And
A case study below showing the suppression of legitimate debate in UK as from our 1st Protest on 27 Oct 2021
Bangladesh Hindus are now being killed almost daily on false charges of blasphemy and just being Hindus as Kafirs and since Dr Mohammed Yunus took control of the Bangladeshi regime in 2024 the attacks against Hindus and other minorities have reached in their thousands and the blasphemy allegations are used to inflame mob violence to kill Hindus in their hundreds. Instead of protecting the Hindu minority, Dr Yunus suggested in a recent interview with a journalist that they should not call themselves Hindus anymore, but just Bangladeshi’s, if the mobs are selectively picking them out to kill them
Last month’s gruesome killing and burning of Shri Dipu Das was too horrible to watch on social media, who is seen pleading with the Police in his defence to say that he only said, ‘all religions are valid paths to God’, yet the police handed him over to the blood thirsty mob. We pray for Dipu Das’s Atma and his poor family. But since then, almost every day the mobs have been picking Hindus to kill for no reason other than that they are Hindus.
British Hindus protested in the Autumn of 2021 when similarly, Islamists mobs went from town to town to kill Hindus as Kafirs and attack their temples. At that time I engaged in a peaceful debate on twitter with hardly 20 or so Indian Supreme Court Advocates, Journalists, CA’s and Doctors, to seek solutions, proposing dialogue and legislation only, non-violent means, but which then the Islamists in UK picked out selectively some of my tweets from the debate and exposed them in early 2022, whilst ignoring the tweets defending the 99% Muslims and Islam, and they got the Cabinet Office to revoke my OBE in November 2024 but more importantly as in May 2024 I had offered to return it, making it plane its morally tainted by Dhimmitude and so I could never use it. Then again in November 2024 I requested my reasons for its return to be allowed on their Government website as a minimum but the Cabinet Office did not give me a chance and went onto to publish their citation to punish me among all the other paedophiles and criminals.
Later when I asked the Cabinet Office in 2025 about their procedures, the Government Legal Department (GLD) gave a manipulated meaning of the word ‘Shaitans’ in one of the debate-tweets which my representations had disclosed to mean: mischievous people, a word used even for children making mischief, and with names like Shaitan Singh – search Google AI colloquial meaning of Shaitan – but GLD mal-interpreted it as Satan/Devil to claim that I’m criticising Islam as a religious institution. The Cabinet Office Forfeiture panel never considered my representations in upholding the Islamists complaint against me.
Besides, in spite of my explanations of the word in my representations the Muslim panel member Sir Hamid Patel should have known the colloquial meaning and the context in which it was said against coercive Dawah to convert people else kill them as the mobs were doing then, but clearly, he resorted to his own ‘shaitani’ against me to effectively make the most of his chances on the panel to religiously persecute a Hindu religious leader. I worked on the Religious and Belief strand of the Equality Act 2010, united along with Muslim, Sikh Jew and Christian leaders but now the Islamophobia seems to have become the dominant protected characteristic.
On my request for a legal review citing the Supreme Court ruling to look at the ’context’, the GLD simply shut me down by invoking their ‘qualified privilege’. So that whatever their decision we can never question it. Even the Director of the Cabinet Office replied that nothing can be done now, all very much against the principles of British justice.
The Treasury Solicitor was on that panel with Sir Hamid Patel, whose office cited another one of my reply-tweets: ‘Islamophobia culls free speech’, as a reason to revoke my OBE. But what else is their action if not to shut down free speech debate, and peaceable one at that, and only with a few lawyers and journalists on twitter, to find solutions against violent attacks on innocent poor Hindus.
We seem to be heading back to the middle-ages imperialism, in fact the Cabinet Office on my further enquiry accused me of pursuing the case as if it was their ‘witch-hunt’ against me. Well, that’s exactly how it looks from my end, in their own words: a witch-hunt. Only my family knows the trauma of their knowingly validating the Islamists death threats.
This case can be used to see what is happening under the Islamophobia definitions, and this suppression of legitimate debate is directly relevant to today’s Bangladesh Hindu diaspora protest. The civil servants themselves are mal-interpreting Islamophobia guidance to punish people, shutting debate and much needed reform, thus emboldening Islamism in the country, let alone in this case encouraging Government silence on the Bangladesh Islamist mob violence against minorities.
The reason the Hindu Council UK Board of Directors decided to put this as a case study on the suppression of debate since 2021 is because once again some Islamist and Hindumisic organisations have started exposing those out of context tweets to re-ignite hatred against Hindus, to distract from the Bangladeshi killings. For instance, Hindus for Human Rights, HfHR, is one such communist based organisation from the USA who now have a fully funded office in the UK by the George Soros Foundation and another UKIMC here from its USA counterpart. They have started now a new campaign against me saying, ‘Anil Bhanot stripped off his OBE’, re-exposing those 2021 tweets, in the same out of context manner, and omitting many which speak against ‘Coercive Dawah of Forced Conversion’ only and so they pick what suits them to spread hatred, whereas my debate was to find solutions to forced conversion and killings of poor Hindus in Bangladesh. Of course, Dawah as an invitation to appeal to someone’s voluntary conversion by heart is no problem but forced conversion asking someone to convert or be killed is evil, just as 20 years ago I had so called out for the forced marriage and honour killings.
Also, the BBC chose last year to invite this HfHR a communist organisation, after initially approaching HCUK but then selecting HfHR, on their Sunday Morning programme to represent Hindu faith matters in the UK. BBC should note that the HfHR also calls us, the entire British Hindu community, as supremacists – a familiar narrative through social media nowadays of what amounts to ‘victim-flipping’.
The GLD cited another tweet in the debate that Islamism is the bad copy or part of the religion, (the Indian lawyers I was debating with spoke of Islam only and not Islamism and thus some of my tweets asked them to make that distinction between Islam and Islamism so as to protect Islam from Islamism), but the Cabinet Office ignored all the other tweets, they pick and choose ones out of the one line twitter-debates, simply to impose maximum harm, ignoring others to avoid context. There are many tweets asking for reform for the Islamism bits too but they ignored those tweets totally – as a Hindu leader I was only following Muslims asking for reform once in a round table meeting with Charles Clarke the then Home Secretary after the 7/7 bombing. But it seems now we cannot even talk of it anymore.
DLG even quoted a tweet to be offensive that is asking for dialogue and legislation amidst the 2021 violence in Bangladesh.
Finally, one more tweet the DLG taunted me on is ‘Hinduism is the father of all religion’ – of course the debate was to render the forced conversion useless by saying we all ascribe to the same God but just in different languages. But why does it upset these civil servants is beyond me. Historically, the Hindu Rig Veda composition is now going back to 10,000 years ago supported by archeological excavations and Zoroastrian and Yazidi are its ancient sister religions from which the Abrahamic religions off-shooted. These are historical facts not worth going into here. But my point was not about superior/inferior debate but to unite us all in spirit. Jesus Christ equated the path to God through the eye of the needle, where no such prejudices can pass through. The Treasury Solicitor accused me of prejudice, where does she get this hatred for me, if not to appease Islamist demands perhaps?
We appeal to the Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP, the Secretary of State for the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Department, to please look to take action on the heinous Islamist killings of innocent Hindus in Bangladesh as a very serious matter and at the very least leverage the British aid fund to Bangladesh to protect innocent victims there.
We do please need a debate on the word ‘Kafir’, which about 15 years ago I had sent several emails to the Department of Communities to debate this word among faith leaders in the Faith Communities Consultative Council at DCLG then, so that our youths would be less likely to fall foul of its radical meaning, but to no avail.
Now in 2026, we see the UAE has imposed restrictions on its Muslim students if applying to study in the UK for fear of radicalisation at the British university campuses.
Hence our appeal to the FCDO Secretary of State Yvette Cooper to bring back the British Values we worked with the Rt Hon Jack Straw after the 7/7 bombing, when Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jews and others including non-belief were all signatories to them.
Dipu Das was handed over to an Islamist mob by the police on 18 December 2025 to be horribly killed and burnt on a tree. He simply said all religions are valid paths to God. This was blasphemous for the Islamists. I too say all religions have the spirituality inherent in them which we must respect and unite at least in spirit.
I cannot believe the British civil servants intentionally seek suppression of debate and the punishment of those who raise these difficult issues to be debated -they are all good people and surely also want unity and harmony in the UK. But I beseech the Government that they ‘fear’ Islamism so much that they play along for conveinence, as I have shown through my case study above, with the mal-interpretations of words like ‘Shaitans’, and the punishment meted out by the GLD, without recourse to legal review by virtue of their qualified-privilege, for my trying to speak against the Kafir killings of innocent life. Please, we need to bring back the British Values, based on ‘Truth and Fairness’.
The Government needs to take courage to take the right action as we fear, from my experience outlined above, the Government may just give a lip service assurance to us but please we really need to see what action the FCDO will take, especially after so many MP’s are now raising their arms up in horror with several written complaints to the FCDO. We have seen the 2021 protest had no impact on change, in fact the UK has become more divided by with much increased levels of ‘fear’ in society, surely its time to take courage to bring the right change from 2026.
Also, for deliberation: Shabana Mahmood MP for the 99% Muslims; Lisa Nandy MP for the BBC, Steve Reed MP for Community Cohesion; David Lammy MP for the GLD Imperialism; and Shadow Secretaries: Priti Patel MP, Chris Philp MP, Nigel Huddleston MP, Nick Timothy MP and for the Hindus APPG Shri Bob Blackman MP.
#SaveBangladeshHindus
Anil Bhanot
Managing Trustee
Hindu Council UK – a national umbrella body representing one million British Hindus of all denominations through their temples and cultural organisations, estd. 1994.
