Proghyananda Vikkhu stood in his purple monk’s robe in front of gleaming gold statues of the Buddha, recalling the night that a mob of nationalist Muslims attacked his monastery in eastern Bangladesh. “This monastery is 300 years old and it was totally demolished on that night in 2012,” he said. “Within one year, the Bangladesh government totally rebuilt it with help from the army.” The mob also sacked a village next door, motivated in part by twisted retribution for attacks by ethnic Rakhine Buddhists on ethnic Rohingya Muslims on the other side of the border, in Myanmar. The government and military responses to violence against Bangladesh’s Buddhist minority and Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim...
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