Bomb-making is probably Bengal’s oldest cottage industry. The British used to bracket it with the sedition that, they said, was brewed with every cup in Calcutta’s dingy tea shops. But never before has Bengali militancy been tainted by any hint of sectarianism. In fact, the late 18th century Fakir-Sanyasi Rebellion, immortalised in Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s novel, Anandamath, united Hindu monks and Muslim ascetics in a common cause against what they regarded as unjust and extortionate taxation.
Hindus, Muslims and Adivasis have joined forces on other occasions too in Bengal’s turbulent history. True, the state has also been scarred by vicious communal riots, while two partitions – in 1905 and 1947 – were both cause and result of serious religious wounds. But the current spate of almost accidental discoveries of bomb-making factories, hoards of lethal chemicals, terror nodules, multiple bank accounts and transfers of money seems to have a terrorist rather than a communal dimension. However, the men and women involved and those whom the intelligence agencies have questioned all have Muslim names. The places they frequent are in Kolkata’s Muslim ghettoes.
The evidence suggests that instead of a Lone Wolf as in the Ottawa shooting, a network of jihadi Muslims with Bangladeshi links threatens the state. Narendra Modi’s warning on the eve of the last Lok Sabha elections to “Bangladeshi infiltrators to pack their bags and leave” West Bengal acquires a particular resonance in the context of grim revelations indicating the state is a hub of international terrorist activity. It has become the playground of organizations like the Jamaat-ul-Mujadideen Bangladesh, Revival of Islamic Heritage (said to operate in several countries), Jamaat-e-Islami, Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh, Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islami (Huji), and Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Toiba. Al-Qaeda and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence are believed to direct them. Can the Islamic State be far behind?
Past violence was directed at Mughal and British rule as well as the infant Indian state which Bengali Communists denounced in 1947 as a stooge of imperialism. Surya Sen and the Chittagong Armoury raid, Khudiram Bose, hanged at 18, and Bagha Jatin are honoured like Benoy Basu, Dinesh Gupta and Badal Gupta who shot dead a British inspector-general of prisons in 1930. Ajoy Mukherjee and Matangini Hazra created a mini-state at Tamluk in Midnapore with its own police, revenue collection, civil administration and even law court. The Kisan Sabha’s Tebhaga movement demanded land for sharecroppers. Santhals, Oraons and Muslim peasants were active in Malda’s Adina (called after the 14th century Adina mosque) and Mach-dhara movements against zamindari privileges. Adivasis spearheaded the Naxalbari upsurge in 1967 but the Naxalite movement embraced thousands of middle class Bengali boys.
Misguided these movements may have been but they were inspired by a concept of public welfare. Today’s incipient violence appears to draw attention to Muslim fanaticism without being directed in any particular direction. It is, however, causing intense embarrassment to Mamata Banerjee’s government which is already beleaguered because of the Saradha chit fund scam, reports of mounting lawlessness, bitter inter-party fighting and murders, and well-documented instances of police and official high-handedness. The Chief Minister’s reluctance to allow the Centre’s National Investigating Agency to look into suspicions of terrorist activity has not done her reputation any good.
Overriding her resistance, the NIA is investigating the possibility of ruling Trinamool Congress leaders with links with extremist Bangladeshi organisations. Banerjee is acutely sensitive to Muslims comprising 26 per cent of the state’s population (double the national average, and up from 19 per cent in 2001). Her attempt to lavish funds on imams was struck down by the Calcutta high court but she refuses to blame Muslims for the recent bomb outrages. “Those who commit offence are criminals but that does not mean putting an entire community in the dock”, she says. “It is like playing with fire. I fear communal riots.”
This is beyond communalism. The problem is not with West Bengal Muslims but with illegal immigration from Bangladesh which is impacting on West Bengal’s (also Assam’s) demographic and political profiles. Badruddin Ajmal’s All-India United Democratic Front, said to be supported by Bangladeshi Muslims, won three Lok Sabha seats in the recent elections from constituencies with large Muslim populations.
There’s no reliable figure for the flood of illegal migrants, mostly encouraged by political parties that seek votes and do not care whether the illegals are Hindu or Muslim.
Illegal immigration is an intolerable violation of India’s sovereignty. It became possible only because of criminally complicit Bengali politicians of all hues. Undeniably, India has to take a sympathetic view of Hindus whose number in Bangladesh has dwindled from 22 per cent in 1951 to 7 per cent. But India’s own security forbids that indulgence being extended to others. For obvious reasons, the “Bangabhumi” formula of a new homeland in a strip of Bangladesh territory is not feasible where potentially jihadist infiltrators are concerned. But illegals must be weeded out and the 4,096-kilometre border with Bangladesh, 2,217 km in West Bengal, made foolproof. India can’t afford a hostile Bangladesh. Even less can it afford another Bangladesh within India.
Sunanda K Datta-Ray
