Washington, Oct 18 (PTI) Bangladeshi Hindus in the United States have lodged a strong protest against the ongoing violence targeting minority group members in their native country, saying the religious differences pose an existential crisis for them.

On late Sunday night, a mob damaged 66 houses and set on fire at least 20 homes of Hindus in Bangladesh over an alleged blasphemous social media post, amidst protests by the minority community against temple vandalisation incidents during the just-concluded Durga Puja celebrations.

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Pranesh Halder, representing the Bangladeshi Hindu community here, wrote to the US State Department "to ensure that no further harm comes to the beleaguered Hindus of Bangladesh."

He urged US-based watchdog groups and media houses to highlight the gravity of the violence in Bangladesh.

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On Sunday, the Bangladeshi Hindu diaspora organised a protest in front of the Embassy of Bangladesh here, protesting large-scale violence leading to the destruction of Hindu homes and temples during Durga Puja festivities across Bangladesh.

"It is especially horrifying to see the last remaining Hindus in Noakhali (southeast Bangladesh) being attacked in this way, 75 years after Islamists demanding the creation of Pakistan killed 12,000 Hindus and forcibly converted 50,000 (of them) to Islam in October 1946," said Utsav Chakrabarti, executive director of HinduPACT, a US-based Hindu advocacy group.

The group said indigenous Hindus continue to be the target of organised hate and discrimination in Bangladesh, a country where the minority population has steadily decreased from 28 per cent in the 1940s to 9 per cent now.

"This recent wave of violence confirms the danger indigenous Hindus continue to face. Fifty years after nearly 2.8 million of them were killed, and another 10 million of them turned destitute and made to become refugees by the Pakistan Army in 1971, during the independence struggle of Bangladesh, Hindus continue to be targeted for their faith," it said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)