Between home, hostility and hard choices

Crackdown on Bengali-speaking 'illegal immigrants', TMC protests, and a language row sharpen the fight before Bengal's high-stakes Assembly polls. Sarthak Choudhury reports from Delhi-NCR's migrant settlements

- Sarthak Choudhury reports from Delhi-NCR's migrant settlements

Rahim, an artisan from Kumartuli in West Bengal, is one of hundreds who leave their homes each year to travel across India in the run-up to Durga Puja, which falls in late September this year. His work, he says, is "sacred": Shaping clay into the goddess Durga, "bringing something to life".

"I feel like the goddess has chosen me for this task. If the goddess herself didn't look at my religion, why should I bother about it? Despite my religion, I am respected wherever I go. This year, though, we are undecided on whether we'd go," he says, his voice weighted by the uncertainty stirred by deportation drives in parts of the country.

The noise around migrants from West Bengal swelled last month after the state's chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, led a march in Kolkata to protest against what she called the harassment of Bengali workers in other states, particularly those ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

"They are calling them Rohingyas. Rohingyas are in Myanmar, not here. Around 2.2 million migrant workers are being targeted.

I appeal to them to return home. They will be safe here," she said.