"Over the past 45 years… Bangladeshi Hindus, together with other religious and ethnic minority communities, are undergoing rapid decline. Since 1947, after the partition of India, Bangladeshi minority communities have suffered a systematic ethnic cleansing cycle that has dropped their population from 23 percent (in 1951) to 9 percent (in 2017). The current Hindu population of about 13 million is far short of the number one should expect based on population growth rates. The rate of minority population decrease has accelerated in recent years, and several districts of Bangladesh are now witnessing the decrease of their Hindu population in absolute numbers.... Looting and burning of households, destruction of temples and religious idols, murder, rape, forced religious conversion, illegal occupation of property, extortion, threats to family structures and other soft and hard intimidations are reducing well-to-do households to paupers and forcing this population across the border to India. With the recent rise of political and militant Islam and its appeasement by the government, the possibility of Bangladesh turning into a monolithic Islamic country looms on the horizon. After 1971, at no time has the existential threat to the Hindu community been as great as it is now."