Jamaat-e-Islami behind the pandal violence in Bangladesh, say officials

According to diplomats in Dhaka and New Delhi, there were attacks on mandaps, pandals and temples in Cumilla, starting the afternoon of October 13 after rumours started circulating that a copy of the Quran was placed near the feet of the idol of Durga at a pandal.

Updated on: Oct 15, 2021, 24:04:52 IST

By Shishir Gupta, NEW DELHI

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The needle of suspicion for the violent attacks against Durga Puja pandals in southern Bangladesh points towards the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI), people familiar with tyhe matter said, with the motive being to embarrass the Sheikh Hasina government and stoke communal fires over the alleged desecration of the Quran in Cumilla, southeast of Dhaka.

A vandalise temple is seen in Comilla on October 14, after hundreds vandalised several Hindu temples across the Muslim-majority country following furore over footage of a Quran being placed on the knee of god Hanuman during a religious festival. (AFP)

According to diplomats in Dhaka and New Delhi, there were attacks on mandaps, pandals and temples in Cumilla, starting the afternoon of October 13 after rumours started circulating that a copy of the Quran was placed near the feet of the idol of Durga at a pandal. There are more than 3,000 pandals in Bangladesh observing Durga Puja, one of the biggest festivals on both sides of the border in Bengal -- in Bangladesh as well as West Bengal.

As the news spread through digital media, there were violent attacks on pandals in Noakhali, Chandpur, Cox’s Bazaar, Chattogram, Chapainawabganj, Pabna, Moulvibazara and Kurigram. However, there were none in Dhaka, Brahmanbaria, Jashore and other major cities.

The police were initially slow to react but after the high commissioner of India spoke to the government, there was heavy deployment of armed police and local enforcement agencies. Three people, including two of those involved in the attacks, were killed in Chandpur and dozens were injured after the forces fired with rubber bullets in Cumilla.

While Dhaka has ensured that heavy police deployment will continue till Friday, when the Durga Puja ends, it is quite evident that communal flames were being fanned by the opposition JEI, which, analysts say, has been encouraged by the Taliban taking over Afghanistan. JEI coined the slogan “ Bangladesh Banega Afghanistan” in a bid to radicalise the youth towards ultra-conservative Islam to achieve political objectives.

“The basic idea behind October 13 incident was to embarrass Bangladesh’s government and force a reaction from India,” said a diplomat based in Dhaka. The Jamaat thrives on radicalised youth to oppose the Sheikh Hasina government and is networked with other pro-Taliban outfits in Bangladesh, this person added.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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