, abducted, or both with no protection from the

West Bengal police.

The story was the same when I visited the Deganga area in West Bengal two years earlier. After police

deployed to stop Muslim rioters, they merely took their violence further from the road, attacking

isolated Hindu settlements, destroying homes, and assaulting women. One woman told me how she

was spared only because she fled quickly and hid in the high grass away from any homes. Most of the

Hindus had left Deganga (2010) when I got there, and many of those who remained were seriously

thinking of leaving. They, too, told me that Hindu women who venture forth alone almost certainly

suffer abuse up to rape and abduction. In response to all of this, the police were searching high and low

to arrest one individual; but like the Diamond Harbour case, they were looking to arrest a Hindu who

tried to defend himself against the mob. And not far from Diamond Harbour, the repetition of

brutalization upon Hindus came down to the Hindus of Naliakhali (Canning sub-division) in the recent

past without a little hindrance from any of political parties of Bengal.

Nothing was done then about this creeping jihad and the West Bengal police’s complicity; and as a result

things have not improved for West Bengal Hindus. If anything, they have gotten worse. Many area

Hindus, requesting anonymity for fear of reprisals by Muslims or local officials, told us that they expect

an armed takeover by Muslims—some of them local, some recently arrived from Bangladesh. Muslims

parade openly with their extensive arms cache, threatening Hindu residents, and police do nothing

about it. They asked us for “arms” so they could protect themselves “because the police will not.” The

accompanying picture is of an individual whose fingers were blown off in what Palestinian terrorists call

a “work accident,” that is, when the bomb they are building explodes pre-maturely.

There are other remedies. The major reason that these injustices proceed is because no one raises a

hue and cry about them. There seems to be a total information blackout about the persecution of

Bengali Hindus outside of a very small group. We can change that. RashidaManjoo, United Nations

Special Rapporteur on violenceagainst women is holding meetings in Bangladesh, adjacent to West

Bengal, and has invited human rights activist RabindraGhosh to testify about violence against

Bangladeshi Hindu women and children. I have sent a letter offering to testify about the confirming

evidence I have. If others can keep up the pressure not to cover up atrocities against Bengali Hindus

with similarly aggressive offers of verified evidence, maintaining India’s secret jihad and Bangladesh’s

not so secret jihad will become unsustainable.

Indian Hindus must also recognize that it is they themselves—not politicians, Muslims, or leftists—who

are preventing a political solution to this problem. I would not presume to know Chief Minister

Banerjee’s thoughts, but if she is like politicians everywhere, she will respond first and foremost to

pressure at the poles. West Bengal Hindus, however, have not formed any sort of strong and unified

political organization. Thus, they seem to have no real alternative to her Trinamool Congress for

securing their safety. The Left Front was no better when they ran West Bengal; the Congress Party has

not opposed similar anti-Hindu actions elsewhere, and Hindus have made the BJP rather marginal in

West Bengal. If West Bengal Hindus want things to change, they have to seize the opportunity

themselves. Whether they turn to the BJP or try to work with Trinamool, they have to make it clear that

a party’s action (that is, not mere words) will be the single issue on which it can secure this very large

vote bank.

Politicians everywhere have various constituencies with countless issues. It is impossible for any official

to satisfy them all. A major determinant of who gets their attention is who demands it; and who can

make it hurt on Election Day if they do not. So, how does one go about such organizing? It is not for

me, a foreigner, to tell citizens of India how to exercise their rights in the world’s largest democracy. I

do, however, know that the key for West Bengal Hindus is to demand the rights and protection that is

theirs and show West Bengal leaders at the poles the consequences of ignoring a large and organized

vote bank.

Demographer BimalPramanik has documented how these changes, coupled with illegal immigration

from Bangladesh, has changed the demographic balance in some areas. Between 1951 and 2001, for

instance, West Bengal’s Hindu population tripled while Muslims quadrupled. He also noted that the

disparity between Muslim and Hindu growth rate was especially pronounced in the West Bengal districts

bordering Bangladesh. He noted that “this is a religio-cultural process taking place in a geographical

space considered to be strategically important…. At least three factors, facilitating the process of

Islamisation, are...a secular political environment… the appeasement of aliens for the purpose of

garnering votes [and] a weak, undefined and unorganized secular frame.”

West Bengal’s Hindus have a shrinking window of opportunity to act as a powerful vote bank. With

national elections less than a year away, this is their opportunity to become significant to the politicians

or continue to be dismissible and dismissed. If they do not act, West Bengal Hindus will find themselves

in the minority in more areas of the state, and the political option will be off the table.

What will happen then?