Bangladeshis voting in India

Lately I have been working on a dissertation chapter about discrimination against North Indian migrants in Mumbai, so for the past several weeks, I've really been very focused on the concept of exclusion. Why don't Maharashtrans want migrants to come to their state and what rights don't these immigrants have that they should have?

But my work isn't entirely about exclusion. The positive end of it is how migrants are also included in society... how they can find creative ways to make their voices heard despite their uncertain status.

I was reminded of this yesterday while reading, of all things, a vitriolic article about Bangladeshis in the northeast of India (the area bordering Bangladesh). It was in a publication called Dialogue, produced by a very nationalist organization. The author aired something that sounds like a conspiracy theory to me: that the government of Bangladesh is quickly sending over as many of its citizens to India as it can so that they will start voting and, through their sheer numbers, force Indian political parties to take pro-Bangladeshi stances. Or even worse, allow Bangladesh to conquer and Islamicize India. (I'm tempted to go into the many reasons why this scenario is ridiculous, but I will resist.  I should say though, that it is well documented that Pakistan has supported Bangladeshi terrorist groups through its ISI).

So amid accusations like this, where does the part about democratic inclusion come in?  Well, it is true that in states like Assam and West Bengal, there are signficant numbers of Bangladeshi nationals that are on voting rolls in India. They can do this mainly because of corruption... if you pay a hefty enough bribe, you can be anyone you want on a state-issued identity card or election card. But I doubt they're using this vote to thwart the Indian government. More likely, they're voting how many poor people in India vote: for the politicians that promise to develop their neighborhoods and deliver concrete goods.

So despite the fact that they're illegal and quite margianilized, they have still found an effective way of making their voice heard. To me, it sounds like a story of a group of people finding a way to get by in the world.

But according to the article I just read, its a prelude to an impending catastrophe: India being overrun by impoverished and Islamist Bangladeshi migrants. Sadly, if you look at more mainstream Indian press coverage, it seems like this view is winning. Its quite fashionable lately to use Bangladeshi and terrorist in the same sentence.

Common estimates of the number of Bangladeshi nationals illegally living in India are roughly 20 million, or less than 2% of the population.  The vast majority of them are very poor labor migrants and people who have fled from natural disasters.