BJP’s bogus theory of infiltration

For months Prime Minister Narendra Modi and sundry Bharatiya Janata Party leaders have been publicly obsessing about Bangladeshi infiltrators swamping Jharkhand hoping to turn its demography into a hotbutton issue in the forthcoming Assembly elections there In the pursuit of their mission BJP leaders have been falsely projecting disputes involving Muslims as evidence of Bangladeshi presence and belligerence in JharkhandI cite three examples from the joint report of two advocacy groups the Jharkhand Janadhikar Mahasabha and the Loktantra Bachao Abhiyan in support of my view The report is based on their factfinding teamrsquos visits to the sites where Bangladeshis were allegedly engaged in ldquoland jihadrdquo and ldquolove jihadrdquoAllegation 1 BJP leader Babulal Marandi in July posted on X that Bangladeshi infiltrators had forcibly occupied a piece of land after assaulting its Adivasi owner The truth Babuji Hembrom of Gaibathan village Pakur district sought to build a hut on a plot of land his father sold to Safruddin Ansari through a gift deed a method adopted to circumvent the Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act that debars nonAdivasis from purchasing Adivasiowned land The two families clashed and Babuji was hospitalised Three Muslims were arrested Babuji told the factfinding team that the Muslims have been living in the village for decadesAllegation 2 Lok Sabha MP Nishikant Dubey and Babulal Marandi in July posted on X that Bangladeshi infiltrators had attacked Hindus of TaranagarIlami village Pakur district sparking their exodus The truth Taranagarrsquos Hindus beat up 17yearold Musharraf Sheikh and his mother Angoori for his mischief of inserting his own image in the photo of a Hindu girl and posting it on social media The police belatedly arrived and rescued the duo Soon a rumour spread that Angoori hadsuccumbed to her injuriesThe next morning Muslims swooped down on Taranagar where they ransacked a few houses Some not all Hindus took refuge elsewhere but they returned after the two warring groups reached a reconciliation A BJP mandal leader based in Taranagar said both Hindus and Muslims have been living in the area for decades No Bangladeshis here eitherAllegation 3 BJP leaders including Dubey claimed that at least 10 Adivasi mukhiya women were married to Muslims in Sahibganj district Hindutva trolls campaigned that the husbands were Bangladeshi who entered interethnic relationships to appropriate their wivesrsquo land even though Adivasi women do not have the inheritance right on their fatherrsquos land Journalist Nolina Minj found that out of the 10 women three were married to Adivasis one to a Hindu and the remaining six to Muslims all localsThe deployment of such bogus tactics is perhaps the only way of spawning fear of Bangladeshis among those Adivasis who grew up between 1991 and 2011 They might not have directly experienced Jharkhandrsquos demographic changes as the share of Adivasis in Jharkhandrsquos population decreased marginally from 2767 per cent in 1991 to 2621 per cent in 2011The BJP largely focuses on Santhal Pargana a subregion comprising six districts for the reason that the Adivasi population there declined steeply from 4467 per cent in 1951 to 2811 per cent in 2011 The BJP ascribes this dip to Bangladeshi infiltrators in contradiction to the Union Home Ministry telling the Jharkhand High Court in September that it is still to be assessed whether the decline has been due to factors such as outward migration low child birth rate among the Adivasis and conversion to ChristianityAnother reason why the BJP spotlights Santhal Pargana is that the share of Hindus in its population is claimed to have declined starkly In 1951 Hindus numbered 2098 lakh and accounted for 90 37 per cent of Santhal Parganarsquos population In the 2011 Census the Hindusrsquo share dropped to 6795 per cent even though they grew 126 per cent to 4735 lakhBut the 2242 percentage point drop in the share of Hindus between 1951 and 2011 is shrouded in ambiguity This is because all Adivasis were counted as Hindu in 1951 though many of them would have been the followers of Sarnaism This skews the share of Hindus in the 1951 population and therefore the precise quantum of decline cannot be calculated It would certainly be lower than 2242 percentage pointsIn 1951 Muslims were 219 lakh and 943 per cent of Santhal Parganarsquos population They grew by 623 per cent to 1584 lakh in 2011 accounting for 2273 per cent of Santhal Parganarsquos population A factor behind the increase has to be the migration of Muslims from neighbouring states particularly West Bengal They are Indian citizens and enjoy the same right as any other community to drop anchor in Jharkhand The BJP projects them as Bangladeshi in order to provide a foe to the Adivasis to concentrate upon rather than recall the misdeeds of the partyrsquos Raghubar Das governmentMisdeeds were aplenty of the Das government of which the prime one was the Bill amending the tenancy laws to allow commercial use of Adivasiowned land It triggered a massive protest that was brutally repressed In Khunti alone more than 10000 citizens were booked for sedition The BJPrsquos concern for Adivasis is hollow their leadersrsquo love for them feigned to capture powerThe writer is a senior journalist and author of Bhima Koregaon Challenging CasteSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper