by GARGA CHATTERJEE
Last month, in the Ramu area of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh (PRB), a largecrowd of the majority religionists destroyed 24 Buddhist and Hindu temples. The crowd included many functionaries of three major political groups –Awami League,BNP andJamaat-e-Islami. Thus, it was not simply a Rohingya response to the Buddhist-on-Muslim oppression in Burma.
When British India was partitioned amidst massive violence, the conception of mutually assured security – that minorities would be safe because attacks on them would risk retribution by their majority co-religionists elsewhere — was blown to smithereens. Macabre minority-less zones were created in vast stretches of the Punjab, Sindh and Rajputana. In Bengal, the story was different. Except events in Kolkata, Noakhali and Barisal, mass-blood letting was not as prominent as feature as it was in the west. But there was migration of epic proportions – with more Hindus moving into the Indian Union than Muslims moving to Pakistan. This, in part, indicated the difference in security and threat-perception of minorities. The migration of persecuted minorities from East to West Bengal still continues. East Bengal (as East Pakistan and later PRB ) has recorded a continuous decade on decade decrease in the percentage of its Hindu and Buddhist minority population since 1951 – a matter of no small shame.
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