Organization: Penn State University
Date: Thursday, 9 Apr 1992 14:44:11 EDT
From: <DXA4@psuvm.psu.edu>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.bangladesh
Subject: Politics of Infiltration: Stop Labanonisation of Eastern India


Recently, I came across an article on Bangladeshi Infiltration (both Hindus and
Muslims) into India, which makes a quite disturbing reading. Since this issue
has been discussed on the net several times, and it seems that few nettrs do
not seem to comprehend the implications of this phenomenon. The following
article will be quite informative and an eye opener. I reproduce it in its
entirety with some emphasis of mine. The discerning readers can make their own
judgement:
              ....Dinesh Agrawal.....

Source: SUNDAY WEEKLY   22-28 March, 1992
Author: Mr. SWAPAN DASGUPTA

           POLITICS OF INFILTRATION: Lebanonisation of eastern India should be
                                     averted at all costs

    Even as the political class in the capital was preoccupied with the predic-
table outcome of the phoney war over the vote of thanks to the President's
address to Parliament, a far more significant movement was being conducted in
the districts of Purnea, Kishanganj and Katihar in Bihar. It is a movement that
is unlikely to appeal to the perverse fantasies of India's cosmopolitan elite,
lacking as it does the support of foreign NGOs and meddlesome human rights
agencies with a track record of selective indignation
    The agitation launched by the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad against
unabated illegal immigration from Bangladesh is uncomfortable precisely because
it touches a very raw nerve and raises awkward questions of nationhood and
nationality. Yet, this is problem which will have to be confronted headlong if
THE LABANONISATION OF EASTERN INDIA IS TO BE AVERTED.
    The facts are not totally unknown. Replying to a question in Parliament in
December last year, the minister of state for home, M. M. Jacob, admitted the
presence of one lakh Bangladeshi nationals in Delhi and 5.87 lakh in West
Bengal. But official statistics underestimate the problem to the point of
absurdity.
     Basing his calculations on the census of both the countries, Bangladesh
and India, Santimoy Roy of the Centre for South Asian Studies, Calcutta,
suggests that some 10 million Bangladeshis have settled in India in the last
decade.Sanjoy Hazarika, in a study on migration commissioned by the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, concludes that "NOT LESS THAN 10 TO 14
MILLION MIGRANTS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS HAVE OVERALL SETTLED IN INDIA". On its
parts, the state unit of BJP estimates the total influx into west Bengal since
1972 at 6 million, of whom 1.2 million have settled in Calcutta. In an article
to The Statesman in 1990, the former Governor of West Bengal, T.V. Rajeshwar,
had even stressed the necessity of "census to identify the exact number of
Bangladeshis in West Bengal, not to speak of other neighboring states like
Bihar".
      What began as the organised trickle of erstwhile Bihari refugee Razakaars
from the refugee camps of Dhaka has turned into a veritable flood thanks to
political patronage. In 1974, some 60,000 or so of these stranded Pakistanis
entered Calcutta and promptly applied for ration cards. The deputy commissioner
(special branch), Archisman Ghatak (now director general of police) warned the
state food secretary of the antecedents of the applicants. The food secretary
in turn instructed the rationing authorities to withhold the new cards. This
angered a section of the Muslim MLAs belonging to both the Congress and its
then ally, CPI, and they petitioned the chief minister, S.S. Ray, alleging
discrimination by Hindu officers. Ray, with his eyes to the Muslim vote, over-
ruled his food secretary, issued the ration cards and established a pattern
that has been replicated throughout the region. So much so that the Biharis who
numbered 7.5 lakhs in the Dhaka camps in 1972 are today estimated at only 5
lakh. Accounting for the 33,000 who were repatriated to Pakistan under Saudi
aegis, this would imply that nearly 5 lakh Razaakars are in India today.
    The slow trickle of Razakaars has been augmented by the systematic exodus
of Hindus from Bangladesh. Political harassment, particularly at the behest of
the Jamaat-i-Islami, is the main reason for their flight to India. The process
of Islamisation that began in 1947, but was checked briefly between 1972 and
1975, is being persued to its logical conclusion almost unnoticed. According to
the report by the Bharat Bangladesh Maitri Samiti, the Hindu population in the
districts of Faridpur, Tangail and Rajshahi showed negative growth between 1974
 and 1981; in other districts, the growth was negligible.
    Yet, Hindus account for a minority of illegal immigrants into India. Nadia
district, whose population has risen by 413 percent in four decades, is describ
ed in intelligence reports as a "load despatch centre". The Border Security
Force (BSF) tally of those Bangladeshis who were apprehnded while attempting
while attempting to cross the border in this district between December 1987 and
 October 1988 reveal that 4,455 were Hindus and 9,791 Muslims. The preponder-
ance of Muslims was further confirmed by Jyoti Basu in August 1991. Replying to
a CPI(M) query in the state assembly whether there was any validity to the BJP
propaganda over the influx from Bangladesh, the chief minister revealed THAT OF
THE 39,055 BANGLADESHIS INTERCEPTED IN THE FIRST SIX MONTHS OF 1991, SOME 28000
WERE MUSLIMS.
     The extent to which illegal immigration has affected the demographic
pattern of border districts is reflected in the 1991 census which, by common
admission, is a conservative reflection of the problem. Against the national
population growth of 23.17 %, West Dinajpur has registered a growth of 30%,
North 24 Parganas 31%, Murshidabad 28% and Malda 29%. The effect on local
communities has been particularly devastating. In Murshidabad district, which
has a Muslim majority, the population in Lalgola PS grew by 44% and in
Ghuliyan PS by 56%. The problem has also affected interior districts such as
Burdwan and Birbhum.
   The modus operandi of infiltration is familiar. After crossing at any point
along the 2,203 km unnatural border or 450 km of riverine border with West
Bengal, immigrants - assisted by touts, friends or relatives - immediately
apply for ration cards with the endorsement of friendly panchayat members. One
Left Front minister even recommended 239 Bangladeshi nationals for Indian
Passports. Once the ration card is secured, it confers a legitimacy of status
to the infiltrator and this forms the basis of entry into the voters lists.
     In West Bengal, the CPI(M) has played a major role in facilitating this
back door naturalization. In Bongaon, a border town, en masse registration of
Bangladesh voters was a key element of a strategy to defeat a sitting MLA of
the Congress. The extent to which Bangladeshi nationals now influence the
electoral outcome in the state may never be fully gauged. However, an intensive
survey of one segment of the Hanskhali assembly constituency of Nadia district
suggests that the electrol rolls may be distorted by as much as 14 per cent.
The figure could well be much higher in the affected districts of Bihar.
   The long term threats posed by this human wave, a part of what a Bangladeshi
writer has justified as the "question of Lebensraum" is not unknown to either
the state or the central government. THE DANGER IS COMPOUNDED BY EVIDENCE THAT
ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALIST GROUPS ARE DIRECTLY INVOLVED IN THIS CLANDESTINE BID TO
SUBVERT THE VERY IDENTITY OF EASTERN INDIA. Both the police and the intelligenc
e wing are aware of the communal ramifications of the problem. Jyoti Basu has
written on numerous occasions to Delhi to find a way out. "WE ARE NOT A DHARAM-
SHALA," he once told the press.
     As minister of state for home, P. Chidambaram toured the border areas in
1989 and returned "convinced about the seriousness and enormity of the infiltra
tion problem". There has been talk of a barbed-wire fencing along the most
porous 465 km of the border at least. The BSF has pleaded for a system of iden-
tity cards along the border. But even when this has been accepted in principle,
the state government has shied away at the last minute.
     The reason of the squeamishness is not hard to comprehend. Neither the
Congress nor the CPI(M) is in a position to antagonise the organised Muslim
lobby that exercises a veto in Indian politics. BUT WHY SHOULD MUSLIMS NOT BE
AS CONCERNED OVER THIS ASSAULT ON OUR NATIONHOOD? And why should the eastern
 region which has already suffred once on account of Partition meekly acquiesce
 in a renewed bout of self-destruction.


     THE TIME HAS COME FOR INDIANS TO PONDER OVER THE CONSEQUENCES OF EXCESSIVE
GENEROSITY TOWARDS THOSE WHO DID NOT REMAIN CONTENT WITH THIER NORTH-EASTERN
PAKISTAN OF 1947. ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION FROM BANGLADESH IS NOT A HUMANITARIAN
PROBLEM, IT IS A POLITICAL QUESTION AFFECTING OUR EXISTENCE AS A NATION. THE
BORDERS OF INDIA HAVE BEEN SHRINKING UNINTERRUPTEDLY FOR CENTURIES; IT IS TIME
TO HOLD ON TO WHATEVER HAS BEEN SALVAGED.