Pratim Ranjan Bose
I have been studying the issue of
citizenship for some time. By now one thing is clear to me, there have been
inexplicable neglect on the part of the governments on the all-important issue
of citizenship - which assumes greater importance because of rising social
spend of the country.
Though provisions like the compulsory issue
of National ID were inbuilt in the citizenship law it was never taken forward,
to benefit vested interest groups. It is stunning to know that those of us,
Hindus from East Bengal, who were forced to come to India, mostly penniless, as
a natural choice given the religion-based Partition, had limited legal
standing.
These are excerpts from a book project that
I am pursuing and based on a reference study. But from real-life experience, we
know this is true.
Almost all who came from East Pakistan or
Bangladesh had to fudge some document or other for living in India. That's all
they got for being Indian in letter and spirit, till some people dumped them in
hostile lands. Such experience starts with my mother (who is no more), my
friends and relatives.
Crores of Hindus who came to India from
East Pakistan were treated by the nation as a liability. The treatment was
reasonably different on the Punjab side.
It is stunning to know that till 1980, the
government used to refer to the total influx from East Pakistan and Bangladesh
as only 40 lakhs. The official documents are full of inconsistencies.
It is shocking to know that government was
so insensitive that the people migrating out of East Pakistan, due to sustained
persecution, were often treated as mere 'migrants' which has a distinct legal
status than a “refugee’.
While Bangladeshi scholars studied the
exodus of Hindus, Indian scholarship was not objective and didn't put pressure
on the government to address this issue. Very categorically, we were no one's
baby in the country we (the Hindu Bengalis from East Pakistan/Bangladesh)
considered our own.
Do you call this secularism? What
secularism stops you from reporting facts objectively? You must practice
secularism in your everyday policies. But you cannot brush aside the unique
history of dividing a nation by religion.
You cannot brush aside that a substantial
non-Muslim population became minorities in a (later became two Islamic
countries (Bangladesh now drops the word Islamic), which was formed by the
fundamentalist idea that a "Muslim's cannot accept any social system where
Hindus are majority" (Ref Jinnah’s speech during Lahore Resolution, Dey
Amalendu) or "Any discrepancy from Islamic Law is unacceptable"
(Iqbal, 1930 Allahabad).
How could you keep a blind eye that these
countries formed specific laws like the Enemy Property Act (Pakistan) or Vested
Property Act (Bangladesh) to rob Hindus from their property. Not only Hindus.
East Pakistan/Bangladesh’s history is full of references to the exodus of
Chakma (Buddhists), Garos (Christian) etc.
It is time the nation must answer why it
didn’t recognize such exodus by offering them citizenship, for so long. My
maternal grandfather fought for India’s independence. Why my mother had to
fudge documents to find a place in same India? Why?
There are crores like her in all families
who had roots in East Bengal. Why the nation had been so insensitive to them
for so many years? I regard Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2019 as a corrective
step, and I do not think it’s a compromise to secularity.
The Muslim migrants from Muslim majority
Bangladesh come to India illegally for a better opportunity. Hindus came
because they had nowhere else to go.
There must be a distinction between the two.
Updating the National Registrar of Citizens
(NRC) is the right and systemic attempt to clean up the whole system. Post-NRC
India should open its job market to countries like Bangladesh against work
permits or VISA.
