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The bridge on the Padma, a narrow stream that disgorges into the Ichhamati river to the east, is usually where small clutches of Chatra’s village folks, both Hindus and Muslims, gather in the evenings to spend a few pleasant moments – sip tea or light a beedi – before returning to the routines of life.
But on 6 July, the calm in leafy Chatra and its nearby sleepy villages, some 25 kms from the India-Bangladesh border, was shattered. A 3,000-strong horde of angry Muslims massed at the southern side of the bridge. A few thousand Hindus laid siege to the northern end. The face-off lasted a couple of hours.
A violent confrontation, with potentially tragic consequences, was averted when saner heads among the two communities in and around Chatra under Machhlandpur block of North 24 Parganas district in West Bengal, intervened to find ways and means to “talk things over”, a day after a Muslim mob set ablaze the house of a 17-year-old Hindu schoolboy in Magurkhali village in Baduria for allegedly posting a deeply offensive photograph on Facebook.
Babul Boral, who originally hails from Jhalukathi in Bangladesh’s Barisal district, said:
As an afterthought, Boral wished “a confrontation had happened”. There was nodding approval from his party colleague Gopinath Das, a “son of the soil” Hindu.
More recently, however, Boral has found in the BJP the “real” response to the Muslims’ assertiveness. He said:
While finding steady jobs is a problem that the Hindu immigrants do face, others of the ilk take to more innovative means of livelihood. Take for instance Nimai Mondal, who emigrated from Khulna, which is across North 24 Parganas, a few years before Boral, and took to assisting for a fee, Bangladeshi Hindus to cross over to West Bengal.
An “Indian citizen”, Mondal, who runs a poultry farm and owns a small garments store in Chatra, has not severed all links with his ancestral village in Khulna where four of his brothers continue to live. Mondal, who owns about 2 bighas of land in North Chatra, said:
Mondal’s political allegiance lies with the BJP.
While Mondal has made it good, other border dalals (brokers) have done even better, he said, pointing out the pink-painted two-storey house of Chatra’s “boro dalal” (the big broker), who he identified as Mahananda Mistiri, said to be a Bangladeshi Hindu immigrant.
Thanks to the dalals of Chatra and other border villages in the North 24 Parganas district, the population of Bangladeshi immigrant Hindus grew in leaps and bounds after 1971, continuing the Partition narrative of persecution and immigration.
Organised under the banner of the Udbastu Kalyan Parishad (Refugee Welfare Council), the Bangladeshi Hindus initially sought refugee status. This move did not yield any positive result, though they now see a ray of hope in the Narendra Modi government’s decision to amend the Citizenship Act and conferring on them Indian citizenship.
Narayan Mondal, a member of the local Refugee Welfare Council, who earns about Rs 400 a day working as a raj-mistiri (mason), said:
Over the past few years, several of the immigrants moved away from the risky environs of the rail tracks to purchase small plots of land in the thickly-populated towns of North 24 Parganas, losing themselves in the vast multitudes of people. But most of the “rail track refugees” live on the edge.
The women cook in the shanties or spread out wet clothing on the tracks for them to dry. Unemployed young men idle away time on the tracks.
“Our future is certainly bleak, but if Muslims so much as touch us, we will certainly fight back,” said Bipul Haldar, who lived in Barisal before crossing over the border some 30 years ago, said adding, in reference to the communal violence in Baduria and Basirhat, “okhane jerom Mussalmaner attyachar hoto, ekhaneo tayi hochhe (we faced atrocities by Muslims there and we are facing the same here too)”.
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