Analysis | Hefazat-e Islam, the group behind anti-Modi protests in Bangladesh
The Hindu
Narendra Modi was in Bangladesh to attend the country’s Golden Jubilee celebrations of independence.
At least 11 people were killed in Bangladesh over the weekend as protesters clashes with police during demonstrations called by Islamist groups against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Dhaka visit. Mr. Modi was in Bangladesh to attend the country’s Golden Jubilee celebrations of independence. After Mr. Modi’s visit, violence spread across the country with protesters attacking a train in the eastern district of Brahmanbaria and targeting several Hindu temples. The main group behind the violent protests was Hefazat-e-Islam Bangladesh, an umbrella organisation of radical Islamists that had in the past clashed with the Awami League government. Hefazat-e-Islam, literally ‘protector of Islam’, was formed in 2010 when the country was taking gradual measures to undo the Islamisation of its polity by the military rulers in the late 1970s and 1980s. In 2008, the military-backed caretaker government had proposed the Draft National Women’s Development Policy Bill, promising equal rights to women in property ‘through earnings, inheritance, loan, land and market management’. In the December 2008 election, the secular Awami League, led by Sheikh Hasina, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s daughter, was brought to power. The secualrists had demanded repealing the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which had made sweeping changes to the country’s original secular Constitution during the years of military rule (Later in the year the Supreme Court ruled the amendment was illegal). The Islamist groups saw these developments, along with the shrinking space of clergy politics, as a threat to their core interests, and came together on one platform to form Hefazat-e-Islam. In February 2010, Hefazat called a demonstration in Chittagong against the Women’s Bill and the bid to cancel the Fifth Amendment. They clashed with police, injuring over a dozen, and announcing the arrival of a new Islamist group in Bangladesh’s political landscape.More Related News