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Bangladesh's population is mostly Muslim, but Hindus do account for some 8% of the country's 180 million people. And ever since protesters ousted the former leader, Sheikh Hasina, in August 2024, Hindus have faced a surge of vigilante attacks, and now they are hoping for safety, as NPR's Diaa Hadid reports.
DIAA HADID, BYLINE: Kids rush out of the gates of the Model Academy school to waiting parents.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
= HADID: Some want to cuddle. Others dash past waiting arms to play with friends. In the weeks after Sheikh Hasina was ousted in 2024, it was very different here. There were protests against the Hindu headmaster, Subhashish Kumar Biswas (ph). We meet Biswas at the Dhakeshwari Hindu Temple complex. In the temple, a woman seeks a priest's blessing for her newborn.
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= HADID: Upstairs, Biswas says he hasn't returned to school since the protests against him. He shows us one from September 2024. He's trapped inside the school while some students, parents and teachers gather outside. Soldiers keep the peace.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
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= HADID: Biswas says it began with a few teachers. They accused him of supporting ousted leader Sheikh Hasina, of stealing school funds and accused him of preventing Muslim students from praying at school. That last accusation terrified Biswas. It could have whipped up a crowd to attack him on the basis of insulting Islam.
SUBHASHISH KUMAR BISWAS: I was life threatened. I was life threatened.
= HADID: He says, they shouted, finish the Hindu. Nothing will happen if he's finished.
BISWAS: (Non-English language spoken).
= HADID: His fear was heightened because violence against minorities surged after Hasina's ouster in August 2024. One advocacy group says, since her ouster to December 2025, there were more than 2,500 violent incidents against religious minorities, including 66 people killed. The Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, who led an interim government after Hasina's ouster, said most attacks were politically motivated because Hindus largely supported Hasina's party. He spoke to NPR in March last year.
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MUHAMMAD YUNUS: You cannot distinguish whether they were attacked because they're followers of Sheikh Hasina or they were attacked because they are Hindu.
= HADID: Some attacks were religiously motivated, like the incident on December 18, when a mob accused a Hindu factory worker, Dipu Chandra Das, of insulting Islam. He was badly beaten, dragged to a tree, hung and burnt. The mob filmed the lynching. It went viral. In other incidents, Hindus were attacked because they were loyalists of Sheikh Hasina. It's also clear they were more vulnerable to attack than Muslims who also supported her.
Consider Biswas, the former headmaster. At the school where Biswas used to work, his assistant, Mohammad Latifur Rahman Bari (ph), says Biswas was close to legislators from Sheikh Hasina's party, and he leveraged that relationship.
MUHAMMAD LATIFUR RAHMAN BARI: He influenced them to give money for the school.
= HADID: Bari says his old boss got money to expand the school to 4,000 students, kindergarten to seniors. He installed filtered tap water to drink. That's a luxury here. As Bari speaks, his office crowds with parents waiting for a turn to speak to him. One parent, Motiur Rahman Raju (ph), tells us Biswas hired Hasina loyalists as teachers and says children of Hasina loyalists were more likely to be admitted into the school.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking Bengali).
= HADID: But Bari says, headmasters across Bangladesh were pressured to do that. They couldn't say no. Bari says, the difference between other headmasters and his boss is that his boss is Hindu.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking Bengali).
= HADID: Bari says he hopes now that a new government is in power, things will settle down return to normal. That new government is the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, known as the BNP. It won elections in mid-February. It was pitted against an alliance led by Islamists. Many Hindus feared if Islamists won, they'd be even more vulnerable to vigilante attacks.
Back at the Dhakeshwari Hindu Temple complex, the former headmaster, Biswas, sips tea with Manindra Kumar Nath. He's the general secretary of the advocacy group for minorities. It's called the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council.
MANINDRA KUMAR NATH: (Speaking Bengali).
= HADID: Nath says he's more hopeful for the future. The Islamists didn't make it to power. And the BNP's manifesto embraces equal rights for all Bangladeshis.
NATH: (Speaking Bengali).
= HADID: Headmaster Biswas says he wants to be optimistic, too. On the day when protesters trapped him inside the school, many of his fellow teachers, mostly Muslims, stayed beside him.
BISWAS: They protected me, and they stayed all day.
= HADID: His colleagues tell NPR they want him back, but Biswas is uncertain. "The problem is," he says, "I'm afraid of the mob." Diaa Hadid, NPR News, Dhaka. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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