Does the Bangladesh government have a problem with Hindus or ISKCON, what is the matter?

The issue of the arrest of Chinmay Prabhu, associated with ISKCON in Bangladesh, has become so big that relations between India and Bangladesh are at stake. When India objected to the arrest, Bangladesh also got angry and said that India should not interfere in this issue. The question is what does ISKCON do in Bangladesh that the Bangladesh government wants to ban it? Is ISKCON's work responsible for what is happening against Hindus in Bangladesh or is this new government of Bangladesh itself against Hindus? What is the reality of the atrocities being committed against Hindus in Bangladesh?

First of all, let us talk about the Hindus living in Bangladesh. So, today about 1 crore 35 lakh Hindus live in Bangladesh. According to this, after India and Nepal, Bangladesh is the third largest Hindu-populated country in the world. But if we look at the population of Bangladesh, this number is only around 7.95 percent. After Islam, Hinduism is the second largest religion in Bangladesh, despite this, the Hindu population in Bangladesh has never been safe and their population kept decreasing year after year. When the census was conducted soon after the formation of Bangladesh, the Hindu population in Bangladesh was about 13.50 percent in 1974, which has now come down to less than 8 percent.

The biggest crisis faced by the Hindus of Bangladesh came when on 5 August 2024, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was overthrown. Sheikh Hasina had to leave her own country and flee. Sheikh Hasina came to India and the minority Hindus of Bangladesh were left behind, on whom the new government committed extreme atrocities. Within just four months from August to November, at least 500 such incidents took place in which the houses of Hindus were burnt, their temples were burnt and every kind of oppression was done on them, which no one could even imagine.

After the overthrow of Sheikh Hasina, an interim government was also formed under the leadership of Mohammad Yunus. Mohammad Yunus also condemned the attack on Hindus. He also assured them of safety, but now the same Mohammad Yunus and his entire government are after ISKCON in Bangladesh and have approached the court to ban it. Although the court has refused to ban ISKCON in Bangladesh, Chinmay Prabhu, the biggest face of ISKCON in Bangladesh, is still in jail, and Hindus of Bangladesh are agitating for his release.

The question is why did Mohammad Yunus do this? After becoming the Prime Minister, he visited Bangladesh's most famous temple Dhakeshwari temple in August and gave assurances, then why did this situation arise? Is Mohammad Yunus with the Hindus, but against ISKCON? Let us try to understand this as well. The Hindus in Bangladesh are Bengali Hindus and in Bengal either Goddess Durga is worshipped or Maa Kali and Lord Shiva. In undivided Bengal, these were the biggest gods of Hindus. So even after the partition of Bengal, the Hindus who lived first in East Pakistan and then in Bangladesh in 1971 also worshipped these gods and goddesses, but then ISKCON came to Bangladesh.

The full name of ISKCON is the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. It is called International Krishna Consciousness in Hindi. Swami Srila Prabhupada founded ISKCON on 11 July 1966. In just about 58 years, ISKCON has built more than 100 temples all over the world, which have more than 10 lakh followers. Apart from India, there are ISKCON temples in America, Russia, and Britain, and there are ISKCON temples in Islamic countries Pakistan and Bangladesh as well. If we talk only about Bangladesh, then the total number of temples there is more than 40 thousand, out of which at least 10 temples belong to ISKCON.

ISKCON's influence has increased so much that now even the Bangladesh government is not as afraid of other temples and their heads as it is afraid of ISKCON. The reason for this is that ISKCON is an international organization, which finds it easier to gather support for itself as compared to other Hindu temples. Apart from this, a new organization has been formed in Bangladesh under the leadership of ISKCON's senior saint Chinmay Prabhu, whose name is Bangladesh Sammilit Sanatan Jagran Jot. This group is demanding better security for Hindus in Bangladesh and is saying that after the coup of Sheikh Hasina, Hindus have become unsafe in Bangladesh and the new interim Prime Minister Mohammad Yunus is also not working towards the safety of Hindus.