The Politics of ‘Push Back’

More than 300 Bengali-speaking Muslims from Assam were forced to go to Bangladesh in the past couple of weeks. The state calls them illegal immigrants. But are they?

- Arshad Ahmed

ON May 27, the Border Security Force, which patrols India's 4,096 km border with Bangladesh, allegedly pushed Korim Ali, a resident of Jania village in Western Assam's Barpeta district, into northern Bangladesh's Rowmari, bordering Assam's South Salmara-Mankachar district.

The 70-year-old Bengali-speaking Muslim man spent nearly two months in Bangladesh, parched and hungry and looking for shelter. After weeks of ordeal, he managed to find shelter in a home in Bangladesh's Kurigam district where the owner helped him contact his family in Jania for his return. Five days later, Ali managed to return home, to Jania, which is over 200 km upstream of the transnational Brahmaputra River.

Although he is back home, he still remembers the tumultuous time spent in Bangladesh. “I would walk without a clue about where I was. I would roam from one place to the other like a beggar, without food and water, for miles,” Ali recalls.

Ali is among the 303 people, all Bengali-speaking Muslims, “pushed back” to Bangladesh. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had informed the state assembly of about 330 “illegal immigrants being pushed back into Bangladesh” in June. “Pushback” is an ad hoc and informal mechanism for deporting alleged immigrants and foreigners to their home countries by bypassing the diplomatic route.

The Bengal-origin Muslims in Assam, who were pushed back into Bangladesh, are from a unique category of citizens in the state called Declared Foreign National (DFNs). The DFNs are individuals declared foreigners by the quasi-judicial Foreigners Tribunals in Assam. These tribunals, according to critics and legal experts, often function like kangaroo courts, and with bias.