The parents of Bidyut Kumar Biswas, a 49-year-old teacher at a government primary school in Nadia district of West Bengal, arrived in India just after the Bangladesh War in 1971.
Biswas said they fled their ancestral village in Jessore district in Bangladesh, as Hindus increasingly faced religious persecution.
“My father secretly sold his properties and land. He then told his neighbours that he was going away for a few days,” Biswas said. Over the years, his father managed to register his and his family members’ names on voter lists and ration cards in India.
Biswas’s father was not alone. A study by Dhaka-based economist Abul Barkat estimated that between 1964 and 2013, as many as 11.3 million Hindus had fled Bangladesh.
Politically, this forms a significant electorate group in Assam and West Bengal.
In the 1960s, the Communists were able to get significant support from refugee groups. In 2009, the Trinamool Congress’s attempts to win over the Matua Mahasangha – a socio-religious organisation of the Matuas, a group of politically influential immigrants from Bangladesh – bore fruit, and helped Mamata Banerjee dethrone the Left Front.
However, the Matuas drifted towards the Bharatiya Janata Party after it began an aggressive campaign in 2015 to bring in amendments to India’s Citizenship Act that would allow undocumented migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh who had entered India before December 31, 2014, to become Indian citizens – as long as they were not Muslim.
The contentious proposals were seen as discriminatory towards Muslims and sparked widespread protests across the country, many of them led by Muslim women. In Delhi, communal riots broke out as a backlash to the protests, and the state cracked down on several Muslim activists – many of whom are still in prison.
But five years after the Citizenship Amendment Act was passed on December 11, 2019, the law has not been of much use to those like Biswas.
“We were happy when the CAA was passed,” Biswas told Scroll. “We are thankful to the Prime Minister for making the law. But the documents needed under the CAA rules make it harder to apply for citizenship.”
Under the rules of the CAA, which were notified in March, applicants need to provide documents proving they came to India before December 31, 2014. Only six non-Muslim communities living in these three countries are eligible for amnesty under this law.
Several families of Hindu migrants from Bangladesh, however, told Scroll that they do not have official documents issued by the government of Bangladesh to prove their country of origin.
Most of the Bengali refugees, largely from lower-caste groups, migrated from East Pakistan to escape religious turmoil.
They are also wary of producing documents that attest to their being undocumented migrants. “How can we state in writing that we are from Bangladesh?” Biswas said. “What is the guarantee that we will not be targeted?”
Even BJP leaders believe that the law makes unreasonable demands on the applicants. “Many of these people arrived here 20-30 years ago under difficult circumstances,” said Mohit Ray, a senior BJP leader from the refugee community in West Bengal. “They are mostly poor people, who have lived in temporary homes on barren lands or on the side of railway tracks. It is difficult for them to provide any documents. So that is becoming a big problem.”
He said that the central government should revise the rules so that an affidavit, stating their place of origin, should be sufficient.
A Kolkata-based spokesperson of the BJP admitted there have been few takers for the law. “Only a few hundred people would have applied under the CAA,” he said. “But the number of people who have come from Bangladesh after 1971 is in the millions.”
The central government has not put out any official data on the number of migrants granted citizenship under the law.
Who needs CAA?
The ruling Trinamool Congress’s counter to the BJP’s CAA pitch has been to deny its utility.
The Mamata Banerjee government has said that the Hindu migrants of this region are already citizens of the state – and do not need to apply under the CAA. Instead, they might even put themselves at risk by declaring their foreign origin.
“The Trinamool Congress has portrayed [the CAA] as a conspiracy to brand the [lower-caste] Namasudra refugees as foreigners and deprive them of all kinds of rights and entitlements,” said political scientist Ayan Guha, whose research focuses on the Matuas.
Sushanta Mandol, a local Matua leader of Bhatjangla panchayat in Nadia district, said: “The Trinamool Congress has been saying that those who have voter IDs, Aadhaar cards and who have voted in previous elections do not need to apply for citizenship. Therefore, our people are confused and at a loss what to do.”
However, many migrant families said that without proof of citizenship, they faced hurdles – if not harassment – while applying for a passport or a government job or a Scheduled Caste certificate.
“When I went to the passport office, they asked me to produce a document to prove that my parents were here before 1971,” said Biswas, who was born in India and joined government service in 2006. “I don’t have any such documents.”
His passport application was rejected. “Didi [Mamata Banerjee] is saying that we have Aadhaar cards and voter cards, that we are citizens and nobody can deport us. But the passport office is saying we are not citizens. This is confusing,” Biswas said.
For the Matuas, a vocal group within the larger immigrant community, citizenship goes beyond mere paperwork – it is an opportunity to shrug off the tag of “infiltrators” and Bangladeshis for good.
“In the government offices and courts in Krishnanagar, if a person belongs to the Matua or Namashudra caste, they label him or her as Bangladeshi even if he came before or after the Partition,” said Sushanta Mandol. “They ask us for documents from before 1971. If we get an Indian citizen certificate, this harassment will stop,” Mandol said.
However, assurances from the Centre have not been enough to convince the Matuas or other Hindu groups from applying under the CAA.
“I am not going to get worried about CAA now,” said 44-year-old Ashim Pal, a resident of Shantipur in Nadia district whose family came to India after 1980 from Kushtia district in Bangladesh. “We will see if and when it becomes compulsory.”
Pal went on to argue: “We are already citizens. Our votes have made politicians MPs and MLAs. If we are not citizens, how come they are getting elected? If voter ID cards can procure everything, why do we need to apply for citizenship again?”
The political math
Though the BJP has considerable influence on the Hindu immigrant voters – BJP’s Shantanu Thakur, a senior Matua leader was elected to the Lok Sabha this May from Bongaon – party workers are worried about the implications of the unfulfilled promise of the CAA.
A BJP leader from the region, who asked not to be identified, told Scroll that there is a “sense of discontent” in the refugee community, which has not yet been expressed openly. “We will get to know how substantial the disappointment is before the elections,” the BJP leader said.
Saradindu Biswas, a social activist from the Matua community, said that the party cannot take the community’s support for granted. “The Matuas will not stay with the BJP for a long time because they have understood that the party is playing with them,” he said. “The other refugee groups, who are bigger in number, are not that bothered by the CAA. Whatever happens, they know they will not go back to Bangladesh and they refuse to identify as infiltrators to apply for the CAA.”
For the BJP, the current religious turmoil in Bangladesh, with Hindu homes and temples being attacked, is a clear vindication of the logic of the CAA. “However, it is also leading to the demand for extending the cut- off date of the CAA beyond December 3, 2014,” said Guha.
Local BJP leaders have aggressively mobilised on the issue of endangered Hindus in Bangladesh. Some are also demanding that the CAA’s cut-off date be extended to accommodate those fleeing violence in Bangladesh.
“We always want Hindus to come to India, as this is a country for Sanatanis,” said Ashok Kirtania, the BJP MLA from Bangaon Uttar. “If Hindus come here from Bangladesh because of atrocities, it is my dream and personal wish that they be accorded citizenship.”
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