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Sons of the Soil and Migration
Pre-independence, industrialized cities saw convergence of people.
Hailing from different regions, speaking dissimilar languages and
wrapped in diverse cultural ethos, they flocked to urban centres in
search of work.During British rule, the work force even crossed the
shores to settle in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Burma (now Myanmar), West
Indies and even Fiji. The migrant had a point or two to prove — to his
family back home that he could fend for himself, and to the boss about
his utility. Migrants and locals worked in harmony even after
independence. Though the framers of the Constitution under Article
19(1)(d)&(e) guaranteed every citizen the fundamental right to
move, reside and settle anywhere in India, no migrant needed to invoke
it.In 1956, the state boundaries were redrawn on linguistic criteria.
This sowed the first seeds of the feeling — ‘locals’ and ‘outsiders’.
Soon, the ‘worker manoos’ transfigured into ‘Marathi manoos’,
‘Bhaiyyas’ and ‘Madrasis’. Lumpen elements, led by political turncoats,
started harping on the ‘son of the soil’ losing out jobs to outsiders.
Exploitation of this perceived deprivation by lumpen elements was
fertilized and nurtured by the vote-bank conscious political leaders,
who blinked at the blatant breach of constitutional provisions allowing
‘bhaiyyas’ and ‘Madrasis’ to migrate and settle in Maharashtra. When
the ruling class for years deliberately forgot its primary duty to
enforce the rule of law — protection of citizens irrespective of their
caste and creed — it is now futile to cry foul over a Thackeray — of
the earlier, or current vintage — who first ignites violent passions
against migrants and then magnanimously pigeon-feeds concessions for
them cocking a snook at Article 19. If governments, through the last
three decades, failed to protect migrants from marauding lumpen
elements in Maharashtra, then it is also true that they sorely lacked
the administrative will to insulate the country from being swarmed by
illegal Bangladeshi migrants. The Centre had in 1971 viewed largescale
illegal migration to the northeastern states from East Pakistan (now
Bangladesh) as ‘aggression’. But, for the last two decades it
deliberately ignored the problem despite tell-tale warnings from a
governor in 1998 and then the Supreme Court (Sarbananda Sonowal Vs
Union of India in July 2005 and December 2006). A month before the
December 1971 Indo-Pak war, that culminated in the birth of Bangladesh,
India’s representative to the UN Dr Nagendra Singh had advocated
widening of the definition of ‘aggression’ to also mean largescale
illegal influx of migrants into a country from its neighbour.Citing the
mammoth Bangladeshi influx into India, Singh had said: ‘‘There could be
a unique type of bloodless aggression from a vast and incessant flow of
millions of human beings forced to flee into another State. If this
invasion of unarmed men in totally unmanageable proportion were not
only to impair the economic and political well-being of the receiving
victim state but to threaten its very existence, I am afraid Mr
Chairman, it would have to be categorized as aggression.’’ Talking
about then prevailing political condition that forced people to cross
over to India, Singh said: ‘‘If this results in inundating the
neighbouring State by millions of fleeing citizens of the offending
State, there could be an aggression of a worst order...’’ Assam has
been, slowly and steadily, inundated by Bangladeshi migrants. When and
why the Centre changed its definition of ‘aggression’ and turned a
blind eye towards this is difficult to tell. Favoured by the
ever-so-sympathetic vote-bank politics, the illegal migrants dug in,
prospered and consolidated their position, in the process changing the
demographic pattern in many areas leading to local discontent and
violent internal disturbance. The present situation, be it Maharashtra
or Assam, is a direct fall out of non-enforcement of rule of law and
constitutional provisions — Article 19 that guarantees free movement
and settlement rights to citizens and Article 355 that casts a duty on
the Centre to protect states against external aggression and internal
disturbances.
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