BJP’s bogus theory of infiltration

Union Minister and senior BJP leader Amit Shah with Jharkhand BJP President Babulal Marandi at the release of the party’s election manifesto for the upcoming Assembly elections, in Ranchi, on November 3. Pic/PTI

For months, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and sundry Bharatiya Janata Party leaders have been publicly obsessing about Bangladeshi infiltrators swamping Jharkhand, hoping to turn its demography into a hot-button issue in the forthcoming Assembly elections there. In the pursuit of their mission, BJP leaders have been falsely projecting disputes involving Muslims as evidence of Bangladeshi presence, and belligerence, in Jharkhand.

I cite three examples from the joint report of two advocacy groups, the Jharkhand Janadhikar Mahasabha and the Loktantra Bachao Abhiyan, in support of my view. The report is based on their fact-finding team's visits to the sites where Bangladeshis were allegedly engaged in "land jihad" and "love jihad."

Allegation 1: BJP leader Babulal Marandi, in July, posted on X that Bangladeshi infiltrators had forcibly occupied a piece of land after assaulting its Adivasi owner. The truth: Babuji Hembrom, of Gaibathan village, Pakur district, sought to build a hut on a plot of land his father sold to Safruddin Ansari through a gift deed, a method adopted to circumvent the Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act that debars non-Adivasis from purchasing Adivasi-owned land. The two families clashed, and Babuji was hospitalised. Three Muslims were arrested. Babuji told the fact-finding team that the Muslims have been living in the village for decades.

Allegation 2: Lok Sabha MP Nishikant Dubey and Babulal Marandi, in July, posted on X that Bangladeshi infiltrators had attacked Hindus of Taranagar-Ilami village, Pakur district, sparking their exodus. The truth: Taranagar's Hindus beat up 17-year-old Musharraf Sheikh and his mother Angoori for his mischief of inserting his own image in the photo of a Hindu girl and posting it on social media. The police belatedly arrived and rescued the duo. Soon, a rumour spread that Angoori had
succumbed to her injuries.

The next morning, Muslims swooped down on Taranagar, where they ransacked a few houses. Some, not all, Hindus took refuge elsewhere, but they returned after the two warring groups reached a reconciliation. A BJP mandal leader, based in Taranagar, said both Hindus and Muslims have been living in the area for decades. No Bangladeshis here, either.

Allegation 3: BJP leaders, including Dubey, claimed that at least 10 Adivasi mukhiya women were married to Muslims in Sahibganj district. Hindutva trolls campaigned that the husbands were Bangladeshi who entered inter-ethnic relationships to appropriate their wives' land, even though Adivasi women do not have the inheritance right on their father's land. Journalist Nolina Minj found that out of the 10 women, three were married to Adivasis, one to a Hindu, and the remaining six to Muslims, all locals.

The deployment of such bogus tactics is perhaps the only way of spawning fear of Bangladeshis among those Adivasis who grew up between 1991 and 2011. They might not have directly experienced Jharkhand's demographic changes as the share of Adivasis in Jharkhand's population decreased marginally from 27.67 per cent in 1991 to 26.21 per cent in 2011.

The BJP largely focuses on Santhal Pargana, a subregion comprising six districts, for the reason that the Adivasi population there declined steeply from 44.67 per cent in 1951 to 28.11 per cent in 2011. The BJP ascribes this dip to Bangladeshi infiltrators, in contradiction to the Union Home Ministry telling the Jharkhand High Court in September that it is still to be assessed whether the decline has been due to factors such as outward migration, low child birth rate among the Adivasis, and conversion to Christianity.

Another reason why the BJP spotlights Santhal Pargana is that the share of Hindus in its population is claimed to have declined starkly. In 1951, Hindus numbered 20.98 lakh and accounted for 90. 37 per cent of Santhal Pargana's population. In the 2011 Census, the Hindus' share dropped to 67.95 per cent, even though they grew 126 per cent to 47.35 lakh.

But the 22.42 percentage point drop in the share of Hindus between 1951 and 2011 is shrouded in ambiguity. This is because all Adivasis were counted as Hindu in 1951, though many of them would have been the followers of Sarnaism. This skews the share of Hindus in the 1951 population and, therefore, the precise quantum of decline cannot be calculated. It would certainly be lower than 22.42 percentage points.

In 1951, Muslims were 2.19 lakh and 9.43 per cent of Santhal Pargana's population. They grew by 623 per cent to 15.84 lakh in 2011, accounting for 22.73 per cent of Santhal Pargana's population. A factor behind the increase has to be the migration of Muslims from neighbouring states, particularly West Bengal. They are Indian citizens, and enjoy the same right as any other community to drop anchor in Jharkhand. The BJP projects them as Bangladeshi in order to provide a foe to the Adivasis to concentrate upon, rather than recall the misdeeds of the party's Raghubar Das government.

Misdeeds were aplenty of the Das government, of which the prime one was the Bill amending the tenancy laws to allow commercial use of Adivasi-owned land. It triggered a massive protest that was brutally repressed. In Khunti alone, more than 10,000 citizens were booked for sedition. The BJP's concern for Adivasis is hollow, their leaders' love for them feigned to capture power.

The writer is a senior journalist and author of Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste

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