Vishwa Hindu Parishad spokesperson and joint secretary (Konkan) Shriraj Nair recently shared a collage of two photographs. The first is black and white, featuring four women seated in a jeep and holding rifles. The other is a coloured image that resembles the first, this time with four older women posing with rifles in a similar fashion. The caption in Nair’s post read, “The picture at the top is of four Bangladeshi freedom fighters taken in 1971, during the Liberation War against West Pakistan. The photo below has been taken recently, 50 years on. The same women now in HIJAB in the same jeep, with the same rifles.”
Following this, many social media users began sharing the two pictures claiming that the women were originally Hindu and made to undergo religious conversion after Bangladesh attained independence. One such post read, “Photo of atrocities on Hindus in Bangladesh. The photo above was taken during the Bangladesh liberation movement of 1971 when they were Hindus. But by the time these women recreated the photo today, they had converted to Islam.” (Archive link)
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