international journal on minority and group rights 27 (2020) 210-222 © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/15718115-02604003 brill.com/ijgr Identifying the Catalysts for Systematic Deprivation of Hindu Women’s Right to Property: An Appraisal from the Political Contours of Bangladesh Md. Al-Ifran Hossain Mollah Eastern University, Dhaka, Bangladesh ifran@easternuni.edu.bd Abstract Hindu women’s limited right to inheritance in Bangladesh is a story of state-sponsored deprivation; a frustrating legacy of the political authority’s systematic indifference and failure in protecting minority women’s right to property for nearly half a century. Bangladesh, from its early decades, has experienced the resurgence of religion as one of the driving factors behind gender and minority-sensitive policy formulation and implementation. Under the veil of constitutional secularism, religion has become one of the most pervasive tools in the hands of the political authorities for methodical marginalisation of religious minority groups especially of Hindu community. Conse- quently, Bangladesh has failed to move forward with appropriate legislative measures for improving the present status of Hindu women’s right to property. This article ar- gues that the underlying reasons behind such failure is intrinsically intertwined with power-centric electoral politics rather than normative socio-religious practices. Keywords Bangladesh – Islam – electoral politics – Hindu women – property rights – legal reformation 1 Introduction Through setting the schematics of racial integration and minority rights in the modern history of the usa, former president Franklin D. Roosevelt once said that no democracy can long survive that does not accept the recognition of