‘We’ll fight communal forces in our country, you take on in your country’

As many as 145 citizens of Bangladesh issued a statement titled “Our plea to the people of India” on Friday. It said, “There is no basic difference between the two countries if the people’s crises are taken into consideration. We will fight communal tendencies and forces in our country, you also fight communalism in your country.”

On behalf of the 15 citizens, Samajtantrik Chhatra Front (Marxist) central general secretary Rafikuzzaman Farid sent the statement to the media on Friday.

Addressing the Indians, the statement further said, “We are living in such a critical time when the diplomatic relations between Bangladesh and India have dipped, and the continuous provocation of some extreme communal forces in India is trying to create a rift in the friendship of the people of this region. We never see the people of India and the government of India as one. We know, the people of India are fighting Hindutva and communal forces. We have ousted the fascist Awami League after fighting against it for a long time. You observed programmes expressing solidarity with us during the bloodied fight in July-August. The continuity of your expression of solidarity with our movements and our expression of solidarity with your movements dates back to a long time.”

Mentioning communalism as a critical problem of the Indian subcontinent, the statement said that communalism creates divisions among the people, creating differences based on religion. All the rulers of this subcontinent used communalism as a weapon to hide many burning questions including education, health, right to work, exorbitant hike in prices of daily essentials and violence against women. They want to ensure the votes of both majority and minority communities using this strategy. Especially the attacks on minority communities are seen regularly taking place during the times of political changes.

The statement mentioned that there were incidents of attacks on the houses of Hindus, occupations of their land, vandalism at the temples and other forms of violence across the country during the tenure of the past Awami League government. Such incidents took place after the mass uprising on 5 August, the statement added.

It further said due to the encouragement of the mass uprising, many people came forward to guard the homes and temples of the Hindu community and thus set new examples of communal harmony. Apart from this, the democracy-loving people of this country protested the desecration of India’s national flag. But many Indian media did not publish actual information regarding Bangladesh. They are doing the same till now. An Indian media covered the accident of a Dhaka-Agartala-Dhaka bus as an incident of planned attack. The assistant high commission in Agartala of India came under attack within several hours of publishing the report, the national flag of Bangladesh was torn and desecrated.

Though the Indian government a few days ago regretted the incident of attack on the assistant high commission, it did not take any effective step to close such publication. The statement read, “We want the incidents that take place in Bangladesh to be viewed properly. Only the communal forces and the rulers are benefitted from such publications, no one else.”

The Bangladesh citizens in their statement said that the role of the government of India following the arrest of Chinmoy Krishna Das in Bangladesh astonished them. It said, “We support the right to justice of Chinmoy Krishna Das, in fact everyone has that right. But the hastiness with which the Ministry of External Affairs of the government of India issued a statement in his favour, is astonishing. A huge chaos was created on the day he was produced before the court and lawyer Saiful Islam Alif was killed. No large-scale unpleasant situation emerged in the country due to the wholehearted effort of the people of this country.”

The statement also said the Hindu community in Bangladesh is always in favour of creating a noncommunal state. The role of the people of Hindu community is glorious in the liberation war of this country and all other democratic movements. Many Hindus took part in the July-August mass uprising and embraced martyrdom.

The statement of the 145 Bangladeshi ended, saying, “We will fight communal tendencies and forces in our country, you also fight communalism in your country. Please prevent these conspiracies upholding the dignity of the aspirations of the people who laid down their lives in democratic movements of your country. THis fight is a continuous fight of the people of both countries against the oppression, looting, torture and dominance of large capitals of India; this is our united fight against the conspiracies of the vested quarter who use religion to differentiate people. We will win in this fight.”

Among the signatories are, Anu Muhammad, Salimullah Khan, Sayeed Ferdaus, Harun-Ar-Rashid, Swadhin Sen, Giti Ara Nasrin, Fahmidul Haque, Kamrul Hasan Mamun, Tuhin Wadud, Samin Lutfa, Moshrefa Mishu, Sima Dutt, Altaf Parvez, Kallol Mustafa, Ashraf Kaiser, Maha Mirza, Jyotirmoy Barua, Manzul-Al-Matin, Sayan, Amitav Reza Chowdhury, Kamar Ahmad Simon, Pritom Das, Sarwar Tushar, Salman Siddiqui, Meghmallar Bosu and others.