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Border of Despair
The Orissa
Government's random deporatation of unauthorised Hindu settlers to Bangladesh
disintegrates families and threatens their livelihood. India Today's Ruben
Banerjee reports.
For
30 years Ajit Roy Chowdhury's existence scarcely merited a
furrow on Orissa administration's collective brow. Then one day in
April this year, wracked by the unchecked illegality of his
immigrant status, the police plucked the 60-year-old from his
family and forcibly deported him to Bangladesh. Roy Chowdhury was not
alone; a randomly selected 21 others from the state's remote Nowrangpur
district were pushed across the Indo-Bangladesh border in a sporadic burst
of initiative on the part of the Government. "What is my crime?"
asks Roy Chowdhury who managed to return to India along with a few others
but is now living like a fugitive for fear of being arrested and deported
again. The answer? He was not among the tens of thousands of Hindu refugees
who escaped Bangladesh's liberation war and arrived in India before December
16, 1971. The people who came in after this date were branded illegal
immigrants. There were others who crossed into India before December 16
but hung around other relief camps and trickled into the Dandakaranya
settlement camp only after the cut-off date. It is these people who have
been targeted by the government from time to time.
What's conspicuous this time round is the timing and selection of
victims. Such deportations have not been effected since
1993---almost 103 unauthorised Bangladeshi settlers were deported between
1973 and 1993. And though nearly 3,000 illegal
Bangladeshis, a majority of them Muslims, have been identified
across the state, never has the Hindu community residing in the
Dandakaranya refugee settlement region been targeted in such a
concerted manner.
To blame is the xenophobia sweeping the tribal-dominated tracts of Orissa,
and a state government seeking to reap cheap political
rewards by favouring the local sentiment. Though the BJP-part of
the ruling coalition in the state spares no opportunity to
publicly oppose the deportations of Hindus, these have, in fact,
been facilitated by the recommendations of a three-member
ministerial committee headed by a BJP state minister. "The
campaign speaks of inhumanity as also double standards," alleges
Swapan Debnath, a resident of Umerkote.
For some time now, the area around Raighar and Umerkote has been on the
boil following violent clashes among indigenous tribals and the Bengalis
settled in the region under the Dandakaranya project. The tribals feel
that the Bengalis have infringed upon their sources of livelihood and
want them to be sent back to Bangladesh. Matters came to a head in October
last year during one such clash when police resorted to firing, killing
five people. A ministerial team, led by state Revenue Minister Biswabhushan
Harichandan, was sent to the area and it sought to assuage tribal discontent
by recommending among other things an immediate deportation of Hindu immigrants.
Though the deportation of a few dozen immigrants is unlikely to
solve the problem, it has nevertheless endeared the Naveen Patnaik Government
to the tribal leaders of the region. They have promptly supported the
BJD in staking claim for the Nowrangpur zila parishad chairmanship. Several
myths have been exploded in the process, one being that only Muslim immigrants
risk deportation under the BJP rule at the Centre.
This, despite the state leadership openly condemning the
deportations. "What can Hindus expect in an Islamic country?"
asks Manmohan Samal, president of the Orissa BJP. "To send a Hindu
to any country other than India would be criminal," adds BJP MP Anandi
Sahu. The party has also stated from time to time that the Hindus coming
in from Bangladesh are only refugees, not illegal immigrants. The deportations,
however, have been relentlessly executed.
In Umerkote, Raighar and Malkangiri, meanwhile, the families of
those deported can only speculate about the fate of the victims.
"They could have been robbed, maimed or even killed," says Roy
Chowdhury. Handed over by the Orissa Police to the Border Security Force,
the deportees were taken to the border under the cover of darkness and
then caned. The thrashing was not so much to hurt as to invoke fear. To
escape the caning and the BSF men, the deportees ran across the border
into Bangladesh. Behind them they left their grieving wives and children.
Unlike these men, their wives are mostly daughters of officially certified
refugees whom they married on arriving in India and which helped provide
them the requisite authorisation to stay behind. The children are also
Indian citizens by birth.
Though law necessitates deportations, there is no denying that it
is resulting in a human problem," admits Tarun Kanti Mishra,
Orissa home secretary. Mishra, who as the deputy administrator of the
Dandakaranya rehabilitation project was responsible for
settling the refugees from Bangladesh, is now supervising the
cleansing process. As men are erratically selected for
deportation, families are disintegrating and hurtling towards
penury. "With the sole wage earner gone, my family is ruined,"
weeps Sabita, wife of Roy Chowdhury.
Similar despair is visible in other households. "It is inhuman and
cruel," laments Suniti Roy, mother of three children. Her husband,
Manoranjan, was also among the 21 who was carted away for
deportation. In Kumli village under Raighar, Suchitra comforts her
deaf and mute son, even as she is rendered speechless with grief
herself since her husband Mukund Bachar was deported.
The Government, meanwhile, pleads helplessness, citing repeated
directives from the Centre to deport illegal immigrants. The last
such missive which arrived in April this year was signed by the
Union home joint secretary and stipulated that the state
Government submit a compliance report as well. But what remains
inexplicable is the Government's reluctance to deport the Muslims
even as it cracks the whip against the Hindus.
In a country rendered askew after the violent excesses perpetrated by
Hindu fundamentalists in Gujarat, Orissa may have provided the uncalled
for balance. Nowrangpur is a reminder that in being insensitive to human
misery, India is truly secular.
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