DHAKA, Bangladesh — Schoolteacher Supriya Sarker is glad to have fun Bangladesh’s largest Hindu pageant of Durga Puja however feels the festivities could be extra jubilant with out the concern and violence that overshadow this 12 months’s occasion.
The weeklong celebration that ends within the Muslim-majority Bangladesh on Sunday with immersions of the Hindu Goddess has strained the Hindu group with studies of vandalism, violence and intimidation in elements of Bangladesh, which has seen harassment and assaults on Hindus, who make up about 8% of the nation’s practically 170 million individuals, or greater than 13 million individuals.
Regardless of pledges to maintain the pageant secure, this 12 months’s model was subdued coming following the ousting of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and assaults on minority teams, particularly Hindus. Hasina left the nation for India due to a mass rebellion spearheaded by a student-led anti-government motion.
Bangladesh’s present interim chief, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, has confronted severe challenges in sustaining regulation and order since he took over in August, and Durga Puja was seen as an acid take a look at of his administration’s means to guard minorities.
Minority communities have blamed the Yunus-led authorities for failing to adequately shield them, and studies recommend that hardline Islamists have gotten more and more politically influential and visual for the reason that fall of Hasina.
“It’s a difficult time for us Hindus,” mentioned Sarker, the schoolteacher, as she joined the Kumari Puja in Dhaka’s Uttara district. “We confronted issues previously as properly, however we didn’t see such escalation earlier. That is our nation, we wish to dwell right here peacefully with our Muslim brothers and sisters and others with out discrimination or intimidation.”
Her concern comes because the nation’s main minority rights group, the Bangladesh Hindu, Buddhist, Christian Unity Council, mentioned that between Aug. 4 and 20, a complete of two,010 incidents of communal violence focusing on minorities, largely Hindus, have been reported. The group’s leaders mentioned a minimum of 9 individuals belonging to minority teams have been killed, 4 ladies have been raped, and houses, companies and temples have been torched or vandalized.
In current weeks, new incidents of vandalism occurred in elements of Bangladesh because the Hindu group ready their temples for Durga Puja. In Dhaka’s Uttara neighborhood, Hindus have been pressured to carry the pageant in a smaller venue after a procession by Muslims known as on authorities to not permit them to put in idols in an open discipline.
Jayanta Kumar Dev, president of Sarbajanin Puja Committee, mentioned they’ve studies of assaults on temples and idols earlier than this 12 months’s pageant formally started on Oct. 9.
Bangladesh’s House Affairs Adviser Mohammad Jahangir Alam Chowdhury, and incumbent Military Chief Gen. Waker-Uz-Zaman, had promised to supply satisfactory safety, Dev mentioned.
“They instructed us there’s nothing to be frightened about. We turned content material and puja is happening throughout the nation,” he mentioned.
However the state of affairs stays tense.
This week, police arrested a minimum of two members of an Islamic cultural group within the southeastern metropolis of Chattogram after six of its members sang Islamic revolutionary songs inviting Hindus to affix an Islamic motion after they took the stage of a temple on Thursday.
The video of the singing turned viral in social media, drawing criticism because the authorities promised to arrest and punish these concerned. Media studies mentioned they belongs to the coed wing of the nation’s largest Islamist get together – Jamaat-e-Islami- however the get together denied the allegation.
On Friday evening, a firebomb was thrown on the Hindu Goddess at a temple in Dhaka’s Tantibazar space, creating panic among the many devotees who thronged the temple. Nobody was harm, police mentioned. Media studies mentioned, quoting volunteers, that a minimum of 5 individuals have been injured after being stabbed by muggers.
Safety was heightened after Friday evening’s incident on the temple, authorities mentioned.
Ankita Bhowmick, a resident of Dhaka, mentioned she was pleased with the safety supplied by the federal government, however such a state of affairs is suffocating.
“We cannot want any safety if we’ve the mentality and tendency that every particular person can apply their faith in accordance with their customs. There shall be no concern. There shall be no want for comparability between final 12 months’s safety association and this 12 months’s measures,” she mentioned at Dhaka’s Dhakeswari temple.
House Affairs Adviser Chowdhury mentioned a particular safety measures would stay in place till Sunday when the pageant ends.
He mentioned aside from police and the standard safety companies, the army, navy and air power have additionally been deployed to make sure regulation and order past the Hindu pageant.
Arpita Barman, a college scholar, was optimistic.
“Individuals who thronged listed below are jubilant. Sooner or later we additionally wish to see, extra individuals come right here and have fun puja. I really feel completely satisfied to see individuals regardless of their religions right here. We wish to see such scenes sooner or later and a harmonious Bangladesh,” she mentioned.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25673333/2172439499.jpg?w=150&resize=150,150&ssl=1 "Boeing is reducing 10 % of its workforce")
