CAA Rules: Righting the neglect and wrongs of decades

Undocumented people – belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Parsi, Christian and Jain communities – who entered India by December 2014, from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan; may apply for Indian citizenship under CAA.

My dead mother, who was forced to leave her aristocratic background in East Pakistan behind and crossed over to India – like millions of victims of the religion-based Partition in 1947 – must be celebrating the Citizenship Amendment Rules, 2024.

She came to India around 1956. In the absence of legal tools and complete neglect by the Jawaharlal Nehru government to the sustained arrival of refugees in the East (that was so different from the near-complete migration on the Punjab side by 1949) she had to live on a forged identity.

My records are clean because she married a working-class ‘Indian’. The Narendra Modi government restored her lost pride, by completing the unfinished task of the Partition that opened gates to persecution of minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan).

The notification of the rules marks operationalisation of the CAA Act, passed in December 2019.

Undocumented people – belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Parsi, Christian and Jain communities – who entered India by December 2014, from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan; may apply for Indian citizenship under CAA.

There is nothing non-secular about it because there are prevailing provisions for anyone else to seek Indian citizenship. By CAA, India has finally accepted the legal responsibility of religious minorities coming over to India for refuge.

In his speech in Parliament during the CAA debate in 2019, veteran BJP leader Dr Subramanian Swamy reminded that the Congress Working Committee passed a resolution in this regard on November 25, 1947. The concern was shared by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former Chief Minister in Assam Tarun Gogoi, he said.

Former Congress Chief Minister of Bengal, Dr BC Roy (1950-1962), who along with Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, were vocal about the cause of Bengali refugees from East Pakistan. Mukherjee had quit the government and founded Bharatiya Jana Sangh (today’s BJP). But Dr Roy fought from within.

Bengalis Biggest Sufferers

All failed due to the historic indifference of Nehru to the cause of Bengalis. To his mind, the Partition was over. The fact remained that the Punjabi migration was over in a year or two but the displacement of Hindu Bengalis continued in very large volumes till 1971 and never stopped.

Avijit Dasgupta of Delhi University pointed out that the Centre first doctored the ‘refugee’ data in the East. Beginning in 1950, refugees were increasingly defined as ‘migrated’ and ‘displaced’. This led to a huge mismatch between the figures tabled by the concerned ministry and subsequent Census data.

Not to mention that the ministry data was crucial for fund allocation. Dasgupta said the per-capita central allocation for the rehabilitation of refugees from Punjab was four times that of the Bengalis.

Haimanti Roy of Dayton University in the US pointed out that by 1958, the Centre wound up refugee camps. But at the same time, they were engaged in diplomatic exchanges with East Pakistan about the sustained arrival of Hindu refugees. Nehru government was concerned that the sustained arrival of Hindus would change the demography of West Bengal, she said.

Meanwhile, India had its passport in 1953. The Citizenship Act came in 1955. That practically ended the free-movement paradigm promised in the Nehru-Liaquat pact of 1950.

In East Pakistan, the East Bengal Requisition and Tenancy Act was misused to grab Hindu properties. After the 1965 war, there came the Enemy Property Act (which was retained by Bangladesh until recently in a new name).

People came in waves between 1966 and 1971. The single biggest displacement took place between 1971 March and December. In the interim period, Mujibur Rahman announced Independence. He was arrested and East Pakistan plunged into a civil war.

In 1972, Delhi offered refugee status to those who came to India before March 1971. After the 1985 Assam Accord, the Citizenship Act was amended in 1987. It accorded “citizenship” to those who went to Assam. The rest were forgotten.

Officially, there were no more refugees after 1971. But Professor Abul Barkat of Dhaka University pointed out that till 2012, every day close to 800 Hindus were migrating from Bangladesh to India, in the face of persecution.

Demographic Change

Back in 1951, while preparing the National Citizenship Register, the government clarified that refugees cannot be voters by default. West Bengal is full of undocumented refugees. And, politics devised a way to bypass the law, which had done irreparable damage to the social fabric and state politics.

In the absence of legal tools, there came a machinery to forge documents are make refugees voters. This was necessary for their survival and the Left took up the agenda to create a constituency.

The stranglehold of the Left on Hindu refugees started declining in the 1980s. That was also the time when Muslim migration from Bangladesh to India peaked for economic reasons. Left started making them voters.

The share of the Muslim population in West Bengal was around 20 percent during 1951-1971. The ratio took a quantum leap from 21 percent to 25 percent between 1981 and 2001. It is now estimated at 28 percent. The political balance tilted away from Hindus.

For a state that suffered so much in the Partition, such gross demographic change was destined to create social tension. And, it is on the rise. It will rise if the government doesn’t prevent further demographic change.

Pratim Ranjan Bose is an independent columnist, researcher, and consultant. His X handle is @pratimbose. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.