Bangladesh’s Stability Question: Why Security of Hindus Matters
Bangladesh mob vandalizes Mujib Ur Rehman residence. Image credit X.com
Minority Security as Strategy: What Bangladesh Risks by Ignoring Its Hindus
By NIRENDRA DEV
New Delhi, January 28, 2026 — Bangladesh is navigating one of the most unsettled phases in its recent political history. Amid institutional drift, economic stress, and the resurgence of religious hard-liners, one factor remains conspicuously under-examined in international discourse: the safety and socio-economic role of the country’s Hindu minority.
Numerically small but historically embedded, Hindus in Bangladesh live under persistent insecurity. Reports of lynching, property seizures, and social exclusion are neither episodic nor accidental. They form a pattern that reflects the broader erosion of the rule of law. While minority protection is often framed as a moral imperative, in Bangladesh it is also a strategic variable—one with direct implications for national stability.
Contrary to prevailing assumptions, Hindu communities continue to exercise disproportionate economic influence in certain rural and semi-urban regions, particularly through land ownership, agriculture, small trade, and services. Their survival has depended less on state protection than on economic resilience and social cohesion. Observers inside Bangladesh note that these communities have historically displayed high workforce participation and low dependence on patronage networks.
This matters because Bangladesh’s internal fault lines are not purely religious. The Muslim population itself is socially and ideologically fragmented. Alongside conservative Islamist blocs exist secular, left-liberal, and atheist constituencies that have repeatedly opposed Jamaat-style politics. In earlier moments of national stress, these groups aligned—often informally—with religious minorities to resist ideological capture of the state.
Today, that informal coalition is weakening.
Since the political transition under the Yunus administration, critics argue that the state’s response to communal violence has been hesitant at best. The perception—fair or not—that attacks on Hindus attract little consequence has emboldened radical actors. The danger is not only humanitarian. It is systemic. A state that selectively enforces law invites parallel authority structures, a familiar precursor to prolonged instability.
Bangladesh’s intellectual class increasingly acknowledges another uncomfortable truth: decades of reflexive anti-India politics and symbolic Pakistan alignment have yielded neither economic acceleration nor institutional strength. This reassessment is not ideological but pragmatic. Development outcomes, not slogans, now shape public frustration.
Here, minority security intersects with regional geopolitics. India’s historical investment in Bangladesh’s independence is well documented, but contemporary engagement hinges on predictability and internal cohesion. A Bangladesh that cannot protect its minorities signals deeper governance failure—raising concerns well beyond bilateral relations.
The fear expressed by women’s groups, technocrats, and educators is not abstract. They point to Afghanistan as a cautionary tale: a society that underestimated incremental radicalisation until institutional rollback became irreversible. Few Bangladeshis want that outcome, yet passivity risks enabling it.
The argument, therefore, is not that Hindus alone can stabilise Bangladesh. It is that their security functions as an early-warning indicator. When minorities feel safe, rule of law is usually intact. When they do not, the state is already in retreat.
Bangladesh’s future will not be decided by identity politics alone, but by whether the state chooses inclusion over expediency. Protecting Hindus is not a concession to any external power. It is an investment in internal coherence.
History suggests that nations ignoring such signals rarely regain control easily.
(This is an opinion piece. Views expressed are author’s own.)
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