Hindu Names Of Cities In Pak, Bangladesh, Malaysia & Indonesia

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Impact of Hindu past on Pakistan vis-a-vis Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia with special focus on City and District names:
(Courtesy: Quora Digest and Muhammad F. Ansori)

Muhammad F. Ansori is a student doing B.A. Historical Studies & History of Southeast Asia, Universitas Indonesia (2019) has submitted a very elaborate answer to the above query as under:

My country — Indonesia too, especially in western part (Kalimantan/Indonesian Borneo, Sumatera, Java, Lombok, and Bali) preserved the Hindu names of cities or places and also acknowledge their connection with Hinduism and Buddhism.

In the case of Bangladesh, the nationalism of that country is likely based on ethnicity and language rather than religion. Yeah, at first, in 1947 when Partition of British India occurred, India was divided into 3 pieces. The larger one is present-day India which is designated as Hindu's homeland. Then, those two smaller pieces, separated hundreds of kilometre were unified into one country — Pakistan. Pakistan is designated for Muslim. A country comprises by Muslim, rules by Muslim, and for Muslim people.
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Because of the partition, there were cross migration between Pakistan and India at that time. Pakistani's Hindu fleed to India and vice versa, some of Indian Muslim migrated to Pakistan, both West and East Pakistan. The number of migrant during the partition could reach as many as 30 million people. So, we can see here that Pakistan from the beginning of the country was so Islamic and acknowledged that the land is for Muslim. Moreover, any connections to Hinduism is likely to be oppressed. But, actually some Pakistanis nowadays know and recognise that their past is coloured by Hindu and its tradition.

Pakistan as a Muslim country adopted Urdu as national and official language. Urdu by the fact is relatively small compared to languages like Pashto, Sindhi, Sairaiki, and Punjabi. Urdu was largely spoken by migrant from India. It was from one root with Hindi. Both Urdu and Hindi later standardized in different way from their root — Hindustani Khariboli. Hindi tends to erased and replaced the Persian or Arabian loanwords with their Sanskrit counterparts. And so on. Urdu is highly borrowed a large number of Arabic, Turkic, and Persian vocabularies. This resulted in the difference between Hindi and Urdu, especially for formal and written version.
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This new national language — Urdu is seen by the Pakistan Government which before the 1972 manage or control both West and East Pakistan as symbol of Islam. It makes the difference between Indian and Pakistani. Its vocabulary which alreay enrich by incorporation of Arabic, Turkic, and Persian loanwords, is one factor why Government do believe that Urdu is so Islamic and could be symbol against the India. In West Pakistan, there were not such a powerful agitation against the imposed of Urdu as national language. But, in the eastern wing of Pakistan which now is Bangladesh, there was a mass protest or agitation against the imposed of Urdu as solely national language.

No, it was not only because Urdu would like to gain it foothold as solely national language which led the anger of Bangladeshi/Bengali. Another reason was the view of Pakistan Government which seen Bengali as kafir language and heavily influenced by Sanskrit, compared to the Urdu. This was followed by large scale protest at Dhaka University in 21 February 1952 (the imposition of Urdu was in 1948).

Police killed many students at that day. Then, it began a civil unrest in all over East Pakistan. So in 1956 Pakistan Goverment made Bengali as co-official language in East Pakistan.
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So, here we could see that Pakistan is so Islamy from its very beginning. It distincted itself from India because of religion's matter. It is totally different with Bangladesh. The separation of East Pakistan was about ethno-nationalism. After the independence of Bangladesh, Hindu as minority and Muslim live along each other in peace. Then, there is no reason to Bangladesh to not acknowledge its relation is past with the Hinduism. Since, almost all Muslim Bangladeshi nowadays are descendant of persons who converted to Islam from their respective former religion, namely Hindu, Buddha, and Animism.

As for Malaysia and Indonesia, Islam came in a very peaceful manner. There was no war to spread Islam or to Islamized Indonesia - Malaysian Archipelago. The Islamization is done by the contact between merchants and buyers, mostly in coastal area and river banks. That is why most of inhabitants in interior (pedalaman) almost not touched by Islam. There were lots of factor, such lack of transportation to reach the interior, and interior people did not do a massive trade. In 19th CE, due to work of missionary, most of people in interior namely Dayak, Toraja, Pamona, Bataks, Minahasan, and Native Papuan were converted to the Christianity.
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After the independence of Indonesia and Malaysia, both the countries were built with no focus on religious issues. Yeah, there were some riots in Malaysia and Indonesia, involved the Muslim majority (Malay [in sense of race and ethnicity]) against minority, especially Chinese. But, other than that, Malaysia and Indonesia is quite stable and take a pride with their past. Islam was come in the past, Islam is their past (now, and future), so does Hindu. Hindu was the first external influence that enabled native Indonesia-Malaysian Archipelago to write and read, by borrowing their akhsara (script) which inscribed in many prasasti (document on the rock) and led them to created a joyful civilization under the name of Hindu Kingdom.

If you visit my country, you will find that our Indonesian language has thousands of Sanskrit-based word like setia, ksatria, tahta, dewa, dewi, pura, raja, and many more. Derived respectively from sathya, ksatri, takht, dev, devi, puri, and raj. Even, Java Island's name is likely from Hindu influence too, Javadvipa means an islands of jewawut.