According to two articles published by two Bengali Dailies-- The daily Inqilab (14 August 2011) and Amardesh (12 August 2011),-- "there is no option to stop spreading Christianity in CHT and activities are going on to turn CHT into East Timor or South Sudan." However, let us have a look what the national Statistics of religious institutions in CHT say:
Following is the statistics of religious institutions in CHT from Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics:
Please compare 1982-83 data with 2011 data:
Mosque and Madrasa in CHT in 1982-1983
Year | No. of Mosque | No. of Madrasa |
1982 | 525 | 35 |
1983 | 529 | 39 |
Source: Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics
Sl. | Name of Item | Total |
| | Mosque | 2297 (Khagrachari 695+ Rangamati 1213+ Bandarban 389) |
| | Madrasa (Muslim religion teaching center) | 1562 ((Khagrachari 859 + Rangamati 351+ Bandarban 352) |
| | Pagoda (Buddist temple) | 1471 (Khagrachari 817+Rangamati 449+ Bandarban 205) |
| | Mondir (Hinudu temple) | 415 (Khagrachari 324+Rangamati 69+ Bandarban 22) |
| | Church | 366 (Khagrachari 125+ Rangamati 122+ Bandarban 119) |
(Source: Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics website) (report of 2001 but showing update up to 13 August, 2011!)
This report is highly misleading. The high number of mosques do not indicate high rate of conversion into Islam. Currently 50% of the inhabitants of CHT are Muslims. They pray five times a day, so need mosques everywhere. While Christians go to church only once a week. Moreover the number of Churches in 1971 or 1981 has not been mentioned. For a meaningful study of the rate of conversion to Christianity and Islam, we need to know the exact number of conversion of tribal people into these two religions over the last few decades, to be fair. Although there is much clamor about tribal people being `forcibly' converted to Islam, in reality the number of tribal people who have converted to Islam so far in CHT is very insignificant and most of them got converted on personal reasons, like marriage etc. On the other hand conversion to Christianity is the result of proselytization, aggressive and vigorous.
ReplyDeleteN.K.Linda
You said "Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) is a military controlled area, where all the news are filtered by the military and the Bangladeshi government.CHT, where blood has shed for decades and hopes were burnt to ashes by the brutes, constitutes of people who want their voice to be heard. We are here to ensure that the voice of these unheard victims in CHT echo around the world despite the Bangladeshi government trying to suppress them in the biased state run media."
ReplyDeleteCHT is not a military controlled area, although military presence there is higher due to the presence of certain armed groups engaged in killing and extortion of innocent people, both tribal and others. Each and every newspaper and electronic media reports in details from the remotes areas of CHT everyday. It is not possible to filter those news items by any quarter. . .