Bangladeshi tag robs 11-year old of her childhood

Courtyard of Kokrajhar Jail Detention Camp is 11-year old ‘Kalpana’s playground and dreaded criminals are her playmates.

Dilip Kumar Sharmabdnews24.com
Published : 11 Sept 2014, 02:20 PM
Updated : 11 Sept 2014, 06:26 PM

She and her younger sister, ‘Archana’, have been lodged in the camp with their mother, who is allegedly an illegal migrant from Bangladesh, for about five years.

Every day, cramped in the detention camp, Kalpana contemplates a life outside the imposing boundaries of the jail, where she will be able to play under the open sky and go to school. And to frolic with a father she has a very faint memory of.

She has not seen him since coming over to the detention camp five years back.

Her father Dilip Biswas is lodged in another detention camp inside Goalparha Jail.

Residents of Kasashila village in Morigaon district of the northeastern Indian state of Assam, Dilip Biswas, his wife Ramani Biswas and their daughter Kalpana were declared foreigners by the Foreigners Tribunal in 2010.

In a travesty of justice, Kalpana’s 6-year old sister is, however, an Indian citizen by birth.

Since there is only a single detention camp for women and children in the state, Kalpana and Archana have been kept with their mother Ramani in Kokrajhar Jail Detention Camp.

This family is just one of the many who have been tagged as Bangladesh nationals.

According to a statistic provided by Assam government to state assembly on Feb 12 this year, there are 130 Hindu illegal migrants from Bangladesh lodged in the state’s three detention camps in Goalparha, Kokrajhar and Silchar.

On the other hand, as per an official estimate, the number of Bengali Hindus who have illegally crossed over from Bangladesh into Assam exceeds more than 100,000.

Organisations like All Assam Bengali Youth Students’ Federation have been demanding immediate release of these “Bengali Hindu foreigners” from detention camps and granting them Indian citizenship through appropriate ordinances.

This appeal has also caught the social media’s attention. Most of those participating in the debate are in support of granting Indian citizenship to the Hindu Bengali refugees who have been “forced to migrate” to Assam from Bangladesh.

The demand has got a fresh momentum after Narendra Modi became the prime minister as during election campaigns in Assam he had promised to compassionately look into the plight of Hindu Bengali refugees.

In a poll rally in the southern Assam town of Silchar, he had promised that if BJP was voted to power, it would close down the detention camps in Assam in which persons declared by foreigners tribunals are lodged as it was a violation of human rights.

He had said that if a Hindu was troubled in any country, he or she could come and take shelter in India.

However, the BJP made it clear that only Assam would not take the burden of providing shelter to all Bangladeshi Hindus, who had to come to the state due to alleged religious persecution in Bangladesh.

All the states of the country should shoulder the responsibility of rehabilitating these people, the party said.

The civil society has also welcomed the Indian home ministry's move to create a task force to grant Indian citizenship to Hindu refugees from Bangladesh.

All Assam Bengali Youth Students’ Federation chief advisor Shadev Das was of the opinion that people's faith in the Modi government had been reinforced following its decision to constitute the task force.

Referring to Prime Minister Modi's speech that human rights were being violated in the detention camps, he said there was an urgent need to immediately release all Bengali Hindus to ensure their children could have a normal childhood and get a good education.

Children in detention camps were often deprived of their basic rights, he added.

Bengali Hindu leader Das also expressed hope that children like Kalpana and Archana, who were forced to spend their lives amidst scanty amenities, would be immediately released by the government of India keeping their future in mind.

An advocate by profession, Das even claimed that detention camp inmates, Dilip Biswas and his family members were Indian citizens, who could not prove their claim in court despite having sufficient documents.

The matter is now pending in the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, the Assam government recently took a Cabinet decision granting asylum to the persons who had fled religious persecution and discrimination and taken refuge in India on humanitarian grounds.

State regional political party Asom Gana Parishad and other social organisations like All Assam Students' Union (AASU) and Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti are, however, opposing this decision.

AASU adviser Samujjal Bhattacharyya says that the state government cannot take any decision which violates the provisions of the Assam Accord.

"Our stand is clear that anyone, Hindu or Muslim or from any other religion, who have entered the state from Bangladesh after midnight of March 24, 1971 is an illegal migrant and should be deported," he said, while talking to reporters.