Heart and Soul: The plight of Hindus in Bangladesh, part two

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary

4.3 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 10 January 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sahar Zand follows young Hindu activists Banamali and Sukanto, who are documenting the violence they say authorities and media are ignoring. She joins them as they respond to a new attack on a Hindu-majority village, where a mob set fire to a yet another building. The attacks are not just aimed at buildings. Sahar meets victims, including an elderly village doctor recovering from an attempted murder and a grieving mother whose 14-year-old son was killed trying to escape the country. In a tense interview, Sahar confronts Mahmudul Hasan Gunovi, a far-right Islamist leader accused of fueling the violence with his inflammatory rhetoric. She experiences the violence first-hand during a volatile encounter when Banamali and Sukanto visit a sensitive site, where a Hindu crematorium has recently been destroyed, and a make-shift mosque built on its ruins.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Suddenly out of nowhere, lots of people came.
0:07.8	And they're all very, very angry.
0:09.8	Emotions are high.
0:11.4	This is only moments before we found ourselves trapped in a horrifying nightmare.
0:18.8	Things have really escalated.
0:20.7	They started beating up my local producer outside.
0:25.3	They all attacked him, and then they started attacking the car,
0:28.1	and now they're not letting us leave.
0:30.5	This is the last recording we managed to get,
0:33.1	before we were attacked by a hostile mob of hundreds.
0:37.5	But how did we end up here?
0:39.5	More on that?
0:40.4	Later in the program.
0:44.9	This is the documentary on the BBC World Service.
0:48.6	I'm Sahar Zand, and this week I'm in Bangladesh for the second of a two-part heart and soul special.
0:54.9	We're investigating violent attacks on the Hindu minority following the collapse of
1:00.2	Sheikh Hasina's government in August 2024.
1:03.2	In this episode, I continue to follow Hindu university students, Bonomali and Shokanto,
1:09.1	who are on a mission to document alleged atrocities against
1:12.9	their community, often in remote rural areas.
1:19.2	It's early morning and I've woken up to a message from Boli Mali and Shokanto saying that
1:25.5	overnight they got intel that there has been another attack in a village nearby.
	...

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