Five years of CAA: Citizenship remains an empty promise for Hindu migrants in Bengal
BJP leaders admit that few have applied under the law because undocumented refugees or their descendants cannot produce documents the law asks for.
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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,...
