Book review: Rizwana Shamshad, Bangladeshi Migrants in India: Foreigners, Refugees, or Infiltrators?
| Author | Akhil Ranjan Dutta |
| DOI | 10.1177/2321023019838751 |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
94 Book Reviews
Rizwana Shamshad, Bangladeshi Migrants in India: Foreigners, Refugees, or Infiltrators? New Delhi: Oxford
University Press. 2017. 317 pages. `895.
DOI: 10.1177/2321023019838751
A book on Bangladeshi migrants in India written by a scholar from Bangladesh is unique. It is based on
a comprehensive field survey and primarily investigates the nationalist ‘imagination’ in three states—
Assam, West Bengal, and Delhi—on the issue of Bangladeshi migrants. The subtitle of the book indi-
cates the dominant perceptions in India about the Bangladeshi migrants, embedded in the political
projects pursued by the civil society and political forces in the respective states. Chapter 1 is devoted to
capturing the multiple narratives, as well as the key conceptual and theoretical categories in nationalism
discourse in India, Chapter 5 describes the parliamentary debates on Bangladeshi migrants in India; the
three core chapters are devoted to understanding the political imaginations and battles around Bangladeshi
migrants in these three states.
Chapter 2 titled ‘The Foreigners in Assam’ investigates Assam discourse on East Bengal origin/
Bangladeshi migrants from the colonial time to the present. The author rightly points out that migrants
in Assam are not just Bengali, Hindu and Muslim, but include tea plantation labourers, Marwari migrants
and Nepali migrants. In Assam, Bangladeshi migrants, mostly Muslim, are considered to be the ‘threat-
ening others’, and there are forces which makes no distinction between pre-1971 east Bengal/east
Pakistan Muslim migrants and post-1971 Bangladeshi migrants. As per the census data, the Muslim
population increased substantially in the state during two periods: from 1921 (19.41%) to 1941 (25.72%)
and 1971 (24.56%) to 1991 (28.43%). In 2011, it had gone up to 34.22 per cent. In 1951, Muslim popula-
tion dropped to 24.68 per cent due to partition and transfer of Sylhet to east Pakistan. During 1971 to
1991, the growth rate of Hindus was 41.89 per cent compared to 77.41 for the Muslims. Growth during
the second period is attributed to unchecked migration from Bangladesh. The author has explored the
contestations around the Bangladeshi migrants, particularly Bangladeshi Muslims, who are termed ‘for-
eigners’, as well as being the ‘threatening other’. Based on her field survey, the author argues that the
RSS had a role in re-directing the six-year long anti-foreigner Assam movement (1979–1985) and giving
it a communal colour. The RSS, the author claims, had a hand in the Nellie massacre of 1983, which has
been termed as quasi-genocidal attack on Bengali Muslims. The author has documented the contested
versions of different political parties on Bangladeshi migrants in Assam as well as the opinion from
cross-sections of the society and arrives at the conclusion that the perception of ‘threatening other’ is
very strong in Assam. Greater care would have avoided certain factual errors in the chapter like Gopinath
Bordoloi as Cabinet Minister during the Premiership of Saadulla or perceptional error like AASU advi-
sor as a Bengali-speaking Hindu.
The state of West Bengal is an exception in India as far as the Bangladeshi migrants are concerned,
due to the fact that before Partition both West Bengal and Bangladesh were under one Bengal and the
linguistic, ethnic and cultural affinity continues to sustain a sense of belongingness across borders.
The author has discussed at length all these differences and disparities within Bengalis across class, caste,
east versus west, and religious lines. After the 1947 partition, West Bengal was burdened with huge flow
of Hindu refugees from the other part of Bengal. The poverty-stricken Hindu refugees from east Bengal
did not receive much respect from the native Hindus in West Bengal. The state also witnessed the
‘bitterly anti-Muslim climate in West Bengal’ (p. 128) that forced 1.5 million Muslims to flee from West
Bengal to east Pakistan in the first twenty years after partition. India’s role in emergence of Bangladesh
as an independent state in 1971, of course, brought about changes to the perception about east Bengal/
east Pakistani Bengalis across religion. The adoption of ‘The Enemy Property Act and the Vested
Property Act’ by independent Bangladesh had only facilitated the appropriation of property of Hindus
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