Place of Prayer

According to the 2001 census there are 11,379,000 Hindus in Bangladesh. Hindus in Bangladesh in the late 1980s were almost evenly distributed in all regions, with concentrations in Chittagong, Khulna, Jessore, Dinajpur, Faridpur, and Barisal. The contributions of Hindus in arts and literature were far in excess of their numerical strength. In politics, they had traditionally supported the liberal and secular ideology of the Awami League and other left wing parties such as Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB), and Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal (JSD). However, barring the fundamentalist ^[1] Islamist parties such as Jamaat-e-Islami, all the major political parties have fielded Hindu candidates. In the current Jatiyo Sangshad, out of 345 members, there are only 33 Hindus: 32 are from the Awami League, and 1 from the Jatiyo Party. Hindu institutions and places of worship received assistance through the Bangladesh Hindu Kalyan Trust (Bangladesh Hindu Welfare Trust), which was sponsored by the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Government sponsored Bangladesh Television and Bangladesh Betar (radio) broadcast readings and interpretations of Hindu scriptures and prayers.
Since the rise of more explicitly Islamist political formations in Bangladesh during the 1990s, many Hindus have been intimidated or attacked, and fairly substantial numbers are leaving the country to India.^[2]
In present-day Bangladesh, Hindus became a minority only in mid-thirteenth century of the Gregorian Calendar.^{[citation needed]} In 1941 the Hindus formed about 28% of the population, which declined to 22.05% in 1951, as rich and upper caste Hindus migrated to India after Partition of India in 1947. The wealthy Hindus who migrated lost their land and assets through the East Bengal Evacuee Act and the poor and middle-class Hindus that were left behind became targets of discrimination through new laws. At the outbreak of the 1965 India-Pakistan war, the Defense of Pakistan Ordinance and later the Enemy (Custody and Registration) Order II, through which the Hindus were labelled as the "enemy" and their property expropriated by the state.^[3][4][5] Since then, it has dropped by about half. Through a combination of mass exodus and genocide in the 1971 Bangladesh atrocities by the Pakistan Army during the Bangladesh Liberation War, this represents a loss of around 20 million Bangladeshi Hindus and their direct heirs, and reflects one of the largest displacements of population based on ethnic or religious identity in recen

Temple