Author: T V R Shenoy
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: May 7, 2003
URL: http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/may/07flip.htm
Here is a conundrum for the legal
eagles amongst you. Assume that a cat burglar enters your house and gets
away with some piece of jewellery. The next day he gets careless, and is
shot by an angry householder. Are the thief's children then entitled to
claim that necklace which their father had stolen as part of the property
that they have inherited?
I confess that I am using this as
a metaphor. The cat burglar who broke and entered is an illegal migrant.
The house is India itself. And the priceless property he stole -- and which
his children now have the cheek to claim as by inherited right -- is citizenship
of this republic. Trust me, this is no joke.
There are said to be up to 57 lakh
[5.7 million] illegal migrants living in West Bengal alone. (Just to put
that into perspective, that is roughly one- tenth the total population
of the United Kingdom.) Conservative estimates say that there are 50 lakh
more in Assam. Now, the menace has spread well beyond those states which
have the misfortune to neighbour Bangladesh; the authorities are concerned
as far away as Mumbai.
Some months ago we heard a lot about
drastic measures to identify these illegal migrants and then to deport
them. Has any action been taken, or has it all been just so much talk?
One officer summed it up succinctly. The whole scheme, he says, has become
little more than a 'Leave Travel Concession scheme courtesy the Government
of India.' Here is why he waxes so sarcastic:
The special team in Delhi identified
a few hundred illegal migrants. (That barely rates as the tip of the iceberg,
but I suppose it was a beginning of sorts.) They were rounded up, and sent
to a special camp. They were then sent under escort to West Bengal by train,
to be pushed back across the frontier. There, the Border Security Force
personnel flatly refused to handle anything more than ten, repeat ten,
persons every day.
Simple mathematics says that at
this rate India cannot deport more than 3,650 Bangladeshi migrants in the
calendar year 2003. And the time taken to send back all one crore [10 million]
or more of them is something to boggle the mind.
By some miracle -- known only to
Heaven and the Border Security Force - - I understand that a few hundred
were escorted across the international boundary. Here is the cream of the
joke: some of them are now back in Delhi. I understand they are all very
happy about the whole incident. And why should they not be? After all,
they have just had a free holiday courtesy the Government of India, seen
all their friends and relatives back home, and then come straight back
after about a month's vacation. Now, do you see why officers are sarcastically
calling it a 'Leave Travel Concession scheme'?
But let me return where I began:
with the children of all those illegal migrants. It is safe to assume that
at least a tenth -- an underestimation if ever there was one -- of those
one crore Bangladeshi will marry and reproduce. And under the law as it
exists today those children born on Indian soil may claim Indian citizenship
as by right. This is one of those situations where one can only helplessly
echo Dickens and exclaim that 'the law is an ass!'
Mercifully, laws made by men can
be repealed or amended, and this is one such case. New legislation is on
the anvil that will make it illegal for the children of illegal migrants
to claim Indian citizenship automatically. But this is not going to solve
the problem in its entirety since it only blocks any automatic grant of
citizenship; the offspring of illegal migrants are still free to claim
the right to stay on through other means. That is not really good enough,
but something is better than nothing.
I think we may as well face the
fact that it is impossible to wield the broom on the one crore or so Bangladeshis
who are already here in India. All we can do now is to prevent any more
useless mouths from entering. Give the Border Security Force 'shoot at
sight' orders. And if anyone is caught employing illegal migrants, fine
that employer so heavily that all his colleagues and competitors will also
think twice. And, in Heaven's name, stop this farce of a 'Leave Travel
Concession scheme' for Bangladeshis!
Tailpiece: I have been following
the point-counterpoint on rediff's message boards with no little interest.
While I don't have the time to participate actively, I would like to answer
some of the points my readers make once in a while. So, here are some points
relating to last week's column:
i. It was not T V R Shenoy but the
Karunakaran faction that is trying to see Kerala politics through religious
-- Hindu:non-Hindu -- spectacles. (I apologise if this point was left muddy.)
Will such a ploy succeed in unseating Antony? The chief minister's well-known
agnosticism and personal integrity leave him invulnerable to any charge
of playing a communal, leave alone Christian, card. But Sonia Gandhi is
not so secure, or, which comes to the same thing, *feels* less safe --
which is why there was so much talk of the high command being pro-Christian.
Her pusillanimous response -- Muraleedharan being retained as president
of the Pradesh Congress Committee, Ambika Sonia losing charge of Kerala
-- suggests that it might be easier to remove Antony through Delhi than
through direct action in Thiruvananthapuram.
ii. While I love Kerala, I have
always been aware of the skull beneath the skin so to speak -- if not of
actual communal conflict, then at least of the potential for the same.
(No student of history could be otherwise; the Moplah Rebellion was as
ghastly an outbreak of Hindu-Muslim battle as anything seen before Partition
-- and without a tenth of the reason.) Recent events in Kozhikode district's
Marad village give the point to my fears. Communal harmony is not a gift
from the gods, everyone in Kerala must work actively to create and then
maintain it.
iii. One reader commented that I
had my facts wrong in citing Andhra Pradesh's Rajasekhara Reddy as a Christian.
There is no need to debate this; without venturing too far, I suggest taking
a look at this article which covered the point quite adequately.
Finally, do keep those brickbats
coming, while I can't respond on a point- by-point basis, I promise to
skim all of them. (Bouquets would be nice too, but in my experience disagreement
is always more likely to draw out a letter!)
