Double Standards: Persecuted Hindus From Bangladesh Jailed On Entering India But Christian Refugees From Myanmar Live Freely In Mizoram

Unable to bear repeated attacks, and fearing for their lives, a family of ten from Dhanpur Union Parishad (equivalent to a panchayat samiti) of Kishoreganj district of northern Bangladesh travelled a couple of hundred kilometres and sneaked into Tripura through a porous section of the international border late last week. 

The family, comprising three men, two women, two teenagers and three minors sneaked into India through the Indo-Bangla border in northern Tripura and made their way to Ambassa, the headquarters of the state’s Dhalai district. 

They had planned to board a train to Silchar in Assam’s southern Barak Valley where they intended to settle down. But fate had something else in store for them: a police team received a tipoff about the presence of some ‘suspicious’ people in the vicinity of Ambassa railway station and arrested them Saturday (December 7) afternoon. 

The family was produced before a local court Sunday (December 8) which remanded the seven adult members of the family to judicial custody and sent the three minors to a juvenile home. 

Seventy-year-old Sudhir Sarkar, the family patriarch, told reporters in Ambassa (about 82 kilometres east of state capital Agartala) that they had been forced to leave Bangladesh. 

“Ever since the Sheikh Hasina government fell, attacks on Hindus started. Our Muslim neighbours suddenly became hostile and accused us of being agents of India. Reports of attacks on Hindus in our area and abduction of Hindu girls started coming in. Muslim clerics gave provocative speeches advocating killing of Hindus and confiscation of Hindu properties,” said Sarkar. 

The Sarkar family owned a couple of bighas of farmland that yielded a subsistence income. Shankar Sarkar, another male member of the family, who supplemented the family’s meagre income from farming by working as an autorickshaw driver, said: “We heard that a girl belonging to a Hindu family in a neighbouring village was forcibly taken away and then converted to Islam and married off to an elderly cleric. When the parents complained to the police, a case of insulting Islam was filed against them and they were arrested. That incident convinced us that we could no longer live in our country and had to flee to India. Staying back would mean getting killed and our women and girls being abducted, raped and forcibly converted to Islam”. 

Sudhir Sarkar also said that while Hindus were being persecuted earlier as well, the intensity of animosity and attacks on Hindu has gone up manifold since the new government (headed by Mohammad Yunus) came to power in Bangladesh. 

“We realised that it is now impossible for us to live in Bangladesh. We always had cordial ties with our Muslim neighbours, but now they have turned against us because of all the hate speeches being made against Hindus by the maulanas (clerics) and leaders of the Muslim community. They are saying we have no place in Bangladesh and that we are traitors and all agents of India,” said Sudhir Sarkar. 

The family also received very disconcerting news of Muslims in a neighbouring village attacking a few Hindu families and forcing them to leave after signing over all their properties to them. 

“Three Hindu families of a neighbouring village were attacked and assaulted, and the attackers threatened to kill all the men and rape all the women if the few bighas of agricultural land they owned were not signed over to the attackers. The attackers also took away cash, gold jewellery and other valuables. The two families were forced to flee. We don’t know where they are now,” said Sudhir’s son Shankar. 

Sudhir feared that not only would the male members of his family, including his teenaged grandsons, be killed and their properties taken over forcibly, the women and girls would be abducted, raped and forcibly converted to Islam.  

They sold off whatever household items like brass and bell metal utensils, ceiling fans, a refrigerator, a television set and some other items that they could, but left a bulk of their assets behind. 

“We know our agricultural land and other possessions, including our family house where we have lived for generations, will now be taken over by our neighbours. They’ll easily get the land registered in their names. But our lives and the honour of our women are more precious to us. That’s why we left all that behind and fled to India,” said Sudhir. 

While being taken away to prison, Sudhir said that there is no way they’ll go back to Bangladesh. “We will be killed if we are deported. We’ll request asylum in India. We’re ready to spend the rest of our lives in prison in India, but won’t go back to Bangladesh. Bangladesh is no longer a country for us. There is no place for Hindus in Bangladesh,” said Sudhir.

The family had planned to reach Silchar, take a small house on rent and rebuild their lives there. Silchar has a large number of Bengali Hindus. “A relative of my daughter-in-law has another relative in Silchar and that’s why we wanted to go there,” said Sudhir. 

Though the Sarkars will have to apply for asylum, there is no guarantee that the same will be granted to them by the Union Government. They are sure to be convicted of entering India illegally under the Foreigners’ Act of 1946. The penalty is a maximum jail term of five years. 

The laid down procedure for a person convicted of entering India illegally is deportation after completion of the jail term. That’s a prospect that the Sarkar family is mortally scared of since it will mean facing imminent death. And they have nothing to go back to anyway. 

Contrast with Chin refugees in Mizoram

Around 50 kilometres west of Ambassa lies the state of Mizoram where more than 31,000 Myanmarese nationals--all Kuki-Chin Christians--are being sheltered. 

These Kuki-Chins have been displaced by the fierce battles between the Myanmarese army and Kuki-Chin insurgent groups that have been raging on for the past two years. 

Myanmarese ground forces have been shelling villages and areas where ethnic groups which are fighting the junta stay while the Myanmarese Air Force has been bombing those villages. That’s why thousands have fled that country and sought refuge in Mizoram. 

The refugees from Myanmar belong to the same larger ethnic group--Zo--as the Mizo people and also belong to same religion (Christianity). 

The Mizoram government, as well as prominent NGOs of the state like the Young Mizo Association (YMA), have rightly arranged for shelter, food and even livelihood opportunities to the refugees from Myanmar. 

Not only were the Myanmarese nationals who entered India illegally since last year not arrested, the Mizoram government even refused to heed the Union Government’s request to collect their biometric data. 

The Union Government has assured Mizoram that the Myanmarese refugees will not be deported till the fighting in that country stops and the situation becomes conducive for their return to their country (Myanmar). 

The Union Government has also been providing considerable financial assistance to Mizoram for taking care of the refugees there. 

As a result, the Kuki-Chin refugees from Myanmar are leading near-normal lives in the shelters provided to them, many of them are gainfully employed in Mizoram now or have been provided other livelihood opportunities and their children enrolled in schools.

There can be no quarrel with this humane treatment of refugees who have suffered terribly in Myanmar and would have risked their limbs and lives had they stayed back there. It is only right that they have been provided shelter, food, livelihood opportunities, healthcare, education etc in Mizoram. It is also right for the Union Government to provide financial assistance to Mizoram to take care of the refugees. 

But why is such humane treatment not meted out to Hindus who are fleeing terrible persecution in Bangladesh? There can be no disputing the fact that Hindus in Bangladesh are being attacked, their properties being looted and taken over forcibly, and Hindu women and even minor girls being the victims of sexual violence by Islamists. 

The Government of India itself acknowledges the sad plight of Hindus in Bangladesh and has made it the most important diplomatic issue between the two countries. 

Why, then, are Hindus fleeing persecution in Bangladesh not being treated at par with Chins fleeing attacks from armed forces in Myanmar? 

Why are Chin refugees provided shelter, food, education, healthcare and livelihood opportunities and guarantees against forcible deportation while the same is being denied to Bangladeshi Hindus who are arrested, thrown in prison, their children separated from them? 

Why does the terrifying prospect of being deported to their country (Bangladesh) to face more persecution and even death hang over the heads of Bangladeshi Hindus who have fled to India?

Since early August (when the Sheikh Hasina government fell), more than 550 Bangladeshi Hindus have been arrested by security forces in Tripura. All of the adults among them have been imprisoned while their children have been forcibly separated from them and lodged in juvenile homes.