THIS is quite disconcerting that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Hindu nationalist government of India has expressed ‘concern’ about the arrest of Chinmoy Krishna Das, spokesperson of Sanatan Jagaran Mancha and a ‘former’ leader of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, or ISKCON, on specific charges of sedition. Moreover, the chief of the West Bengal BJP, Suvendu Adhikari, reportedly threatened Bangladesh the same day that the party would ‘block the Bangladesh-India border, if Chinmoy Das is not released.’ These are unwarranted interferences by Indian authorities with the internal affairs of Bangladesh and, that too, as the government of Bangladesh has already pointed out that day, on fabricated allegations, mostly propagated by a section of the communally oriented Indian media.
While ISKCON was banned in some countries on charges of terrorism, the Chinmoy-led Sanatan Jagaran Mancha has recently created troubles in society, in the name of upholding the interests of the minority community, palpably to destabilise the nascent government of Dr Muhammad Yunus, installed after the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s autocratic government in the face of a students-led popular mass uprising. That Chinmoy’s religious preaching has hardly anything to do with the welfare of the Hindu community of Bangladesh was amply proved when he kept completely silent over various kinds of repression of the Hindu community by Hasina’s autocratic regime over the past 15 years. To give a couple of examples, Chinmoy kept silent over the much-talked-about brutal murder of a politically innocent Hindu young man, Biswajit Das, by the Awami League goons in 2012, and the forcible ouster of chief justice SK Sinha by the League regime in 2017, because of the former’s refusal to entertain Hasina’s unlawful desires. Evidently, the interests of Chinmoy’s Sanatan Jagaran Mancha and those of the patriotic Sanatani Hindus in Bangladesh are not the same.
However, we at ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ· are aware that some Hindu citizens were exposed to troubles, some were arrested as well, after the ouster of the League regime, but we are also aware that most of them faced the troubles and arrests not because of their religious identity but, rather, their political identity, Awami League that is — the party that oppressed and harassed thousands of its opponents for years and finally conducted a massacre of the democratically oriented protesters in July–August. Like the Muslim leaders and activists of the autocratic Awami League, their Hindu counterparts were exposed to public wrath while both the government and the people stood by the politically innocent Hindus against any possible attacks by the criminals.
Under such circumstances, when the non-party interim government of Yunus is busy stabilising the post-mass uprising instability, this Chinmoy, and his Santan Jagaran Mancha, appeared on the scene with his palpably ill-intentioned communal issues, posing a threat to the traditional religious harmony in the Bangladesh society, forcing the government to take legal steps against him. Why should the Indian government be unhappy about that? Does the Indian Hindu nationalist government of the Bharatiya Janata Party want the post-Hasina Bangladesh to be exposed to communal disharmony, pushing the Hindu minorities into trouble in the Muslim majority Bangladesh? While Indian interference in Bangladesh’s internal affairs is not welcome, the democratically oriented Bangladeshis must remain alert to any political design — local or foreign — of causing communal disharmony in the country.
