How a same-sex wedding put Bangladesh’s national Hindu temple under fire

On July 10, a wedding took place at Dhakeshwari Temple in Dhaka. There was, at first, little reason for anyone at the temple to remember it.

The couple arrived dressed as a bride and groom. They produced identity documents, brought witnesses and filled out the required forms. The bride wore a traditional bridal crown. The groom was dressed for the occasion. After the paperwork was completed, priests performed the customary Hindu marriage rituals.

Then the couple quietly left.

For Dhakeshwari — Bangladesh’s National Temple and one of the oldest and most revered Hindu places of worship in the country — it appeared to be another wedding among the many conducted there.

Only later did temple officials learn who the couple were.

The bride was Tasnuva Anan Shishir, a transgender actor and former television news presenter. The groom was a Hindu man.

Within days, images and accounts of the ceremony began circulating on social media. And it became the subject of an increasingly heated public argument.

Criticism came from conservative activists, members of the Hindu community and ordinary social media users. Some focused on the legality of the marriage. Others questioned how such a ceremony could have been conducted at Dhakeshwari in the first place.

The controversy quickly grew beyond the couple. Increasingly, it was the temple itself that was being asked to explain what had happened.

On Tuesday, 1,230 people, including conservative professionals and Muslim clerics, issued a statement demanding an investigation and legal action over the ceremony.

The statement, circulated by the conservative platform Mullobodh Andolon, described the ceremony as an illegal “same-sex marriage” and called on the government to investigate those involved. It warned that a failure to act could fuel public anger and create problems for law and order.

In a separate Facebook post, anti-LGBTQ activist Mohammad Sorowar Hossain demanded an explanation from Dhakeshwari authorities, asking how what he described as an “illegal male-male marriage” had been allowed to take place at the temple.

But not all of the criticism centered on the couple or their gender identities.

A ‘strange’ choice?

Durjoy Chandra Ghoss, writing on Facebook, said his principal concern was not that a Muslim-born transgender woman had married a Hindu man. His question was why the couple had chosen Dhakeshwari.

For him, the symbolism of the place made the decision particularly sensitive. He questioned why the ceremony had not been held elsewhere, particularly since Shishir now lives in the United States.

Others raised a similar question: Whatever the circumstances of the couple, should Bangladesh’s national Hindu temple have hosted the ceremony?

Inside Dhakeshwari, however, temple officials say the answer is considerably less dramatic or provocative. They simply did not know.

“We were completely innocent until we learned about it later through Facebook and after police began their investigation,” Kajal Debnath, a member of the Dhakeshwari Temple Management Committee, told Daily Waadaa.

As Debnath described it, nothing about the couple attracted particular attention that day.

“They came dressed up like any other bride and groom,” he said. “The bride was wearing a bridal crown, the groom was dressed as a groom. They filled out the forms, submitted all the required documents and brought witnesses. We kept copies of their national identity cards.”

The rituals were performed. The couple left. “There was no way for us to know,” Debnath said.

Dhakeshwari requires couples seeking to marry there to provide identity documents and complete the necessary paperwork before priests conduct the religious ceremony. But, Debnath said, temple officials do not conduct investigations into the personal histories of couples who arrive seeking marriage.

He compared the process to that followed by Muslim marriage registrars.

“If a man and a woman go to a marriage registrar with their parents or witnesses, the registrar checks their age and documents and conducts the marriage,” he said. “That’s exactly how our process works.”

Debnath said officers from Chawkbazar Police Station, the Special Branch and the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence later visited Dhakeshwari and collected documents related to the ceremony.

The temple submitted its own written account of what happened.

‘Unprecedented’ marriage

In a statement sent to Chawkbazar Police on Aug. 1, temple authorities said the couple had arrived dressed as a bride and groom and submitted national identity cards, information about their witnesses and the other documents required for a wedding.

Marriages at Dhakeshwari, the statement said, are conducted as religious rituals after the required documents have been submitted and in the presence of the couple, their witnesses and family members.

Police confirmed that the matter had drawn the attention of senior officers.

“Our senior officers have been working on this matter for the past two days,” Abdullah Al Mamun, officer-in-charge of Chawkbazar Police Station, told Waadaa.

But, he added, no formal complaint had been filed at his station. “We have not received any complaint here,” Mamun said. “Our senior officers will brief you on the matter.”

Some senior figures in Bangladesh’s Hindu community have also questioned whether the priests or temple administrators could reasonably have been expected to know more than the documents and appearance of the couple suggested.

“There was no way to know,” said Subrata Chowdhury, an adviser to the Bangladesh Puja Udjapan Parishad. “They came as a normal bride and groom, submitted their identity cards and the wedding was performed. The priests had no way of knowing what the reality was.”

“This kind of marriage does not exist in our country,” he added, saying that the ceremony appeared to have been handled as an ordinary wedding until its wider circumstances became known.

—