I met Tarun Sarkar* in Jagannath Hall, Dhaka University’s hostel for Hindu students. I was to interview him about the upcoming elections in Bangladesh, the first after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was deposed in 2024.
“We can chat over lunch in one of the student messes,” Sarkar, 28, a former student of Dhaka University said. “But first let me give you a tour of Jagannath Hall. It is a historic place.”
The first spot Sarkar took me was a memorial for the students and professors of Jagannath Hall massacred by the Pakistan Army in 1971. One hundred and forty people – students, professors and staff – were killed as Pakistan began Operation Searchlight, their genocidal military crackdown on the territory that was then called East Pakistan.
On August 5, 2024, after Hasina fled to Delhi, Sarkar said mobs entered Jagannath Hall and vandalised a statue of Bangladesh’s first prime minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, located right by the memorial.
“This place [Jaganath Hall] shed blood so that East Pakistan could become Bangladesh,” he said. “Those people want to make Bangladesh East Pakistan again.”
He disagreed with the popular triumphalist narrative around the July uprising that unseated Hasina. “For minorities, the past 18 months has been a very difficult time,” Sarkar said....
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