Let us take stock of our border states and provinces Jammu, Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat [that share a] border with Pakistan. Whether you like it or not, if anything goes wrong in these four states, a habit has developed in this country just to doubt and cast aspersions on the Muslims of this area, as the agents of Pakistan.
I would like to mention that one Shri Suraj Ali Khan was a Member of the Legislative Assembly of Bengal from a Constituency called Tihatta Nadia district long back in 1967.
He was arrested under the Defence of India Rules and suspected of being a Pakistani spy during the days of war with Pakistan and the-then chief minister was helpless to do anything. Later on, I discovered that Shri Suraj Ali Khan was the co-prisoner of Shri Deshbandu Chittaranjan Das. Shri Deshbandu Chittaranjan Das used to go with his family for campaigning for the country’s liberation struggle, and he had been in India for long enough.
The states which are bordered by Bangladesh — Tripura, Assam and West Bengal — have phases of history. Phase (a) is the part of the Partition, (b) the onslaught of refugees coming and going (c) the poverty-stricken districts in the border, and d) the constant poverty both in West Bengal, Tripura and Assam border, and of the border of Pakistan — the border which is a namesake border in the map, the border which has a routine and national concept of the border, but the border which was neither guarded from their side with an iron gate nor from our side with an iron gate.
Thirty years ago, a daily wage earner of the agricultural field, maybe his name is Shri Ramatulla Khan, could not thrive in his own part and maybe on the side of Tripura or West Bengal or Assam. The big landlords, whether Hindu or Muslim, asked Shri Ramatulla Khan during agriculture season to come and work in the field and to give support to agricultural production. Now, when the time has come to identify, we [overlook] how Ramatulla Khan came in [in the first place].
We go straight to his child and tell them like this: “Look here, your father came here as an illegal immigrant. We have enough documents because Ramatulla used to stay in a village till 16th August 1947 or till such and such date of August 1950 or August 1960. You are his child, so get out from here.” This is the kind of attitude we have always adopted throughout the country.
I was born in Bangladesh, and I was a student of Class-l at that time. I remember the day when I came out on the street. I heard a slogan…at that time, I did not know anything…We ran [out] in the street and heard some leaders who raised the slogan of “rashtra bhasha“, that is, the language of the state should be Bengali, nothing else. That was finally the slogan of Sheikh Mujibur Rehman at a later stage.
One night I came out and found that there was trouble.
My father, mother and sister were [inside] the house…The next day morning, I found that the gentleman and his brother, who escorted us safely across the border, were Muslims. After having successfully crossed the border, myself, my mother and my sister arrived by train at the border of India. After seven days. we gathered the news that the great Muslim family which helped us had been killed at the hands of some fanatics. I still remember it.
When I became a minister, I went to visit the family.
I had to ask the government to accommodate the man who saved our lives. Suppose the situation stabilises and such a person stays in India. The point is that the law of the home ministry and the provisions and regulations describe that such a person is a foreigner, and ask him to get out of this land. Yes, logically Da is a foreigner. But historically, neither was he responsible to escort me nor my parents responsible to bring them.
The particular situation which we witnessed was a grave one. What was the situation that we witnessed on the night of 15th August 1947? Who was responsible for that?
Should I bring the late Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the late Mohammad Al Jinnah and the late Mahatma Gandhi to dock for trial? Or, should I accept history and reality as it is and accept that man’s identity? Should I accept him as a fellow traveller, a friend of mine, and ask him to stay here or not?
Having said all these words, still, if they try to say that let us find out the genuine infiltrators, I could understand the logic. But a campaign is carried on in this country in such a manner that some people are in fear. Who are the Chakmas who are in Tripura? They are not Muslims. They are not Hindus. They are Buddhists.
Whenever I used to go to Tripura for an election campaign, I used to see at a distance of three yards the tents of the Chakmas, the Buddhists, the poorest of the poor who could not stay in the Chittagong hill tracts because of the oppression and suppression of one regime.
I do agree that there is a reasonable fear which arose in the minds of the people in Assam and Tripura. I fully share their fear. The fear is that if the influx is more than the expected number which is invisible, the fear of losing one’s cultural identity is there. The social identity of the tribes of Tripura, who are the original claimants of that land is in danger. The fear of the Assamese about the Ahom culture is there. They are not only the masters but also the people who did preserve their land by shedding blood. There is a reasonable apprehension in the minds of the people who live in the Brahmaputra Valley that one day or the other they would be asked to go out. I fully share their concern.
In India, if [we] want unity in the real sense of ‘unity in diversity’, then we should not create any situation by which any part of India gains any kind of fear or apprehension that its cultural, social, linguistic and ethnic identity will be wiped out by a hidden pressure sooner or later. If we keep quiet on that matter, then I think we are not doing justice…In that regard, the process of identification, and the process of evaluation could be thought of in a different manner. But the campaign which has been built up in this country is terrible.
In Mumbai and Delhi, any Bengali who wears a lungi and does a job is treated as a Bangladeshi—which means he has come from Bangladesh, and he is a foreigner. So he has to get out.
Diamond trade or diamond polishing work in Mumbai city is the best trade in the country. The people who are working in these trades come from my constituency, Howrah. Out of them, 90 per cent are Muslims. By tradition, they do this work. I know them, and before Independence, their families were in India. Since they speak in Bengali, they dwell in the Ravindarpur area. Most of the time, they are the victims. Since they speak Bengali and are Muslims, we say that they are Bangladeshis. When they are asked to give their identities, they tell their father’s age and other particulars.
Then, they are also asked about their grandfather and great-grandfather. Finally, when they are not in a position to reply, either they get a beating or they have to pay something to the police and get out.
This is what is happening in this country.
If a Muslim speaks in Bengali, he is a Bangladeshi. And if a Muslim speaks in Urdu, in a densely populated area, whose identity was not known to top leaders, an easy way is to tell him that he has a connection with Pakistan. Otherwise, he has to tell them the particulars of 10 generations and after seven generations, if he is unable to tell the particulars, then he is named as a foreigner and asked to get out. This is not the correct approach. I cannot contest the statement made by the government that 10 million people are here in India as foreigners.
There are three kinds of foreigners. There are foreigners who are defaulters in not going back to a particular place after the expiry of their visa and are hiding…Mr Chairman Sir, you may recall that 10 years back, we had a General Secretary in AICC called Poorvi Mukherjee.
Her relatives were Hindus and they were settled for 30 years in Africa. One fine morning, they all came to Delhi saying that they could not go back. What happened? All the Indians had been driven out from Zambia, Uganda and Nairobi within 40 days’ notice. I recall that her family also came out one morning and said that they could not go back and they settled here. According to the stricter sense of the term, they are also foreigners because Poorvi Mukherjee’s family were Hindus.
Maybe, Shri Banatwalla is right that we treat them with a colourful word called ‘refugees’. Had he or she been a Muslim, we would have said that they infiltrated from Africa into India. What happened after and before the Taliban took over Kabul? Is it not a fact that a lot of people from Afghanistan, from the days of Tagore writing the’ famous story ‘The Kabuliwala’, used to come to India?
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The people from Afghanistan, who were poverty-stricken, used to come with sweets, grapes and kishmish to the streets of India and go back. Tagore’s famous story ‘Kabuliwala’ was based on that…Should I take all the Kabuliwalas as foreigners? Suppose they are here for the last four or five generations. Maybe their sixth generation was in Kabul, is it right or is it wrong? The people who have been in Tibet right after the Dalai Lama have come to India and are here.
Should somebody take the view that we should also not tolerate the Tibetans? I come to the sensitive point about the Muslims, which is now being debated in the country. What is your arrangement with Nepal? Right from the days of the British till this day, is it not a fact that our Gorkha Regiment is an Army with the best fighting Jawans [who] are recruited from Kathmandu? [There are] those [Gorkhas] who came from Sikkim Valley, who come from Bhutan, who come from the Kumaon region of India, who come from various parts of hill areas and substantially from Nepal.
I want an explanation. What do you mean by the Gorkha identity—not the Nepal Gorkha identity? Do the Gorkhas belong to India or some outside country? Do the Gorkhas not belong to India? Are they only confined to Darjeeling? Are the Gorkhas, who are in the Indian Army, foreigners? It is history. Let us accept it. You are not discussing the Gorkhas. You are not discussing the Tibetans. You are not discussing the Hindus who have departed from Africa. You are not discussing the Afghans. You are not discussing the Chakma Tribes. I am sorry to say that our whole attention in the country is towards Muslims. It is so because it suits us. If I can hit them more, it suits me to get communal feedback from other sections.
It may benefit us temporarily but it will bring disaster. Do not mix up the issue of ISI with this issue. If anybody is engaged in espionage activity, whether it is the ISI planted from Islamabad, or the CIA planted from Washington, whether it is somebody else like Mossad from Tel Aviv, there is no question. The nation has a responsible government. It should not have any sympathy for him irrespective of his religious identity.
Now I come to the question of fear and threat to cultural and social identity. Dhubri and Goalpara regions of Assam and the border districts of West Bengal have very fertile land due to agriculture, due to tea plantations, and due to many other activities for years together.
Our ethnic brotherhood from this side and that side might have brought people who stay for long years and may still be coming and going. A check, a scrutiny, a kind of residential card as G M Banatwalla has said, a mechanism could be found. I do not mind it. It can be done. After having a successful experiment in one or two districts if you find that there is a genuine case, do it. My request to you is that if you want to scrutinise infiltrators and foreigners in the matter of residential cards in West Bengal or Assam or Tripura, please do not leave it to their government because somebody from those states, who is not effective, will take an objective view.
Excerpts from PR Dasmunsi’s speech on illegal immigration in the Lok Sabha, 9 May 1997. Read the full speech here.
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