Amit Shah’s Knockout Blow in the Rajya Sabha is a Good Time to Unearth a Buried Report on Illegal Immigration

As anticipated, seasoned boxer Amit Shah delivered the knockout blow yesterday in a marathon session of the Rajya Sabha, which culminated in passing the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill by the upper house as well. The assorted media mouthpieces of the Congress and its secular friends were more in tune with this outcome—they barely paused to report it in their headlines and instead, quickly moved on to the only thing they are experts at: breaking India. This time, their dogged focus is on the violence in Assam. Check out for example, Scroll, The Wire, The Quint, The New Indian Express, The Hindu…

Finding themselves hopelessly on the wrong side of history, the pseudo secular political nonentities have thundered that they will approach the Supreme Court. Wholly expected. And because we’re speaking of history, let’s tap its dusty doors open and unearth some interesting stuff on related to illegal immigration, asylum-seeking, religious persecution and related topics.

The following are extracts from a long buried report. An important section of this report is titled, Migration: Secularism vs Fundamentalism. Emphases have been added.

Migration: Secularism vs Fundamentalism.

During the last four and a half decades the population movements in the Indian subcontinent across the international borders have been anything but natural. In the eastern region, the population movement across the borders in its unnatural form remains a disturbing fact of our social life with the threat that it may become even more disturbing in not too distant future.

The assumption that the Partition would solve the Hindu-Muslim question and that, on both sides, Hindus & Muslims will be able to live in peace and unity, proved to be unreal…

With the…decline in the power of the Muslim League which had been playing the fundamentalist role and, with the growing resistance of the people of Eastern Bengal…although fanatically resisted by the fundamentalists, culminated in the liberation of East Pakistan and the Republic of Bangladesh came into existence. India’s moral and material support to the cause…was based on yet another assumption that, in the new Republic, the remaining minority population would be able to live in dignity and peace…it would act as safety valves for sustained economic co-operation and ensure prosperity and growth and prevent migration of people from Eastern Bengal to India’s Eastern region…To remind ourselves, the religious minorities, which accounted for 29.7% of population in the area comprising…Bangladesh in 1947, were reduced to 14.6%…in 1971…

After the assassination of Sheikh Mujib in August 1975, … the [major fundamentalist parties]…were busy propagating their cause. Mosques were the focal points in this exercise. It was at this time that the fundamentalists scored their first victory. The unifying slogan of ‘Joy Bangla’ of Bengali nationalism was replaced by the slogan, ‘Bangladesh Zindabad.’…

On April 21, 1976, the first action of General Zia…was to erase secularism from the…Constitution. Ordinance and rules were passed to provide opportunities to the fundamentalist parties to function openly and legally.

Blessed by the military rule, the fundamentalists lost no time to entrench and emerge as a force…It was also essential that the Constitution be made Islamic sealing the path of progressive forces…in 1979…Mustatizur Rahaman, announced in a seminar inaugurated by the Ambassador of Saudi Arabia, ‘The first and foremost concern of the new Parliament will be to enact laws based on the Quran and the Sunnah’…

In June 1988, Islam was declared the State Religion of Bangladesh…

We are thus back to square one. Against this backdrop, it is easily understandable why migration of the minorities (i.e., Hindus and Buddhists) continues unabated. With the steep fall in the numerical strength of the minorities, there is…a qualitative change in the causes of migration. Riots and killings have yielded place to other means of oppression. Minorities today find that they are seldom able to protect their faith, property and women. Reports of forced marriages and conversions are pouring in…Even temple lands are not spared.

The story of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) is one of the most tragic episodes in recent history. Once inhabited by tribals, this beautiful land has been substantially captured by the Muslims. As there was no provision for the protection of ethnic minorities in the Bangladesh Constitution, the invasion from the neighbouring areas continued…the [Bangladesh] regime sought a military solution and thousands of refugees crossed over to India…The militarization of the Tracts…has been designed to suppress any dissent…

It would be interesting to note that a group of intellectuals in Dacca is seeking to legitimize the migration of Muslims into…areas of the North East by invoking the theory of Lebensraum…They were not at all apologetic about the infiltration. People are sought to be inspired by the hope that one day the North Eastern region will be added to Bangladesh…

We do share the apprehension of the minorities that any talk about infiltration tends to make their lives miserable…But the emerging trends in Bangladesh today and the increasing infiltrations have thrown a challenge to the minorities living in the region to take a wise…stand. To turn a blind eye or to oppose any such talk, using a forum in the name of a particular community, in a tone and temper that strengthen only the fundamentalist forces, will be the height of folly…

An ideological support is given to the phenomenon by the Islamic Fundamentalists creating the vision of a larger Islamic country comprising Bangladesh and the entire North East…

There is a direct correlation between the rise of fundamentalism and increase in influx…

Unfortunately, the Government of India appears to be suffering from a half-hearted approach or no approach to this challenging problem. The External Affairs Ministry has not done the job it should have done. The concerned desk has virtually been a non-functioning one…

History has taught us in the North East that…the virus of fundamentalism cannot be allowed to persist or spread. As Congressmen, we have an additional responsibility…for separating politics from religion and liberating men from religious gangsterism…

We beg of the Prime Minister to give his personal attention to this affair that calls for answers to India’s Eastern Questions.  

The penultimate paragraph probably gave it away. This was the report prepared by the General Secretaries of the Congress Party hailing from Nagaland, Tripura, Meghalaya, Assam and Mizoram under the guidance of P.A. Sangma. The full title of the report reads: Report of the General Secretaries of the Congress (I) to the Seventh General Conference of the North-eastern Co-ordination Committee, Guwahati, 3^rd July 1992.

You can download the complete report by clicking on the link below.

Congress General Secretaries Report on Illegal Infiltration from Bangladesh

The report copy has been provided on The Dharma Dispatch in a spirit of public service.