Everyday forms of discrimination experienced by the minority : An exploratory study in a village in Bangladesh 【Article】

Contrary to the ongoing major researches on institutional discrimination in Bangladesh, in general,and individual level discrimination focusing physically salient group(s) in the US, in particular, thisexploratory study analyzed various patterns of discrimination that the members of a physically non-salient minority in Bangladesh experience in their everyday lives through interaction with the majority.The study also examined whether there was any variation among the participants in terms of receivingdiscrimination. Collecting data by using a semi-structured interview from 40 randomly selected reli-gious minority household heads from a village in Bangladesh, the study identified the following dis-criminatory patterns: (i) criticizing rituals and practices, (ii) verbal harassment, (iii) offering poor ser-vices, (iv) exploitation of labor and money, (v) threats, (vi) physical attack, (vii) creating obstacles inperforming festivals and (viii) land dispossession. This study found that participants from the lowersocio-economic status (SES) were more prone to receiving discrimination than those from the upperSES. The most unique patterns of discrimination experienced by the participants were criticizing ritualsand practices, exploitation of labor and money, threatening, creating obstacles in performing festivalsand land dispossession. In terms of the effect of each pattern on the victims, land grabbing was found tobe the most dreadful pattern of discrimination. The participants were victimized more in the environ-ment surrounded by known members of the majority. Parallel to some other studies, the physically non-salient participants of the present study were found to experience the discriminatory patterns of verbalharassment, offering poor services and physical attack.