India Spreading ‘Fake News’ About Anti-Hindu Violence

SALEEM SAMAD

Bangladesh, like elsewhere, the Hindus are celebrating a weeklong Durga Puja. This is the second Durga Puja celebration since the Interim Government took charge of the helm of affairs of the nation.

Durga Puja is widely celebrated with great enthusiasm, color, festivity, and religious passion by Bangla-speaking Hindu diasporas and in several neighboring Indian states and among those living abroad.

The festival goes beyond religion to promote strength, unity, and community spirit. However, the Puja is not the mainstream religious festival of majoritarian Indians. They celebrate the Diwali festival of lights.

“There is no anti-Hindu violence,” Chief Adviser of the Interim Government Professor Muhammad Yunus said in an interview with veteran journalist Mehdi Hasan for Zeteo news media on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York last week.

Bangladesh’s majoritarian population is Sunni Muslims, and the religious minorities make up a small but diverse portion of the population of 9 per cent.

Hindus are the largest minority of 8 per cent, followed by Buddhists and Christians. The country has a tiny population of Shia Muslims, Ahmadiyya Muslims, Baha’is, animists, and atheists. Dismissing the claims as misinformation, Yunus told Hasan, “One of the specialities of India right now is fake news.”

Professor Yunus, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning economist, became the interim head of Bangladesh following the 2024 July Uprising known as Monsoon Revolution that led to the ouster of former fascist Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Mehdi sits down with Yunus in New York, a year after student protesters in his country ousted the repressive former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who ruled the 174 million people with an iron hand for more than 15 years.

The Nobel Laureate accuses India of spreading ‘fake news’ about anti-Hindu violence. Delhi often blames the Dhaka authorities for not doing enough to ensure protection and security for the Hindu population, especially the protection of Hindu temples, which Indian authorities claim are being sporadically attacked.

Dhaka avoids pointing fingers at Delhi for persecution, intimidation, and violence by Hindu extremists on Dalits (untouchable community), Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, Adivasis (ethnic communities), and others.

In November, around 30,000 Hindus in Bangladesh gathered to protest Yunus’ interim government, demanding protection and security, with Donald Trump even weighing in to call Bangladesh’s treatment of Hindus “barbaric”. “One of the specialities of India right now is fake news,” the Nobel laureate tells Zeteo, before declaiming, “There’s no anti-Hindu violence.”

Once, Murshidabad was the capital of Nawab Sirajuddowla (1756-1757), the last independent Nawab of Bengal. The young Muslim ruler met at the Battle of Plassey in 1757. He was defeated by the British East India Company. His defeat marked the end of the 500-year-long Muslim rule over Bengal.

In the same capital, a pavilion of a Durga Puja at Murshidabad, in a state adjacent to Bangladesh. The goddess Durga has other faces of Prof Yunus as a demon, Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and US President Donald Trump as evils. It did not surprise many, the organizers deliberately avoided Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu, blamed for atrocities in Gaza.

BBC Bangla was the first to post a visual story of the Puja celebration in Murshidabad, which enraged the netizens and social media users in Bangladesh and the Bangladeshi diasporas abroad. The tension and distrust between the two neighboring countries in South Asia have gone cold. No visible diplomatic initiatives from Dhaka and Delhi to warm up the relations.

In one incident, Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal urged the interim government in Dhaka to “live up to its responsibility” of protecting minorities without “inventing excuses.” MEA protested the claim of vandalism at Rabindranath Tagore’s ancestral home in Shahzadpur, north of Bangladesh.

Immediately Indian government, Indian political figures, and Hindutva–aligned social media handlers circulated about the vandalism at Rabindranath Tagore’s ancestral home. Bangladesh Chief Adviser’s Press Wing, after fact-check, debunked the Indian claim and posted a statement on its verified Facebook page.

Without a fact-check, India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) expressed concern over the incident. MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal claimed that the attack was portrayed as a “systematic Islamist attack” or “terrorist act” against a symbol of Hindu heritage.

MEA spokesperson in his rhetoric on Bangladesh often states: “The attack falls in the broad pattern of systematic attempts made by extremists to erase the symbols of tolerance and eviscerate the syncretic culture and the cultural legacy of Bangladesh.”

Several Indian media outlets have circulated videos claiming that Hindus are being targeted by ‘Islamist forces’ in Bangladesh. Analysts say that while there have been attacks on minorities during the political unrest, the media is exaggerating the scale, says Qatar-based international TV network Al Jazeera.

South Asia witnessed a continuation of religious violence, fake news, and political messaging that mainly targeted Muslim minorities. In India, there were mob attacks, hate speeches by religious leaders, and forced deportations of Muslims to Bangladesh, wrote Mohammed Raihan in The Insighta, an analytical portal.

At the same time, some Indian media were alleged to spread false stories about events in Bangladesh, claiming attacks on Hindus, he wrote inThe Insighta. There is no hide and seek, India has huge discomfort and embarrassment about the political changeover in Bangladesh that took place on 5th August.

Developing events suggest that India considers the changeover as its ‘political defeat in Bangladesh’ and unleashing vengeful plots in hegemonic arrogance to destabilize the country to put back the government of its choice in power, writes Mohammad Abdur Razzak in a secular newspaper, The New Age, published from Dhaka.

Playing the Hindu card, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a message on his X (Twitter) handle, urged the chief adviser to Bangladesh’s interim government few days after Yunus was sworn in August last year to “ensure the safety and protection of the Hindus and all other minorities in Bangladesh”.

According to Indian media outlet The Wire published a short documentary titled “Being Hindu in Bangladesh is Not a Black and White Story,” which tells the personal story of Deepak Kumar Goswami, a well-known actor from Bangladesh who is a Hindu. He talks about what it’s really like to live as a Hindu in a Muslim majority country.

Deepak shows that life in Bangladesh for Hindus isn’t just good or bad – it’s more complex than what some Indian media shows. In the documentary, Deepak criticizes the Indian media for spreading propaganda after Hasina fled to India, questioning whether it truly supports Hindus or serves Hasina’s interests.

He rejects the portrayal of the July 2024 uprising as an Islamist movement, pointing out that Hindus, including himself, also opposed Hasina—a fact ignored by the Indian media.

Another bone of contention is the recent anti-immigrant crackdown in India. The crackdown ensued after the Pahalgam massacre by Islamic militants’ attack on tourists in Indian administered Kashmir.

Hundreds of Muslim migrants are forced into Bangladesh's porous borders. Many were found to be Indian citizens. Their crime, they speak Bangla and, most importantly, Muslims are eligible to the deported.

Indian ‘Godi Media’, within a few days after the fall of Hasina, quoting “reliable sources” inside Bangladesh, claimed a military coup in the country and Prof Yunus’ government is a façade.

When the Godi Media found the conspiracy theory of a military coup narrative is not credible, they quickly changed their claim that the Yunus government is governed by the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami.

Yunus addressed a group of researchers and academicians in New York last week. He flagged a piece of fake news claiming that the Gen Z (youths) who brought about change in Bangladesh are Taliban. “They even said I’m a Taliban too. I don’t have a beard. I just left it at home,” he laughed.

The Nobel laureate is a staunch secularist. The Grameen Bank, which he founded, has beneficiaries of 10.75 million (August 2025), with 97% of them being rural women. He has brought about the empowerment of women and supported them from sinking into poverty.

The person who has worked with millions of women over several decades and even got the rural women in the Grameen Bank as board members, is regularly slammed by the Indian media as being backed by the Islamists, Mullahs, and Muslim radicals. It is indeed a pity, remarked political historian and researcher Mohiuddin Ahmad.

First published in Stratheia Policy Journal, Islamabad, Pakistan

Saleem Samad is an independent journalist based in Bangladesh and a media rights defender with Reporters Without Borders. He is the recipient of the Ashoka Fellowship and the Hellman-Hammett Award. He could be reached at <saleem.samad.1971@gmail.com>; Twitter (X): @saleemsamad

“Doctor Of The Poor” Gave New Hope To Bangladesh

SALEEM SAMAD

My mindset was first awakened after reading the cover story Dr Zafarullah Chowdhury (popularly known as Zafar Bhai) and his dream hospital Gonoshastya Kendra in a defunct weekly Bichitra on 25 January 1974.

Later, on the first-page news photo in a defunct Dainik Bangla newspaper, dozens of women health workers of Gonoshastya Kendra (People’s Health Centre) from the outskirts of Dhaka, riding bicycles arrived at Central Martyrs Memorial in Dhaka to pay homage to the language martyrs on 21 February 1974.

I along with Nadira Majumder, correspondent of weekly Robbar and myself (The New Nation) regularly visited Gonoshastya Kendra in 1981 to understand Dr Zafarullah Chowdhury’s concept of his war against “drug imperialism” of the multinational companies in Bangladesh and health for all campaign.

The international drug producers were profiteering from third-world countries, like Bangladesh in over-invoicing imports of raw materials, over-pricing packaging materials and producing unnecessary medicaments.

We were doing serious research and interviews of the national committee headed by Dr Nurul Islam, Zafarullah and others when they were drafting the crucial National Drug Policy and a voluminous document reasoning for banning thousands of drugs and listing a hundred or so essential drugs which have to be produced under the generic name.

The drug policy completely knocked down the business of the multinational companies in Bangladesh. The drug policy for the first time was pinned on the world map for a pro-people initiative.

Despite the drug policy being severely criticised by drug producers and hundreds of doctors, the military dictator General HM Ershad went ahead with full steam to implement the policy.

Several ambassadors spoke to the government to delay the implementation, citing unemployment of hundreds and thousands of employees and the shortage of drugs in the market which will jeopardise the healthcare system in the country.

Zafarullah was confident and so was the Health Ministry admitting that there will be a shortage of drugs in the market and could be replenished from the competitive world market.

Gonoshastya Kendra believed in alternative healthcare which needs to reach the rural areas, where people cannot afford it and most importantly where rural people have never seen a doctor in their life.

The centre produced thousands of barefoot doctors mostly women, recruited from rural areas. They went to remote inaccessible regions to provide healthcare to pregnant women, children and treatment of elderly people.

The concept of barefoot healthcare medics encouraged the government to launch a nationwide primary healthcare programme. The best example is the nationwide child immunisation drive by the government by trained paramedics. Child immunisation was much higher than the World Health Organisation (WHO) target of 75% and Bangladesh attained between 93% and 98% every year since 2005.

Well, fearing the doctors and physicians will be posted in rural areas, away from the luxuries of city hospitals, the Bangladesh Medical Association vehemently opposed the national primary healthcare programme.

The medical doctors’ apex body criticising the programme said it takes several years to train a doctor and a couple of years for nurses (including internship), therefore the mobilisation of medics will be a major challenge.

Zafarullah scoffed at their criticism and said it is possible to train barefoot medics within six months, who can perform delivery of infants including obstructive births.

The world’s largest NGO, BRAC partnered with Gonoshastya Kendra to train thousands of medics to cover millions of the population in villages.

The drug policy buoyed the massive growth of home-grown medicament entrepreneurs who are presently producing drugs in Bangladesh and exporting to more than 150 countries worth US$163.83 million (2021-22).

No other medical colleges or para-medic training institutions in Bangladesh have compulsory field (rural) training experience, except for those under Gonoshastya Trust.

The 82-year-old doctor of the poor had the vision to reach the rural poor to ensure that the global ‘Health For All’ campaign was meaningful.

When the health message of smoking-related diseases was not known to many, his institution was a pioneer to announce job opportunities and even for students in medical college and para-medics, with a strict note in red letters that only non-smokers should apply.

The patient’s suffering, agony and pain caused by smoking-related disease is widespread. The government’s ban on smoking in public has not been able to deter people from smoking, ignoring the harms of nicotine and second-hand smoke.

Well, besides a series of successes, he has had a few failures in his life. He attempted to bring about a change in politicking and government, which he miserably failed. In 1981, he wanted to form a coalition of the left-leaning, muktijuddhas (liberation war veterans) and mainstream Awami League to support his candidate, a liberation war hero General MAG Osmany for the president.

The plan was scuttled and a major setback in the presidential campaign when Awami League nominated constitutional author Dr Kamal Hossain as their candidate for the election against Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) candidate Justice Abdus Sattar who obviously won with a wide margin.

Zafarullah did not have any properties or business in his or his family’s name anywhere. All the institutions and establishments are under Gonoshastya Trust. He left behind the entire country to mourn his death but left behind his legacy of pro-people healthcare institutions.

First published in The News Times on April 13, 2023

Saleem Samad is an award-winning independent journalist, media rights defender, recipient of Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. He could be reached at <saleemsamad@hotmail.com>; Twitter @saleemsamad

Why Taliban's Are Afraid Of Purple?

SALEEM SAMAD

The radicalised Taliban after recapturing Afghanistan in August 2021, the regime has promulgated a series of misogynist decrees which targeted women only.

Women are barred from higher education, jobs and business. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan issued nearly 20 decrees against women during the last one and a half years inviting global outcry. The

International Women’s Day on 8 March is observed worldwide, but Afghanistan is the world’s most repressive country for women and girls, deprived of their basic rights, said the United Nations.

Despite the dark clouds over Afghanistan, there is two good news on an international day.

First, Afghan broadcaster Tolo News aired an all-female panel in its studio with an audience of women to mark International Women’s Day, a rare broadcast since the Taliban took over the vibrant country, reports BBC.

Second, despite the strict enforcement of protests, the women held a protest in Kabul on International Women’s Day, calling for women’s access to education and work. The protestors called for the removal of blanket restrictions on women in Afghanistan.

Since 1908 International Women’s Day’s thematic colour purple stands for dignity and justice, green for hope, and white for purity. Purple is the colour of women’s empowerment and gender equality, which the Taliban hates to listen to.

Tolo News to mark the auspicious day held a discussion session. The panel of three women and one female moderator with surgical masks covering their faces discussed the topic of the position of women in Islam. Taliban is not prepared to hear a sermon on Islam from a woman.

International media rights defender Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is aghast that the Taliban has continued to erase women journalists from the media landscape in Afghanistan.

In less than two years. Half of the 526 media outlets that existed until the summer of 2021 have had to close and, of the 2,300 women journalists since the Taliban takeover in August 2021, fewer than 200 are still working. Almost all of the women journalists (90%) have had to leave their jobs and some have fled the country, although exactly how many have managed to flee is not known.

Those still working must accept conditions that are becoming more and more draconian if not impossible. The Taliban Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Repression of Vice has also imposed a strict dress code. When women journalists are on camera, they must be covered from head to toe and only their eyes may be seen.

The female protestors issued a statement saying the current challenges against women should not be forgotten.

“It is March 8 but women in Afghanistan have no right to celebrate this day. We are the women who are imprisoned in the country. The restrictions are worsened day-by-day,” said Jolia Parsa, a member of Junbish Itlaf Khodjosh Zanan.

The protesters appealed to the international community to pay attention to the situation of women in Afghanistan.

“Today, the gates of gyms, schools, universities and parks have been closed for women,” said a member of Junbish Itlaf Khodjosh Zanan.

The UN Secretary-General António Guterres laments that women and girls “are erased from public life” in Afghanistan.

On the other hand, hopes are dashed as universities reopen after a winter vacation, but it’s another painful reminder to young women of how their world is shrinking.

Due to growing restrictions as well as the country’s severe economic crisis, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said female employment had fallen 25 per cent last year since mid-2021. It added that more women were turning to self-employed work such as tailoring at home.

The United Nations Mission to Afghanistan called on the Taliban to reverse restrictions on the rights of girls and women, calling them “distressing.”

The Taliban have said the authorities have set up a committee to examine perceived issues to work towards re-opening girls’ schools. But there is no light at the end of the tunnel.

The Islamic Emirate has repeatedly said that they are committed to the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan and that their rights are preserved within strict Islamic Sharia laws.

First published in The News Times, Dhaka, Bangladesh on 9 March 2023

Saleem Samad, is an award-winning independent journalist, media rights defender, recipient of Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. He could be reached at <saleemsamad@hotmail.com>; Twitter @saleemsamad

The Female Factor: Success in a Land Known for Disasters

Photo: Munem Wasif for the International Herald Tribune: Nur Jahan cared for a relative at a hospital. Ms. Jahan worked on a road maintenance crew for two years and hopes to one day run for a local government position.

BETTINA WASSENER

SOMESHPUR, Bangladesh — To many outsiders, Bangladesh is best known for its poverty and the natural disasters that hit it with depressing regularity.

When it comes to the position of women, however, this country has made progress that would be unthinkable in many other Muslim societies. Bangladeshi women have served in U.N. peacekeeping missions. There are women ambassadors, doctors, engineers and pilots. Two powerful women — the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, and her political rival, Khaleda Zia — have been alternating at the country’s helm for years. The proportion of parliamentary seats held by women is 19.7 percent, not much lower than the 22.3 percent in the British House of Commons.

“This is a country where women are active in every field,” Dipu Moni, the minister of foreign affairs, said at her office in Dhaka, the capital. Ms. Moni, the daughter of a prominent politician and a Western-educated lawyer and physician, has campaigned for years for women’s rights and improved health provisions in the country.

Such efforts by successive governments and development organizations have led to major improvements in the lives of women across the country, with expanded access to health care and basic education in rural and urban areas. Decades of microlending and, more recently, the burgeoning garment sector have underpinned the progress by turning millions of women into breadwinners for their families.

Nur Jahan, who lives in Someshpur, a ramshackle village of about 1,000 people four hours from Dhaka, illustrates how tough life remains for many Bangladeshi women, but also how many women’s lives are transforming.

Ms. Jahan’s husband abandoned her, penniless and in rags, on the main square of Someshpur when she was pregnant with her second child about 10 years ago. A compact and vivacious woman who is about 26 years old — no one keeps exact records — Ms. Jahan spent years doing odd jobs for other households to keep herself and her children above water. In a country that ranks as one of the poorest in the world, she was about as low as it is possible to get.

Then, two years ago, luck finally arrived, in the form of a development project that arranged for women who had been widowed or left by their husbands to get jobs maintaining roads in the vicinity.

The project, funded by the European Union and the U.N. Development Program, and implemented with the assistance of local governments, helped about 24,400 women like Ms. Jahan across Bangladesh.

For two years, they cleared shrubs and smoothed surfaces. They were paid 100 taka, or about $1.20, a day. But the savings they accumulated allowed many of them to buy a plot of land or a humble dwelling. In addition, they were taught to start tiny businesses that should allow them to make a living going forward.

Ms. Jahan now makes and sells compost, and trades dried fish. Others in the village sell wood, cookies or stationery for a slim profit. One became the proud owner of a hand loom. Instead of being destitute, these women are now merely poor. They can afford to eat and to send their children to school.

Ms. Jahan hopes to run for a local government position in a few years. Already, people come to her for help, she explained proudly. Recently, the relatives of a sick neighbor asked her to accompany them to the local clinic. Before, they would have hardly looked at her.

“When I think about my past, I want to cry,” she said. “When I think about life now, it is nothing but smiles.”

The roots of much of the development work were laid in the aftermath of the Bangladeshi war for independence from Pakistan in 1971. What started off as efforts to support the tens of thousands of women who were widowed during the fighting was later expanded into much wider efforts to alleviate poverty and facilitate women’s empowerment, said Ferdousi Sultana Begum, senior social development officer at the Asian Development Bank in Dhaka.

“There is still a long way to go, but there has been a lot of gradual progress, especially over the past two decades,” she said. Girls’ education, in particular, has been embraced widely, she added.

Statistics, too, underline the improvement in women’s lives. The number of births by teenage mothers, for example, plummeted to 78.9 per 1,000 in 2010 from 130.5 in 2000. That is still high by Western standards (the figure for the United States is 41.2), but it is below the 86.3 recorded in India.

Fewer babies die in Bangladesh than in India: 52 out of 1,000, compared with 66 in India and 87 in Pakistan.

And population growth has been stemmed. In the late 1980s, women in Bangladesh had on average 5.1 children. By 2009, the rate had been more than halved, to 2.3. India has a rate of 2.7, according to the World Bank.

The progress comes despite the toughest of backdrops. Over all, Bangladesh ranks 146th of 187 countries on an index measuring human development compiled by the U.N. Development Program — ahead of Myanmar and many African countries but behind Iraq. Nearly one-third of the population lives in poverty. Corruption, red tape and poor infrastructure mar everyday life. Access to clean water and electricity is scarce in the villages that dot the flat landscape of the country, whose 160 million inhabitants squeeze into an area smaller than Florida and larger than Greece.

Conservative traditions are deeply enshrined in this country, where about 70 percent of the population lives in the countryside. There are frequent reports of domestic violence, often related to demands for dowry payments. And many women who have achieved top leadership positions owe their prominence in part to powerful male relatives.

But while women in many other Muslim nations are seeing their rights eroded by the rise of conservative Islamism, this is not the case in Bangladesh. Extremism is a fringe phenomenon, and women’s development projects encounter little religious opposition.

The country is predominantly Muslim, but moderate; Buddhist and Hindu traditions are widely respected, and there is a widespread acceptance of the concept that women can work outside the home.

Microlending, which took off in the 1980s, has allowed many women to start tiny businesses over the years.

More recently, millions of people have found work in the garment sector, which accounts for about three-quarters of exports from Bangladesh.

At the Mustafa Garments Industries factory in the southeastern port city of Chittagong, hundreds of women, most in their 20s and early 30s, were recently bent over sewing machines and cutting tables, making shorts for customers in the United States and Europe.

The factory employs about 500 people — 95 percent of them women — who earn between 4,500 and 5,000 taka a month, according to Kallol Majumder, the general manager. That is about $2 a day — but even that gives them breadwinner status. And it underlines the fact that women in Bangladesh are not simply recipients of Western charity, but active economic agents in their own right.

“Bangladesh is undergoing a structural change in the economy, from agricultural to manufacturing,” said Stefan Priesner, the U.N. Development Program country director in Dhaka. “Women have played a huge role in this.”

On the education front, men still outnumber women in universities. But the number of women enrolling has risen steadily. In an attempt to help redress the balance, a women-only university was set up in Chittagong in 2008.

Kamal Ahmad, a Bangladeshi who worked for many years in development organizations and as a lawyer in the United States and Britain, spent years raising donations and lobbying the government for land for the university. The goal for the Asian University for Women, he said, is to create women leaders capable of bringing about change across Asia.

The first class is expected to graduate next year, and many of the students already have plans to set up businesses, campaign groups, banks or schools in their 12 respective home countries.

“I have a real responsibility to help social progress,” said Moumita Basak, a bubbly 21-year-old from Chittagong. Her goal: to become a writer, and set up organizations aimed at promoting social causes.

First published in The New York Times, New York, USA, April 9, 2012