Bangladesh today is the only nation-state in the Indian subcontinent with levels of ethnic homogeneity similar to Western or Central Europe It does have some minority communities – ‘tribal’ people  Urdu or Bihari speakers  and in religious terms Hindus  Buddhists and Christians – but with more than 90 per cent of the population being Bengali-speaking Muslims there is far more uniformity than in India  Pakistan and Nepal with their hundreds of languages and multitude of religious identities