Poll rhetoric casts shadows on Delhi's Bengali migrants

Afroza Khatun's makeshift home in south Delhi's Nizamuddin Basti is a patchwork of desperation and ingenuity.

- Jignasa Sinha and Dhrubo Jyoti

NEW DELHI: A sheet of corrugated tin separates an already cramped room into two pigeonholes where neither sunlight nor the haunting qawwalis wafting from the dargah next door are permitted to enter. The roof is a precarious arrangement of tin, tarpaulin, and occasional concrete slab, often sagging under the weight of monsoon water or accumulated debris and waste. Outside, electrical wires hug buildings like desperate lifelines crisscrossing structures. Khatun doesn't own any curtains but a line of faded fabrics creates an illusion of a canopy. A domestic worker, she has been saving up to buy a cotton curtain to hang on what she calls her front door. Some day.

This winter, though, hopes of a more dignified life evaporated as Khatun saw with trepidation the police march through the basti with authorities in tow, demanding to see paperwork from many of her neighbours and taking people away at the slightest hint of suspicion. Her two children were puzzled by the sudden buzz but Khatun, from Malda district in West Bengal, was not surprised.

"Amra Bangali toh (We're Bengalis, no). Someone must have called us Bangladeshi again," she said. Khatun has now stitched inner pockets in her blouse, and in her children's clothes where they carry their Aadhaar cards all the time. Familiar with the biases that come from the confluence of her appearance, faith and tongue, Khatun is not complaining. "We have our cards in one place. We are lucky," she said.