Being Hindu In Bangladesh

For those who carry the scars of Partition, more than seven decades after arbitrary lines scarred the subcontinent, home is still on the other side of the Padma river. They pine for those who were left behind as a great mass of humanity moved from the east to the west of Bengal to settle in Hindu-majority India. Where are they today in the land that was then east Bengal, which became East Pakistan in 1947, and then Bangladesh in 1971?

According to an estimate from the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, there were 17 million Hindus in Bangladesh in 2015, though the population is steadily dwindling. Hindus in Bangladesh in the late 2000s were almost evenly distributed in all regions of the country, with large concentrations in Gopalganj, Dinajpur, Sylhet, Sunamganj, Mymensingh, Khulna, Jessore, Chittagong and parts of Chittagong's Hill Tracts. Since the rise of Islamist political formations in the country during the 1990s, many Hindus have been threatened or attacked, and...