WEST BENGAL: THE ILLEGALS DEBATE
The Assam citizens’ register crisis has spilled into neighbouring West Bengal with both the TMC and BJP playing votebank politics over the issue
Mamata Banerjee was the first to speak out in defence of the four million people left in limbo in neighbouring Assam following the Supreme Court-ordered publication of the National Register of Citizens (NRC). “It’s a plan to throw out Bengalis and Biharis, whose names have been removed on the basis of surnames,” the West Bengal chief minister claimed at a news conference, minutes after the numbers were released on July 30. She accused the BJP-led Assam government of deliberately targeting Muslims.
Clearly expecting the diatribe, state BJP chief Dilip Ghosh responded with a series of demonstrations demanding a similar exercise in Bengal. “If voted to power, we will have a separate NRC for Bengal and push illegal migrants out of the country. Those supporting them will also be thrown out,” he warned, claiming there were over 15 million illegal Bangladeshis in the state. BJP national president Amit Shah accused Banerjee and the rest of the Opposition of playing votebank politics at the cost of national security. “Apart from the BJP and BJD, not a single party has come forward and said that there was place for illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in the country... and all this for the sake of votebank politics,” Shah said in Delhi on July 31.
There has been no let-up in the mutual slugfest between the ruling Trinamool Congress and the BJP. On July 31, the West Bengal assembly adopted a resolution with all parties, except the BJP, condemning the NRC. It was timed, they insisted, to benefit the BJP in next year’s Lok Sabha polls. Mamata even warned of a bloody civil war on the streets. Meanwhile, the Assam government quickly moved to block a team of TMC legislators and ministers from entering the state (on August 2) to meet the “victims” of the NRC exercise.
Analysts say if the BJP expects to benefit by using the NRC to polarise Hindu voters in Bengal, the TMC’s counter-strategy is to use it to secure its 30 per cent Muslim votebank in the state.
Rabindra Bharati University political scientist Biswanath Chakrabarty says that while the BJP is using the NRC to play the communal card, Mamata is also looking to consolidate linguistic identity by presenting it as a move to target Bengali-speaking people. He points out that Bengalis have been largely secular and reluctant to make HinduMuslim distinctions. By clubbing Assam’s Bihari migrants with Bengalis, the chief minister is evidently looking to draw in the Hindi-speaking Bihari voters in Bengal.
But the BJP clearly sees its increasing vote share in the state as an indication of a growing Hindu exasperation at the TMC’s Muslim-appeasement policies. “This is why Mamata is celebrating Ram Navami and Janmashtami and chanting Hindu mantras at political rallies,” says Sayantan Basu, BJP general secretary. Ghosh says “she (Mamata) is scared of a Hindu jagran (awakening) in Bengal”.
The state BJP leadership has already launched a campaign alleging that illegal (Muslim) Bangladeshi migrants have been eating into Bengal’s economy and usurping job opportunities that ought to have gone to local (Hindu) youth. With unemployment at an all-time high, Ghosh says “we will club the issue of unemployment with illegal immigrants”. Shah is slated to visit Bengal on August 11 to coordinate with local leaders on these issues.
BJP leaders have been playing up the numbers quoted during the National Front and UPA governments. In 1991, then Union home minister Indrajit Gupta had stated there were some 10 million Bangladeshis living in India. Later, Sriprakash Jaiswal, MoS for home affairs during UPA-1, told Parliament the number was 12 million. This, analysts say, lends credence to the BJP’s claim that there are, by now, some 15 million illegal Bangladeshis in West Bengal alone. The party has dug up Lok Sabha minutes that bear witness to Mamata herself furiously accusing the then Left Front government in Bengal of building votebanks with Bangladeshi migrants.
BJP leaders say that rather than communal polarisation, the NRC will help genuine citizens and weed out illegal foreigners. This, while the party hopes to push through amendments to the Citizenship Act, 1955, to provide Hindu refugees a window. “Those who have come to India persecuted, we have a responsibility towards them. They are our own people,” says BJP national secretary Ram Madhav (see interview on page 16).
But amid the mutual blame game, Mamata has already managed to take round one by consolidating the support of some 6.8 million Scheduled Caste Matua refugees from Bangladesh, settled along the international border in six Bengal districts. Viral images of Assam policemen manhandling Matua MP Mamata Bala Thakur (among the TMC leaders who tried to enter Assam) have enraged the community. Angry demonstrations were also staged in the state against the dropping of 500,000 Matua names from the Assam NRC.
The community had been leaning towards the BJP till now on the promise of being naturalised via the Citizenship Act, but recent events have put them firmly back behind Mamata, claim TMC leaders.
THE WEST BENGAL ASSEMBLY ADOPTED A RESOLUTION WITH ALL PARTIES, EXCEPT THE BJP, CONDEMNING THE ASSAM NRC