Do you know how many illegal Bangladeshi immigrants there are in India?
Are there 30 million of them? What about 20 million? Or is the figure as
low as 10 million?
I ask because the truth is that nobody knows how many illegal
Bangladeshi migrants have made India their home. Every figure you read
will be an approximation or - and this is more likely - a simple guess.
The 30-million figure, for instance, is usually quoted by people who
want to claim that the problem of migration has now veered dangerously
out of control. Because 30 million sounds more alarming than 10 million,
it is this figure that will get quoted. But nobody knows that there are,
in fact, 10 million illegal immigrants (the 30 million figure is just
plain ridiculous) because no statistics exist.
At an intuitive level, however, we do recognise that there are many
illegal migrants in India. The border between India and Bangladesh is
porous and there is little that anyone can do to check migration.
Moreover, many people in the border villages do not recognise that an
international boundary exists. It is not uncommon for a man to cycle
from a Bangladeshi village to a town in India to buy something - and for
him to then cycle back home on the same day.
So, there are many Bangladeshis in the border districts of West Bengal.
Because there are few cultural differences, they fit in easily with the
local people. Many of these Bangladeshis do then make their way to such
cities as Calcutta or Delhi.
This by itself should not be a cause for much concern. We were all part
of the same country till 1947 and it is inevitable that people will keep
moving between the nations of South Asia, no matter how the
international boundaries are drawn.
But, we are repeatedly told, the “problem of Bangladeshi migrants” is
different. First of all, there are supposed to be too many of them.
Secondly, there is a danger that some of them will have terrorist links.
And finally, there is no way that India can sustain such a huge burden
on its resources. There are simply not enough jobs to go around.
If you think about it, none of this makes much sense. The figures, as we
have seen, are just concoctions. The terrorism stuff is nonsense. There
is very little evidence that Bangladeshis foment terrorism in India and
no evidence at all that the rag-pickers, sweepers and domestic servants
who constitute the bulk of the illegal migrant population have a
terrorist agenda.
That leaves us with the not-enough-jobs-to-go-around argument. This
seems reasonable enough till you realise that nobody objects to
immigration from Nepal. In fact, we actually encourage Nepalis to come
and seek employment in India and have special laws in place that enable
them to cross the border without passports and to work without visas.
So, why are there enough jobs for Nepalis and not enough jobs for
Bangladeshis?
Not only is the answer obvious but here’s another fact: many of those
who have left Bangladesh and opted for India are Hindus who feel
increasingly alienated because of the Islam-isation of Bangladeshi
society. But, do you ever hear of a drive against illegal Hindu
immigrants? On the contrary, such parties as the BJP have invited
Bangladeshi Hindus to seek shelter in India.
No doubt, there are enough jobs to go around when it comes to Bengali
Hindus.
But why blame the BJP alone? The Congress is as responsible for creating
the scare about illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. In 1993, when Narasimha
Rao was Prime Minister, we made the mental shift from seeing Bangladesh
as a source of cheap labour to suddenly seeing it as a menacing country
from which millions of illegal immigrants would deprive happy Hindus of
their jobs.
It was in 1993 that the government launched Operation Pushback which
authorised the police to pick up thousands of poor Bengali Muslims from
all over Delhi and to send them to the border. Bangladesh refused to
accept these people - claiming that they were not Bangladeshis at all -
and many were stuck in the no-man’s land on the edge of the border
before eventually sneaking back into India after bribing soldiers and
officials.
Operation Pushback - and its equivalents in other cities - continues to
this day even if the name has changed. It is still the responsibility of
the police to round up illegal Bangladeshis and to send them back across
the border. The Delhi Police, for instance, has ten Task Forces whose
primary function is to scour Delhi looking for Bangladeshis to ship back
to Dhaka. In other cities too - and the Bangladeshi scare has now taken
hold in Bombay - more and more policemen are being pulled away from
their normal duties (i.e., the maintenance of law and order) and being
told to concentrate on looking for Bangladeshis.
In my view, the police should have better things to do. But even if you
disagree with me and believe that illegal immigration is a serious
problem, I don’t think it is possible for anybody to support the manner
in which alleged Bangladeshis are being deported.
I have been reading a pamphlet produced by the Citizen’s Campaign for
Preserving Democracy. Members of this group studied the way in which the
police rounded up Bangladeshis. And what they found is truly disturbing.
First of all, many of the people being deported are not even
Bangladeshis. Under the Foreigners Act, the burden of proof is on the
accused and not on the police (you are guilty till proved otherwise). So
the only way for a Bengali Muslim to prove that he is an Indian is to
produce documentation. But few poor people in India possess any
documents at all. So, the police can pick up and deport anybody they
like as long as: a) he speaks Bengali, b) is a Muslim, and c) looks like
he lacks the resources to defend himself.
Secondly, the notion of due process does not exist. All civilised
countries constitute some kind of judicial body that serves as a court
of appeal and allows the man who is being deported a chance to be heard.
In theory, India also allows for this kind of appeal. According to the
Foreigners Act, there should be a tribunal. And the Illegal Migrants
(DT) Act of 1983 has a provision for a tribunal.But no tribunal has been
constituted in Delhi under the Foreigners’ Act. And as for the Illegal
Migrants (DT) Act, well, that’s not valid in Delhi.
In effect, this means that the authorities can decide that anybody is an
illegal immigrant and can throw him out of the country. There is nothing
a victim can do by way of protest. There is no appeal at all.
Thirdly, because the police are not very good at identifying illegal
immigrants, they rely on a network of local informers who point out the
so-called Bangladeshis. Because these informers are trusted implicitly
by the police, they have complete power over their communities. Anybody
who does not keep them happy will be deported unless he then pays off
the local police. This is a system that lends itself to injustice and
corruption and, of course, these are exactly the consequences that follow.
Fourthly, the Task Forces work on the basis of a quota. In a manner
reminiscent of the sterilisation quotas during the Emergency, each Task
Force has to identify 100 illegal Bangladeshi immigrants every day.
Obviously, the police cut corners in an effort to fill this quota - even
if this means deporting non-Bangladeshi Muslims.
And finally, there is a complete violation of all international
protocol. Diplomatic procedure requires that if you are deporting
nationals of another country, you inform that country’s embassy or high
commission. But nobody bothers to inform the Bangladeshi Mission.
What worries me the most about all this is that we in the media have
been happy to go along with the Bangladeshi migration scare despite its
plainly xenophobic and frankly communal nature. Perhaps this is because
the victims of the injustice - the poorest of the poor, rag-pickers,
slum-dwellers etc - do not constitute our readership or viewership or
impinge on our world.
But this is no longer about poor people or even about Bangladeshis. It
is about how we define ourselves as a society. Are we to become a
country that allows policemen to pick up anybody they like and throw him
out without any kind of due process? Or are we to be a society of laws
where everyone has the right to be heard and where justice is freely
dispensed?
How you answer those questions does, I think, determine your response to
the drive against Bangladeshi migrants.