The Supreme Court’s directive to the Assam government to release all those Bangladeshis currently lodged in different detention camps is an interesting development. The Supreme Court’s directive is very clear on one particular aspect – only those persons are to be released who have completed three years in detention. There are at least 900 persons currently lodged in the six detention centres after various Foreigners Tribunals constituted under provisions of the Constitution of India had declared them as foreigners – in this case Bangladeshis who had illegally entered India. The apex court has also specifically directed that the persons to be released would have to execute two sureties of Rs one lakh each and would have to submit verifiable address of stay after release, while the authorities would have to obtain the biometrics of their iris, all ten fingerprints, and photographs which would be stored in a secured database before these persons are released. These Bangladeshi infiltrators so released would also have to report to the police station of their respective place of stay, and would have to notify any change of address. Likewise, the Superintendent of Police (Border) would have to submit a quarterly report to the Foreigners Tribunals regarding the regularity of appearance of these people in their respective police stations. It was only last week that the government of Assam had informed the Supreme Court that of the 91,609 persons declared as foreigners who had illegally entered Assam after 1971, as many as 72,486 have been absconding. These 91,609 persons – all Bangladeshi infiltrators – were detected by various Foreigners Tribunals in Assam between 1985 and 2018.
As has been pointed out in this column from time to time, infiltration from erstwhile East Pakistan and present-day Bangladesh has assumed alarming proportions, with the huge number of infiltrators and their progeny threatening to push the indigenous Indian communities of Assam into extinction. Infiltration has already dangerously changed the demographic composition of Assam, while the linguistic balance is also on the verge of tilting against the Assamese and other Indian communities living in Assam. One must recall at this juncture how Lokapriya Gopinath Bardoloi, Bhimbor Deuri and other leaders of that time had successfully thwarted a sinister design hatched jointly by the outgoing British government and the Md Ali Jinnah’s Muslim League of clubbing Assam in Group C so that it would eventually become part of East Pakistan when Partition of India came into effect in 1947. Gopinath Bardoloi was not a BJP or RSS leader. He was a true patriot who loved his motherland and mother-tongue more that anything else. Pandit Nehru, who was responsible for shaping Post-Independence India, however, had least concern for Assam, and he had almost agreed to Assam’s merger with East Pakistan had Bardoloi and his colleagues from Assam not approached Sardar Patel and Mahatma Gandhi. Unfortunately, while the government of Assam has been trying to detect the illegal migrants under supervision of the Supreme Court of India, a few groups have been working overtime to scuttle these efforts so that the illegal migrants are allowed to stay in Assam. These groups, some of which have been at work since before Partition and were probably among those who wanted Assam’s inclusion in Pakistan, and some others always raising their heads to deny that there has been any infiltration to Assam, definitely have some powerful individuals and organizations behind them. This becomes evident when one observes that they don’t voice their concern for the indigenous ethnic communities of Assam. These become evident from the fact that they don’t express concern when there is a devastating flood in Assam. These become evident when they don’t come with aid of tribal people rendered homeless because of attacks by organized groups of people of doubtful citizenship as had happened in Kokrajhar a few years ago.