'Why are they so much anti-India': Taslima Nasrin slams Bangladeshis celebrating India's defeat against Australia in World Cup final

Taslima Nasrin, a Bangladeshi writer and poet, has slammed Bangladeshis celebrating India's defeat in the cricket World Cup final. 

In a post on X, Nasrin wrote, “Bangladesh's young Muslims are happy because India lost the World Cup. Why are they so much anti-India when India liberated their country and they depend on India for almost everything, healthcare, entertainment, clothing, beef, onion etc.? Govts encourage them to practice Islam, they do & so automatically become anti-Hindu.”

This post comes after Australia defeated India by six wickets in the World Cup final. Before that, Indian won 10 matches on the trot. A substantial section of Bangladeshi cricket supporters celebrated India's defeat with joy.

India played a crucial role in liberating Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971. The Bangladesh Liberation War, also known as the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, was a conflict between East Pakistan and West Pakistan that resulted in the independence of Bangladesh. The war began on March 25, 1971, when the Pakistani military launched a brutal crackdown on Bengali nationalists in East Pakistan. Millions of Bengalis fled to India as refugees, and the Indian government began providing them with humanitarian aid and military training.

On December 3, 1971, India entered the war in support of the Bengali freedom fighters. The Indian military quickly gained the upper hand and forced the Pakistani military to surrender on December 16, 1971. The liberation of Bangladesh was a major victory for India and a turning point in the history of South Asia.

"Maybe we should have let Bangladesh remain under Pakistan military rule. If they are so ungrateful and racist towards Hindus and India, why did we liberate them? They are embarrassed that Hindus had to rescue them and so compensate by bashing us to please the Muslim ummah," a user wrote on X.

Nasrin’s writings won critical acclaim and global attention in the early 1990s. However, her radical writings exposing hypocrisy as well as fundamentalism, also infuriated the orthodox clergy in her homeland, some of whom passed ‘fatwas’ against her, forcing her to flee to Europe and the US.

Meanwhile, there has been a series of attacks on Hindu temples in Bangladesh. An octogenarian Hindu poet was beaten up in a series of similar attacks in Bangladesh last month. In August 2023, a human rights watch report issued by the NGO 'Shrishti o Chetona' stated that "attacks on temples and other community properties" or general anti-minority slurs, threats of "expulsion from the country and abuse" were among the occurrences reported.

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