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.