Over 200 Muslims destroyed an idol of the goddess Kali and engaged in anti-Hindu violence in Medinipur Town, West Bengal. The local police attacked Hindu victims instead of protecting them. The document provides several examples of attacks on Hindus in West Bengal by Muslims, including attempted rapes, home invasions, and intimidation. Hindus who have complained to the police say they receive no help and women live in fear of abuse. The author argues that West Bengal Hindus must organize politically and make their votes count to pressure politicians to protect Hindu rights and safety.

1. The War on West Bengal’s Hindus
Dr. Richard L. Benkin
Hindu Existence recently published an article about an anti-Hindu pogrom in Medinipur Town, West
Bengal, India. Over 200 Muslims destroyed an idol of the goddess Kali earlier this month and engaged in
other acts of hooliganism against individual Hindus and Hinduism. Instead of protecting its Hindu
citizens, the West Bengal police and government attacked them and arrested several of the victims.
While Hindu Existence published this piece of news, the major media, Indian and foreign, were silent; as
they have been time and again about cases of anti-Hindu persecution. Smaller but potential outlet
likeHindu Existence and my web site, InterfaithStrength, are almost alone in their efforts to educate
people about the ongoing brutalization of Hindus in Bangladesh and even in the world’s largest Hindu
nation, India. Are my resources and those of Hindu Existence and itseditor, UpanandaBrahmachari,
greater than those of CNN, The New York Times, The Times of India, Reuters, AP, and others? Obviously
not. Yet, with our limited resources, we will continue to unearth incidents like this even while
recognized journalists do not.
Clearly, the anti-Hindu pogrom in Medinipur Town was an isolated incident. It would be tragic enough if
it was. But it is not isolated, not a function of individuals, or one of individual officials. And it will get no
response from either the West Bengal government or other authorities.

2. Yes, jihad has come to India, and the world better wake up to that fact, and soon.
Here is something else the major media studiously ignored. In February, AnimitraChakraborty, one
Rights Activist of Bengal linked with Hindu Samhati and I visited several places under the Diamond
Harbour police station in West Bengal including the home of 18-year-old “Bharati.” For her security, we
are using a pseudonym that reflects this young woman’s fidelity to her people. Bharati lives with her
disabled brother and aged parents in one of her village’s last Hindu homes. Local Muslims have been
buying up or seizing Hindu lands. They harass, abuse, or otherwise intimidate those who will not
cooperate into fleeing the area. One of their favorite methods is to assault Hindu women and girls and
make them fearful of moving about in their own communities. About “six or seven months” before we
arrived, they tried to rape Bharati. It was not the first time local Muslims assaulted this petite young
woman with a childlike laugh, but it was the final straw. She and her disabled brother went to the local
police for help and even traveled to Kolkata where they petitioned Chief Minister Momata Banerjee’s
personal assistant; but neither provided them with any effective help. Not to give up, they filed a civil
suit and secured an injunction; but the miscreants were able to ignore it because the police refused to
enforce it. Things got even worse, and the threats became more violent. Bharati’s abusers cut down
fruit trees on the property and dried up the pond where they raised fish in an attempt to starve them
out of their home; but they still stood tall and refused to drop their lawsuit or flee.

3. Seeing that the police would not stop them, the Muslim thugs grew even bolder and invaded the family
home. In November 2012, they tried to steal the legal papers and rape Bharati, who escaped only after
her aged mother’s screams started drawing attention. In December, they tried to abduct the young
woman from her home. Fortunately, she struggled and fought until others came and the invaders ran
off. After the November attack, Bharati and her brother went to the local administration, but it refused
to acknowledge any case except simple burglary. So, they again traveled to Kolkata. Police there did
accept a wider case but have taken no action on it. She again went to the local police after the
December home invasion, offering extensive evidence including eyewitnesses, but the police did not
want any. She soon heard back from them; they made an arrest: Bharati herself! The accused men
summarily denied the allegations. The police accepted the Muslims’ denials without any investigation
and went after the young Hindu girl. “What more can they do,” she said to us, “besides kill me?”
Bharati’s case is unique only in the details and in the strength and courage she and her brother have
shown—strength and courage that has not found support from other Bengali Hindus outside of brave
individuals like PintuMahish, PratapHazra and some others linked to Hindu Samhati. Throughout the
Diamond Harbour area, we encountered Hindus who complained of attacks, intimidation, and Muslim
demands that they get out and do so quickly. Without exception, they told us that Hindu women and
girls are afraid to move about because of insulting catcalls, molestations, threats, and the knowledge of
what happened to other women. They fear being raped, abducted, or both with no protection from the
West Bengal police.

4. The story was the same when I visited the Deganga area in West Bengal two years earlier. After police
deployed to stop Muslim rioters, they merely took their violence further from the road, attacking
isolated Hindu settlements, destroying homes, and assaulting women. One woman told me how she
was spared only because she fled quickly and hid in the high grass away from any homes. Most of the
Hindus had left Deganga (2010) when I got there, and many of those who remained were seriously
thinking of leaving. They, too, told me that Hindu women who venture forth alone almost certainly
suffer abuse up to rape and abduction. In response to all of this, the police were searching high and low
to arrest one individual; but like the Diamond Harbour case, they were looking to arrest a Hindu who
tried to defend himself against the mob. And not far from Diamond Harbour, the repetition of
brutalization upon Hindus came down to the Hindus of Naliakhali (Canning sub-division) in the recent
past without a little hindrance from any of political parties of Bengal.
Nothing was done then about this creeping jihad and the West Bengal police’s complicity; and as a result
things have not improved for West Bengal Hindus. If anything, they have gotten worse. Many area
Hindus, requesting anonymity for fear of reprisals by Muslims or local officials, told us that they expect
an armed takeover by Muslims—some of them local, some recently arrived from Bangladesh. Muslims
parade openly with their extensive arms cache, threatening Hindu residents, and police do nothing
about it. They asked us for “arms” so they could protect themselves “because the police will not.” The

5. accompanying picture is of an individual whose fingers were blown off in what Palestinian terrorists call
a “work accident,” that is, when the bomb they are building explodes pre-maturely.
There are other remedies. The major reason that these injustices proceed is because no one raises a
hue and cry about them. There seems to be a total information blackout about the persecution of
Bengali Hindus outside of a very small group. We can change that. RashidaManjoo, United Nations
Special Rapporteur on violenceagainst women is holding meetings in Bangladesh, adjacent to West
Bengal, and has invited human rights activist RabindraGhosh to testify about violence against
Bangladeshi Hindu women and children. I have sent a letter offering to testify about the confirming
evidence I have. If others can keep up the pressure not to cover up atrocities against Bengali Hindus
with similarly aggressive offers of verified evidence, maintaining India’s secret jihad and Bangladesh’s
not so secret jihad will become unsustainable.
Indian Hindus must also recognize that it is they themselves—not politicians, Muslims, or leftists—who
are preventing a political solution to this problem. I would not presume to know Chief Minister
Banerjee’s thoughts, but if she is like politicians everywhere, she will respond first and foremost to

6. pressure at the poles. West Bengal Hindus, however, have not formed any sort of strong and unified
political organization. Thus, they seem to have no real alternative to her Trinamool Congress for
securing their safety. The Left Front was no better when they ran West Bengal; the Congress Party has
not opposed similar anti-Hindu actions elsewhere, and Hindus have made the BJP rather marginal in
West Bengal. If West Bengal Hindus want things to change, they have to seize the opportunity
themselves. Whether they turn to the BJP or try to work with Trinamool, they have to make it clear that
a party’s action (that is, not mere words) will be the single issue on which it can secure this very large
vote bank.
Politicians everywhere have various constituencies with countless issues. It is impossible for any official
to satisfy them all. A major determinant of who gets their attention is who demands it; and who can
make it hurt on Election Day if they do not. So, how does one go about such organizing? It is not for
me, a foreigner, to tell citizens of India how to exercise their rights in the world’s largest democracy. I
do, however, know that the key for West Bengal Hindus is to demand the rights and protection that is
theirs and show West Bengal leaders at the poles the consequences of ignoring a large and organized
vote bank.
Demographer BimalPramanik has documented how these changes, coupled with illegal immigration
from Bangladesh, has changed the demographic balance in some areas. Between 1951 and 2001, for
instance, West Bengal’s Hindu population tripled while Muslims quadrupled. He also noted that the
disparity between Muslim and Hindu growth rate was especially pronounced in the West Bengal districts
bordering Bangladesh. He noted that “this is a religio-cultural process taking place in a geographical
space considered to be strategically important…. At least three factors, facilitating the process of
Islamisation, are...a secular political environment… the appeasement of aliens for the purpose of
garnering votes [and] a weak, undefined and unorganized secular frame.”
West Bengal’s Hindus have a shrinking window of opportunity to act as a powerful vote bank. With
national elections less than a year away, this is their opportunity to become significant to the politicians
or continue to be dismissible and dismissed. If they do not act, West Bengal Hindus will find themselves
in the minority in more areas of the state, and the political option will be off the table.
What will happen then?