A Question for the BJP: Why Would Bangladeshis Come to Bihar?

When millions have been forced to migrate from Bihar, Assam and West Bengal to southern and western India because of lack of employment opportunities at home, why would hordes of Bangladeshis risk their lives to enter and permanently settle in these states? More so, when the per capita income of Bangladesh is now higher than that of these border states.

Large-scale migration takes place from an economically poorer region to a richer one, not the other way round. For example, 7.25 lakh Indians are living illegally in the United States, according to a Pew Research Center Report. But how many undocumented Americans would there be in India?

Bihar’s per capita income stands at $785.47, which is less than one-third of Bangladesh’s $2,551 (2023-24 figures). Long gone are the decades when Assam and West Bengal attracted people from across India, and Bangladesh was the backwater of the subcontinent. So, when the Bharatiya Janata Party claims that there is a huge influx of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh into India, it needs to provide a reasonable argument to back this up.

One might also be tempted to ask how many illegal immigrants the government has identified, given that the BJP has been in power at the Union government for 11 years and in Bihar for 14 out of the past 20 years. Identifying illegal immigrants is the responsibility of the government, not that of the Election Commission which is claiming to have found many Bangladeshis, Nepalis and Myanmarese living illegally in Bihar. The international boundary is manned by the Border Security Force, which reports to the home ministry, headed since 2019 by Amit Shah.

Historical factors

Historically, Muslims have had a sizeable presence in the border districts of Assam and West Bengal and in the Seemanchal region of north-eastern Bihar, a fact that certain vested interests are exploiting to raise the bogey of illegal immigration.

Until August 2024, when Sheikh Hasina was ousted and the new government took over in Dhaka, India was issuing between 15 and 20 lakh visas to Bangladeshis annually, or 7,000-8,000 visas every working day. The figure is now under 1,000 a day. The large number of Bangladeshi visitors, who came to India for medical treatment and to shop, contributed to the local economy. Hospitals and hotels in Kolkata, the city most patients preferred because of the common language and culture, have been hit hard by the drop in numbers in the past year. Thousands of Indian students would also go to study in Bangladesh, especially in medical colleges, and many Indians work there.

That is not to say there is no illegal crossing of the border. Like in New Delhi, in Dhaka, too, the authorities complain that there are undocumented migrants working in the country. Smugglers and criminals are active in border areas. These are issues that should be sorted out.

But to say that Muslim infiltrators have consciously entered India and enrolled as voters to change the demography and help Trinamul Congress in West Bengal and the Grand Alliance in Bihar and Assam win elections is an outlandish claim.

Population displacement has been a contentious issue since the 19th century when British colonialists started exploiting the rich forests of Assam. The Adivasis of the Chhotanagpur region of east-central India were forcibly uprooted and settled in the tea gardens of Assam, where the British needed workers. The Adivasis, who had rebelled against colonial rule, were pitted against the tribals of Assam, who too had stiffly opposed the loot by the British.

The period of the Partition and the liberation of Bangladesh also saw a transfer of population. When the Pakistani army cracked down on Awami League supporters, Hindu and Muslim Bengalis fled what was then East Pakistan and took shelter in Assam, West Bengal and other adjoining states. While many returned home after the creation of Bangladesh, some opted to stay on in India. It was difficult to ascertain whose number was more, that of Hindu Bengalis or Muslim Bengalis. Migrants who arrived in India till March 25, 1971, were considered eligible for citizenship.

When the All Assam Students’ Union and the Assam Gana Sangram Parishad led an agitation against illegal immigration between 1979 and 1985, it was not communal in nature, and was targeted at all outsiders – Muslims and Hindus. Even in the pre-Partition years, the Assamese Hindus were unhappy with the presence of Bengali Hindus, who they said were brought by the British masters from Bengal to dominate the middle and lower level of the administrative machinery. In the initial years of 20th century, the Assamese Hindu landowners were not averse to hiring Bengali Muslim labourers but saw Bengali Hindus as agents of the British.

The BJP entered the scene in the early 1980s to make it a Hindu-Muslim issue. At that time resentment was growing in Assam against the big traders and well-off migrants from the north and the west who dominated the business in the state. The Sangh Parivar tried to give the movement a communal twist to protect the traders’ lobby as well as Bengali Hindus while at the same time championing the cause of the Assamese. In this process, Bengali Muslims became the favourite whipping boy.

Shift to Seemanchal

The RSS spread its campaign to West Bengal but could not succeed much because the Left Front was in power. So, it shifted its attention towards the Seemanchal districts of Bihar which already had a substantial Muslim population.

Whipping up the bogey of illegal migrants in Bihar is easy, but substantiating this allegation is not. Seemanchal and the adjoining Kosi belt are among the poorest regions of Bihar, which itself stands at the bottom of the development ladder in India. It is incomprehensible why large numbers of Bangladeshis would come and settle in this industrially starved, densely populated and flood-prone region of Bihar.

With elections due in Bihar later this year and in West Bengal and Assam next summer, the saffron camp has started cooking up stories about massive infiltration from Bangladesh. They have clearly failed to learn a lesson from the BJP’s humiliating defeat in the Jharkhand Assembly elections last November when the party had banked on the propaganda that Bangladeshi men were marrying Adivasi girls to grab land.

The Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls was launched in a hurry in Bihar last month despite the failed NRC (National Register of Citizens) exercise in Assam, which took years, cost Rs 1,600 crore and caused enormous hardship to millions but achieved nothing. The aim of NRC was to identify undocumented migrants, and it excluded almost an equal number of Hindus and Muslims.

The reason for the failure in tackling illegal immigration is that no objective or rational approach has been adopted, and the purpose appears to be to just  sensationalise the issue and polarise voters to win elections. Only a sober and sincere approach can bring results.

Soroor Ahmed is a Patna-based freelance journalist.

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