Author: Sabyasachi Bagchi
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: December 11, 2004
Two meta or transformational trends,
exported from Bangladesh, pose a real danger for the entire eastern slice
of India. These are: One, the infiltration of mllions of Bangladeshi Muslims
who have now spread all over India, and, two, Taliban-type Islamic terrorism
manned by fundamentalist cadres.
Mass infiltration, designed to force
a demographic change in the eastern states of India, and the disproportionate
increase of the Muslim population over the growth rate of Hindus (15.67
per cent more without adjustment and 9.21 per cent more with adjustment
between 1991-2001as reported by Census 2001) constitute a re-run of the
traumatic spectre of the 1940s. Result: The next door neighbour, Bangladesh,
is willy-nilly acting as a destabilising force for the entire region.
For terrorists, Bangladesh is serving
as a base from which both south and southeast Asian terrorist groups are
regrouping under umbrellas offered by the Al -Qaeda, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami
(Huji) Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO), Jemaah Islaiya (JI) etc.,
besides the ISI of Pakistan. Terrorists from Pakistan, Chechnya, Afghanistan,
Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, Malayasia, Singapore, Nepal, India (ULFA, KLO, Bodo
etc) and many other countries have reportedly got sanctuary in camps inside
Bangladesh where they are getting arms and training in handling explosives.
There are about 200 such camps and many of them are well-fortified cave
bunkers like the Tora Bora caves of Afghanistan. These camps have huge
stocks of arms and ammunition, imported from abroad. There are modern amenities
for the trainees. Reports filed by Alex Perry (Time, October 2003), Bertil
Linter (Paper presented at the Centre for Security Studies, Honolulu in
August 2002), Dr Zachary Abbuza (US House International Sub- Committee)
Kimina Lyall (The Australian, September 2003), statements of the chief
ministers of the Northeastern states of Tripura, Assam, Meghalaya, West
Bengal, as well as the reports of various newspapers of the sub-continent,
have given conclusive evidences (of Bangladesh authorities' complicity)
supporting and re-inforcing the above facts.
In short, we are witnessing a tectonic
shift in terms of terror flash point movement. From Kashmir in the north
to the eastern part of India with the epicentre located in Bangladesh.
This may evoke familiar shrugs of "so what" from India's intelligentsia,
many of them recipients of petro-dollar largesse. But that is not the case
with the multitudes of ordinary Indians (more so of eastern India) who
are apprehensive of Bangladeshi nationalism drowning the spirit of Indian
nationalism.
In India, the concept of nationalism
is based on its culture. It is unlike the West, where the parameters are
altogether different. Had it not been so, Pakistan would not have harped
on the pride of "five thousand years" of cultural lineage when the concept
of Islam was not even heard of. The same is the case with Bangladesh too,
when Sheikh Hasina reminded her people about their thousand-year heritage.
The implication is that political identity can never erase the cultural,
inguistic, humanitarian linkages of the people with their locale.
This contention is still valid,
but the cultural identity in India is again on the back-foot , ground under
the feet of national and international politics. In 1947, the vivisection
of India took place ignoring the cultural and ethnic oneness of Bharat.
The Muslim League's Lahore principles of 1940 on the partition of India
were for the creation of autonomous and sovereign states in the Muslim
majority areas of India. It read: "Areas in which the Muslims are numerically
in a majority, as in the northwestern and eastern zones of India... grouped
to constitute independent states in which the constituent units shall be
autonomous and sovereign." An interesting point here is that when Pakistan
was created, its constituent units were neither autonomous nor sovereign.
On the other hand, the central grip was considered so obsessively suffocating
and economically exploitative that ultimately it led to the division of
that country within 24 years. The bondage of the religion's ritualistic
base did not prove sufficient. Bangladesh was freed with the help of Indian
armed forces-the fact they now try to forget.
1971 became inevitable because the
people of the erstwhile East Pakistan "saw many attempts to annihilate
the language, literature, culture of Bengal and to annex its economy for
the benefits of West Pakistan" (Bangladesh, contemporary events and documents,
Peoples' Republic of Bangladesh, External Publicity Division). At birth,
Bangladesh was secular, but from General Ziaur Rehman's time in 1977, it
became Islamic. Strangely, after another 24 years of becoming Islamic,
that is in 2001, Begum Khaleda Zia came to power in a four- party coalition
with the help of fundamentalist elements. On assuming power, the present
BNP government took a 180 degree turn. Bangladesh, by now, had shed the
spirit of 1971 and had started turning a blind eye to the process of East
Pakistan-type ethnic cleansing being undertaken by fundamentalists. In
fact, as per an estimate made for the period between 1974 and 1991, about
475 Hindus left Bangladesh each day for security reasons and took shelter
in India as refugees. This was stated by an important Bangladesh human
rights activist and writer, Mr Salam Azad, in his book, Hindu Samproday
Kano Deshotayg Korche (Why are the Hindus emigrating?)
Incidentally, between 1941 and 1991,
the minority Hindu population in Pakistan has come down from 19 per cent
to 1.65 per cent, and in Bangladesh it had shrunk from 29.61 per cent to
11.37 per cent. In 1971, when Bangladesh was born, the Hindu population
accounted for 14.30 per cent of the population, which may have got reduced
to around 10 per cent in 2004. Seeing this, shouldn't we take it as a foregone
conclusion that in a predominantly Islamic country there is hardly any
place for non-Islamic people? This apprehension is further reinforced when
the fundamentalists raise slogans of "Amra sabai Taliban, Bangla hobe Afghanistan"
(We have become Taliban and shortly Bangladesh will become Afghanistan).
Interestingly, the situation for minority Hindu-Buddhists-Christians inside
Bangladesh is such that they are forced to either flee the country of their
origin and be refugees in India, or, get converted to Islam. Obviously
something has got to be done immediately to check this.
The demographic invasion due to
constant infiltration from Bangladesh has created a new dimension for India's
national security. As per a news item in Kolkata's Ananda Bazar Patrika
of August 18, 1998, the central government is on record as stating there
was a total of 1.80 crore Bangladeshi infiltrators living illegally in
India, of which 1.20 crore were in West Bengal alone. The West Bengal government,
too, admitted the presence of some one crore infiltrators. The Bangladeshi
Muslim infiltrators, with the help of political parties, have got ration
cards, registered their names in voters' lists and have fathered children
here, thereby legitimatising themselves as Indian citizens.
The 2001 Census figures amply establish
this fact, when we see that as against the national average of 13.4 per
cent, some states like Assam (30.9 per cent) , West Bengal (25.2 per cent),
Bihar (16.5 per cent) and Jharkhand (13.8 per cent) have disproportionately
high Muslim population levels. If we compare these figures with the provinces
adjacent to them, the contrast is mind-boggling. For example, Punjab has
a Muslim population of only 1.60 per cent, Haryana 5.82 per cent, Rajasthan
8.52 per cent, Gujarat 9.1 per cent. Such glaring differences would not
have been possible had there not been a pattern behind the infiltration.
The question, then, is: What is that design? Is this meant to be revenge
for the 1971 vivisection of Pakistan, or, is there a plan to merge Assam
and West Bengal with the present Bangladesh, itself a pre-1947 idea? The
answer perhaps lies in the latter. Bangladesh is no longer the strategic
backwater of the east. Events since 9/11 have confirmed that fear.
Every factor necessitating a second
partition of India is now neatly stacked against India. We can only blame
the failure of the Indian polity for this. A political solution is no longer
possible. Only interventions by culture and economics can save the situation
for India and South Asia.
(The author, a retired Colonel of
the Indian Army, is a leader of the BJP in West Bengal)
