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No-Where People on the Indo-Bangladesh
Border
INTRODUCTION
The story is as bizarre as is symptomatic of the problem – National
Security Anxiety. The policy makers and the bureaucrats of the two South
Asian states, India and Bangladesh are so engrossed with national
security calculations and considerations, that they are unable to see
that the more they try to grapple with "security concerns", the more it
eludes them.
Solution, to the problem of "illegal immigration" within the traditional
"security perspective" as the several newspaper reports extracted here
testify, seems to be an impossible goal. However, if the "problem" is
not perceived essentially as a security problem – an invasion of a
country by illegal immigrants from another, or rather, if the states
could be persuaded to see this as a human problem – indigent people
crossing international borders in search of a decent livelihood, then
hopefully we could find a solution through a combination of measures.
But then, under the present conditions these recommendations would seem
impossible or naïve. It would be called a wish-list of the bleeding
hearts, because we would hope for – India taking a non-communal attitude
to the issue of trans-border migration; Bangladesh acknowledging the
phenomenon of many of her people eager to leave the country for all
kinds of reasons; India stopping illegal immigration yet remaining a
humanitarian state; India fencing the entire border with Bangladesh;
immigrants filling in forms to enter India legally to seek work, stay or
pass through; India and Bangladesh seeking friendly relations with each
other; India not trying to discriminate against sizable sections of her
denizens and learning to look at them with the eyes with which she looks
at her "confirmed" citizens - "confirmed" meaning in this case
"confirmed" in the minds of the state; also India acknowledging that its
citizens too do the same, they too “go west” or “east” in the same way,
perishing at times in high sea, snows, or in the belly of huge
aeroplanes; and Bangladesh and India accepting responsibility of the
welfare of its citizens, and not indulging in push-in or push-out games
with utter callousness towards the rights and the dignity of the people
being pushed out or pushed in.
The unfortunate reality is that both India and Bangladesh wish the
problem to vanish, both wink at each other, both suffer the nightmare of
millions of peasantry on the move, both adopt communal vision and
denounce these people who are voting on the state-system in South Asia
with their feet, and both desperately pray that these nowhere people
somehow vanish, giving the political class of the two countries relief.
The nation-state system is getting mad with these nowhere people; and it
is said, whom the gods want to destroy, they first make them mad. (Vinash
Kaley Vipareet Budhi)
First, however, that tragic and yet a bizarre story: To the relief of
the two states, the 213 "stranded people" on the "no man’s land" between
Bangladesh and India at Satgachi in Cooch Behar in West Bengal, vanished
mysteriously on 6 February, 2003. They were there for a week. India
claimed that they were illegal immigrants and should be pushed back
and/or not allowed entry, with Bangladesh refusing to accept that they
were her citizens, demanding proof, and refusing to accept them. In
India’s words Bangladesh was refusing to “take them back”. So there they
stood, or rather sat most of the time, huddling together in severe cold
in the open for six days and nights, with guns of the two forces facing
each other. India claiming that she was offering humanitarian assistance
for the survival of the 213 people.
And then on that on that morning of February 6, around 4.30 when India's
Border Security Force (BSF) personnel went to check these people, the
entire group of 213 men, women, and children, were "missing". They had
disappeared. Everyone it seemed breathed a sigh of relief. The BSF
claimed that Bangladesh had taken them back, succumbing to Indian
pressure but without acknowledging the fact. But how did this happen?
According to the BSF, taking advantage of the thick fog, “the
Bangladeshi nationals were quietly taken away by the BDR. It seems a
face-saving gesture on their part.” Bangladesh government denied having
taken back the group of 213, and any knowledge of their whereabouts.
Newspapers, which had been covering the incident for days with their
headlines shrieking about security concerns, speculating on fate of the
poor people, feeding on the dramatic turn of contesting versions - too
sighed in relief. “Suddenly no sign of migrants”, as the first banner
headline of one prominent daily cried out. The most surreal was the
comment of the Indian External Affairs Minister who said, “snake
charmers cannot spoil our relations, we can get over these problems, if
Bangladesh acknowledges the fact and decides to talk”. Yes, these 213
people were snake charmers.
Expectedly newspaper headlines on the snake charmers have disappeared;
problems of greater urgency now occupy the attention of the nation –
Assembly elections here, and war or peace abroad. Snake charmers,
labourers, persecuted Hindus, women, girls, fleeing Muslims, men and
women in search of an el dorado – they keep on moving from place to
place. The gold rush continues across the vast expanse of the
sub-continent with railway stations not far from the border like Katihar,
or Kishangunj, and distant urban settlements and metropolises like
Delhi, and then the shores of the Arabian Sea at Karachi and beyond –
all beckon the peasantry of the east, as they did throughout the last
century, and certainly seventy years back when the subcontinent not
divided.
On this historically built pattern of migration we have now an added a
new factor, that of communal politics predicating the movements of
populations. Few years ago, when I was travelling along the border from
north to south Bengal on the Indian in the course of writing my book on
trans-border migration, The Marginal Nation, I saw and wrote about how
border villages were becoming homogenous in terms of religious identity
of its inhabitants. Hindu villages on "this" side, Muslim villages on
"that" side – and as the border security forces' records show - these
border villages, mile after mile, have become what the colonial
administrator MacAlpin had called exactly one century ago the “broken
villages” - villages earlier having mixed population now breaking up.
These villages are being encouraged to become "patriotic", take up
lathis (sticks), tangis (broad-blade knives), spears, swords, and
wherever made available guns, to strengthen the border, and “resist the
illegal intruders”. In North Bengal in the past few years we have
witnessed repeated border clashes where besides the government security
forces, local populations on both sides have taken part in what one
newspaper commented on one such occasion, “the dance of death”. In this
communalisation of the scenario, in the villages of the border districts
with only Muslim or Hindu population, mosques or temples are being built
on strategic locations of choice, signalling to the shelter-seekers of
the protection of the Almighty.
In this reappearance of partition politics, cartographic, communal, and
political lines are being replicated within the borders, creating new
visible and invisible frontiers. The unique feature of these nouvelle
frontiers being produced internally is that these are not vertical lines
separating two spaces, but concentric circles continuously dividing and
reassembling these divided spaces into the universe of the nation, law,
citizenship, rights, obligation, morality, and habitation. In this
situation only the snake charmers can survive. They probably have no
defined religious identity or a space which they can call as home. They
are a nomadic people. The snake charmers are the nowhere people who
combine global mobility with local lives. And statecraft must lose in
face of the ingenuity of the immigrant population who in response to the
security concerns of the states can suddenly vanish. If we remember the
fate of the people caught in the immigration detection measures in
Assam, India, we should not be surprised.
I remember, several years ago when I argued in favour of developing for
a human rights sensitive approach to the issue of population movement in
our time and in our region, instead of remaining locked into the
national security perspective, I was chided by an ex-governor of West
Bengal. In a review of my book, published in a prominent Indian magazine
this retired senior bureaucrat commented, “These are well meaning
intellectuals whose advices the immigrants can do without”. I am sure
that immigrants very sensibly do not wait for our advice. They do what
they are best at, “slip and survive”. The point is: will the governments
listen to our suggestions?
Here briefly some of these are, though this may be cry in wilderness –
introduction of a liberal visa regime; a work permit system for the
entire zone which should be regarded as a common labour market;
introduction and encouragement of border trade; a democratic management
of the border – for which we, a group of researchers belonging to the
east and the northeast of this sub-continent had offered certain
concrete suggestions three years back in an article in Economic and
Political Weekly. We asked that the Panchayats, Kisan Sabhas ( peasant
organisations), trade unions particularly in the informal labour sector,
local human rights groups, and women’s groups in border areas be given a
significant role in managing the population flows across the borders. We
also urged for the creation of a regional convention or a SAARC protocol
on rights of immigrants and asylum seekers. These are not revolutionary
suggestions, these do not call for abolition of borders, these ask for a
little more humane response, a little more kindness, hospitality, a
greater sense of care, and an awareness of the need for policy
innovations that can bypass the path of confrontation, militarisation of
borders, and communalisation of the citizenry.
This is what the evolving human rights sense today suggests elsewhere
too. Conventions on migrant workers, frontier workers, convention on the
rights of the child, convention against all forms of discrimination
against women, against racism, ILO conventions, convention on non-state
people – all these are landmarks in the journey of justice. Immigration
is an issue that signals new forms of racism everywhere, and in today’s
world of post September 11 with the spectre of terrorism everywhere,
drawbridges are being pulled – in the west, and now in the east. No
wonder immigrant women too are suspects, and we are told that democracy
must renounce norms of justice to survive in the dark world of today.
The National Security Anxiety is the hallmark of the resurgent New
Right. While it might succeed in creating a neo-nazi citizenry as its
main political support, the question is, will it win in its objective of
tackling immigration? Today's immigrants are not the prodigal children
who want to return; they have appeared nearly sixty years after the days
of Toba Tek Singh, who if we remember, lay in the middle, on a stretch
of land that had no name. Today’s nowhere people are not like Sadat
Hasan Manto’s character alias Bishan Singh. They are the survivors of
partition and nation state making. They upset the neat boundaries of
states and remind us of the un-addressed issues of justice and
responsibility. By their very survival, they scare the political class.
Hence the shrieks, the alarm bells, indignant voices, and the outcries
of an impending doom.
Can the political class of South Asia for once see beyond their nose? In
these excerpts, the reader will find shrill voices and nationalist
clamour on both sides of the border with little sensitivity to the
rights of the people, and to the fact that in this great age of
citizenship, South Asia's democracies are producing non-state persons
for whom no state wants to take responsibility. Nor can these people
claim rights as citizens of a state.
In extracting these reports and opinions, we have two purposes. First,
we have shown that no matter whichever one looks at this practice of
people being "pushed in" or "pushed out", from human rights perspective
these actions constitute serious violations of the rights of the
immigrant workers, rights of non-state people, rights against racist
abuse and discrimination, or against violation of the rights to dignity
and rights of the child and the women. Second, we hope that this
publication will generate an informed debate on the obligations of the
states and the international community under the established
international human rights and humanitarian laws that are meant for the
protection of individuals against such abuse?
In this time of millenarian nationalism and security phobia, what can we
say about the quality of "protection" in South Asia, the notion of
vulnerability, and the emergence of new vulnerable groups, about whom
even the laws do not have much to say? How shall we invoke the tribune
of justice so that laws can respond to this misery of the no-where
people?
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