MELLON-MIT FOUNDATION on Ngos and FORCED MIGRATION
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MELLON-MIT FOUNDATION ON NGOs AND FORCED MIGRATION ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION FROM BANGLADESH TO INDIA: THE EMERGING CONFLICTS CHANDAN NANDY SLIFKA PROGRAM IN INTER-COMMUNAL COEXISTENCE BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY NOVEMBER 30, 2005 CONTENTS Tables and Photos ix Abbreviations viii Maps x & 65 Acknowledgments i Executive Summary iii Introduction, Methodology and Literature Review xiv 1. International Migration: Some Theoretical Frameworks 1 2. Partition: The Great Divide 23 3. Bangladesh Liberation War: Exodus of Millions 37 4. Push Them Out, Pull Them In 49 5. Politics of Immigration 89 6. Extent of Migration 149 7. Ancient Hatreds or Conflict Over Resources? 165 8. In Crying Need: An Effective Immigration Policy 181 9. Conclusion: Towards a Broad-Based, Nuanced Evaluation 203 and Time-Bound Monitoring References 208 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project, whose rudiments were formed years back when I was a journalist, would not have seen the light of the day without the help and support of innumerable people and a generous grant from the Mellon-MIT Foundation on Forced Migration. Encouragement to pursue this complex and controversial topic came from Dr Sharon Stanton Russell and other members on the selection committee who considered by proposal’s merited support. Dr Mari Fitzduff, Director of the Slifka Program on Inter-Communal Coexistence at Brandeis University, Massachusetts, and my advisor for the project had encouraging words for an earlier draft of this report. She and Brandeis University Politics Department Chair Dr Steven Burg provided useful ideas that shaped several parts of the report. Their lectures in class at Brandeis guided me through much of the demanding task. Dr Jayanta Ray, Director of South Asia Research Society, was kind enough to allow me access to his organisation’s research facilities and database. He gave me a completely free hand to pursue the fieldwork. I appreciate the very incisive comments that Dr Sanjib Baruah provided when I discussed plans to embark on this field project. Subir Bhowmick of the British Broadcasting Corporation willingly and gladly parted with the taped interviews he had conducted with migrants for one his stories for the BBC World Service. I thank him profusely. Much of the field work and interviews of the migrants was conducted by me, but they would not have been complete without the assistance of Haren Mondal and Babul Boral who guided me through unknown and, at times, the seemingly distant borderland. While Haren accompanied me in Murshidabad and Nadia, Babul acted as guide, informer, friend and well-wisher – all rolled into one. A similar role was played by Shib Shankar Chatterjee of Guwahati, in my travel through Dhubri and Karimganj districts of Assam. A special word of thanks and gratitude to some of the migrants – men and women -- for their hospitality. They threw open their humble abodes for me to spend nights, served me i food, and took great personal risks to talk to me boldly. The fieldwork was not just another research activity. It gave me an excellent opportunity to meet people and make friends. I express the same heart-felt thanks and gratitude to my “sources” from the days I was a journalist. They supplied me with not only information, but a host of classified documents. Last, but not least, no words are enough to express my thanks to Bibhuti Bhushan Nandy – my father – who goaded me morning, noon and night so that I could complete the task in time. His intellectual depth has been my strength that saw me through. Finally. Chandan Nandy Calcutta November 2005 ii EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Population movements have been a constant feature of the evolution of human civilisation. For a variety of reasons – social, political, economic, natural and climatic -- migration occurs within the geographical limits of states and beyond. In recent years, globalisation has given a new thrust to the international labour market, adding a new dimension to inter-state migration. While migration between countries in the developed world is a two-way traffic, demographic mobility from the developing to the more advanced countries is generally uni-directional. India, though a developing country, has been at the receiving end of migrants from its relatively less developed neighbourhoods. While many Indians belonging to the upper economic strata have been moving out to the developed countries in search of better economic opportunities, the magnitude of migration into India is far in excess of the numbers going out. While migrants from Tibet, Nepal, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Pakistan have been coming in varying numbers, the largest intake has been from Bangladesh. Despite the enormity of the problem of illegal immigration from Bangladesh to India, its systematic research and study has been few and far between. The paucity of literature on the subject is striking. The existing literature on the South Asian migration problems and previous research works yielded only a limited picture of the range and nature of illegal immigration from Bangladesh to India in the last several decades. In the given situation this research had to depend on extensive survey of the problem at the ground level in different areas and states. The insight thus gained from field visits pointed toward as-yet untapped sources of information, including public servants dealing with the problem at policy-making and policy-execution levels. A good number of them were contacted, their information and perceptions recorded and factored into the research framework. Contacts with one group of individuals working in diverse fields of public service, academics, non- governmental organisations, national and local level political figures helped to not only assess the enormity of the problem possible lines of solution, but also exposed an iii incredible lack of initiative among decision-makers at the bureaucratic and political levels. Extensive public contact at the grassroots level in the border belts resulted in flow of very useful information about activities of organised racketeers who play a crucial role in arranging border crossings without necessary inter-state travel documents. The linkages of these networks with the border guards, local police, administrative officials and also politically influential people revealed yet another dimension of illegal immigration, i.e. the nexus between the mafia and the officialdom. For identifying the areas and the routes of border crossings, local guides at important locations along the international border were employed. They put across the researcher to the main persons who control the activities on both sides of the Indo-Bangladesh border in West Bengal and Assam sectors. The guides, who themselves are involved in the organised trans-border movements, introduced the researcher to a number of immigrants both Hindus and Muslims from different geographical areas and diverse occupational backgrounds. The migrants’ stories were a vivid account of the different push and pull factors that have made them come over to India. Discussions and conversations with senior officers of the Border Security Force, intelligence agencies and state-level police forces were helpful in deciding the areas to visit and how to go about collecting the required information. Persecuted ethnic and religious minorities, who are victims of discrimination by the state and subjected to recurring communal and racial atrocities have been coming over to India in droves since the Partition of 1947. For a brief period of three-and-a-half years after liberation, Bangladesh was committed to secular governance when the Hindus and other minorities experienced some let up in the persecution by the majority Muslim community. Ever since 1975, the country has gone through a steady process of Islamisation, ranging from deletion of secularism from the constitution to legitimisation of banned communal and fundamentalist Islamist parties to declaration of Islam as the state religion of Bangladesh. The consequent heightening of insecurity among the minorities intensified migration of the Hindus to the bordering states of India. iv The second type of migrants consist of pauperised landless Muslims from rural Bangladesh in search of employment. The in-flow of economic migrants began during the 1974 famine in Bangladesh and has continued unabated ever since. There has been no census of immigrants yet, but academics, government agencies, research organisations and demographers estimate 15-20 million migrants have found their way to different Indian states in the last three decades, the ratio of Hindu-Muslim immigrants being approximately 1:3. While the migration pressure is understandably on the border states (Assam, West Bengal, Meghalaya and Tripura), significant numbers have traveled further afield and have been living in concentration in metropolitan cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Jaipur and a host of other urban conglomerates. Besides generating tensions between the natives and the alien migrants on racial and communal lines, immigration on such a massive scale has completely changed the demographic profile of the border districts of eastern and north-eastern India. So much so that “demographic invasion” has become an oft-repeated phrase in migration discourse in India. Open and poorly controlled and managed borders in the absence of a sound and comprehensive immigration policy in India has greatly facilitated illegal immigration. Rampant corruption among the border guards and the cynical policy of turning the foreign migrants into captive voters by political