Vanishing Infiltrators

Even as the demography of Assam continues to change because of large-scale infiltration from erstwhile East Pakistan and present-day Bangladesh and because of rapid increases in their population, the situation has been further complicated because of the failure of the authorities concerned to deport them back to their country of origin. According to media reports, only ten persons declared as foreigners by the courts of law were officially deported to Bangladesh from Assam in more than a decade, from the year 2013 to July 2024. It is also a matter of grave concern that successive governments at the Centre have failed to compel Bangladesh to accept the fact that infiltration from that country to India in general and Assam in particular has been going on unabated and that the other country should take back all their citizens who had either illegally entered India or had stayed back after their visa term had expired. One root of this problem is the failure—most likely a deliberate failure—of successive regimes at the Centre to understand or accept that large-scale infiltration from the neighbouring country has caused a grave threat not just to the very existence of the indigenous communities of Assam but also poses a threat to the territorial integrity of India. Way back in 1998, the then Assam Governor SK Sinha—a former Vice Chief of the Army—had, in his report to the President of India, very lucidly analysed the influx problem of Assam and warned that the time was not far away when these Muslim infiltrators, upon attaining a majority in the Assam districts bordering Bangladesh, would demand the merger of the border districts with Bangladesh. Encroachment of government and public land by the infiltrators—whom Lord Wavell had about nine decades ago described as “land-hungry Muslims”—is part of a long-drawn conspiracy of the Muslim League hatched some one hundred years ago to fulfill the dream of the Mughals to occupy Assam. Unfortunately, there are several political parties in India, as well as a large gang of leftist intellectuals, who consider protection of the infiltrators a more important duty than protection of the indigenous communities of Assam. There were several chief ministers in Assam in the post-Chaliha era who too had openly advocated for protecting the interests of the infiltrators vis-à-vis the indigenous communities of Assam. That is Assam’s biggest tragedy.