Looks like the Bangladeshi Muslims are ‘invading’ North East India and turning these small border

states into parts of “Greater Bangladesh”.

Dhananjay Mathur
Demographic Invasion Of Assam By Bangladeshi Muslim Immigrants
Presence of illegal Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants in India is nothing new. In almost every district of
states like Assam, Tripura or West Bengal one can easily identify Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants by
their Urdu-mixed Bengali and typical accent. However over last fifteen years or so this problem of
illegal immigration has taken a new alarming shape. Recent statistics clearly show that North Eastern
states, especially Assam have become the victims of demographic invasion due to illegal Muslim
migration from Bangladesh.
In the political arena, the person who recently studied this migration phenomenon in an elaborate
manner and analyzed the situation in quite some depth is Lt. Gen. (retd) S K Sinha, Assam’s present
Governor. Sinha was appointed as Governor of Assam in August 1997 by the then United Front Central
Government replacing Loknath Mishra. Sinha’s appointment came at a time when insurgency has
resurfaced in the State and the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) government headed by P K Mahanta was
facing flak from the people.
In March 1999, Sinha submitted a 42-page report to President K R Narayanan drawing his attention to
the influx of Bangladeshi immigrants into lower Assam regions. Sinha, a retired lieutenant general who
served in the area as an army officer for many years, is well aware of the problems caused in the region
by infiltration. Before preparing the report titled ‘Illegal immigration into Assam’, he held prolonged
discussions on the subject with several people from varied backgrounds and different shades of
opinion. He also extensively toured the areas of Assam bordering Bangladesh.
The report stated that illegal influx of Bangladeshi Muslims into the state may lead to serious
consequences, and could threaten the national security. Sinha observed, “The long-cherished design of
Greater Bangladesh, making inroads into the strategic land link of Assam with the rest of [India], can
lead to severing the entire land mass of the North-East, with all its rich resources, from the rest of the
country. This will have disastrous strategic and economic consequences.”
The report provided an accurate picture of how the Bangladeshi Muslims have settled along the river
Brahmaputra, stretching from western Assam’s Dhubri district to eastern Assam’s Lakhimpur district.
“The ground reality is that, of late, almost all the illegal migrants coming into Assam are Muslims,”
Sinha pointed out. With statistical tools and analysis, the report also gave a detailed picture of how the
influx of illegal migrants is fast turning the lower Assam districts into a Muslim-majority region. It also
clearly stated that it would only be a matter of time when a demand for their merger with Bangladesh
will be made and the loss of lower Assam will sever the entire landmass of the northeast from the rest
of India. The statistics provided in the report gave a shocking but accurate snapshot of the demographic
invasion that is going on in Assam. 57 of Assam’s 126 constituencies were found to have more than 20
per cent increase in the number of voters between 1994 and 1997 whereas the all-India average is just
7.4 per cent. Statistical Analysis showed that Muslim population in Assam has shown a rise of 77.42
per cent over what it was in 1971 (there was no census in Assam in 1981). Officials found that four
districts in the state (Dhubri, Goalpara, Barpeta and Hailakandi) are already Muslim-majority whereas
three more are fast approaching that stage. At the time of Independence, only Dhubri was a Muslim-
majority district. And even by very conservative estimates, at least 1.5 million illegal Bangladeshi
immigrants are said to be living in the state of Assam.
S K Sinha’s report also pointed out the ineffectiveness of the controversial Illegal Migrants
Determination by Tribunal Act (IMDT) which was enacted by Congress Government in 1983 only for
the state of Assam. Although the outward and superficial objective of the act was to detect and deport
illegal immigrants in Assam, there were obviously ulterior political motives behind it. Under the hood
of “providing adequate safety measures against the harassment of minorities” Congress Government
created this act which provided them with convenient legal framework to convert illegal Bangladeshi
Muslim immigrants to eligible voters. The basic flaw cited by critics of the act is that the onus of
furnishing the proof of a person’s citizenship rests with the complainant, and not the person whose
citizenship is in doubt. Also according to this act, a ration card is more than sufficient for proof of
domicile. For past few years, Congress and CPM parties have been issuing these cards illegally to the
Muslim immigrants to fulfill their political agenda.
The IMDT act was also found highly impractical, as currently there are only 16 tribunals functioning in
Assam meant for detecting thousands of illegal Muslim immigrants. Considering the fact the
Foreigners’ Act of 1946 is in force for the rest of India to detect illegal immigrants, IMDT is also very
discriminatory to the people of Assam.
Although there have been attempts earlier to scrap the act, so far every single attempt has been
unsuccessful. Students of Assam under the banner of All Assam Student Union took up the cause and
launched an agitation for about six years starting from 1984 to 1990. In 1997, the issue raised a storm
when former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda promised the All Assam Students Union to carry out a
repeal in order to make the act more effective. However, Gowda had to backtrack in the face of strong
opposition from the Congress, which was supporting the United Front government. In 1998 when BJP
Government was in power, in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha during a session of parliament, Union
home minister L K Advani said: “The scrapping of the IMDT Act, 1983, is under consideration of the
government”. It was one of the major promises made by the BJP in Assam during the Lok Sabha
elections; a promise that helped the party win new support among the Hindus of Assam, which was
clearly reflected in the election results. Congress and Communist party members expectedly and
vehemently opposed BJP’s move. Surprisingly even AGP Government at that time came up with an
illogical argument that they would not support the BJP on this issue as the party considered only
Muslim nationals living in Assam as illegal migrants. AGP conveniently forgot that record shows that
98 percent of the illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in Assam are Muslim and the remaining two percent
which are Hindu, had to take political refuge in India because of the state-sponsored Islamic oppression
on them in Bangladesh. However the real cause of Assam’s Chief Minister P K Mahanta’s reluctant
regarding this issue is different. He himself very well knows that scraping of IMDT act means a
significant loss of Muslim votes for AGP. This is really ironic considering the fact that Prafulla
Mahanta is a product of AASU, the organization whose sole aim was to repeal the IMDT act.
Prafulla Kumar Mahanta of Assam is not the only political figure in country to gain advantage of the
growing problem of illegal immigration. In fact, his counterpart in West Bengal, Mr. Jyoti Basu has
already excelled in the minority vote bank politics and has amply demonstrated in numerous occasions
how low he can stoop to achieve his dirty political ambition. Not long ago, the sympathy wave
emanating from minority votebank politics had blinded the CPI(M) cadre in West Bengal when the
organized communist mob had forcibly freed the illegal Bangladeshi nationals deported by
Maharashtra administration from Mumbai at Kharagpur and Howrah railway stations. In March 1997
however, the former Union Home Minister Indrajit Gupta (a hardcore communist) himself admitted
that India has an estimated 10 million foreigners living illegally in the country.
In his report, “Illegal immigration into Assam”, Lt. General Sinha pointed out that when India was
partitioned in 1947, Assam would have been part of East Pakistan if it hadn’t been for the vehement
opposition of the late ‘Lokapriya’ (People’s Beloved) Gopinath Bordoloi. Failure to get Assam included
in East Pakistan remained a source of abiding resentment in Pakistan. Sinha has quoted Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto, who once wrote, “One at least is nearly as important as the Kashmir dispute, that of Assam and
some districts of India adjacent to East Pakistan. To these Pakistan has very good claims.” Sinha has
drawn attention to the fact that even a pro-India politician like Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Father of
Bangladesh, had observed, “Because Eastern Pakistan must have sufficient land for its expansion and
because Assam has abundant forests and mineral resources, Eastern Pakistan must include Assam to be
financially and economically strong.” Sinha also gave a breakdown of suspected illegal immigrants in
India by state: West Bengal has 5.4 million, Assam 4 million, Tripura 0.8 million, Bihar 0.5 million,
Maharashtra 0.5 million, Rajasthan 0.5 million and Delhi 0.3 million.
Pointing out that leading intellectuals in Bangladesh have been making out a case for ‘lebensraum’ for
their country, Sinha warned, “No matter how friendly our relations with Bangladesh, we can ill afford
to ignore the dangers inherent in a demographic invasion from that country.” “We must not allow any
misconceived notions of secularism to blind us to these realities,” he has said. “Concrete steps must be
taken on a war footing to ensure that the borders are as nearly sealed as possible and the unabated flood
of infiltration is reduced to a trickle.”
Other than the obvious imbalance in economic and social infrastructure, illegal Muslim migration in
Assam has one more disastrous implication. Here it will not be out of place to mention that the Indian
military intelligence, about four years back, had unearthed an ISI plot of pushing Bangladeshi Muslims
into India with a view to swelling their numbers in the border districts of Assam and West Bengal. The
aim was to tilt the demographic balance heavily in their favor so as to create in the long run fertile
religious grounds for the demand for a new pro-Pakistan state. The ISI seems to be succeeding in its
design as the demographic equilibrium has been disturbed to a great extent, rendering the original
inhabitants a minority in their own land. According to chief of the army’s eastern command, ISI is
steadily spreading its wings in northeastern states and West Bengal. The Pakistani agency was not only
using West Bengal as a corridor to the north- eastern region where it was supplying arms to the
insurgents, but the Muslim- dominated border districts of other eastern states were also getting its
increasing attention.
Recent developments in Assam are clear indication to the fact that Muslim organizations are well in
control of terrorism in Assam. In May, 1999 the Indian Government received sensational information
clearly indicating direct contact between a group of Kashmiri Muslim Terrorists and two extremist
Muslim terrorist outfits of Assam - Muslim Tiger Force and Revolutionary Muslim Commandos. These
Muslim groups which operate in the NorthEast states owe their allegiance to the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen
and Lashkar-e-Toiba, two of the world’s most murderous Islamic terrorist groups.
Two other Muslim militant organizations, namely, Muslim Liberation Tigers of Assam (MLTA) and
Muslim Liberation Army (MLA) are training batches of Muslim terrorists and criminals in Jammu and
Kashmir, particularly in Poonch and Rajouri sectors. Yet another sensational connection has been
unearthed with the discovery of a recent clandestine visit by Muslim terrorists belonging to the Muslim
Liberation Tigers of Assam to Kashmir and Rajouri sector as “tourists”. The captured terrorists
revealed that Pakistan is pumping immense sums of money into the northeastern region of India with
periodic messages from across the border to have a particular portion of the money thus received
transferred to the “specified” persons in Jammu and Kashmir. Since 1990 more than NINE Muslim
terrorist organizations have taken root in Assam alone. Today terrorist organizations in Assam like
Muslim Liberation Army, Muslim Liberation Tigers of Assam, Muslim Security Force, Islamic United
Reformation Protest of India, United Muslim Liberation Front of Assam, Revolutionary Muslim
Commandos, Islamic Liberation Army of Assam, Islamic Sevak Sangh, Muslim Tiger Force etc enjoy
moral and financial support from International Islamic fundamentalist groups and figures such as
Osama Bin Laden.
Its about time Indian Government realizes that its just not a local problem to state of Assam, but is a
threat to the National security of India. Its about time the state Government of Assam realizes that
because of its politics of minority votebank, residents of Assam will be victims of a bloodier Islamic
aggression than that Kashmir has observed. The following suggestions by Lt. General S K Sinha
regarding the illegal Bangladeshi migrant in NorthEast should be immediately acted upon by both
Central and State Governments as a bare minimum precautionary step for the sake of the entire
country:
The highly discriminatory Illegal Migration Determination Tribunal Act for the state of Assam, which
has proved its futility over the last 15 years, should be repealed and the Foreigners’ Act of 1946 should
be used for detection and deporting of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. Officials from outside Assam be
deputed for this task.
The Border Security Force battalions deployed in the state should not be given the responsibility of
holding unduly extended frontages. As in Punjab, a battalion should hold a frontage of just 30km.
Additional BSF battalions should be provided and diversion of the personnel for other duties must be
avoided.
The National Register of Citizens should be updated and computerized and a separate register of
stateless citizens should also be maintained.
Multi-purpose photo identity cards should be given to all nationals, with a higher priority accorded to
districts bordering Bangladesh.
If the Central Government of India and the affected states do not work closely to come up with an
effective solution to this ever-growing demographic menace, the situation can become explosive,
severely jeopardizing the national security of India. Any negligence towards this issue of Muslim
immigration might very well produce many more Kargils in the North Eastern regions of India.