India’s Hindu nationalist symbols and slogans are gaining popularity in Muslim-majority Bangladesh.
By Snigdhendu Bhattacharya
December 10, 2024
A demonstrator waves a flag depicting the “Angry Hanuman,” which is popular among Hindutva proponents in India and Bangladesh, during a protest for Hindu rights in Shahbag Square, Dhaka, Bangladesh, Aug. 10, 2024.Credit: Wikimedia Commons/ BadhonCR
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On August 9, the day after Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus took charge as the head of Bangladesh’s interim government, Hindus, a religious minority making up 8 percent of the Bangladeshi population, started hitting the streets in different parts of the country, including the Shahbag Square in the national capital, Dhaka.
They protested a series of attacks targeting Hindu homes, businesses, and places of worship during August 5-8, when the country descended into lawlessness following Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s resignation and hurried exit from the country.
Thousands of people gathered on the streets, responding to calls from Bangladesh’s traditional minority rights organizations like the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council and the Bangladesh Puja Udjapan Parishad.
While the sloganeering involved demanding safety and justice, there were a few who chanted “Jai Shree Ram” (Victory to Ram), a controversial slogan associated with India’s Hindu nationalist forces.
On August 11, the third day of the protests, a new platform, Bangladesh Hindu Jagran Manch (BHJM), was formed and Nihar Haldar, Jewel Aich Arko, Joy Rajbongshi, Rony Rajbangshi, and Pradip Kanti Dey emerged as its coordinators and key spokespersons. The Facebook group of the BHJM was created the same day.
The name Bangladesh Hindu Jagaran Manch is curiously similar to the Hindu Jagran Manch (HJM), an affiliate of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological-organizational parent of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Many HJM leaders have also served in the BJP.
The HJM was the first Indian organization to stage a protest against atrocities on Hindus in Bangladesh when they held a rally in Kolkata, the capital of India’s West Bengal state that shares its border with Bangladesh, on August 8, even before Yunus had been sworn in.
In Bangladesh, over the following weeks, the traditional minority rights organizations receded to the background, while the new platform, BHJM, rose to prominence.
Its key organizers were all involved with Bangladesh Hindu Chhatra Mahajote and Hindu Jubo Mahajote, the student and youth wing of Bangladesh Jayito Hindu Mahajote (BJHM), respectively. BJHM is a Hindu rights organization founded in Dhaka in 2006. It is to this organization that many in Bangladesh trace the roots of Hindutva in Bangladesh.
The RSS and its affiliates, including the BJP and the HJM, are together called the Sangh Parivar, or the RSS family. Their self-proclaimed ideology is Hindutva, which they describe as “Hindu cultural nationalism.”
Even though they call it nationalism, it is not limited to the current geographical borders of the Indian nation. The Sangh Parivar propagates the idea of restoring Akhand Bharat, or undivided India, an imagined entity stretching from Afghanistan to Bangladesh and Myanmar, from Nepal and Tibet to Sri Lanka.
Earlier, Hindutva influence was also reported to have reached Nepal.
In Bangladesh, the BJHM leaders have previously sparked controversy for canvasing for the Akhand Bharat proposition.
A Controversial India Trip
On August 12, a Facebook page with 34,000 followers, named Puja Parbon, called for entrusting Nihar Haldar and former ISKCON monk Chinmoy Das to lead Hindus. Over the next few weeks, Haldar and Das emerged among the most important organizers of the Hindu protests.
Haldar continued to play a leading role in the BHJM, which carried out a series of protests in different parts of the country, including September 8, September 13, September 20 and September 27. On September 27, BHJM announced a weeklong protest. Das, meanwhile, emerged as the key face in Chattogram, where the protests were being organized under the banner of Sammilito Sanatani Chhatra Samaj.
However, on September 30, the BHJM split, apparently over letting Hasina’s Awami League (AL) or the BJP influence the movement. Haldar’s India trip became the main issue. Haldar went to India in mid-September. He shared photos of his meetings with BJP leaders in Tripura and West Bengal from one of his Facebook accounts, which later got suspended.
Photos show Haldar with BJP Tripura Member of Parliament Pratima Bhowmik on September 21, former Tripura and Meghalaya governor Tathagata Roy in Kolkata on September 27, Bengal BJP’s cultural cell convenor Rudranil Ghosh on October 1, Bengal BJP legislator Asim Sarkar in Kolkata’s BJP party office on October 28, former BJP Bengal unit president Dilip Ghosh on November 7, and finally, again with Bhowmik on November 9 before reaching Bangladesh.
Notably, Dilip Ghosh led Hindu Jagran Manch’s activities in West Bengal before taking charge of the BJP.
In Dhaka, the BHJM issued a statement on October 1, saying that Haldar had been relieved of all responsibilities until he returned to the country and the organization would not be responsible for the comments he made during his stay abroad.
Soon, the other faction issued a statement, informing that the BHJM had been renamed Bangladesh Sanatan Jagran Mancha (BSJM). They announced Haldar as the coordinator and Chinmoy Das as the spokesperson.
Throughout October, both BHJM and BSJM organized protests, though separately, while the latter gained more prominence. On returning to Bangladesh in the second week of November, Haldar’s first public appearance was with Chinmoy Das, who had already emerged at the center of a political storm.
On November 17, the BSJM announced it was merging with Bangladesh Sammilito Sankhyalaghu Jote, an umbrella of various traditional Hindu organizations formed in September 2024, to launch the new platform called Bangladesh Sammilito Sanatani Jagaran Jote, with Das as the spokesperson
By that time, many in Bangladesh, including leaders of the student-led uprising, had started objecting to the protesters raising the Jai Shree Ram slogan. They highlighted the role of the slogan in inciting anti-Muslim attacks in India.
On November 22, Das strongly defended the practice, arguing that if Allah Hu Akbar was not a terror slogan despite having been chanted by terror groups, Jai Shree Ram could not be associated specifically with the BJP-RSS either.
The slogan, apart from being associated with the movement that led to the demolition of the Babri Masjid in northern India in 1992, has also been associated with many instances of harassing and assaulting people, especially Muslims but not limited to them. BJP critics in India have argued that Jai Siya Ram, Hey Ram, Ram Ram, Hare Krishna Hare Ram are among the traditional ways religious Hindus praise Ram, but that Jai Shree Ram is a political slogan.
Hindutva in Bangladesh
Political observers in Bangladesh trace the root of Hindutva ideology in Bangladesh to the foundation of the BJHM or Hindu Mahajote, in 2006. It is a section of their leaders who started using slogans like Jai Shree Ram. The next year, they started organizing, though on a small scale, the Ram Navami, a festival that India’s Hindu nationalists have used to flex muscles.
The Hindu Mahajote opened branches abroad and maintained organizational ties with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), another RSS affiliate.
In 2016, the BJHM split. They patched up but split again at the beginning of 2020, with one faction led by Prabhas Chandra Roy and Palash Kanti Dey re-expelling Secretary-General Gobinda Pramanik, and Pramanik expelling the other faction. The reason for the split was Pramanik’s political stance – he objected to the Hindu strategy of “unconditional support” to the AL.
Following the split, both the Roy-Dey faction and the Pramanik faction continued to claim Hindutva as their ideology, even though Pramanik tried to build rapport with Hasina’s opponents, chiefly the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI). The Roy-Dey faction said that having any association with forces opposed to the spirit of the 1971 Liberation War was unacceptable.
In 2021, Pramanik also emerged as a critic of India’s role, saying that despite taking up the issue of atrocities on Hindus in Bangladesh with several senior leaders of the RSS, BJP, and the VHP, the Modi government was going soft to keep Hasina’s government in good humor. The other faction remained pro-AL and, resultantly, pro-India.
In the protests after the fall of Hasina, student and youth activists of the Roy-Dey faction of the BJHM played the leading role among Hindu groups, including the formation of the Hindu Jagran Manch and, subsequently, the Sanatan Jagran Manch.
A BJHM member who spoke to The Diplomat on condition of anonymity due to the prevailing situation in Bangladesh said that the use of India’s Hindutva symbols like the slogan Jai Shree Ram, the image of the Angry Hanuman, festivals like Ram Navami, and campaigns on issues like Love Jihad started gaining popularity in Bangladesh in 2022.
“The attacks on Hindus towards the end of 2021 prompted many to adopt hardline Hindutva, as practiced by the RSS in India. They decided to adopt Jai Shree Ram as a slogan of Hindu resistance against Islamic fundamentalism. People, especially the youth, started closely following RSS-linked social media outlets of Indian users,” said the BJHM leader.
In 2022, both factions of the BJHM conducted the Ram Navami celebration on a grand scale. In August 2022, during Janmashtami, a Hindu festival associated with Lord Krishna, their slogan was “Jini-e Krishno Tini-e Ram/ Jai Shree Ram, Jai Shree Ram” (Krishna and Ram are the same/ Victory to Ram). They also raised slogans like “Jai Hindutva” (Victory to Hindutva).
While pointing out that only the name of Lord Krishna could unite all Hindus, they repeated the same argument that since Krishna and Ram are the same, they all should shout Jai Shree Ram.
In 2023, Jatiyo Hindu Chhatro Mahajot described itself as Bangladesh’s first hindutwavadi (Hindutva-following) student organization dedicated to protecting Hindus and Hindutva. At an event, its leader argued it is not right to connect them with India’s BJP just because they have Hindutva as their ideology and Jai Shree Ram as the slogan. They are a Bangladeshi organization with international chapters, they argued.
A BHJM leader argued that personal losses pushed many toward a hardline approach. “Nihar Haldar’s family lost their properties to Muslims. They could not recover their property. The administration didn’t help. I can’t blame him for turning into a militant Hindu activist. His desperation forced him to seek help from Indian politicians,” the BHJM organizer said.
Haldar could not be contacted for comments despite repeated attempts.
Rony Rajbongshi, one of the founders of the BHJM, founded the Mahakal Swayamsevak Foundation (MSF) in 2023. Swayamsevak is again a term associated with the RSS. The RSS calls its members “swayamsevak,” the Sanskrit word for volunteer. Only people associated with the RSS use the term in India to refer to volunteers. In Bangladesh, MSF, too, calls its volunteers swayamsevak.
“Hindutva is a Hindu religious ideology. It can’t have borders. We have no organizational connection with the RSS or the BJP,” said one of the members, who was unwilling to be identified.
He argued that “secular-liberal journalists and intellectuals” differentiate between Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamaat-Ul-Mujahideen in Bangladesh, calling the former a democratic political party and the latter a terror group.
“But the same people are trying to connect us with the RSS,” he said.
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