Daily Times

Sir: Both houses of Indian parliament, House of states (Rajya Sabha) and house of people (Lok Sabha) have witnessed uproar, on the question of pushing back 4.7 million Bangladeshi Muslims back to their ‘original’ homeland. But, the BD government has clarified that it won’t take back these refugees, as they are ‘Indian nationals’.

The fate of Bangladeshi Muslims, settled in Assam, since times immemorial, thus hangs in the balance. Many politicians, including former officers of India’s premier intelligence agency, Research and Intelligence Wing (RAW), have claimed that it was ISI’s conspiracy to push Bangladeshi Muslims into various Indian states as moles. A retired RAW officer (Sriprakash Jaiswal), in his public statement made startling revelations. He claimed that “there were around 12 million such people living in 17 states and union territories as of December 31 2001”. He added, “Assam accounted for 50 lakh and West Bengal 57 lakh Bangladeshi immigrants living illegally”.

Aside from Jaswal’s recent statements, the BJP government had informed the rajya sabha in 2006 that “as per the available information there are 20 million such persons living illegally in India”. The BJP leaders quote from Sheikh Mujibur Rehman’s book to say that Mujib, as an East Pakistani national, wanted to annex Assam into Bangladesh. Mujeeb in his book, ‘Eastern Pakistan: Its Population and Economics’, wrote, “because Eastern Pakistan must have sufficient land for its expansion and because Assam has abundant forests and mineral resources, coal, petroleum etc., Eastern Pakistan must include Assam to be financially and economically strong”.

Demand for expelling all Bangladeshis from various Indian states is gaining momentum. Some critics think the onslaught against Bangladeshi Muslims in India is part of hindutva (Hindu nationalism) frenzy to harass Muslim community. The aim is to force them to vote for BJP, instead of Congress, dubbed as the ‘Pakistan party’.

AJ MALIK

Rawalpindi

Published in Daily Times, August 3^rd 2018.