Bengali speakers are facing danger in India due to the recent crackdown on speaking their mother tongue. In the past four months, about 9,000 Bengali speakers have been detained and kept in temporary detention centers in three states. And at least 2,000 Bengali speakers have been pushed to Bangladesh by Indian law enforcement agencies. The situation is so dire that people are afraid to speak Bengali.
This information was revealed in a report published by the New York Times last Friday.
The anti-immigration campaign began after the terrorist attack in Kashmir on April 22. The Indian government has turned it into a tool to spread fear against Muslims. In particular, Bengali speakers have become the target.
Most of the people detained in this campaign have never been to Pakistan. India has blamed this country for the attacks. Bengali is the official language of Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura. Billions of people on both sides of the border of both countries speak this language. Several thousand Indian Bengali speakers have been detained or sent to Bangladesh. Most of them are Muslims. Many are residents of West Bengal. For decades, the state's youth have been moving to other major cities in India for work.
There are allegations that hundreds of thousands of undocumented Bangladeshis live in India. They cross the border between the two countries legally or illegally. Raids are being conducted in densely populated areas of Bengali-speaking people in various Indian states. Evidence of undocumented migrants is also being found.
Since last July, authorities in Gurugram, a suburb of the capital New Delhi, have been conducting a drive to find illegal immigrants. According to local media reports, Gurugram police have detained hundreds of people. Many of them have documents to legally reside in India. They were later released. Since the start of the drive, hundreds of poor Bengali-speaking people have fled the city fearing police harassment.
Gurugram Police Department Public Relations Officer Sandeep Kumar said that 200 to 250 people have been detained in this drive. Of these, 10 have been identified as illegal Bangladeshi migrants. He added that there are rumors that they are fleeing the city.
Supanth Sinha, a lawyer working on detention cases in Gurugram, said the number of people who have fled the city is close to 1,000. A dozen Muslim and Hindu Bengali speakers from four states who were raided said they were afraid of the government crackdown.
Abhijit Pal, 18, said he works as a cleaner. He had come to Gurugram from West Bengal. When his slum was raided, he showed the police his identity card. He was still detained for five days. He was released after social workers provided the police with additional documents proving his Indian citizenship. Fearing re-arrest, he left Gurugram and returned to West Bengal. He is now unemployed. “I am afraid of being caught again. Because I speak Bengali,” he said.
The New York Times report by Saif Hasnat and Pranab Bhaskar said there are hundreds of thousands of Indians who do not have documents to prove their citizenship. Human rights groups and lawyers have accused the government of carrying out the immigration crackdown without following due process. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has used the April terror attacks as a tool for a systematic crackdown on the country’s Muslims.
Since the attacks, thousands of Rohingya or Bangladeshi Muslims have been detained in BJP-led Indian states.
According to state police, at least 6,500 have been detained in Gujarat, 2,000 in Kashmir and about 250 in Rajasthan. Three new temporary detention centers were set up in Rajasthan in May.
The exact number of people deported from India to Bangladesh is still unknown. Bangladeshi officials say about 2,000 people were pushed back from India to Bangladesh between May and July. India has not confirmed the number.
According to a July report by Human Rights Watch, India has been forced to take back dozens of people who were unable to prove their citizenship. Meenakshi Ganguly, the group’s deputy Asia director, said the campaign has targeted poor Muslim migrant workers.
Amir Sheikh, 21, had gone to Rajasthan from West Bengal to work as a construction worker. His uncle, Ajmaul Sheikh, said that despite having an identity card and birth certificate, the police arrested his nephew last June. After three days in police custody, he lost contact with his family.
Danish Sheikh (27), a cleaner born in West Bengal, was arrested in late June along with his pregnant wife and son (8). He said that after five days in police custody, they threw him into the forest. They told him to walk to Bangladesh. Their family has decades-old land records and Indian identity cards in India.
Imran Hossain (60) said that Indian police raided his house in Gujarat. They blindfolded him and beat him. After a five-day boat journey, he was taken to Bangladesh. He is having trouble sleeping at night. “When I try to sleep, I hear people crying,” he said.
BJP leaders at the state and national levels have long described Bangladesh as a “hub for infiltrators.” This is threatening India’s multi-religious, linguistic and ethnic identities. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma warned of a “worrying demographic shift” in July. He said his state had built up a “resistance against Muslim infiltration across the border.”
About a third of Assam’s population is Muslim. Bengali-speaking identity is a long-standing issue here. The state’s latest expulsion drive
