Looks like the Bangladeshi Muslims are ‘invading’ North East India and turning these small border states into parts of “Greater Bangladesh”.

Dhananjay Mathur

Demographic Invasion Of Assam By Bangladeshi Muslim Immigrants

Presence of illegal Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants in India is nothing new. In almost every district of states like Assam, Tripura or West Bengal one can easily identify Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants by their Urdu-mixed Bengali and typical accent. However over last fifteen years or so this problem of illegal immigration has taken a new alarming shape. Recent statistics clearly show that North Eastern states, especially Assam have become the victims of demographic invasion due to illegal Muslim migration from Bangladesh.

In the political arena, the person who recently studied this migration phenomenon in an elaborate manner and analyzed the situation in quite some depth is Lt. Gen. (retd) S K Sinha, Assam’s present Governor. Sinha was appointed as Governor of Assam in August 1997 by the then United Front Central Government replacing Loknath Mishra. Sinha’s appointment came at a time when insurgency has resurfaced in the State and the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) government headed by P K Mahanta was facing flak from the people.

In March 1999, Sinha submitted a 42-page report to President K R Narayanan drawing his attention to the influx of Bangladeshi immigrants into lower Assam regions. Sinha, a retired lieutenant general who served in the area as an army officer for many years, is well aware of the problems caused in the region by infiltration. Before preparing the report titled ‘Illegal immigration into Assam’, he held prolonged discussions on the subject with several people from varied backgrounds and different shades of opinion. He also extensively toured the areas of Assam bordering Bangladesh.

The report stated that illegal influx of Bangladeshi Muslims into the state may lead to serious consequences, and could threaten the national security. Sinha observed, “The long-cherished design of Greater Bangladesh, making inroads into the strategic land link of Assam with the rest of [India], can lead to severing the entire land mass of the North-East, with all its rich resources, from the rest of the country. This will have disastrous strategic and economic consequences.”

The report provided an accurate picture of how the Bangladeshi Muslims have settled along the river Brahmaputra, stretching from western Assam’s Dhubri district to eastern Assam’s Lakhimpur district. “The ground reality is that, of late, almost all the illegal migrants coming into Assam are Muslims,” Sinha pointed out. With statistical tools and analysis, the report also gave a detailed picture of how the influx of illegal migrants is fast turning the lower Assam districts into a Muslim-majority region. It also clearly stated that it would only be a matter of time when a demand for their merger with Bangladesh will be made and the loss of lower Assam will sever the entire landmass of the northeast from the rest of India. The statistics provided in the report gave a shocking but accurate snapshot of the demographic invasion that is going on in Assam. 57 of Assam’s 126 constituencies were found to have more than 20 per cent increase in the number of voters between 1994 and 1997 whereas the all-India average is just 7.4 per cent. Statistical Analysis showed that Muslim population in Assam has shown a rise of 77.42 per cent over what it was in 1971 (there was no census in Assam in 1981). Officials found that four districts in the state (Dhubri, Goalpara, Barpeta and Hailakandi) are already Muslim-majority whereas three more are fast approaching that stage. At the time of Independence, only Dhubri was a Muslim-majority district. And even by very conservative estimates, at least 1.5 million illegal Bangladeshi immigrants are said to be living in the state of Assam.

S K Sinha’s report also pointed out the ineffectiveness of the controversial Illegal Migrants

Determination by Tribunal Act (IMDT) which was enacted by Congress Government in 1983 only for the state of Assam. Although the outward and superficial objective of the act was to detect and deport illegal immigrants in Assam, there were obviously ulterior political motives behind it. Under the hood of “providing adequate safety measures against the harassment of minorities” Congress Government created this act which provided them with convenient legal framework to convert illegal Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants to eligible voters. The basic flaw cited by critics of the act is that the onus of furnishing the proof of a person’s citizenship rests with the complainant, and not the person whose citizenship is in doubt. Also according to this act, a ration card is more than sufficient for proof of domicile. For past few years, Congress and CPM parties have been issuing these cards illegally to the Muslim immigrants to fulfill their political agenda.

The IMDT act was also found highly impractical, as currently there are only 16 tribunals functioning in Assam meant for detecting thousands of illegal Muslim immigrants. Considering the fact the Foreigners’ Act of 1946 is in force for the rest of India to detect illegal immigrants, IMDT is also very discriminatory to the people of Assam.

Although there have been attempts earlier to scrap the act, so far every single attempt has been unsuccessful. Students of Assam under the banner of All Assam Student Union took up the cause and launched an agitation for about six years starting from 1984 to 1990. In 1997, the issue raised a storm when former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda promised the All Assam Students Union to carry out a repeal in order to make the act more effective. However, Gowda had to backtrack in the face of strong opposition from the Congress, which was supporting the United Front government. In 1998 when BJP Government was in power, in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha during a session of parliament, Union home minister L K Advani said: “The scrapping of the IMDT Act, 1983, is under consideration of the government”. It was one of the major promises made by the BJP in Assam during the Lok Sabha elections; a promise that helped the party win new support among the Hindus of Assam, which was clearly reflected in the election results. Congress and Communist party members expectedly and vehemently opposed BJP’s move. Surprisingly even AGP Government at that time came up with an illogical argument that they would not support the BJP on this issue as the party considered only Muslim nationals living in Assam as illegal migrants. AGP conveniently forgot that record shows that 98 percent of the illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in Assam are Muslim and the remaining two percent which are Hindu, had to take political refuge in India because of the state-sponsored Islamic oppression on them in Bangladesh. However the real cause of Assam’s Chief Minister P K Mahanta’s reluctant regarding this issue is different. He himself very well knows that scraping of IMDT act means a significant loss of Muslim votes for AGP. This is really ironic considering the fact that Prafulla Mahanta is a product of AASU, the organization whose sole aim was to repeal the IMDT act.

Prafulla Kumar Mahanta of Assam is not the only political figure in country to gain advantage of the growing problem of illegal immigration. In fact, his counterpart in West Bengal, Mr. Jyoti Basu has already excelled in the minority vote bank politics and has amply demonstrated in numerous occasions how low he can stoop to achieve his dirty political ambition. Not long ago, the sympathy wave emanating from minority votebank politics had blinded the CPI(M) cadre in West Bengal when the organized communist mob had forcibly freed the illegal Bangladeshi nationals deported by Maharashtra administration from Mumbai at Kharagpur and Howrah railway stations. In March 1997 however, the former Union Home Minister Indrajit Gupta (a hardcore communist) himself admitted that India has an estimated 10 million foreigners living illegally in the country.

In his report, “Illegal immigration into Assam”, Lt. General Sinha pointed out that when India was partitioned in 1947, Assam would have been part of East Pakistan if it hadn’t been for the vehement opposition of the late ‘Lokapriya’ (People’s Beloved) Gopinath Bordoloi. Failure to get Assam included in East Pakistan remained a source of abiding resentment in Pakistan. Sinha has quoted Zulfikar Ali

Bhutto, who once wrote, “One at least is nearly as important as the Kashmir dispute, that of Assam and some districts of India adjacent to East Pakistan. To these Pakistan has very good claims.” Sinha has drawn attention to the fact that even a pro-India politician like Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Father of Bangladesh, had observed, “Because Eastern Pakistan must have sufficient land for its expansion and because Assam has abundant forests and mineral resources, Eastern Pakistan must include Assam to be financially and economically strong.” Sinha also gave a breakdown of suspected illegal immigrants in India by state: West Bengal has 5.4 million, Assam 4 million, Tripura 0.8 million, Bihar 0.5 million, Maharashtra 0.5 million, Rajasthan 0.5 million and Delhi 0.3 million.

Pointing out that leading intellectuals in Bangladesh have been making out a case for ‘lebensraum’ for their country, Sinha warned, “No matter how friendly our relations with Bangladesh, we can ill afford to ignore the dangers inherent in a demographic invasion from that country.” “We must not allow any misconceived notions of secularism to blind us to these realities,” he has said. “Concrete steps must be taken on a war footing to ensure that the borders are as nearly sealed as possible and the unabated flood of infiltration is reduced to a trickle.”

Other than the obvious imbalance in economic and social infrastructure, illegal Muslim migration in Assam has one more disastrous implication. Here it will not be out of place to mention that the Indian military intelligence, about four years back, had unearthed an ISI plot of pushing Bangladeshi Muslims into India with a view to swelling their numbers in the border districts of Assam and West Bengal. The aim was to tilt the demographic balance heavily in their favor so as to create in the long run fertile religious grounds for the demand for a new pro-Pakistan state. The ISI seems to be succeeding in its design as the demographic equilibrium has been disturbed to a great extent, rendering the original inhabitants a minority in their own land. According to chief of the army’s eastern command, ISI is steadily spreading its wings in northeastern states and West Bengal. The Pakistani agency was not only using West Bengal as a corridor to the north- eastern region where it was supplying arms to the insurgents, but the Muslim- dominated border districts of other eastern states were also getting its increasing attention.

Recent developments in Assam are clear indication to the fact that Muslim organizations are well in control of terrorism in Assam. In May, 1999 the Indian Government received sensational information clearly indicating direct contact between a group of Kashmiri Muslim Terrorists and two extremist Muslim terrorist outfits of Assam - Muslim Tiger Force and Revolutionary Muslim Commandos. These Muslim groups which operate in the NorthEast states owe their allegiance to the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-Toiba, two of the world’s most murderous Islamic terrorist groups.

Two other Muslim militant organizations, namely, Muslim Liberation Tigers of Assam (MLTA) and Muslim Liberation Army (MLA) are training batches of Muslim terrorists and criminals in Jammu and Kashmir, particularly in Poonch and Rajouri sectors. Yet another sensational connection has been unearthed with the discovery of a recent clandestine visit by Muslim terrorists belonging to the Muslim Liberation Tigers of Assam to Kashmir and Rajouri sector as “tourists”. The captured terrorists revealed that Pakistan is pumping immense sums of money into the northeastern region of India with periodic messages from across the border to have a particular portion of the money thus received transferred to the “specified” persons in Jammu and Kashmir. Since 1990 more than NINE Muslim terrorist organizations have taken root in Assam alone. Today terrorist organizations in Assam like Muslim Liberation Army, Muslim Liberation Tigers of Assam, Muslim Security Force, Islamic United Reformation Protest of India, United Muslim Liberation Front of Assam, Revolutionary Muslim Commandos, Islamic Liberation Army of Assam, Islamic Sevak Sangh, Muslim Tiger Force etc enjoy moral and financial support from International Islamic fundamentalist groups and figures such as Osama Bin Laden.

Its about time Indian Government realizes that its just not a local problem to state of Assam, but is a

threat to the National security of India. Its about time the state Government of Assam realizes that because of its politics of minority votebank, residents of Assam will be victims of a bloodier Islamic aggression than that Kashmir has observed. The following suggestions by Lt. General S K Sinha regarding the illegal Bangladeshi migrant in NorthEast should be immediately acted upon by both Central and State Governments as a bare minimum precautionary step for the sake of the entire country:

The highly discriminatory Illegal Migration Determination Tribunal Act for the state of Assam, which has proved its futility over the last 15 years, should be repealed and the Foreigners’ Act of 1946 should be used for detection and deporting of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. Officials from outside Assam be deputed for this task.

The Border Security Force battalions deployed in the state should not be given the responsibility of holding unduly extended frontages. As in Punjab, a battalion should hold a frontage of just 30km. Additional BSF battalions should be provided and diversion of the personnel for other duties must be avoided.

The National Register of Citizens should be updated and computerized and a separate register of stateless citizens should also be maintained.

Multi-purpose photo identity cards should be given to all nationals, with a higher priority accorded to districts bordering Bangladesh.

If the Central Government of India and the affected states do not work closely to come up with an effective solution to this ever-growing demographic menace, the situation can become explosive, severely jeopardizing the national security of India. Any negligence towards this issue of Muslim immigration might very well produce many more Kargils in the North Eastern regions of India.