‘ISLAMOPHOBIC, ALARMIST’: HOW SOME INDIA OUTLETS COVERED BANGLADESH CRISIS

Dhaka, Bangladesh – Within hours of Sheikh Hasina’s removal from power after a student-led mass uprising, reports began to appear in some Indian media outlets that members of Hindu minorities in Bangladesh were being targeted by “Islamist forces”.

Articles and videos containing misleading content emerged across Indian media and social media platforms.A video on The Times Group-owned Mirror Now’s YouTube channel, titled Attack on Hindus in Bangladesh? Mass Murders, Killings by Mob, shows footage of violence and arson attacks on four houses, two of them have been identified to be owned by Muslims. The title of the video is clearly misleading as there was no mass murders reported in the incident. Local reports say one of the houses belonged to Bangladesh’s freedom icon Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

The video also makes unsubstantiated claims, like “24 burnt alive by mob” and “Minorities at the centre of attacks”.

Several Indian media outlets have circulated videos claiming that Hindus are being targeted by ‘Islamist forces’ in Bangladesh.

Analysts say that while there have been attacks on minorities during the political unrest, the media is exaggerating the scale. pic.twitter.com/WBsFNr34Ch

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) August 9, 2024

Al Jazeera has independently verified that only two Hindus have been killed since Hasina’s ouster on Monday – one police officer and one activist with Hasina’s Awami League party.

Hindus constitute about 8 percent of Bangladesh’s 170 million people and have traditionally been strong supporters of the Awami League, which is generally viewed as secular compared with the opposition coalition, which includes an Islamist party.

Many news reports of attacks on Hindus contain outlandish claims such as “more than one crore [10 million] refugees are likely to enter West Bengal soon”, which was made in a Times of India report that quoted Suvendu Adhikari, a senior leader of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The ANI news agency, seen close to Modi’s government, quoted a student leader in India as saying the mass uprising was “orchestrated by the enemies of Bangladesh”. 

An even more bizarre Times of India article stated that Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh’s biggest Islamist party, “brought down Sheikh Hasina government in Bangladesh”.

Political analyst Zahed Ur Rahman said Indian media have reported through an “Islamophobic” lens.“The student movement that fomented the mass uprising involving people from all walks of life is unanimously understood as a popular movement here in Bangladesh. But Indian media somehow have been interpreting the whole scenario through their Islamophobic eye,” he told Al Jazeera.

ISI and religious claims

As Hasina fled the country on Monday, news articles in Indian media alleged that Bangladesh’s protests were influenced by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), a Pakistani spy agency, because it is seeking to turn Bangladesh into an Islamic state with the support of political parties like the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its former political ally Jamaat-e-Islami.

Some media outlets even urged the Indian government to prepare for a potential refugee crisis, speculating that Hindus would be driven out of Bangladesh.

Speculation suggesting an ISI and Chinese connection to the popular Bangladesh movement was a common thread in social media posts by some commentators and media outlets.

The diplomatic affairs editor of The Economic Times, Dipanjan R Chaudhury, posted on X: “Jamaat-e-Islami in Bangladesh politics doesn’t bode well either for country or India. Jamaat track record of promoting cross border terror … is part of recent history.”

The television channel TV9 Gujarati with one million followers on X characterised the uprising as a “coup”, stating on the social media platform: “Is ISI behind the coup attack in Bangladesh? Is Jamaat-E-Islam behind the violent attacks?”

What is the reality on the ground?

These articles by Indian media and posts in social media contrast sharply with factual reports chronicling the events that led to the Hasina’s resignation. She fled to India, which had backed her. 

Local media in Bangladesh reported that since Monday night, several Hindu households across 20 of the country’s 64 districts have been attacked and looted.

Al Jazeera reached out to sources in some of these districts and discovered that the attacks on Hindu households were not driven by religious identity but by political affiliations.

Mustafizur Rahman Hiru, a rent-a-car driver from the central district of Narsingdi, told Al Jazeera that in his village, the two Hindu households targeted were home to local Awami League leaders.

“People were angry because these Hindu leaders were bullying others when the Awami League was in power. Now, with Hasina’s fall, they are facing the backlash,” he said.

In Jashore, a border district with India, a warehouse and home belonging to Babul Saha, a local government chairman who ran for office on the Awami League ticket, were attacked.

Abdur Rab Haider, a resident of Jashore, told Al Jazeera that no Hindu household had been attacked without ties to the Awami League.

Rahman pointed out that Sajeeb Wazed Joy, Hasina’s son, who resides in the United States, has given several interviews to Indian media, spreading rumours and unverified claims about attacks on Hindus and alleged operations by the ISI. 

“Indian media merrily jumped onto it and spread Joy’s bogus claims,” Rahman told Al Jazeera.

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‘Attacks politically motivated, not communal’

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Gobindra Chandra Pramanik, a leader of the Hindu community in Bangladesh, stated that to his knowledge no Hindu households without connections to the Awami League were attacked.

“As a leader of the Hindu community, I can confirm that these attacks were politically motivated, not communal,” he said. “Across the country, 10 times more Muslim households affiliated with the Awami League were attacked.”

Local media reported that since Monday night, more than 119 people – primarily Awami League leaders, activists and police – were killed in mob violence. Qadaruddin Shishir, the fact-checking editor for the AFP news agency, told Al Jazeera that only two of the victims were Hindus: one policeman and one Awami League activist.

Zafar Sobhan, editor of Bangladesh’s Dhaka Tribune newspaper, told Al Jazeera that most of the Indian media “as a general rule is clueless about Bangladesh”. 

“I don’t like to attribute to malice that which just as easily can be explained by incompetence. But the uniformity of the misinformation that is routinely peddled in the Indian media suggests that they are taking dictation from a common source,” he said.

But an Indian academic rejected any allegation that the Indian media’s reporting has been Islamophobic.

Sreeradha Datta, a professor at OP Jindal University in Sonipat in northern India, told Al Jazeera that the Indian media’s concern about the safety of Hindus under a non-Hasina administration in Bangladesh stems from past experiences rather than Islamophobia.

Datta noted that during previous non-Awami League governments, such as the BNP-Jamaat alliance, “there was an increase in attacks on minorities, and this historical context continues to influence current perceptions.”

The media’s reporting has caused concern in India with several prominent Hindu religious leaders and politicians calling for the protection of Hindus. 

Muslims protecting Hindus

Meanwhile, images of individuals, including students from Muslim religious schools, standing watch in front of Hindu temples and homes have been widely circulated on social media.

In Brahmanbaria, a district with one of the largest Hindu populations in Bangladesh, residents, including students, stepped up to protect Hindu households.

Munshi Azizul Haque, an apparel businessman from Brahmanbaria, told Al Jazeera that they are working to prevent any communal violence in the area. “We’ve seen how Indian media are depicting attacks on minorities in Bangladesh on social media. The reality is quite different,” he said.

Pramanik also acknowledged that Hindu temples were being protected.

News of Bangladeshi students, including from religious schools, volunteering to protect Hindu temples have been reported locally since the unrest began, and it has been picked up by outlets like Clarion India and The Wire. 

These sites ran headlines stating “Muslims Stand Guard at Temples, Call to Protect Minorities” and “Students Stand Guard Outside Temples and Churches in Wake of Attacks.”

Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor of The Wire, told Al Jazeera that while there is legitimate and genuine concern about reports of attacks on Hindu places of worship, businesses and homes across more than two dozen districts in Bangladesh, the Indian media are also exaggerating the scale and extent of these incidents.

Also, he said, there is a section of the Indian media that is using the Bangladesh situation to boost anti-Muslim rhetoric “in service of the BJP and [its ideological parent] RSS’s agenda.

“For them, the ouster of Hasina is an Islamist conspiracy hatched in collaboration with Pakistan and China and that the target is India and Hindus,” he said.

Naresh Fernandez, editor of the Indian news portal Scroll.in, said Hindutva (right-wing Hindu nationalism) supporters in India are using the situation in Bangladesh “as a screen on which to project their own anxieties, fantasies and conspiracy theories to serve their narrow political purposes”. 

“They are claiming that Hasina’s fall was actually engineered by international forces and that this is a rehearsal for a similar regime change to be effected in India,” Fernandez told Al Jazeera.

He said, however, that Hindutva supporters are rightfully concerned about the safety of minorities in Bangladesh in this period of crisis, “a concern that they fail to demonstrate about minorities in India”.

‘Delhi’s intent to destabilise Dhaka’

Political analyst Farid Erkizia Bakht, meanwhile, suggested that misinformation spread by Indian media reflects New Delhi’s intent to destabilise Dhaka. He noted that India has lost its most valuable ally in the subcontinent and is deeply concerned about the direction of the incoming administration.

Varadarajan also echoed the sentiment.

“The popular uprising which unseated Hasina caught New Delhi by surprise, and the government is now scrambling to formulate a coherent and rational policy in the face of the new situation. 

“It cannot welcome the student-led protest and bottom-up expression of people power or dismiss the change as a ‘coup’ or an ‘anti-India conspiracy’ either as the Hindutva right wing on social media is saying,” he said.

“For now, New Delhi will be in a wait-and-watch mode. The focus will be on ensuring the safety of Indian nationals in Bangladesh and monitoring the situation of minorities there,” he added.

Bangladeshi activist and author Aupam Debashis Roy told Al Jazeera that there had been attacks on Hindu minorities but the numbers have been overblown and Bangladesh is being portrayed as being taken over by “Islamist forces”, which is not true, he said.

The nature of the soon-to-be-formed interim government will not be “radical Islamist” in nature, Roy said. “But the BJP-leaning media wants to spread the world that Bangladesh is going to be in the hands of Islamists because it supports their [the BJP’s] narrative … built around previous laws like CAA and NRC,” Roy said, referring to India’s citizenship law and national register of citizens, which have been criticised as being directed against Muslims.

“They want to show that Bangladesh is a place for radical Islamists and Hindus and minorities are not safe here. I think that’s why the BJP-leaning Indian media is spreading misinformation about attacks on minorities and an Islamist force taking over Bangladesh,” he added. 

US-based Bangladeshi political commentator Shafquat Rabbee Anik said the violence occurring in Bangladesh is a result of the “collapse of the police force,” which is “mostly due to popular reprisal against excesses committed by them throughout the last 15 years”.

Once Nobel Peace Prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus officially becomes the leader of the interim government, that will calm down “Indian nerves”, Anik predicted.

“For one, it will be very hard to portray Yunus as an Islamist trying to take away the rights of the minorities and women.”

By Faisal Mahmud and Saqib Sarker