POLITICS: India Serious about Deporting Bangladeshi Immigrants

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Feb 17 2003 (IPS) - The seriousness with which India regards the issue of 15 million Bangladeshis it claims are residing illegally in this country was reflected in an address to Parliament made Monday by President A P J Abdul Kalam.

"The problem of illegal migration from Bangladesh has assumed serious proportions and affects many States," Kalam said in his address to the joint sitting of Parliament.

Kalam’s remarks reflected the government’s mood following the recent standoff between the two countries along the 4,000-km long border they share. Border guards of each country were trying to push people they claimed were not theirs across to the other side.

In an attempt to defuse the issue, Bangladesh Foreign Minister Mohammad. Morshed Khan visited New Delhi last week for talks with Indian leaders on the migrant issue and other irritants between the two neighbours.

According to the Atlas of Population and Environment released by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the mass migration into India has been the result of pressure on land caused by a rapidly expanding population.

”In the 1980s, land scarcity caused by a fast-rising population in Bangladesh led to conflicts that drove 12 to 17 million Bangaldeshis into neighbouring Indian states of West Bengal and Assam,” the AAAS atlas said.

The Indian government, which until recently took a remarkably lenient view of the steady migration across the porous border, now believes that Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) has taken advantage of it for subversive activities.

Kalam argued in his speech that the ISI was active in Bangladesh. ”This makes the issue of infiltration even more ominous.”

However, the president observed that historical, cultural and ethnic affinities had shaped India’s relations with Bangladesh and that even now the two countries were engaged in dialogue to sort out political and security issues.

Close racial affinities between Bangladeshis and people in the adjoining Indian states of Assam, West Bengal and Tripura make identification difficult especially when India does not have system of issuing identity cards to genuine citizens.

In continuation of the newly initiated dialogue, the foreign secretaries of the two countries are scheduled to meet in the first week of April in Dhaka where the illegal immigrant issue will be addressed.

Earlier this month, the government began a process of issuing identity cards to all Indian citizens, starting with the 13 states considered vulnerable to illegal immigration – northern Kashmir and Uttaranchal, western Gujarat, West Bengal and Tripura in the east and southern Tamil Nadu, Goa and Pondicherry and Delhi.

Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani has already directed state governments to launch ”special drives” starting April to detect and deport illegal immigrants.

Illegal immigration from Bangladesh has been a particular problem in Assam state, which saw violent agitations by the All Assam Students Union (AASU) through the eighties defused by the drawing up of Assam Accord in 1986. Under that agreement, mass deportations were to have been carried out by the central and state governments.

"Assam may soon become part of Bangladesh if the central and state government do not take steps to implement the accord and stop this infiltration,” said AASU adviser Sammujal Bhattacharyya at a recent press conference in Guwahati, the state capital.

Bhattacharya said the AASU now planned to revive the mass agitation against the ”influx of foreigners into Assam which has upset the demography of the state”.

Indian officials say the main difficulty is that Bangladesh officially shies away from admitting to the mass migration, leaving the Indian government no choice but to resort to rounding them up and push migrants across the border.

"I don’t think there is any illegal migrant from Bangladesh coming to India to live,” Bangladesh Foreign Minister Mohammed Morshed Khan told journalists during his visit here last week.

But Dhaka has been more responsive to Advani’s complaints that it was harbouring Islamic fundamentalist groups and criminal gangs that were allegedly carrying on subversive activities against India.

Last week, the Khaleda Zia government banned the Shahadat-e-Hikma. a fundamentalist group said to be funded by Dawood Ibrahim, an Indian underworld don who operates out of Dubai.

”After observing the activities of Al Hikma it was found to be a threat to peace and security. That’s why the decision has been taken to ban it,” Bangladesh Home Minister Altaf Hussain Chowdhury was reported as telling Parliament.

This was the first instance of an Islamic organisation being banned by Zia’s Bangladesh National Party (BNP) government. which is partnered by the openly anti-India, Jamaat-e-Islami party.