The police arrested sixteen people from Gutia village in Ujirpur subdistrict of Barisal district on April 25 while they were singing religious songs. They were daily wage workers engaged in betel leaf cultivation.
After the State Religion Bill was passed, some people in Siddhirpasha village in Abhay Nagar subdistrict of Jessore district circulated the rumor that the Hindus would no longer be able to sell their lands. The frightened Hindus decided to sell their land at a quarter of the actual value. Madhab Nandy, a sensible Hindu of the village, who sought to assuage the fear of the people and to urge them to ignore the false propaganda about the so-called ban on the land sale, had to pay very dearly for his wise counsel. A few days later, Madhab Babdy's house was raided by twelve or fourteen men armed with long choppers and spears who raped his daughter-in-law, who was seven months pregnant, and his young daughter.
Deben Biswas of Khoksa subdistrict of Kustia was killed by unknown gunmen. The formal complaint did not lead to any arrests.
Armed police along with young thugs led a joint invasion on Gaibpur village in Chtalmari subdistrict of Bagerhat district on August 12 and 16, 1988. They smashed the idol of the local temple and raped the women. More than twenty people were severely beaten up and then released after money was extorted from them. Narayan Bairagi, Sushanta Dhali, Anukul Baroi, Ranjan Dhali and Jagadish Bairagi had to stay confined in the police lockup for a long time. An identical raid was conducted on Charbaliari village and fifteen or sixteen people arrested there were later released after heavy extortion.
The teenage daughter of Rabindranath Ghosh of Parku- mira village in Tala subdistrict of Satksheera, Chanda, a student of Class III, was raped by a schoolteacher. The incident occurred on May 3, 1979. That night Chhanda was asleep on the verandah of her house along with other family members. In the dead of night her teacher, a Muslim called Nasi- muddin, and some other men picked her up and then raped her in a nearby garden. Next day Chhanda was found unconscious and bloodspattered. Despite the lodging of a complaint at Tala police station, none of the accused was arrested. The girl was sent to Satkheera hospital.
The minorities were persecuted like hell in the name of arresting the members of the Proletariat party in Barisal district's Jhalakathi, Najirpur and Gouranadi areas. All the arrested men were released after the police got some money. Many Hindus in those areas were on the run, fearing arrests. Kashinath Halder, a resident of Agailjhara subdistrict, was all but killed as a result of police torture.
A mob of seventy or eighty people led by Sahabuddin and Alauddin attacked the Hindus of the carpenters' colony in Charmadhua village in Raipur subdistrict of Narasingdi district and looted their movables. Nearly 150 people from some twenty families were now living the life of wandering refugees.
A fundamentalist group raided the house of minority leader Binay Baishya in Jehangirpur village in Madan subdistrict of Netrokona district. The members of Binay Babu's family were kept confined for thirty-six hours and all his belongings were looted. When the police were informed of the attack, they arrested his two sons instead. They were later released, however.
A mob of nearly one hundred, under the leadership of local Union Council member Golam Hussain Pintu, attacked the house of Rajendra Chandra Das in Durgapur village of Chandpur Union of Bakherganj on December 10. They went through the routine of looting the house, beating up the residents and finally setting the house on fire. There was a second arson attack on his house following his complaint to the police along with the threat of killing all members of his family.
Some people had forcibly occupied the property of Dinesh Chandra Das of Miwarishpur village in Begumganj subdistrict of Noakhali district.
Sleep continued to elude Suranjan. He had worked for paper Ekata for a couple of years in 1988-89. As a reporter he had to rove a lot all over the country. His bag would invariably be loaded with the sad tales of such persecution of minorities. Some were used, some not. The editor would explain, "Look, Suranjan, this is nothing but oppression of the defenseless weak by the high and mighty. All these are cases of the strong oppressing the weak, the rich oppressing the poor. If you are rich, it does not matter much if you are Hindu or Muslim. Unfortunately, that is the rule of a capitalist society. If you go and look for yourself, you'll find that poor Muslims also are being persecuted. This is because the rich always torture the poor-they don't care whether their victims are Hindu or Muslim."
id the winter lack its expected nip this year? Suranjan pushed the quilt away from him. He didn't feel like leaving bed. He had roamed around the city last night, but he had not felt like visiting anyone or talking to anybody. Not that he hadn't felt for his worrying parents. Still, he wasn't keen on returning home. He himself felt scared seeing Kiranmayee's fear-stricken face. Sudhamay's eyes were becoming expressionless. Suranjan felt like having a drink somewhere else. If only the haze of drink could erase from his mind the dreamy eyes of Maya exuding a fear that prompted her to repeatedly seek his help. How rapidly she had grown up. Just the other day she would go to the riverside holding on to his fingers. The beautiful brown girl would invariably nag him for new clothes before Durga Puja. Suranjan would try to dissuade her, saying, "Why don't you rid yourself of all those trashy rituals like Puja? Those uncouth boys dance in front of that day image and you enjoy putting on that new dress. Don't you feel ashamed? It's a pity I couldn't rear you up to my liking."
Maya would still importune him, saying, "I'll go out to see the Puja pandals, won't you escort me?"
Suranjan would scold her: "Be a rational being, be a human being, don't be a Hindu." Maya would burst into giggles and ask, "Don't you consider the Hindus human beings?"
Maya had to be called Farida in 1971 to conceal her Hindu identity. Even in 1972 Suranjan would carelessly call out the same name much to Maya's annoyance. Then she had to be placated with chocolates. The girl was crazy about chocolates which would bring instant happiness to her eyes. During Eid festival, when she saw her Muslim friend playing, she would urge him to buy her balloons, firecrackers and sparklers, whining for Kiranmayee to cook pilau which her friend Nadira would be having in her house. Kiranmayee would oblige her.
Maya hadn't been heard of since she left home the day before yesterday. Her absence made her parents' burden of worry much heavier. Her survival in the shelter of a Muslim house was more or less assured. Even at her age she earned something by coaching two girls. She rarely, if ever, asked for any financial help from her parents to continue her studies in the Eden College. But Suranjan frequently had to ask for money. He couldn't get any job, despite having a master's degree in physics. At the outset, he hoped to land a job, and had had several interviews. He was a brilliant student in the university. Yet the very students whom he coached voluntarily scored better marks than he in the final exam. The same trend persisted in his job-hunting forays. The teaching jobs went to those with far inferior grades. This happened despite his standing up well to the grilling by the members of the interview boards before whom he appeared. Yet the boys who lamented over their poor performance at such interviews or cut sorry figures in the oral examination would, much to Suranjan's surprise, invariably receive the appointment letters. Complaints about him were heard in some interviews that he hadn't been properly respectful to the board members. But the real matter was that he never thought the Muslim way of paying respect by saying "Assalammu Alaikum" or, for that matter, the Hindu manner of doing so by saying "Namaskar" to be the only acknowledged method of showing reverence to the elders. Yet the boys who, while being obsequious and courteous to the examiners with "Assalammu Alaikum" and all, called them "swine" just after coming out of the hall, eventually were successful in the interview. But Suranjan did neither. Yet he had been branded discourteous, or rather had earned a bad reputation for improper behavior. That might have been the reason or it might have been his being Hindu, but no government jobs came his way. He got a job in a private concern. But he didn't like it and gave it up after three months. On the contrary, Maya
had somehow adjusted herself to the situation and got private coaching assignments quite easily. She might even have gotten a job in a nongovernment organization. Suranjan suspected that Maya was getting these facilities because of the manipulation by her boyfriend Jehangir. Could Maya go to the extent of marrying that boy out of her gratitude to him, Suranjan wondered. Such a suspicion took a definitive shape of apprehension in his mind.
Kiranmayee came with a cup of tea. Swollen pouches under her eyes showed that she, too, had missed her night's sleep. But Suranjan didn't like to expose his lack of sleep. He yawned and said, "I couldn't guess I would be so late getting up in the morning." As if he had slept too deeply during the night. Otherwise, he would have gone out for his early walk or jogging.
Kiranmayee still stood with the cup of tea in her hand. She didn't make any move to put the cup on the table and leave the room. Suranjan could feel that Kiranmayee was about to tell him something. But she remained silent as if she were waiting for her son to take the cup of tea from her hand. Suranjan realized that the distance between them had widened so much that both preferred silence. Suranjan took the initiative to say, "Hasn't Maya returned even today?"
"No," as if Kiranmayee were awaiting for this question from him. She sat silently on his bed. Within his easy reach. Such closeness, Suranjan could feel, was indicative of her restlessness caused by the sense of insecurity. He took his eyes off Kiranmayee's sleepless eyes, uncombed hair and none-too-clean sari. Lifting himself partially, he sipped his tea. "Why is she not coming back? Are the Muslims keeping her safe? Doesn't she have any trust in us? She is so unconcerned about us. Does she think that her own survival is enough?"
Kiranmayee still kept mum. Suranjan lit up a cigarette after his tea. He was suddenly oblivious of his own rule of never smoking before his mother. It didn't occur to him even when he struck the match and blew out the smoke from his mouth and nostrils. But it was a different day, which brought them much closer, removing the thin wall between them. He hadn't placed a hand, though craving a mother's affection, on Kiranmayee's lap for a long time. Did grown-up children move away from their mother's touch in this way? Suranjan had an irresistible desire to he with his head on his mother's lap like an innocent child and talk of kite flying. There was a maternal uncle, Nabin Mama, who would come to their place from Sylhet and make kites with his own hands. He was a champion kite flier whose kite would rule the sky.
Suranjan just looked at his mother's lap with craving eyes. He asked, after having his last puff at the cigarette, "Did Kamal or Belal or anyone like them call on us yesterday?"
Kiranmayee dully answered, "No."
He was amazed at his friends' lack of interest in his survival. Did they think that he was dead, or weren't they feeling any urge to save him?
Kiranmayee's voice became choked as she said, "Where did you go yesterday? We were left alone in the house. Don't you think about us? If anything happened to you? Gautam, a boy from a nearby house, went out to buy some eggs. The Muslim boys beat him up so severely that he lost two front teeth and possibly had his foot broken."
"Oh," came the brief reply.
"Do you remember a couple of years ago, our maid called Geeta's mother, who would come to work from Shanir Akhra, had her house burned down? She rebuilt her hut by saving money by working in different households. Again her hut turned into a heap of ashes. She came yesterday with her children moving about on the roads. She asked, 'Can you tell me where I can buy poison?' I think she's gone mad."
"Oh," said Suranjan, keeping the empty cup by the side of the pillow.
"When Maya comes, don't you think she will be a greater source of worry?"
"Does that mean she will have to stay all her life under the protective umbrella of a Muslim household?"
Suranjan s voice sounded hard. He didn't feel disgrace for once taking shelter in the house of his Muslim friend Kamal. He once thought the situation created by the mischief of some rogues, who invariable figured in every country, would be normalized. Nothing like that would happen again. Now it didn't seem like the pranks of a handful of mischief-makers. His suspicion deepened, leading him to believe that none of his friends, Kamal, Belal, Kaisar or Lutfar, was really noncommunal. In 1978, Zia-urRahman introduced Bismilla her Rahman er Rahim (I am beginning with the name of Allah) into the constitution, not out of deference to any popular mandate. Nor did President Ershad declare Islam as the state religion in conformity with the people's wish. But why did he do that? The Bengali Muslims were said to be great believers in secularism, particularly those who supported the Liberation War. But wasn't it surprising that they didn't raise any voice of protest when the seeds of communalism were being sowed through these actions? Were they not aggrieved? These very people, who became so hot-headed as to declare a war of liberation, now seemed to be cold-blooded as reptiles. Why weren't they feeling the need for this sapling of communalism then? How could they dare nurture such an absurd thought as ushering in democracy in a country rejecting secularism? It was truly ironic that those who had joined hands to strengthen the fight for independence were now the same people who were allowing the nonsecular state, which was the good ground of communalism.
"Have you heard about the destruction of the Soraighat Temple yesterday? And the Shyampur temple, too?" Kiranmayee said in a plaintive voice.
Suranjan twisted himself in a limbering exercise. He said, "Did you ever visit a temple? So why are you moved over temple demolition? Let all these buildings dedicated to religion be ground to bits."
"They feel offended if a mosque is destroyed; don't they ever feel that the Hindus, too, are equally hurt in the case of temples? Or rather, they don't want to understand. And for the destruction of a single mosque, they are plundering hundreds of temples. Isn't Islam called a religion of peace?"
"The Muslims in this country know quite well that the Hindus' anger can't cause any harm to them. That's why they are acting this way. They know not a single mosque can be touched. Since its destruction a couple of years ago, the Nayabazar temple is still a heap of rubble. The children play on it, even urinate on it. Is there a single Hindu who dares strike a blow or two against the polished walls of a mosque with bare hands?"
Kiranmayee went out silently. Suranjan could understand that even a woman like Kiranmayee, who seldom bothered about the outside world, had in her inner thoughts put a Parvin and an Archana on the same footing; she, too, had reached a precarious stage. She, too, was being ruffled by questions like: Do the Muslims have the monopoly on pride and anger?
It was not the first attack on the Babri mosque in October 1990 that marked the beginning of Hindu persecution in this country. He could remember, on the morning of April 21, 1979, how a man named Ayub All smashed with his own hands the image of Kali in the historic temple in Rajsahi town. After that, Hindu-owned shops were subjected to similar attacks.
On April 16 of the same year, the famous image of Ram- gopal was stolen from the temple at Ramgopalpara in Shailakupa subdistrict in Jhanaidaha. Later, the image was recovered, although considerably damaged, next to the local cremation ground. But the image's gold and silver ornaments were never found. Jaigopalhat Kali temple in Purana Lalanagar village in Seetakunda was set on fire. The image of Durga at Kuraisha Chandgaon Durgabari in North Chandgaon was broken to bits.
After two months of legislation declaring Islam the state religion, the black touchstone image of the old Kalac- hand temple, along with its ornaments, was stolen from near Dakshindihi village in Pultala subdistrict of Khulna. When the secretary of the temple committee went to the police station to lodge a complaint, he was put behind bars and physically tortured. Arrest warrants were issued against all members of the temple committee. The Additional Superintendent of Police, who went to the spot to investigate, threatened the Hindus and charged them with stealing the image. In the single night of December 8 the white marble Shiva, the images of Radha-Gavinda and Annapurna and the sacred Salgram stone disappeared from the old temple in Dwimukha village
in Kalihati subdistrict of Tangail district. The police inquiries revealed the identity of the idol thief as one Nur Mahammad Talukdar. Yet no action was taken against him. An organization known as "World Islam" sent threatening letters to the Hindus in Mainamati Union in Burichang subdistrict in Comilla telling them to leave the country at once. They were warned that unless their worship was stopped, they would be at the receiving end of riots. On April 14, the banyan tree beside the temple was doused with gasoline and then set on fire. A man called All Ahmed openly declared in the Mainamati market that the Hindus would have to be evicted through riots. While devotional chanting was going on in Sri Sri Madanmahan Akhra in Lalmohan subdistrict in Bhola on March 11, more than a hundred people attacked the pandal. They forced their way into the temple, smashed the image and beat up the assembled devotees. They then started a game of sack and fire that left a trail of devastation on Hindu temples in Baratia village in Gheor subdistrict in Manikgunj district, with a local advocate, Zia-ur-Rahman, taking the initiative to set up a Muslim graveyard and mosque in the land adjoining the Kali temple that was more than a century old. The long-worshiped Hindu temple at Kalihat in Mahammadpur Union in Chatkhil subdistrict of Noakhali district was converted into a place for business transactions due to a conspiracy by local Muslims. The image in the Lakshmi temple in Phaukal village in Gazipur Municipality was broken first and then its head carried away.
A mob pounced on the assembly during the ritual of Charak in the monastery building in Kashtasagara village in the headquarter subdistrict in Jhinaidaha. They severely assaulted the priest, threw away the offerings for worship and snatched the drum from the drummer. Muslims attacked the Kali temple at Nijra Purbapara in Gopalgunj headquarter subdistrict at about nine at night on October 17, 1988, causing extensive damage. The lock of the Ulpur Shiva temple was broken to storm the inner sanctum. The Phallic Shiva image also was carried away with many other valuables.
Shame: A Novel Page 7