“Bangladeshi Islamists love Pakistan, hate India”: New article by author Taslima Nasreen sparks debate

Amid unrest in Bangladesh, award-winning Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen said on Tuesday that Muslims in Bangladesh “love Pakistan and hate India” and urged the country’s people to boycott Indian products.

Her post on social media platform X (formerly Twitter) was accompanied by an image that appeared to show Bangladeshis holding a flag of their own country and Pakistan.

“Bangladeshi Islamists love Pakistan and hate India. Do they even know that Pakistan killed us and India saved us in 1971? They have been brainwashed to believe in the Muslim Brotherhood,” her post said.

(It was not clear when and where the picture shared by Nasreen was taken.)

In another post, Taslima Nasreen shared a picture of a man wearing a T-shirt that read “Teach your child to hate India.”

“Bangladeshi Jamate Islami helps poor people and wears a T-shirt that says ‘Teach your child to hate India’. Islamists are calling on people to boycott Indian products. There are more and more anti-Indian and Hindu Wahabi Islamists in Bangladesh,” the author wrote.

(News18 could not independently verify the authenticity of the image).

X USER ANSWERS

Responding to Nasreen’s post showing Bangladeshis holding the Pakistani flag, one X user wrote: “You don’t know how Pakistani soldiers went house to house, raping and killing, so sometimes it’s helpful to look into history.”

Another user claimed that the picture was taken while many people were attending a flood relief fundraiser in Dhaka and that Taslima Nasreen’s statement was “distorted”.

“Ms. Nasreen is absolutely right. Without India, there would be no Bangladesh and countless more Bangladeshis would have died. But who cares about history, right?” said another post.

A fourth reaction from a Pakistani citizen was: “They know that without the Pakistan Movement they would have been slaughtered for eating beef. It is not about religion, it is about being the master of one’s own destiny. It is sad that things did not work out between Pakistan and Bengal, but they still owe their freedom to the Pakistan Movement.”

“Very soon, Bangladesh will turn into an Islamic state,” said another comment on the author’s article.

TASLIMA NASREEN’S STATEMENT ON THE ACTORS OF ATROCITIES

This was not the first time that the Bangladeshi author, activist and doctor spoke on this issue.

Nasreen, who has lived in exile in India for many years, had stated on September 1 that officials of the previous government (the regime of former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina) were being “harassed, imprisoned and killed”.

Her statement followed reports of teachers from minority communities being forced to resign from all educational institutions as a result of the political chaos in the country that ended with Hasina’s ouster in August this month.

“In Bangladesh, teachers are being forced to resign. Journalists, ministers and officials of the former government are being killed, harassed and imprisoned. Generation Z has burned down the factories of Ahmadi Muslims. Mazars and dargahs of Sufi Muslims are being destroyed by Islamic terrorists. Yunus says nothing about it,” Nasreen wrote on X.

(According to a report in the Daily Star, an English-language newspaper in Bangladesh, 49 teachers from minority communities across the country were forced to resign.)

NO FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN BANGLADESH: NASREEN

On September 3, Nasreen said in an interview with The New Indian Express that she feared that radical elements in Bangladesh would introduce Sharia law and women in the country would lose their rights.

“There is no freedom of speech. Human rights are being violated and soon women will have no rights at all after the introduction of Sharia law,” she said in an interview.

“Sheikh Hasina encouraged the radical elements that eventually Frankensteined and led to her inglorious downfall. However, the current government is worse than Sheikh Hasina’s ‘autocratic rule,'” she added.

The Bangladeshi author also said of the current interim government under its chief adviser Muhammad Yunus: “The interim government under Md Yunus will only make things worse, because the violence following the overthrow of Sheikh Hasina was described as jubilation. Temples were vandalised, museums and statues of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman were destroyed and minorities such as Hindus were attacked.”

“The interim government said it was a reaction by students celebrating the victory of the new order. The mood on the ground is anti-Indian, misogynistic and anti-democratic. Radicalisation in the country has increased manifold. Islamists have called on people to boycott Indian products,” she added.

WHAT HAPPENED IN BANGLADESH

In mid-July this year, there were massive student protests in Bangladesh against the controversial quota system that reserved 30 percent of jobs for the families of veterans of the 1971 War of Independence.

The uprising forced Sheikh Hasina, the 76-year-old daughter of Bangladesh’s founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, to resign on August 5 and flee to India.

One day later, an interim government led by 84-year-old Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus took power.

So far, more than a thousand people have died as a result of the unrest in the country.