• This is a call to Hindus for helping their sisters in Bangladesh and shedding their indifference to the plight of fellow Hindus worldwide.

Our prayer intentions are for our sisters in Bangladesh. Their cries for help are going largely unnoticed by the world. We can only hope that the situation does not become like elsewhere. Bangladeshi Hindu men are being asked to resign from their jobs. 

Calm has returned to the capital of Bangladesh, Dhaka, but the violence has not lessened outside Dhaka.

The Indian Government has set up a monitoring committee for Hindus in Bangladesh and for those who want to enter India, yet this seems to be not working out for the moment for our persecuted sisters and brothers there. They need further humanitarian help from the current government there and also from Hindus in India and throughout the world. Unless we are able to help them in the here and now; there is little hope for them.

There are reports of vigilante groups hunting for Hindus in areas outside Dhaka. We should use social media to rally in helping Hindus in Bangladesh. We must preferentially opt for helping them first; since our Dharma is a religion for the marginalised and the forgotten.

There is little credit in us going about our daily life as if nothing has happened in Bangladesh. We must help our sisters and brothers there concretely since silence is often assent.

In many cases silence is the result of deep fear. Yet today or tomorrow, if we who are not persecuted yet, do nothing, then we may be certain that in the future, our heirs will have to bear the bitter burden of being attacked by those  who are certainly going to clamp down heavily on our yet unborn girl children. Let us not forget that we have a duty to stand up for the rights of our religious community no matter what the cost. The cost may be heavy, but silence will cost us more.

Persecution takes many different forms. Horrors like murders and tortures are easy to understand. But small ways of persecution do not make the news. Like eliminating the right candidate for a job just because the candidate’s gender and religion are hated by the appointing authority. Yet all the while, technically correct reasons may be given to the candidate while rejecting her. But the intent is mala fide. 

Hindus need to stand by each other today than ever before.  

We need to educate our children about what is happening today at Bangladesh with the Hindu populace. Unless we today, right now, start teaching our children about what is happening in Bangladesh, our future is very uncertain. We need to take charge of our future.

Remember the future is never with the aged --- it is always with the youth.

Unless Hindu parents educate their children that there is a world outside of traditional academics and ensure that our kids study the Bhagavad Gita with all its commentaries; our religion will be annihilated because we failed as guardians. Most of us are not authentic Hindus. We try to balance between our religion and the world. This culture of worldliness has broken our backbones.

We are prey to a culture of indifference arising out of a spiritual worldliness. In short, we have been successful in emasculating ourselves.

No one from any other religion has prevented us from leading authentic lives. But it is our own laziness and greed that has nearly destroyed us.

We know stock prices, but we do not know the Yoga Sutras. We pretend everything is as they should be. And, secretly blame others for our troubles. The cancer of indifference is in us, not in other religious communities. Yet we have chosen to not read the writing on the wall --- we are dying. Partying will not help us. Hatred will not help us.

Only calm, strategic and forward looking, proactive global unity leading to action will help us.

Otherwise, Hindus will continue to face genocides in the future.

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Also read

1. What happens if Muslim population increases

2. India is only home of Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs and Jains

3. Bangladeshi infiltration into West Bengal

Editor Notes – Extract from another article.

“One way to gauge how minorities are treated is by population numbers. Out of India’s population in 1951 of 36.11 crores, Muslims were 3.77 crs or 10.4 %. In 2011 they were 14.2 % of a 121 cr population.

Conversely, population of Indian religions in Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) has continuously fallen. It was 23 per cent in 1951, 14 per cent in 1974, 11 per cent in 1991, 10 per cent in 2001 and 9.3 per cent in 2011. In Pakistan, their population (formerly West Pakistan; before that part of undivided Punjab) was 19.7 per cent in 1941, came down to 1.6 per cent in 1951 and settled at a meagre 1.8 per cent in 1998.”