In Noida, Uttar Pradesh, several migrant workers who had come from West Bengal had been living for a long time. Among them were Sonali Bibi and Sweety Bibi from Birbhum district of West Bengal. Hearing them converse in the Bengali language, the Uttar Pradesh police detained them under the “Drive Out Bangladeshis” campaign. Pregnant Sonali, along with her husband Danish and their eight-year-old son, as well as Sweety Bibi and her two minor children, were handed over by the central government to the Border Security Force (BSF). Despite repeated protests by these people, the BSF pushed them back across the West Bengal–Bangladesh border and sent them into Bangladesh.
In this manner, many Indian citizens have been forcibly pushed into Bangladesh and continue to be pushed out. The Modi government ran into difficulty only when a Bangladeshi court identified them as Indian citizens and sent them to jail. Meanwhile, there was considerable uproar in West Bengal over this issue. On the appeal filed by Sonali Bibi’s father, Bhodu Sheikh, seeking the return of Sonali, her son, and her husband to India, the Calcutta High Court expressed a positive opinion, stating that Sonali is an Indian citizen and pregnant, and directed the central government to immediately make arrangements to bring her back to India. However, the Modi government stood by its decision, declared Sonali to be Bangladeshi, and refused to bring her back.
The Calcutta High Court then initiated contempt proceedings against the central government and once again ordered it to bring Sonali back from Bangladesh. Even then, the Modi government did nothing, treating the matter as an issue of prestige. The case then went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court directed the central government to secure the release of the pregnant Sonali Bibi from a Bangladeshi jail, bring her back to India, and ensure proper medical treatment for her.
One of Sonali’s relatives went to Bangladesh and tried to arrange bail for Sonali Bibi and Sweety Bibi. On humanitarian grounds, a Bangladeshi court granted bail to Sonali Bibi. However, her husband Danish, Sweety Bibi, and Sweety’s two minor children have still not been able to leave Bangladesh. After Sonali Bibi and her eight-year-old child returned, the West Bengal government ensured proper medical treatment for her. Sonali is very happy to be reunited with her family in Birbhum, but she remains deeply worried because her husband Danish and Sweety Bibi are still stranded in Bangladesh. Meanwhile, during the SIR process in Birbhum, since Sonali Bibi’s father Bhodu Sheikh’s name appeared in the 2003 voter list, Sonali’s name has also been updated in the new SIR list.
The Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, the self-proclaimed new “Hindu Hriday Samrat” Yogi Adityanath, has now resolved to outdo Assam in promoting this new model of Hindu Rashtra. During the CAA/NRC period in Assam, under labels such as “illegal migrant,” “infiltrator,” or “stateless foreigner,” people were arrested on mere suspicion, incarcerated in detention camps on a massive scale, tortured and harassed, and driven to the point of suicide. Now, under Yogi Adityanath’s leadership, Uttar Pradesh is moving in the same direction.
Proof of this is the recent order issued by the Uttar Pradesh government to all district collectors, instructing them to identify infiltrators, illegal migrants, and foreigners in their districts and to set up temporary detention centers in every district. Identified “illegal migrants/foreigners” are to be sent to these centers and then deported as per central government directions. At present, in districts such as Bahraich, Varanasi, Ghaziabad, Mirzapur, Aligarh, and others, the Uttar Pradesh police are engaged in a witch-hunt-like search for so-called Bangladeshi or Rohingya infiltrators. In this campaign, the UP police are particularly targeting Muslims, especially Bengali-speaking Muslims from West Bengal.
For now, the lapdog media has no other work except hunting for “Bangladeshis” and “Rohingyas” in Uttar Pradesh and using this as a pretext to spread hatred and division. Switch on the TV and one is confronted with hateful headlines such as: “Yogi’s Strike, Panic Among Infiltrators” or “Bulldozer Baba’s Terror, Wrath on Bangladeshi Infiltrators,” and so on. This endless hatred claimed the life of Ramnarayan Baghel, a Dalit migrant worker from Chhattisgarh who had gone to Kerala in search of work. In Palakkad district, saffron goons beat him so brutally on the suspicion of being Bangladeshi that he died. According to the doctors who conducted the post-mortem, they had never seen such brutality—every part of his body was broken. What is more, even in supposedly progressive Kerala, when saffron goons demanded proof of Indian citizenship and beat Ramnarayan, he was not speaking Bengali but Hindi-mixed Chhattisgarhi. Yet, the RSS goons killed him. Similarly, in Maharashtra, Odisha, and several other states, Muslim migrant workers from West Bengal have been killed by saffron gangs in this storm of hatred.
After Bihar, among the 12 states where the Election Commission has implemented SIR, Uttar Pradesh stands out as the state with the largest number of voters in the country. The real objective of SIR is not to identify fake voters but to identify migrant workers/citizens, strip them of their voting and civic rights, and promptly send them to detention centers for deportation—this is abundantly clear from the actions of the Uttar Pradesh government. The Chief Minister has justified this in the name of maintaining law and order, communal harmony, and above all “national security.”
According to the latest SIR figures from these 12 states, Uttar Pradesh has a total of 154 million voters. In the SIR process, the highest number of names deleted from the voter lists anywhere in the country—28.9 million—has been in Uttar Pradesh. Yogi Adityanath and his administrative officials surely know that the United Nations has classified Rohingya refugees among the most persecuted communities and has urged governments worldwide to take special measures for their protection. In any case, the number of Rohingya refugees in India is very small; most are in Bangladesh.
As long as the Awami League under Sheikh Hasina was in power in Bangladesh, the fascist Sangh Parivar had no concern about “Bangladeshi infiltrators,” because the Modi government enjoyed cordial relations with the Hasina government. But circumstances have changed. Since Hasina was ousted from power in Bangladesh and granted diplomatic asylum by the Indian government, the Sangh Parivar and its blind followers have been projecting infiltrators—especially Bangladeshi or Rohingya Muslims—as the cause of all problems in the country. In BJP-ruled double-engine states such as Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Delhi, Bihar, and Assam, all these maneuvers are driven by Islamophobia—hatred toward Muslims and an attempt to isolate them.
In Uttar Pradesh, under recent government instructions, 17 municipal corporations have been asked to identify Bangladeshi and Rohingya workers employed alongside sanitation workers and hand over lists to the police. The Yogi government has even abolished the Christmas holiday on December 25.
While this orgy of hatred and division is underway in Uttar Pradesh, the state ranks very low on the Human Development Index according to official data. Unemployment and poverty are at their peak. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, atrocities against Dalits/oppressed communities, women, and minorities are the highest in the state. Demolishing the homes of the poor, workers, and minorities with bulldozers; allowing upper-caste strongmen’s hooliganism to reach its zenith; and killing oppressed people and minorities in fake encounters and declaring the state “crime-free”—these are the Uttar Pradesh government’s crowning achievements. But none of this is visible to the petty journalists of the corporate-controlled lapdog media who survive on crumbs while worshipping Bulldozer Baba daily.
In Assam, the state government justified detention centers as necessary for securing the northeastern borders. But Uttar Pradesh shares an international border with only one country—Nepal. So which country is Uttar Pradesh threatened by? Relations with Nepal are stable, and Nepali citizens in Uttar Pradesh are not being harassed by saffron goons or the state government. Then why this hateful campaign against Bengali-speaking working people in Uttar Pradesh?
Across all BJP-ruled states, hateful and violent campaigns against Muslims and, more recently, Christians are intrinsic to their Hindu Rashtra project. On December 23, in Raipur, the capital of Chhattisgarh, the police forcibly picked up 120 elderly Muslims—many of them women—who had just returned from the Haj pilgrimage, from their homes at midnight, detained them all day, and subjected them to humiliating interrogation. The Muslim community in Raipur protested against this. Similarly, in every BJP-ruled state, there is a hunt for infiltrators—especially Bengali-speakers—leading to indiscriminate arrests and harassment.
In reality, this violent campaign to crush “infiltrators” under the guise of SIR has a larger objective: to conquer Bengal. With this aim, on the occasion of the RSS completing 100 years, its chief Mohan Bhagwat organized several conferences in Bengal, including public recitations of the Gita. According to him, everyone residing in India is Hindu, and there is no need to declare a Hindu Rashtra—India already is one. Mohan Bhagwat, who reveres Hitler, has even claimed that this time there will be “change” in Bengal and a pro–Hindu Rashtra government will be formed. That is why the political arm of the Sangh Parivar, the BJP, is aggressively targeting Bengali-speaking working people.
Among BJP Chief Ministers, there is intense competition over who can run the most violent Islamophobic campaign. In this race are Himanta Biswa Sarma, Devendra Fadnavis, Pushkar Dhami, Bhajan Lal Sharma, and Mohan Yadav. Vishnu Deo Sai is busy proving himself a “pure Sanatani,” while Rekha Gupta has mastered hate speech. And Yogi Adityanath is running just behind Modi in the race to become the supreme “Hindu Hriday Samrat.” Therefore, even after the Bengal elections, the fascist Sangh Parivar’s primary weapons—hatred, fear, and division—will continue unabated, whether in Uttar Pradesh or in whichever state faces the next election.
