M Serajul Islam: PRIYA Saha, one of the many organising secretaries of the Hindu, Christian and Buddhist Unity Council, a pressure group of the minorities in Bangladesh, is now a household name in the country for the infamy she acquired for her recent anti-Bangladesh actions while she was in Washington. She managed an invitation to the Oval Office as an alleged victim of religious persecution with 16 others from several countries in a similar predicament to share their experiences with the US president Donald Trump.
Priya Saha, standing twice removed from the most powerful political leader of the world, narrated a litany of lies nonchalantly in well-rehearsed English about the persecution of the Hindu community with the Christians and the Buddhists in Bangladesh. She said that 37 million of them had become victims of enforced disappearances in the hands of the Islamic fundamentalists. When Trump inquired whether action had been taken against the perpetrators, she answered in the negative, stating that they were powerful and blamed the governments for indulging them.
Priya Saha, as was revealed later, had good connections with the ruling party. Social and mainstream media were replete with her pictures with ministers and ruling party leaders as soon as the video of her Oval Office meeting was posted on the internet and went viral immediately that brought frantic calls from the ministers and ruling party leaders to take action against her. Hell, of course, would have broken loose on her if her connections had been with the opposition. Instead, when her ruling party connections were revealed, the call for action against her from the ruling party leaders faded.
Her misdeeds rattled the foreign minister in the beginning when it was stated on the social media that she had gone to Washington as a member of his delegation to the 2nd Ministerial Conference on Religious Freedom that was hosted by the US secretary of state. He blasted her on his Facebook page and the mainstream media. He made a complete U-turn after the prime minister had intervened in the matter and called for calm. The foreign minister’s U-turn was also encouraged after the ruling party posted on Facebook that the US embassy in Dhaka had sponsored Priya Saha’s trip as a conspiracy against the ruling party and Bangladesh.
The prime minister’s call for calm was a wise one that helped put things in perspective because knee-jerk reactions from the foreign minister and others were pushing things to the government’s disadvantage. She assessed, and no doubt correctly, that Priya Saha had damaged her credibility totally by the preposterously wild figure of 37 million and the best way to deal with her was to ignore what she had said and, instead, use the publicity that she had received on the international media to Bangladesh’s advantage. She also, no doubt, considered that Priya Saha did not land at the Oval Office by waving a magic wand and that she had a plan and that powerful individuals and/or groups must have helped her make her incredible journey and that it was necessary to expose her plan and those that had helped her.
Priya Saha could have been helped by several quarters that want to harm Bangladesh. The truth about the condition of the Hindus in present-day Bangladesh is, of course, far different. The fact has been partly undermined by the silence of sections of secular forces over the Priya Saha saga. They were the most active sympathisers of the Hindus in the past because they believed then that they could blame their nemesis, the BNP and the Jamaat, for such persecution. The secular forces in question with the rest of the country now see before them plain as daylight that far from suffering persecution, the Hindus now hold for instance 25 per cent of jobs in the government although they are less than 10 per cent of the country’s population. The foreign minister and the adviser to the prime minister HT Imam used the point to nail Priya Saha’s litany of lies. Many believe that the Hindus enjoy even a bigger share of government jobs and other privileges as well and fear that unless such bias towards the Hindus is corrected, the community could, in fact, be targets of wrath in future.
The foreign ministry could now use the exposure of Priya Saha’s litany of lies to establish the unacknowledged strength of Bangladesh as a country largely free from communal conflict. Many Hindus in Bangladesh have suffered persecution in the past and still do. So do many other minorities and many of the majority Muslims as well. But these Hindus, other minorities and many Muslims that suffer persecution do so not for their respective religions but for one reason that is as old as history itself that they are weak and historically everywhere, the weak suffered persecution in the hands of the strong and powerful and continue to do so.
The foreign minister should have a few things to take up with the US embassy in particular related to Priya Saha who was known to its staff that work with minorities. The US embassy has been involved with individuals such a Priya Saha and groups they represent that have harmed the country. The foreign minister should inquire if the embassy had any role in helping her reach the Oval Office. He should request the embassy to bring her home because she has been spreading more lies on the social media by abusing her visa perhaps to seek political asylum that many believe was the personal reason that inspired her lies on Hindu persecution in the first place.
The US embassy has the embarrassing responsibility of finding the way to deal with the fact that it is representing a president who is almost totally unaware of the country to which it is accredited. He did not seem to know much about the Rohingyas either — that a million of them fled to Bangladesh to avoid an active ethnic cleansing in the hands of the Myanmar military. Its credibility to represent the United States in Bangladesh would be severely hampered unless it can establish to the people of Bangladesh that president Trump knows a little more about Bangladesh and the region than a kindergarten child of his country. There are many ways to do so diplomatically and the US embassy should spend more time exploring those channels.
The Freedom House, a ‘US government-funded non-governmental organisation that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights’ has a few things to answer to the Bangladesh government. In a statement after president Trump had met Priya Saha and the others, Michael J Abramowitz, the president of the organisation, commended the US president ‘for providing strong public support to victims of religious persecution around the world.’ Priya Saha was the proverbial bad apple in the barrel. The Freedom House should issue a statement to distance its good name from someone like Priya Saha.
Postscript: Muslims constitute 14 per cent of India’s population but enjoy around 3 per cent share of government jobs. Former Indian vice-president Hamid Ansari called such a plight of Indian Muslims as ‘appalling.’ The Muslims now live in fear of their lives from the Hindu fundamentalist RSS whose members are now out into the open for their blood. Yet no Hindu in Bangladesh is in any fear from the 90 per cent majority Muslims of Bangladesh. This fact with the figures of the Hindus in government jobs given by the foreign minister should nail Priya Saha’s litany of lies in a coffin and be put to final rest.
Meanwhile, since India’s irrational treatment of its Muslim minority community does not justify any wrongdoing of Bangladesh to its religious minority communities, the government of Bangladesh must address the legitimate grievances of the country’s non-Muslim communities.
M Serajul Islam is a former career ambassador.
