Those were my growing up years in the sleepy hill town Siliguri, located close to the Bangladesh border when I had witnessed an enormous human enfeeblement Multitude of men, women, children and the old, all begging for contributions, gathered at our doorsteps. In no time they spread to each nook and corner of our locality. Such visits were too frequent for our comfort. Diaphanous clothes, partly torn, partly stitched, barely covered them. The presence of a great number of children hinted at the future tragedy in the making A feeling of desperation throbbed in that situation. Unlike in the past, there was no social unrest or a war Moreover, Bangladesh and India are closely knit friends but then compelled there people to come to us for alms they would walk in through the porous borders and would go back before the sunset. To which country did they come and which country did they go for when I asked them, neither they knew an answer nor were they bothered to seek an answer to it. To ask them which religion they practiced seemed a cruel joke and to 1 refrained from any such obscene curiosity. But shortly thereafter, colonies sprouted close to out locality much to the chagrin of the locals. An air of disgust, bordering on anger, brewed behind the curtains though no one spewed venom in public. Those days the communists were at the helm in West Bengal and the allegation that they were changing the demography to suit their electoral needs was on the rise. It had dawned in me soon, what I thought was a walk back to their motherland, in fact, was not in the same proportion as the walk-in. Too many of them stayed back. Such illegal migration still tickles.
Much later, at different points in time, I delved deeper into this phenomenon. Speaking to hundreds of illegal immigrants who have settled here hoping they would once melt in India, I confronted other shades of reality about Hindus in particular. What was also palpable among them was a mixed sentiment for their Muslim neighbours. With great feeling of gratitude, they would narrate how without their support, both financially and organisationally, they could not have celebrated their festivals. In similar vein, they would narrate how their neighbours had saved scores of lives of the Hindus, often risking their own, when another segment of their fellow Mohammedans set themselves to annihilate the 'Kafirs' And yet, they do not ever think to return. Why do they fret at the prospect of going back to Bangladesh to live along with their former Muslim neighbours? Such a question usually brought stern silence as though that was an absurd assertion.
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