It would be appropriate to quote here from The Marginal Men, a scholarly work by Prafulla K.Chakrabarti, Lumiere Books, Kalyani, 1990:

The second phase of the migration began with the pogrom of February 1950 in East Pakistan. This time the migrants came down like an avalanche. The entire administrative machinery cracked under the strain. The organised killing of the Hindus and looting of their property started at Bagerhat in East Pakistar? and then it spread to other areas. The February riots started a chain reaction of organised violence in both Bengals and this time it was not a one-way traffic. For in 1950 riot only Hindus came from the East to the West, terrified Muslims also started their trek fromWest Bengal to the other side of the border. But the refugees who sought shelter in government camps represented only a small fraction of the total influx. A large number of those who crossed into West Benga, Tripura and Assam tried to fend for themselves. The Census of 1951 shows the extent a/ the influx. In 1951 there were at least 3.5 million refugees in West Bengal.

It is extraordinary how passively West Bengal accepted after partition the uprooting and the near-extermination of an entire people who participated almost to a man in the Indian struggle for freedom.True, the uprooting did not occur in East Pakistan in one swift swipe. It was like a wasting disease. But it was this slow and surer process which ensured the steady expulsion of a completely denuded Hindu population through riots sponsored by an Islamic State and social, economic and religious persecution of the Hindus by Muslims in collusive partnership with the bureaucracy, which caused anger in West Bengal but did not provoke the Hindus to retaliatory reprisal. Only in 1950, in the wake of brutal massacres in different districts of East Bengal did the Hindus retaliate and immediately a two-way exodus began which might hare brought about an unofficial transfer of population and a natural solution of the communal problem in West Bengal. But Nehru had reasons of his own to stop this natural solution of the problem and he bestirred himself immediately to stop this two-way movement by the Delhi Pact of 1950. The Pact stopped this two-way movement effectively and the Muslims who had left West Bengal returned and Nehru saw to it that their property was restored to them. But the exodus of the Hindus continued and lingers to this day. Even the Buddhist Chakmas of the Chittagong Hill Tract are now being hounded out of the recesses of their hills

The tragedy continues to unfold inexorably. On 27th May 2002, The Statesman. published from Kolkata and New Delhi, had the following to say in an editorial under the title of Sinister Design.

Another attempt on the life of a Buddhist monk in Chittagong in the wake of recent gruesome murders of two much respected religious heads -one a Buddhist and the other a HIindu - of the same area has made Bangladesh's minorities very insecure and badly tarnished the country's image. The suspicion has deepened as the police have refused to arrest the assailants when they are moving about freely with arms. What is worse is that the police have sought to explain the incidents in terms of sexual habits of the victims. Printed leaflets were distributed to this epect to coincide with the Home Minister's visit. The motive was also ascribed to possible occupation of vast properties owned by the two ashrams. But this is not the truth. It is far more sinister as the religious leaders were the mainstay of the local Buddhist and Hindu communities which looked up to them for guidance and support. In fact, Gyanjyoli ran an orphanage for which he got liberal assistance from international Buddhist bodies. His murder outraged the Japanese government so much that its embassy in Dhaka while expressing shock sent a delegation to the ashram wanting the culprits to be punished. Interestingly Begum Zia's ministers called the two murders "stray, isolated and unfortunate incidents."

Actually the killings are a legacy of Zia-ur-Rahman and H.M. Ershad's policy of communalising Bangladesh politics by banishing secularism and making Islam the state religion. Large scale persecution of minorities by Begum Zia's armed cadres, following last October's Parliamentary election, when at gun point they were told togo to India in their own interest, was also part of this legacy. Significantly, the two killings have coincided withthe sinister public campaign that the Jamat-i-Islam has launched urging minorities to opt for an electorate as in the pakistani days. The objective is to marginalise about 20 million people from Bangladesh's political mainstream.

In 1947 the percentage of the Hindu population was about 30 percent. In 1991 the proportion has come down to 10.3 percent as illustrated in table I:

Table I: Bangladesh
Percentage Distribution of major Communities

Ethnic cleansing has taken pkce elsewhere in the world. A comparison with what happened more recently in Cyprus, a part of Europe, is interesting.

The island country is situated about 40 miles south of Turkey and some 480 miles southeast of Greece. It was once inhabited by only 720,000 greeks. During the high noon of the Ottoman expansion in 1571, it was invaded by the Turks, many of whom settled in the northern part of the island all of which was ruled from Istanbul. In 1878, the British took Cyprus on lease. The lease ended with the end of World War I and the island officially became a British colony in March 1925. It however ceased to be a part of the empire in 1960 when it was given independence. It then became the Republic of Cyprus. About 80 percent of the people were Greek speaking, while the balance were Turks.

Not uncommon to Muslims, the Turks found it difficult to coexist with the Christian Greeks. After the displacement of the Ottoman rule in 1878, Cyprus ceased to be a Darul Islam since the writ of the sharia ceased to run. But it became a land of dispute or warfare or a Darul Harb to the Turkish settlers.However unwelcome the change of rulers, they had to tolerate it due to the sheer might of imperial Britain. The situation changed as soon as the British left. Yet, the Darul Harb status could not be changed because the Turkish population was only about one/fifth of the total. The corollary of this hopelessness was separatism which however could not be spontaneously implemented by the Turkish speaking minority.

The Muslims therefore invited the Republic of Turkey to invade Cyprus in 1974. Obviously, the government of the island was too small to resist the invasion. Turkey imposed partition of the country in 1975. The people of the separated portion made an unilateral declaration of independence in 1983 and adopted the name Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Its independence was recognized by Istanbul only.

It is noteworthy that the Muslim Turks and the Christian Greeks lived across Cyprus in varying numbers. The northern part had many Greek speaking people. Remember, until the 16th century, the island was inhabited only by them; the Turks came in from 1571 onwards. What was particularly tragic was that in the wake of the invasion in July and August 1974, the Turkish invaders from the mainland carried out ruthless ethnic cleansing. As many as 200,000 Greek Cypriots were expelled from the northern area by force. They had to leave their homes and properties behind and move to the Greek majority areas in the South. They became refugees in their own country. All this happened well before partition was imposed in 1975, not to speak of the unilateral declaration of independence in 1983.

After the ethnic cleansing of 1974, some 12,000 Greek Cypriots, mostly older people, insisted on staying put in the northern area. Over the following 20 years the figure was down to 715 and is probably nil by now. The experience of Cyprus is reminiscent of what has happened not only in the western wing of Pakistan and also Bangladesh. Similar ethnic cleansing continues inexorably in Bangladesh. Rather than repeating the well known tragic tale of Bangladeshi Hindus, the story is portrayed in the following two tables:

Tables II: Bangladesh
Census of Population by Religion in Numbers

Table III
Percentage Distribution & Variation Of major Communities by Religion