Irvine, CA (February 15, 2025):

Abduction, rape, forceful marriage, and conversion of Hindu women to Islam is a calculated measure to prevent births within the group and annihilate Hindus. It is a part of the Hindu genocide currently underway in Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority state. Calling the exploitation of Hindu women “Womb Jihad,” Prof. Renita Mujumdar, a professor of philosophy in the Department of Women Studies at the University of New Mexico, said that just about a week ago, mobs abducted 44 Hindu women from Khulna, a Bangladeshi town on its border with India. She said it is part of a broader campaign to alter the demographic landscape of the region.

Delivering a lecture on violence against Hindus in Bangladesh, Mujumdar provided a historical context on the persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh based on her extensive research. Voice of Hindus  (VOH) organized the program. VOH is a platform for minority Hindu communities in Northern America and beyond to raise awareness about Hinduphobia, Hindu hate, and the lack of Hindu rights globally. The Voice of Hindus platform aims to give voice to the legitimate causes of Hindu communities and help combat anti-Hindu discrimination.

“Jihad stems from intra-Muslim conflict, it has been, however, redefined over time. For many Muslims, participating in jihad is considered a moral duty, rather than a sin”. This duty, Mazumdar pointed out, is deeply rooted in scriptural interpretations and has been used to justify violence against non-Muslims, particularly Hindus.

Jihad & Slavery

“The mainstream media says Jihad is terrorism. It is not terrorism. It is a very, very complex system of colonization, racism, and slavery. If it were terrorism, it would have been one time, but this is structural. Jihad is a sacred duty of a Muslim to change the non-believers, and the ultimate aim is to make the world “Dar ul-Islam,” an Islamic land governed by Shariah law.”

Tracing the roots of Hindu genocide, Mujumdar said Pandit Jonaraja, a 14th-century poet from Kashmir, India, gave the first definition of genocide and termed it “Jati Vidhwams,” a Sanskrit term very close to the modern-day meaning of genocide, a word coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Holocaust survivor, and a Polish lawyer.  

In the second book of “Raja Tarangini,” a historical account of the rulers of Kashmir, Jonaraja writes about how in Kashmir, a tree is being “uprooted with branch and leaves,” providing a vivid description of genocide. According to the United Nations’ “killing members of the group, causing serious or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life intended to destroy the group, and imposing measures to prevent birth” is genocide. 

Noakhali Hindu Genocide

Majumdar also discussed the systematic destruction of Hindu temples in Bangladesh and talked about the book “The Great Calcutta Killings and Noakhali Genocide 1946.” The book gives details of the Noakhali riots in 1946 in which over 5000 Hindus were killed, thousands converted or driven out of their home and hundreds of Hindu women were raped and massacred. 

“The Noakhali riots were very coordinated. The adult Hindu males, exactly like the Kashmiri Hindu Pandits in 1990 Kashmir, were told they would be killed and asked to leave their women behind. Hindu women were married to Muslim men so that the next generation would be pro-perpetrator and create the whole race of mestizos”, she said. She further contextualized this with examples of ethnic cleansing, including the *Vested Property Act* in Bangladesh, which resulted in the forcible transfer of Hindu properties to Muslims following the creation of the country in 1971.

“Hindu genocide is a topic that affects all of us. When our children attend American Universities, they return home as different individuals. They start questioning our faith, values, and family system,” said Praveen Sinha, an accountancy professor at California State University, Long Beach. 

Oppressor, Oppressed Narrative:

Introducing Prof. Mujumdar and appreciating her research work on systematically documenting atrocities on Hindus in Bangladesh, Sinha said that we need to understand the root cause of these atrocities against Hindu women in Bangladesh. It is a long story, Sinha continued, but at least one department in every university, at the center of this, is the Department of Gender Studies, where the narrative of the oppressor, oppressed, has been presented in a way and by parties who are anti-Hindu, anti-Indian. 

“We raise our children the best way we can, and when they go to the university, they’re like a blank slate, and these people write all kinds of garbage on it. Last week, when a friend’s daughter went to an elite university and came back literally transformed with thousands of allegations against our community, which are all ill-informed and propaganda. We need a representation of our people in these departments to present a counter-narrative”, Sinha said.

“For over a thousand years, there has been a Hindu genocide. The Britishers rewrote the history, so we don’t know about it. What Muslims and Mughals did, we don’t know about it because the rulers sugarcoated the history. Prof. Mujumdar is bringing into the classroom the topic of Hindu genocide, which has never been discussed before in any classroom or any curriculum. Prof. Mujumdar is fighting false narratives,” Sinha said.