When a peace prize becomes a shield for power and denial, truth itself bleeds. The question before the world is simple: will it listen to the victims, or to the man who calls their suffering fake?

Bangladesh’s tragedy today lies in its paradox: a Nobel laureate whose name once evoked moral redemption now presides over a republic of denial. Professor Muhammad Yunus, hailed for lifting the poor through micro-credit, has refashioned himself as the interim Chief Adviser—a statesman cloaked in sanctimony. Yet when confronted with reports of Hindu killings, temple desecrations, and targeted terror, he offers not contrition but contempt.

The ‘saint’ who refused to see blood

In his now-notorious interview with journalist Mehdi Hasan, Yunus declared with professorial hauteur: “These are fake news. One of the specialties of India is fake news.” Thus did a man once garlanded by Oslo and feted by Davos dismiss the documented anguish of a besieged minority. His protest was not a slip of tongue; it was a strategy—an attempt to delegitimise testimony by smearing the witness.

Reuters and The Hindu have both chronicled the disturbing rise in anti-Hindu attacks since Sheikh Hasina’s ouster in 2024: temples torched in Rangpur, idols decapitated in Khulna, families driven from ancestral land in Faridpur. The Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council recorded more than 2,400 hate crimes between August 2024 and June 2025, a figure echoed by Human Rights Watch and the Dhaka Tribune. To call these “fabrications” is not merely dishonest—it is a desecration of grief itself.

A history written in ashes

No understanding of today’s Bangladesh can be divorced from the longue durée of its communal torment. From the genocidal convulsions of 1971—when, as documented by historian Gary J. Bass in The Blood Telegram, Hindus were systematically marked for slaughter—to the pogroms that followed the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992 and the elections of 2001, the script has rarely changed. Each cycle of violence has unfolded with numbing predictability: local instigation, administrative apathy, official denial.

The Gangachara attack of July 2025 alone left twenty Hindu homes reduced to cinders. In Ashulia the previous year, six members of a minority family were burned alive in what survivors described to Prothom Alo as “a message to leave.” Amnesty International noted that these assaults were “patterned, not spontaneous”—ritualistic reprisals masquerading as land disputes.

Against such a background, Yunus’s insistence that “law and order is maintained” reads less like reassurance and more like Orwellian irony. The very institutions meant to uphold justice—Rapid Action Battalions and police units—have too often acted as bystanders, if not accomplices.

The alleged Islamist in the guise of philanthropy

From micro‑credit pioneer to political lightning rod, Yunus’s ascent has always been contested:

• Allegations by Hindu right‑wing voices claim he is a hate‑monger, a rabid fundamentalist Muslim, and a quiet patron of Islamist causes. These aren’t fringe whispers — some BJP MPs have publicly urged a reevaluation of his Nobel status, accusing him of being the mastermind behind Hindu persecution in Bangladesh.
• Critics argue his financial networks and NGOs have channeled funds to Islamist seminaries and radical organizations under the radar.
• His long history of political maneuvering — once subtle, now overt — positions him at the heart of a narrative where charity and coercion intersect.

Whether every accusation holds legal weight is a secondary question. The importance is this: these claims exist, they resonate, and they shape perception. Any serious journalistic take must confront them — not shy away.

Historical bloodlines: Communal targets across eras

To truly understand 2024–2025, you must trace the bloodlines:

• Partition and 1971 genocide — In 1947, Hindu Bengal shattered. In 1971, as East Pakistan fought for independence, Hindus were systematically targeted — massacres, rapes, forced displacement. Massacres such as Dakra, Ishangopalpur and many more are etched into collective memory.
• Recurring cycles — In 1992 (post‑Babri demolition), Bangladesh saw Hindu homes and temples attacked. In 2001, the scale soared. Forced conversions, land snatching, silent discrimination — these became everyday weapons.
• Implications for today — The claim that Hindu killings are sudden anomalies collapses under this deep timeline. The same scripts play: local instigator, weak response, denial from above.

Killings, temple loot, testimonies — Evidence speaks

Here is what is undeniable, unless you choose to live in willful blindness:

• Gangachara Attack (July 2025): 15–20 Hindu homes burned, victims displaced.
• Ashulia Imbroglio (Aug 2024): Six bodies incinerated in a van — minority families claim targeted extrajudicial killings.
• Wider canvas — Reuters reported that after Hasina’s ouster, temple attacks and looting hit multiple districts. The Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council alleges 2,442 hate crimes (Aug 2024–June 2025), including killings, arson, assaults. Survivors speak of rituals disrupted, idols smashed, memorial stones desecrated.

These are not rumors. These are witness statements, FIRs, NGO compilations, media investigations.

Diplomacy, denial, and the dance of hypocrisy

Across the border, India has not been indifferent. BJP parliamentarians have raised the matter in Parliament, urging a diplomatic demarche and even questioning Yunus’s continued sanctification by the Nobel Committee. Television studios in Delhi and Kolkata have run searing exposés, while Dhaka’s establishment lashes back, accusing India of peddling propaganda.

What we are witnessing is not merely a bilateral spat; it is a struggle over narrative sovereignty. In a post—truth subcontinent, the first casualty is always memory. When a revered figure deploys his moral capital to obscure rather than illuminate, he imperils the very conscience that once ennobled him.

As the Dhaka Tribune editorialised in May 2025, “Bangladesh cannot build its democracy on the corpses it refuses to count.” To that one might add: nor can the world continue to lionise a laureate who mistakes denial for diplomacy.

The moral reckoning

The choice before Bangladesh is stark. It can either rediscover the pluralism that animated its liberation struggle, or descend into the monochrome bigotry that its founders abhorred. And for India—whose political class now oscillates between outrage and fatigue-the imperative is not only to condemn but to chronicle, lest the silence of neighbours become the complicity of nations.

If even Nobel laureates can invoke “fake news” to whitewash real suffering, then words have lost their sanctity and prizes their purpose. In the end, it is not the mobs that kill truth-it is the men of peace who refuse to name it.

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