Opinion | The 'Real' Bengali: On Migrant Politics In Bengal And Assam

A controversy is brewing, which, some political commentators assume, may influence the sundry 'bhadralok' in the upcoming assembly elections in West Bengal.

The state, especially since 1977, has stood out on the country's political map like the tiny Gaulish village imagined by Rene Goscinny in his Asterix series. For most of its political history, West Bengal has been ruled by parties opposed to the Centre. There have been occasions when the conflict has been intense, even hostile. Rarely have those in power in Kolkata considered a Union government "friendly" - rarely, because there have been brief spells of camaraderie.

Now, when state assembly elections are expected in March-April 2026, "Bengali pride" seems to be the main ingredient in the political cauldron being stirred by Trinamool Congress (TMC) druids. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has exhorted her party members to continue the "movement" against the detention of Bengali-speaking migrant workers in states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). But will that be enough to fend off the latter's strong nationalist appeal?

Mamata's lieutenant-turned-arch-rival and now Leader of Opposition in the state assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, has alleged that these protests are a smokescreen for hiding administrative controversies. He has accused the government of trying to shift focus from corruption, the lack of safety and security of citizens, and other burning issues. Adhikari has also blamed the TMC of harbouring "Bengali-speaking Rohingya" in West Bengal to buttress its vote bank.

The Influx From Across

Meanwhile, Banerjee has referred to the Assam government's notice to at least two people residing in her state. One of them, a farmer from West Bengal's Cooch Behar district, received a notice late last year from the Assam Foreigners Tribunal. 

The allegation was followed by a rebuttal from Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma. He pointed out in a post on X, "...the people of Assam - especially Hindus - are becoming a hopeless minority in our own land. All this has happened over a span of just 60 years."

Incidentally, assembly elections are due in Assam at the same time as West Bengal. For long, infiltration has been an issue that has been constantly raised by the two states. Concerns are voiced over Bengali-speaking immigrants squatting on land owned by the state or by its indigenous people.

Beginning 1979, Assam witnessed a tumultuous period that saw students and the intelligentsia taking to the streets. It was aimed to address the political, cultural, and economic concerns of Assamese people over large-scale illegal immigration into the state. Six years later, on August 15, 1985, the Assam Accord was signed in New Delhi by the Union and state governments, and the leaders of the movement.

Apart from the social, cultural, and political impacts it made, the framework established by the Accord underpins the National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercises.

As is now, then, too, the NRC exercise in Assam had drawn flak from the TMC, when in early 2018, its MP, Sougata Ray, alleged that the process was a "conspiracy to drive out Bengali-speaking people from Assam".

Interestingly, way back in May 2005, DMK's S. Regupathy, the then Minister of State for Home Affairs in the Manmohan Singh government, had said in the Rajya Sabha: "The Government proposes to prepare a National Register of Indian Citizens and issue Multipurpose National Identity Cards to the citizens of the country". He was answering a question on whether there was a proposal to identify "illegal Bangladeshi migrants on the basis of separate identity cards and a pilot project for such door-to-door verification is already in progress...".

Going By Numbers...

Based on Census figures of 2001 and 2011, a back-of-the-envelope calculation finds that the Assamese-language population grew by about 16%, yet its share in Assam's total population dipped by 0.42 percentage points in the decade. In contrast, Bengali speakers expanded nearly 23% in absolute terms, lifting their statewide share by 1.37 points between 2001 and 2011.

However, it needs mention here that the Census of India, 1911, Volume III, Assam, in para 100 (pages 96-97), stated, "The language of the large foreign population is often returned as Bengali, and most of the aboriginal tribes in the plains are bilingual and are just as likely to return Assamese for their mother tongue as their own language." It also quoted an incident from Lakhimpur, where enumerators "entered the parents as speaking Hindi and their infant born in Lakhimpur as speaking Assamese". They, agreed the document, were just following "a rule of thumb".

It is difficult to identify illegal immigrants given the fact that the state was part of the Bengal Presidency under British colonial rule, hosting several Bengali-speaking Hindu and Muslim families. 

But geographically, due to its location, Assam did witness an influx of refugees during the partition of India (1947) and after the creation of Bangladesh (1971). Even today, undocumented immigrants, with the help of touts, manage to slip through the porous border and even organise documents to prove Indian identity, as many reports claim.

The Brahma Committee Report, submitted in January 2018, had also mentioned the risks to the indigenous people of Assam from illegal Bangladeshi immigration into the state. The committee, headed by former Chief Election Commissioner Hari Shankar Brahma, was formed to address the land rights and encroachment faced by the state's indigenous people.

The Way We Speak

Moving West, the story repeats in West Bengal, where allegations against squatters come from the state's border districts along Bangladesh. The BJP accuses the TMC of appeasing "nearly 40%" of West Bengal's minority population for electoral advantage. According to the Census of 2011, Muslims comprised about 27% of the state's population then. 

Again, the history and geography of West Bengal is such that identifying Bangladeshi infiltrators poses a challenge. 

However, despite the similarities, there are differences in the languages spoken in Bangladesh and India. It even differs from region to region within the countries. In his landmark classification, linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji has identified the broad regional groups, each with its own morphological and phonetic profile. Bengali may be the official language in Bangladesh, but there, it has words drawn from Arabic and Persian. For example, in West Bengal, father is usually 'baba', but in Bangladesh, it is generally 'abbu'; the mother's sister here is addressed as 'maasi', unlike 'khala' on the other side.

The pronunciation and diction vary, too. However, much like what's mentioned in the Census 2001 documents on Assam, an offspring of a migrant may speak Bengali as spoken in West Bengal. For a Bengali-speaking Indian, the language may be easy to identify in a first-generation immigrant. For a trained ear, the diction of even a second-generation immigrant may be decipherable.

However, electoral and political interests leave little room for such extensive exercises to determine infiltrators. The health of the nation depends on addressing this complex issue without pride, prejudice, or interests in short-term gains.

(The author is a senior journalist)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author