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We must expel infiltrators
WE MUST EXPEL INFILTRATORS: If others can do it why can't India?
By: M.V. Kamath in Free Press Journal (Bomby) April 6, 1995
Sometime towards the end of February, an innocuous news item appeared in
the Indian Press. It said that the Saudi Arabian govt had repatriated 1900
Indian Muslims who had overstayed there. They may have been Muslims but they
were aliens and the Saudis did not want them.
In mid-March (19 March) another similar news item appeared also in the
Indian Press. It said: "Saudi Arabia has expelled over 20,000 Bangladeshi
workers after terming them illegal entrants into the kingdom...The first
batch of these expelled BD workers, mostly low-skilled labourers, reached
the southeastern port city of Chittagong after an arduous 17-day voyage
on board a Saudi vessel in which the workers complained of maltreatment
by the crew... Many of these BD workers...have come back virtually penniless.
The deportees siad they were all detained in a jail at Jeddah after arrest...
The two news items deal with an important principle: the right of a
nation to protect its interests. Saudi Arabia is presently going through a
financial crunch after being forced to pay billions of dollars for the
short war waged by the United States against Iraq and is in no mood to
maintain alien labour on its soil. The fact that the Indians and BD workers
were Muslims was of no relevance to Saudi Arabia which is a diehard Muslim
country. The only truth recognised by the Saudis was that they were aliens
to be ruthlessly expelled.
In India not a dog barked. No newspaper asked whether the Indian Muslims
who had been rounded up and unceremoniously packed into a ship were legally
arrested and tried or whether the police knocked at their doors at midnight.
There was no follow-up of the story. No one bothered to ask those 1900
repatriates how they came to be arrested and deported. One suspects that
many embarrassing details might have emerged from such interrogation. A
secular press does not look into affairs of an Islamic state.
The fact that the Saudi govt also expelled 20,000 BD workers, has not
stirred the compassion of the Indian press either. After all, what record
does BD have when for years after the formation of the state, lakhs of
Bihari Pakistanis were herded into what were for all practical purposes
concentration camps and denied of citizenship?
But let the Shiv Sena say that it wants to expel BDs from Bombay and there
is a furor. Charges of fascism are raised; the religion of the BDs is
invoked and the govt itself is smeared by the familiar taunt of communalism.
At the time of partition, west Punjab had a minority population of 25%
consisting of Hindus, Sikhs and Christians. Four decades later that percentage
has come down to a bare three. The Indian press has not bothered to ask how
this happened. Are we to presume that these minorities left Pakistan because
of a surfeit of happiness and wellbeing? The truth, if it has to be told,
is that they were terrorised, exposed to the prospect of conversion to Islam
and turned into second class citizen. It is much the same story in Bangladesh.
Hindus who have lived for centuries in East Bengal have been slowly pushed
out in a not-so-well-hidden attempt at ethnic cleansing but again, not a
dog has barked. It is not considered politic or polite to talk of these
matters. The Hindu BD did what was most convenient to them: They moved over
to next door Assam, disturbing the ethnic demographic balance. There was an
uproar from the Assamese, also Hindus. Assamese, it was held, would soon
be a minority in their own home state.
The first to be thrown out or forced out were Hindus. Now the poor Muslims
are forced to leave for reasons of sheer poverty. The border between BD and
India is porous. Thousands have fled Bangladesh. The Economic Time (30 March)
concedes that "million have poured into India". But what have the Congress
govts both in Assam and at the Centre done? In Assam the Muslims became a
solid vote bank for the Congress. Presentl, several districts bordering Bangla
Desh have become Muslim - majority districts and can be expected to create
trouble for India in the not-so-distant future. It was this continuous and
unchecked immigration that created the All Assam Students Union (AASU) and
its other parallel bodies and a climate of violence for over a decade. The
Assamese are a gentle people not given to violence. But what does one do
when one feels invaded? Sit back and take no notice of what is happening
around them? The Assamese tried to hit back as best as they could, until
the passage of time and pressures from Delhi and the ageing process tamed
their leaders and took their toll.
No country wants immigrants. The United States, richest and most powerful
of all nations has strict immigration laws. It even went to the extent of
arresting and imprisoning the late Osho for being an illegal migrant. To
get a green card, literally hundreds wait patiently in front of the US
Consulates. But BDs have no such scruples. They have only a river to cross
and once on Indian soil they can spread out as they have and no-body can
detect them as they can be detected in Saudi Arabia. A BD looks as much
an Indian as any other.
This country and its government must be clear on what it wants. Either
it has Immigration laws and it seeks to implement them properly or it
scraps the laws and permits India to be the world's largest dustbin for
unwanted labour elsewhere. In all honesty it cannot follow a middle course,
willing to wound but afraid to strike. In Maharashtra, a Shiv Sena-BJP govt
has been elected. The Shiv Sena is the major partner in the alliance and
is calling the shots. It has made no bones of its desire to expel BDs who
are known to be holed in many parts of Bombay, many with the connivance of
their co-religionists. In all these years the govt of Maharashtra run by
the Congress party did practically nothing to contain this illegal immigra-
tion. Many of these immigrants are known to have obtained ration cards and
even succeeded in getting into the voters' list. I f the govt fails in its
primary duty, on whom does the responsibility of defending the country's
interests fall? "But the Shiv Sena is the best agency to hunt and identify
the illegal immigrants" writes The Economic Times. But which is the best
agency to do the job? The govt which has never bothered to look into the
matter? When govts fail to do their job, mobs then take over. And it makes
little sense to blame the mobs. It is the long Congress rule that passively
encouraged the illegal immigration of BDs that is responsible for our present
troubles. It was the Congress which helped and sustained the Shiv Sena in
its formative years to fight the CPI unions. If one creates a Frankenstein,
then one shouldn't complain against the monster. One can't have one's cake
and eat it too.
For over twenty years as BDs steadily infiltrated into Bombay's labour
force, no one spoke about it - not even Shic Sena. It is only now when their
numbers have become substantial that the Shiv Sena has woken up, no doubt
for political reasons. Is it expected that a BD will line up at the
nearest police station, declare his original natinality and pray to be
expelled? then how is one to detect him? In what way would he look or
behave differently from, say, a West Bengali Muslim?
In Saudi Arabia an alien is easily detected. There is no need for the
midnight knowck. In Bombay a BD cannot be expected to stay at his home
waiting to be arrested by the police. He can only be found when he
returns home. This allows for all kinds of misuse. Innocent Muslims could
become targets of personal animosities. Wrong information available to the
police could lead to harrassment. The list is endless.
Let us face some hard facts: No BD resident in Bombay will willingly
identify himself and agree to quit. He has nothing waiting for him in his
own homeland. If he had he would not have come to Bombay in the first place.
Pakistan is too far away, besides which he would not be welcome there, as
events in Karachi in the last few months have shown. If even an Urdu
speaking Mohajir is unwanted, would a Bengali Muslim get any warmer welcome
in Pakistan? SO does that mean that we have to take in the poor from Bangla-
desh? What logic is that?
What is clear is that in the sub-continent, Muslims seem to practise the
well-known theory that what is ours is ours and what is yours is also ours.
It won't work in practice. It will only create Shiv Senas out to dispense
with summary justice. What is sought to be done is to expel BDs, not
Muslims. That they happen to be Muslims is incidental. Saudi Arabia did
not expel Muslims - it expelled Indians and BDs who happen to be Muslims. And
if the aliens in India will not leave on their own there is always the
danger of sectarian violence, because they happen to be Muslims.
We are in a Catch 22 situation. If, as the Economic Times says "millions
have poured into India" with the govt either unable or unwilling to halt
this, then the people will take the law into their own hands, which is
what is likely to happen soon. What all this brings out forcefully is the
artificial nature of Bangladesh as a state. Either Bangladesh closes its
borders to prevent its citizens from moving out as East Germany once did or
it merges with Indian as again, East Germany with West Germany did, blood-
lessly. Or else, organisations such as Shiv Sena will crop up with the
backing of the public with the clear intent of doing what the govt has failed
to do. There is such a thing as Cause and Effect. We are now paying not only
for partition which was bad enough but for Congress irresponsibility in
dealing with illegal migration which is worse.
