From the mainstay to the fringe

The Government of West Bengal has taken lots of pains to take care of immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh, who have been changing the demography of Siliguri and adjoining areas, pushing the original inhabitants, the Indian Gorkhas to the fringe areas. However, when thousands of Nepali speaking Bhutanese citizens were forcefully thrown out from Bhutan in the 1990s, not only did the Government of West Bengal keep mum on the issue, on the contrary it helped in the deportation of these Nepali speaking Bhutanese citizens through its territory in Indian army vehicles at the dead of night to the other side of the river Mechi in Nepal, where these refugees are languishing in a pathetic state.

Every time they make efforts to go their homeland, they are thwarted by the Bengal police at Panitanki. The interesting question that arises here is why a differential treatment is meted out to refugees from Bhutan unlike those from Bangladesh? Are not both the groups foreigners? The answer to our question is obvious. As the Bhutanese refugees speak the language of the Indian Gorkhas, have similar physiognomy and have a similar social and cultural ethos, the West Bengal government was afraid that the accommodation of the Bhutanese refugees would alter the demography of Dooars, Siliguri and the adjoining areas.

Similar episodes have happened to Indian Gorkhas residing in Assam and the North East. Had we a separate state, the Indian Gorkhas and the Nepali speaking Bhutanese refugees could have been saved from the ignominy of having to lead such miserable lives on the banks of the river Mechi on pure humanitarian grounds. In contrast, the Bangladeshis have been sheltered in West Bengal simply because of the common language and culture they share with the Bengalis residing in West Bengal and of course, the ‘vote bank’ issue. This was possible because the Bengalis have a separate state of West Bengal for themselves. If the state of West Bengal had not been in existence, the Bangladeshis would have possibly met the same fate as the Bhutanese refugees and the evicted Indian Gorkhas from Assam and the North East. A book titled, ‘Immigration from Bangladesh to India based on census data’ by Aswini Kumar Nanda has documented the population flows from Bangladesh to India over 1981 and 2001. He reports that as of 2001, there were 3.1 – 3.7 million Bangladeshis in India, 97% of who have infiltrated to the East (i.e. Bengal) and Northeast regions in 1981-2001.

It is reported that an average of 200,000 persons slip annually into West Bengal State alone’. Almost all of them stay back by procuring ration cards and entering their names in the voter’s list in collusion with the ruling Left front of West Bengal for the now well known ‘VOTE BANK’. In collusion with the highly politicized state administration, the CPI-M is reported to have forged and distributed more than 8 million ration cards,thereby jeopardizing the public distribution system.