Endangered Demography Nature and impact of Demographic changes in West Bengal - 1951-2001: Bimal Pramanik

A change in the demographic pattern in a country is an obvious resultant effect of migration which is as old as human civilization, but if the change is significantly high in a short span of time it is bound to cause a serious social concern for the country experiencing this phenomenon. No people of a country accept migratory people with open arms and when this migration of people belonging to a separate religion takes the shape of a design the question of acceptance almost vanishes giving rise to social unrest and tension. Significantly, however, there has been marked departure from this hypothesis so far as migration/infiltration from East Pakistan/Bangladesh to West Bengal is concerned. The Hindus who were uprooted from their hearth and home in East Pakistan due to religious persecution and measures or lack of them, taken by the successive Governments in Bangladesh after partition in 1947 were accepted as refugees by the Government of India and her people, not of course without grudge, and were given shelter, citizenship and were gradually absorbed in the mainstream of Indian people, particularly that of West Bengal. This was quite understandable. But what happened after the birth of Bangladesh w3hen it was the declared policy of the Government of India not to grant citizenship to any people (even if they were Hindus and were forced to leave Bangladesh as refugees after 1971? In what way the migratory trend post 1971 was different from the earlier trends? How were hordes of Muslims able to settle in the border districts of West Bengal without much notice and commotion? How was this silent demographic invasion possible? Was there any historical perspective behind this large scale infiltration or a well thought out design of our neighboring country? What change this invasion has brought up in the demographic pattern of border districts as well as interior districts of West Bengal? These are the queries I have tried to address here.

I would like to make it clear that no extraneous facts except that are borne out of the data available from the Census reports have been considered for determining the change in the demographic pattern and the author has been swayed by reason to spell out some of its fallouts and possible danger to the polity of West Bengal socio politically as well as economically. One does not have to be communal or for that matter secular in one’s attempt to pin point a social change which is part of history and history does not have any conscience of what is good or what is evil but its grand design provides some clues in finding out ways and means to mend our mistakes committed in the past in order to sustain a decent life for the present and the future, socio-politically and economically.

It is fair to affirm that the vast demographic changes in the eastern and north-eastern States of India are deniable. Yet there is ample scope for an analysis of facts and factors behind such demographic changes. Moreover, the nature, the pattern and even the motives are to be brought into proper focus, if one is to understand the totality of phenomenal demographic changes that have occurred. Migration from one country to another has been a persistent and significant socio-economic and socio-political phenomenon over the whole world. The concept of migration is not alien to the Indian people also. In fact, as an inevitable consequence of Partition of India in 1947, mass migration to West Bengal became ceaseless and large-scale. There was a continuous flow of the Hindu minority population from erstwhile East Bengal/East Pakistan, which was attributed mainly to the communal enmity of the Muslim majority population. The rate of this continuous migration from East Bengal to West Bengal, however, fluctuated, till 1971, depending on a multitude of socio-political and socio-religious factors.

A novel outcome of demographic pressures became more and more prominent over the years among the Bangladeshi migrants setting in India’s border region. Amazingly, this has gone largely unnoticed, even though it reflects significant changes in the daily life style and affects the very root of the civil society. We have gone into some details in this study of such unanticipated fallout of the demographic changes. I have tried to analyze the negative impact of gigantic immigration fro Bangladesh upon India’s attempts to preserve secular harmony as well as national security. We do not intend to overrate the military potential of Bangladesh while assessing the impact of Bangladeshi immigrants upon India’s national security in north eastern and eastern States, but we can hardly underrate the significance of their disturbing and distorting impact on the ethos of secular harmony that India stands for, and has been practicing unabatedly since independence, despite Partition on religious grounds.

The sordid impact of Bangladeshi immigration upon India is but a logical consequence of the stark failure of Bangladesh to evolve as a secular multicultural polity. The ruling circle of present day Bangladesh is determined not only to broaden and deepen the Islamisation of Bangladesh, but also to use Islam to incite separatist or secessionist forces in eastern/north-eastern India - by extensive support to a protracted arms struggle, if necessary. It is an open secret that in Bangladesh many international terrorist outfits with aggressive fundamentalist agendas are making all efforts to envelop Bangladesh’s socio-cultural fabrics with new Islamic prints and designs—though at the cost of the liberal tenets of Islam. The religio-cultural aspects of social harmony and the political-economic aspects of national security have been taken up in an integrated fashion in this study. This will enable us to assess truly the potential menace casting its shadow on the relations between India and Bangladesh. Following the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, the eastern and north eastern region of India faced a novel political and social challenge. At one time, critics and analysts complacently characterized it to be a migration flow. But later on, a series of political events proved that this was nothing but a kind of infiltration flow. As a corollary, it is equally imperative to understand the changing responses of the political parties and their leaders in this great drama of incessant demographic change, creating a menace to social harmony and national security.

This threat to our national security and social harmony will not be clearly understood unless we analyze the role of Bangladesh in this regard. Since the days of Partition, the Muslim psyche in both the parts of Pakistan has been suffering from a sense of injury about losing half of Bengal and Assam. They have been ruthlessly pursuing the policy of ‘lebensraum’ since the days of partition. Acting, perhaps, on the philosophy of the great Italian, Machiavelli, who observed in the 16th century that “Sending immigrants is the most effective way to colonize countries because it is less offensive than to send military expeditions and much less expensive.” Bangladesh with a single minded devotion has been following this policy, and, t say the least, it has been quite successful in this endeavor.

There was, however, not much concern about Muslim infiltration from erstwhile East Pakistan to India in the pre-1971 period. For, an extensive migration of Hindu population into India was regarded as a natural fall-out of Partition. If we look back to the history of political development of East Pakistan, especially in the phase of 1966 to 1971, we can easily identify the new features and directions of the strong Bengali nationalist sentiment to encourage and enthuse Bengali masses, irrespective of religion, against the political leadership of the military junta of Pakistan. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was able to articulate step by step the aggrieved Bengali psyche by mooting an alternative scheme of sharing power at the center of Pakistan’s power structure. The central political power structure in Pakistan failed to comprehend anything beyond their selfish design of perpetuating the status of eastern Pakistan as a subservient region of the West Pakistani heartland. Obviously, on the other side of the barricade, Mujib’s Bengal started resenting a colonial treatment.

When Mujib and his Bengal were fast assuming a posture of defiance against Pakistan political leadership, the Muslim population in North-East and Eastern India regionally, and in India as a whole, were suffering from a kind of nervousness at any prospect of political weakening of Pakistan, in case Mujib could triumph, and thereby justify his complaint about Pakistani colonial domination over eastern Pakistan. Obviously, Hindus, by and large, whether in east Pakistan or outside, were increasingly amused and gradually enthused about a potential political metamorphosis of the Pakistani state. Mujib was not squarely ready at the strategic level for a resolution of his demand by even a sort of war, even if that was thrust upon him. On their part, the leadership of Pakistan started suffering from uncertainly about he fallout of a conflagration between Mujib’s Bengal and western Pakistan. This was what exactly occurred in December 1971, almost inevitably. The destiny of Pakistan from its historic origin was thus already blown off. The entire subcontinent was now on the verge of a new set of relations which were not intelligible, far less recognizable. Only one thing was discernible, and that was the fate of hapless and hopeless Hindus, whose sacrifice in the 1971 freedom struggle appeared to be negated by the assassination of Mujibur Rahman, and who started moving as an endless flock of people from Bangladesh to multiple directions into the land of India.

A new politics, a new economics and a new culture, taken together, started unraveling itself in India as a result of secularism, which aggravated the confusion of the exuberant and extravagant politics of secularism of the erstwhile radical nationalist and the radical left in India. Gradually, for the first time, the Hindu refugees were being treated at par with the Muslim infiltrators. This twin flow at the same time had introduced a new opportunity to show perversely that Bangladesh was as much secular as India. Politicians, who placed immediate electoral gain above national interest, could successfully equate Muslim infiltration with the Hindu refugee flow under the grand title of infinite and indefinite migration of Bangladeshis with nondescript faces through all conceivable manholes in the border region. A gunman, a smuggler and a family man have started working together only to mislead the border security forces, because the infiltrator is not easily distinguishable from a refugee. A new era has started, Leading Bangladeshi strategic analysts and intelligentsia introduced the theory of lebensraum in the 1980s. They claim that their right to settle in India’s eastern and north eastern States is to be considered as the natural course of overriding what is to them, an unacceptable political demarcation of the border. Growing population pressure and crippling poverty and pauperization of the marginal rural masses in Bangladesh encouraged, if not forced, them to put this agenda of migration as a life and death question, which no lock can resist. In the mean time, the consolidation of Islamic forces was already advanced. They adopted the agenda of a greater Islamic region as a grand political strategy. Although it was an emotional issue for Sheikh Mujib, later it became a political and strategic issue with the support of Pakistan. Population Movement or migration, internal or external, is a universal phenomenon of human society. Its nature, degree, direction and dimension, however, may vary from case to case. Numerous studies have been conducted to identify the attributes associated with migratory movements of people. Along with ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors, a variety of explanations are also available as the cause and effect of migration and consequent societal change. A change in the demographic pattern in any country is an obvious resultant effect of migration, which is as old as human civilization, but if the change is significantly high in a short span of time, it is bound to arouse a serious social concern in the country experiencing the phenomenon. No people of a country accept migratory people with open arms, and when this migration of people belonging to a separate ethnic group and religion appears to reveal an unholy political design, the question of acceptance almost vanishes, giving rise to social unrest and tension. The north eastern region of India, particularly Assam and West Bengal, are cases in point.

The change in the demographic pattern of the Eastern and North-Eastern States, particularly West Bengal during the last five decades, has been exhaustively dealt with in this book, and we can sum up the phenomenon in a few words. A new dimension in the political and social arena has emerged in this eastern and northeastern region of India after independence of Bangladesh in 1971. A novel phenomenon of demographic pressure—emanating from Bangladesh—started looming larger and larger in the border region. During the last three decades, illegal migration from Bangladesh to India is going on unabated. All the refugees who had been coming to West Bengal during Pakistan days were Hindus. In the Bangladesh era, Hindus are coming as usual like in the days of Pakistan due to religious persecution and political pressure, but a new feature also started emerging as people from the majority segment (Muslims), for different reasons and purposes, started coming to West Bengal. Both the Central and West Bengal governments were generally aware of this development, yet no great concern was visible before November 2002. In recent years, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister of the NDA Government, the Chief Minister of West Bengal and even the President of India have expressed their grave concern and agony on the issue of illegal Bangladeshi migration, and its implications for internal security issues. There is no state religion in secular India, which is obliged to protect all religious equally, but the Bangladesh Republic has to preserve religious peace and harmony under the shadow of its state religion, viz. Islam. The adoption of Islam as the state religion has utterly demoralized Hindus, and has reinforced their already powerful compulsions about migration to India. Significantly, a state religion cannot extend the minimum of socio-economic protection even to Muslims, who, instead of being satisfied with living in Islamic Bangladesh, have long been voting with their feet, and continuously leaving for secular India, especially Assam and West Bengal. Whereas this is a constant tribute to India’s secularism, this is also a threat to India’s socio-economic-political security. Unfortunately, authorities in India have displayed little alertness in preempting or coping with this threat. For more than three decades (1971-2005) there ahs been a ceaseless and significant demographic change in the districts of West Bengal, particularly districts adjoining Bangladesh. Now both sides of the Indo-Bangladesh border region are inhabited by a population which is ethnically, culturally, linguistically and religiously identical. Already, thus, it has taken the shape of a demographic invasion.

• To sum up, callous local administration, limited scope for earning income in the incompetently managed economy of Bangladesh and religious vested interests may not always be meticulously working out anti-Indian designs, but from ground level data the impression is inescapable that they are so working. The most important fact to note is that the residual Hindu population in some border villages, still not insignificant, remains under a constant pressure to migrate from their traditional and ancestral places of habitation. Opinion makers and decision makers have not paid even the minimum of attention to available data on this significant subject. Such data, recorded and analyzed in the present study, deserve immediate attention from all those who are genuinely interested in national integration, internal security and social harmony in India.