A Hindu businessman was attacked by a mob in Bangladesh’s Shariatpur district on Dec. 31. He was beaten with sharp weapons, doused in petrol and set on fire. This was the third such attack in a month — part of a larger pattern of violence against religious minorities since the fall of the previous government.
The incident shows that the interim administration has failed to enforce the rule of law in cases involving political or communal violence. That failure has left the country’s transition in a dangerously exposed state.
The victim, 50-year-old Khokon Chandra Das, was returning home after closing his shop when a group of men stopped his auto-rickshaw on a rural road near Keurbhanga Bazar, according to the Prothom Alo newspaper. They attacked him with sharp weapons and set him on fire. He jumped into a nearby pond to put out the flames and was later taken to Dhaka for medical treatment. By the time local residents reached the spot, the attackers had escaped.
Earlier in December, two other attacks on Hindus drew public attention. In Mymensingh district, a garment worker named Dipu Chandra Das was lynched and his body set on fire after he was accused of blasphemy.
On the same day, mobs attacked the offices of The Daily Star and Prothom Alo, setting fire to part of one building and trapping journalists on the roof. A few days later, in another district, another Hindu man was beaten to death by a crowd in a separate lynching.
The Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council of Bangladesh claims that between August 2024 and June 2025, at least 2,442 incidents of violence against minorities took place. These included killings, sexual assaults and attacks on places of worship. Separate reporting by Prothom Alo documented that over 1,000 houses and business establishments owned by religious minorities were attacked in the first two weeks after Sheikh Hasina’s government was ousted in August 2024.
The repeated incidents of violence without consistent legal action suggest that Bangladesh is experiencing what sociologists call “norm erosion.” This refers to a situation where laws still exist on paper, but they no longer influence people’s behaviour in practice. Or, we could say that rules are formally in place, but they are not being enforced in a way that deters violence or maintains order.
During political transitions, especially after a government is overthrown or a major power shift, legal institutions often come under suspicion. Courts, police and prosecutors may be seen as loyal to the previous rulers, which makes their actions appear biased. That bias may be real, but the law still needs to be applied equally and without delay. If authorities hesitate to act against those involved in mob attacks, violence may quickly become normalised, especially when it targets groups linked to the former regime.
In Egypt, after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011, attacks against minorities increased sharply, with little or no state response, as security forces were seen as politically paralysed. In post-genocide Rwanda in the early 1990s, transitional authorities struggled to contain retaliatory violence, especially in rural areas.
In Iraq, after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, state institutions were viewed as illegitimate by large segments of the population, and widespread sectarian violence followed, often tolerated or ignored by parts of the interim administration. These examples show how the breakdown of trust in legal systems during political transitions can open space for organised violence, especially against groups associated with the old order.
In Bangladesh, the main targets have been religious minorities, especially Hindus, Christians and Buddhists. Many of them have supported the Awami League in the past, partly because the party claims to be secular, even if that claim is rightly contested, and also because other parties were seen by them as having an Islamist leaning.
The backlash against these communities has involved burnings, lynchings and public threats. In many cases, the police have either failed to show up or arrived too late. This has led to serious doubts about whether the state is acting in a neutral manner.
The interim administration has publicly dismissed the extent and seriousness of violence against minorities. In October 2025, its head, Muhammad Yunus, called such concerns “fake news.”
This response may serve a political purpose by pushing back against criticism, but it ignores what minority communities in Bangladesh are actually going through. Denying the problem is a political choice. It allows the state to avoid responsibility and leaves religious minorities unprotected.
However, the concern is larger than the immediate threat to the safety of religious minorities. The denial of the interim government has come alongside the resurgence of Jamaat-e-Islami in public life.
The group has expanded its presence in public universities and parts of the civil administration, and this has gone hand in hand with a shift in how religious diversity is discussed. Jamaat’s deputy leaders have delivered speeches calling for Islamic law in Parliament and rejecting the authority of laws made by people.
These ideas do not reflect the values of most Bangladeshis, who are known for their pluralistic traditions. But the danger lies in the state’s silence. It risks allowing Jamaat to quietly advance an agenda that lacks large support but could still reshape public institutions and legal norms.
The current environment in Bangladesh, marked by rising attacks on minorities without consequences, creates space for what political theorists call “informal veto players.” These are groups outside the government that still hold the power to block or influence state decisions. By choosing not to stop them, the state effectively hands over control of law and order to groups that have no democratic legitimacy.
Sociologists refer to this situation as “asymmetric citizenship.” Hindus, Christians and other minorities may hold equal rights under the law, but in practice they face greater risk of violence, fewer chances of legal remedy, and are often left out of how the nation sees itself. This becomes especially clear during religious festivals or elections, where the state may choose to provide protection, or withhold it, based on political interests.
What is at stake is the meaning of the transition that brought down Sheikh Hasina’s government. The student-led uprising that led to it promised a new kind of republic, one based on equality and dignity for all citizens.
That promise was written into the July Charter, which called for legal reform, action against corruption and inclusive citizenship. Some formal reforms have begun, but none deal with the serious and growing threats facing religious minorities. Without strong institutional checks in place, the new system risks repeating old patterns of exclusion, just under a different name.
The attacks on Hindus and other minorities are symptoms of a deeper erosion that must be reversed.
