Bangladeshi Hindus celebrate Janmashtami amid tight security

Dhaka, Aug 16 (PTI) Hindus in Bangladesh on Saturday celebrated the Janmashtami festival amid tight security with the country’s army, navy and air chiefs joining the main function in the capital.

The community leaders welcomed Army Chief General Waker-uz-Zaman, Navy Chief Admiral M Nazmul Hassan and Air Chief Marshal Hasan Mahmood Khan at the Palashi before the start of the procession amid beating of drums to mark the festivity. The celebrations began with songs and dance.

"I am grateful that you have included us in this festivity,” Zaman told the devotees, adding that Bangladesh belonged equally to people of all religions and communities.

The armed forces would always stand beside citizens to safeguard peace, security, and harmony, he added.

Police enforced a tight vigil while army troops, tasked to assist law enforcement with magistracy power, were kept on alert as the main celebration began at the National Dhakeswari Temple, one of the prominent shakti peethas.

Thousands of Hindu men, women and children in colourful dresses joined the prayers at the temple and Palashi procession in Dhaka, even as members of Bangladesh’s largest minority community also celebrated the traditional festival elsewhere in the country.

Hindu community leaders said generally the mayor of Dhaka opens the festival, but since there is no mayor since the ouster of then prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League regime last year, the three armed forces chiefs were invited.

“Lord Krishna’s message calls for ‘suppression of evil and preservation of virtue’, and so their (three chiefs) presence is significant in the current scenario when a sense of insecurity prevails among the minority communities,” a key-organiser of the festival Kajal Debnath told PTI.

The three service chiefs jointly inaugurated the Janmashtami procession by lighting ceremonial lamps while the street march began from Palashi intersection and concluded at Bahadur Shah Park in Old Dhaka.

Interim government chief Professor Muhammad Yunus issued a statement on the eve of Janmashtami on Friday, greeting members of the Hindu community and calling upon "everyone to remain vigilant so that no one can undermine the existing order, fraternity, and communal amity in society”.

Yunus said the interim government was formed through the historic mass uprising of students, workers, and the general public, and it was committed to keeping this bond of harmony unbroken.

However, Debnath said, soon after assuming power, the Chief Adviser visited the Dhakeswari Temple when he vowed to develop all Bangladeshis as “one family”, but in the past months, the minority communities were excluded from meetings of his “national unity commission”.

“You cannot form one family discarding 10 per cent of the (minority) population,” Debnath said.

Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council said in a statement that religious minorities in the country were facing escalating violence and systemic exclusion, while it cited reports of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and Bangladeshi rights groups.

In a statement last month, the Council said the minority communities faced 2,442 incidents of communal violence in 330 days from August 4, 2024, when the political unrest reached its peak, eventually ousting the past regime.

It said the incidents included “murders, rapes, vandalism of places of worship, forced evictions, and attacks on small communities”.

The US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), in a report, said in the latest such incidents on July 26 and 27, a mob damaged at least 14 homes belonging to members of the Hindu minority in northwestern Rangpur, and there were “continuing violations” against minority communities in the southeastern Chittagong Hill Tracts.

The government previously insisted such attacks were political and the outburst of public anger against leaders of the banned “fascist regime” of the then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League.

But in December 2024, Bangladesh confirmed 88 cases of communal violence targeting minorities, primarily Hindus, since the ouster of the past regime, adding that 70 individuals were arrested in connection with the attacks.

Meanwhile, the media reports said police in the northeastern port city of Chattogram detained six people from the traditional Janmashtami procession after they displayed placards and chanted slogans demanding the release of former Iskcon leader Chinmoy Krishna Das Brahmachari.

"We detained six individuals during the rally. Placards demanding Chinmoy Das’s were recovered from them. The organisers earlier asked us to stay alert to avoid any untoward incident, so police were on high alert," Kotwali police station’s officer-in-charge Abdul Karim told reporters.

Das was arrested in Dhaka on November 25 on sedition charges for allegedly “desecrating” the Bangladesh flag brought to Chattogram, where subsequent violence over his arrest left a government prosecutor dead, sparking tensions.

The court has so far declined his bail petitions. PTI AR RD RD RD