Some 2 lakh families lose 1.22 lakh
bighas since 2001
Khawaza Main Uddin
Nearly two lakh Hindu families have lost 1.22 lakh bighas of land, including their houses, in the six years since the Vested Property Act was annulled in 2001 to return the 'vested' property to their original owners, according to a research on the issue.
Abul Barkat, a professor of economics at Dhaka University who has conducted the research, says some 12 lakh or 44 per cent of the 27 lakh Hindu households in the country were affected by the Enemy Property Act 1965 and its post-independence version, the Vested Property Act 1974.
At the current market price, the value of the 22 lakh acres of land (one acre roughly equals three bighas) that the Hindu families were displaced from is Tk 2,52,000 crore, which is more than half of the country's gross domestic product, he says.
'This is a man-made problem contrary to the spirit of humanity. We have to get rid of this uncivilised state of affairs to establish a civilised society. Otherwise, we have to face a bigger historic catastrophe,' Barkat insists in the abridged version of his research paper, 'Deprivation of affected million families: Living with Vested Property in Bangladesh', which will be published in its entirety later.
In 2001, the then Awami League government enacted the Vested Property Return Act to repeal the Vested Property Act with a view to restoring ownership of the lost land to many an affected Hindu family. The move was criticised as a 'political tokenism' aimed to appease minority voters prior to the general elections.
While trying to review the impact of the law on the land ownership of the Hindu community, Barkat has found that no list of the people evicted or the quantum of lands grabbed on the basis of the Vested Property Act has been prepared till date.
Instead, politically powerful people grabbed most of the land during the reign of the BNP-led alliance government between 2001 and 2006. Forty-five per cent of the land grabbers were affiliated with the BNP, 31 per cent with the Awami League,
eight per cent with Jamaat-e-Islami and six per cent with the Jatiya Party and other political organisations.
An earlier research on vested properties, also done by Barkat in 1997, painted a diametrically opposite picture of political affiliation of direct beneficiaries of appropriated property — 44 per cent with the Awami League and 32 per cent with the BNP since the former was in power and the latter the main opposition.
In his latest research report, Barkat mentions that the affected Hindu families met with more incidents of violence and repression in the immediate-past five years of the BNP-led government than in the previous five years of the Awami League government.
Political elements, locally influential people in collaboration with the land administration, trickery by land officials and employees themselves, use of force and crookedness, fake documentation, contracted farmers and death or exile of original owners have also been blamed for land grabbing and perpetuation of the 'vested properties'.
Barkat points out that 53 per cent of the family displacement and 74 per cent of the land grabbing occurred before the country's independence in 1971 after the then Pakistan government, following the India-Pakistan War in 1965, introduced the Enemy Property (Custody and Registration) Order II, which was widely criticised as a tool for appropriating the lands of the minority population.
The issue came to the limelight in the form of another research on 'Impact of Vested Property Act on Rural Bangladesh: An Exploratory Study' which was undertaken in 1995-96 and published in 1997 — a move that sensitised the public.
This time around, his research covered the progress since 2001 and used as samples 450 affected Hindu families in 16 union parishads in 16 districts across the country.
In view of the gravity of the problem that has had tragic effects on the demography over 42 years, Barkat acknowledges that it will also be a tough task to establish the rights of the original owners.
More than 60 per cent of the owners and the successors of 'vested properties' are either dead or have left the country, he says.
He also dismisses the 'Hindu versus Muslim' polarisation in the problem and claims that it is an issue created by communal elements and vested interests groups. 'Criminals do not bother whether a piece of land is owned by a Hindu, a Muslim or a Santal; they resort to easy means to loot property,' he adds.
To solve the residual problems of the Vested Property Act, Barkat has come up with a number of recommendations such as identification and listing of such cases and lands, amendments to certain provisions of the 2001 law that hinders its implementation, cancellation of leases of such land to different people for 99 years, and involving citizens' groups in addressing the problem.
He explains that the scrapping of the Vested Property Act in 2001 has not paved the way for its implementation to end deprivation of the Hindu community due to deliberate delay and criminalisation of the political economy.
'The vested property act incapacitated Hindu people in serving the nation, depriving the country of their more valuable contribution. Also the inability to raise protests against the repression by a tiny class of looters implies the weakness of the majority people who are though non-communal,' Barkat observes.
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