Fortress India
Why is Delhi building a new Berlin Wall to keep out its Bangladeshi neighbors?
BY SCOTT CARNEY, JASON MIKLIAN, KRISTIAN HOELSCHER | JULY/AUGUST 2011
Felani wore her gold bridal jewelry as she crouched out of sight inside the squalid concrete building. The 15-year-old's father, Nurul Islam, peeked cautiously out the window and scanned the steel and barbed-wire fence that demarcates the border between India and Bangladesh. The fence was the last obstacle to Felani's wedding, arranged for a week later in her family's ancestral village just across the border in Bangladesh.
There was no question of crossing legally -- visas and passports from New Delhi could take years -- and besides, the Bangladeshi village where Islam grew up was less than a mile away from the bus stand on the Indian side. Still, they knew it was dangerous. The Indians who watched the fence had a reputation for shooting first and asking questions later. Islam had paid $65 to a broker who said he could bribe the Indian border guard, but he had no way of knowing whether the money actually made it into the right hands.
Father and daughter waited for the moment when the guards' backs were turned and they could prop a ladder against the fence and clamber over. The broker held them back for hours, insisting it wasn't safe yet. But eventually the first rays of dawn began to cut through the thick morning fog. They had no choice but to make a break for it.
Islam went first, clearing the barrier in seconds. Felani wasn't so lucky. The hem of her salwar kameez caught on the barbed wire. She panicked, and screamed. An Indian soldier came running and fired a single shot at point-blank range, killing her instantly. The father fled, leaving his daughter's corpse tangled in the barbed wire. It hung there for another five hours before the border guards were able to negotiate a way to take her down; the Indians transferred the body across the border the next day. "When we got her body back the soldiers had even stolen her bridal jewelry," Islam told us, speaking in a distant voice a week after the January incident.
Other border fortifications around the world may get all the headlines, but over the past decade the 1,790-mile fence barricading the near entirety of the frontier between India and Bangladesh has become one of the world's bloodiest. Since 2000, Indian troops have shot and killed nearly 1,000 people like Felani there.
In India, the 25-year-old border fence -- finally expected to be completed next year at a cost of $1.2 billion -- is celebrated as a panacea for a whole range of national neuroses: Islamist terrorism, illegal immigrants stealing Indian jobs, the refugee crisis that could ensue should a climate catastrophe ravage South Asia. But for Bangladeshis, the fence has come to embody the irrational fears of a neighbor that is jealously guarding its newfound wealth even as their own country remains mired in poverty. The barrier is a physical reminder of just how much has come between two once-friendly countries with a common history and culture -- and how much blood one side is willing to shed to keep them apart.
India did not always view its eastern neighbor in such hostile terms. When Bengali-speaking nationalists in what was then East Pakistan won Bangladesh's independence in a bloody 1971 civil war, they did it armed with Indian weapons. But the war destroyed Bangladesh's already anemic infrastructure and left more than a million dead, presaging the new country's famously unlucky future. Bangladesh is now home to 160 million people crammed into an area smaller than Iowa; 50 percent of the population lives on less than $1.25 a day, and the country bottoms out the list on most major international health indicators.
As bad as things are, they can get plenty worse. Situated on a delta and crisscrossed by 54 swollen rivers, Bangladesh factors prominently in nearly every worst-case climate-change scenario. The 1-meter sea-level rise predicted by some widely used scientific models would submerge almost 20 percent of the country. The slow creep of seawater into Bangladesh's rivers caused by global-warming-induced flooding, upriver dams in India, and reduced glacial melt from the Himalayas is already turning much of the country's fertile land into saline desert, upending its precarious agricultural economy. Studies commissioned by the U.S. Defense Department and almost a dozen other security agencies warn that if Bangladesh is hit by the kind of Hurricane Katrina-grade storm that climate change is likely to make more frequent, it would be a "threat multiplier," sending ripples of instability across the globe: new opportunities for terrorist networks, conflicts over basic human essentials like access to food and water, and of course millions of refugees. And it's no secret where the uprooted Bangladeshis would go first. Bangladesh shares a border with only two countries: the democratic republic of India and the military dictatorship of Burma. Which would you choose?
India has a long history of accepting refugees, from the Tibetan government in exile to Sri Lankans fleeing a drawn-out civil war. Faced with the threat of mass migration from the east, however, New Delhi has drawn a line in the sand. Rather than prepare expensive and possibly permanent resettlement zones, India began erecting a fence, complete with well-armed guards, in 1986. After the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won national elections in 1998, the program was ramped up to placate anti-Muslim sentiment among the party faithful. The fence grew longer and the killings more frequent. After years of complaints from Bangladeshi politicians, India made promises on several occasions to switch to nonlethal weaponry, but has rarely followed through on them.
By next year, every available crossing point between India and Bangladesh will have been blocked off by the fence. But while tightened security has made the border more dangerous, it hasn't actually made it much more secure. More than 100 border villages operate as illicit transit points through which thousands of migrants pass daily. Each of these villages has a "lineman" -- what would be called a coyote on the U.S.-Mexican border -- who facilitates the smuggling, paying border guards from both notoriously corrupt countries to look the other way when people pass through.
"Entire villages can cross the border with the right payoffs," says Kirity Roy, head of the Indian human rights organization Masum, which together with Human Rights Watch released a bleak report on the border situation in December. No one is likely to manage the crossing without a lineman's help, Roy explains. "If someone tries to sneak past the linemen without paying, they will find them out and tell the border guards to shoot them." An inefficient bribe system, he says, explains how border guards could kill 1,000 unarmed people in the last decade.
The ugly immigration politics on the western side of the fence, where popular sentiment runs decisively in favor of walling off Bangladesh, have made a bad situation worse. The New Delhi-based Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses estimates that there are already 10 to 20 million illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in India. (By comparison, there are an estimated 11.2 million illegal Mexican immigrants in the United States.)
The rise of global Islamist militancy in recent years has worsened the xenophobic streak in India's already dicey relations with its Muslim neighbors, and Indian politicians have been quick to capitalize on it. By 2009, Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram was declaring that Bangladeshis have "no business to come to India." The opposition BJP isn't rolling out the welcome mat either: Tathagata Roy, the party's leader in the Bangladesh-bordering state of West Bengal, has called for lining the border with antipersonnel mines. If the predictions come true for immigration from Bangladesh, Roy says, India's population of 900 million Hindus will have no choice but "to convert or jump into the sea."
The border itself has hardened into a grim killing field. Although border shootings are officially recorded by Indian officials as "shot in self-defense," the Masum and Human Rights Watch report found that none of the victims was armed with anything more dangerous than a sickle, and it accused the Indian Border Security Force of "indiscriminate killing and torture."
Most of the dead are farmers caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. In January, Bangladeshi soldiers told us, six Indian soldiers lured a Bangladeshi farmer named Shahjahan Ali into a swath of no man's land along the border. They stripped him naked, beat him, broke his legs, and mutilated his genitals before throwing him back into Bangladesh, where he bled to death from his injuries. "It's like they are drunk," says the Bangladeshi soldier who found Ali. "Like they are on drugs." Powerless to fire back without creating an international incident with their vastly stronger neighbor, the Bangladeshi border guards can do little more than pick up the bodies.
Felani's death, however, galvanized Bangladesh. Graphic photos of her dead body made the front pages of newspapers across the country, and political parties posted her picture with the caption "Stop Border Killing!" on seemingly every available wall in the capital city of Dhaka. Shamsher Chowdhury, a former Bangladeshi foreign secretary and current vice chairman of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, says, "The fence is our Berlin Wall." The shooting seemed to have given India pause as well. In March, New Delhi once again agreed to strip its border guards of live ammunition, and for once actually did it. For the first month in almost a decade, Indian troops didn't kill anyone on the border.
But by April the Indian soldiers had reloaded, shooting a Bangladeshi cattle trader and three others in separate incidents. It was a bleak reminder that while the fence itself may be a flimsy thing, the tensions that make it into a killing zone are remarkably durable.
COMMENTS:
"Since 2000, Indian troops have shot and killed nearly 1,000 people like Felani there."
This one statement alone demonstrates the sheer bias of this article. Felani and civilians like her have been a small minority of cases who have been killed. Most of the people killed by the Border Security Force on the Indian side have been cattle smugglers, fuel smugglers drug smugglers, human traffickers and gun runners. All engaging in highly illegal activities and activities that cause the greatest harm to the very poorest of the poor, especially in Bangladesh.
Why doesn't this article note how human trafficking of young Bangladeshi girls sold into prostitution in India has been dramatically curtailed due to the Border fence ? How the sale of low quality drugs and the sale of illegal weapons has been curtailed ?
"and how much blood one side is willing to shed to keep them apart."
This statement again belies the real truth of the situation. The Bangladeshi Rifles are notorious for sparking international incidents by firing at Indian Border Police without cause. Till the recent change in government in Dhaka, the Bangla Rifles were regularly conducting unprovoked attacks on Indian guard positions along the international border. This was either done to give cover to smugglers moving goods across the border or to facilitate the crossing of criminals and terrorists from the Indian side over to Bangladesh to find safe sanctuary.
This article's hypocritical tone about "Indian aggression" fails to explain the belligerence of the Bangla Rifles or the fact that Bangladesh has stubbornly refused to demonstrate even a modicum of neighborly behavior by continuously refusing the passage of Indian goods across its territory to Indian states on its other sides or from Indian goods or Burmese oil from meeting each other. Bangladesh has for the last few decades engaged in a policy that was actively hostile towards India while covertly supporting anti-Indian militias, anti-Indian Islamic terrorists and other operations that have been severely detrimental to Indian internal security. The article fails to even note how many BSF soldiers have lost their lives to Bangla Border Guards in unprovoked firing on BSF positions. After all this, do the authors of this article really expect Indian benevolence towards such neighbors ?
The bottom line is quite simply; India owes Bangladesh NOTHING. We do not owe Bangladeshis refuge from natural disasters or economic aid or democratic guidance to solve their political problems and we most certainly do no owe Bangladesh a share of our still nascent economic progress.
In fact it is the Bangladeshis that owe India much for having a nation at all and for coming to their aid to stop a genocide by Pakistani troops.
RAJSINGH said:
> you do know that in many states or assam and West bengal the "illegal" immigrants are now a big voting block and have become influential,
What he failed to mention is that they use their influence to peddle islamic intolerance and extremism. bangladesh itself, like pakistan, is built on the foundation of islamic intolerance and genocide of Hindus. See this site to learn more about it:
http://www.genocidebangladesh.org/
What articles like this imply is that it is perfectly fine for islamic shitheads to kill Hindus and take over their lands, but if the remaining Hindus take proper care of the remaining land and make it flourish with their own hard work, they then have the obligation to let these same islamic assholes into these lands - and for what? So that they may take over these lands too? So that they can inflict yet another genocide on the native Hindus of the subcontinent? The real wonder is not that India has finally begun to do something to stop bangladeshis from taking over India, but rather this that India itself does not try to take over bangladesh. Would any of you have shown the same degree of restraint? I doubt it.
Good article, but needs more perspective
You need to understand the reason why this is a huge issue in India. Immigration of millions from across the border have led to major demographic changes in some Indian states leading to violent movements that lasted for decades. Lets say if illegal immigrants from Mexico become close to 50% of the population of an US state - and if USA and Mexico were both very poor countries with lots of ethnic divisions and conflicts and if Mexico were majority Muslim which had a record of treating their Christian minority very badly, how would things work out? Bangladesh has for decades provided shelter to Islamic militants and other terrorist newworks that have targeted India - they have stopped doing this only recently after a new progressive government came to power. The minority community in Bangladesh- Hindus have been treated pretty horribly by Bangladesh, though things have been getting better of late.
That said, unlike the other comments, I unequivoically condemn the shooting of innocent people on the border and I agree it should stop. So you are making an useful point. Thanks.
A complete lack of historical understanding
Bangladeshi muslims are Indian Bengali muslims who in 1946, claimed that they could not live with Hindus and used street rioting in Direct Action Day and Noakhali, to rape, murder and forcibly convert Hindus. East Pakistan / Bangladesh was carved out of India by muslim rioting.
They reduced Hindus from 30% in 1946 to 10% today, by ethnic cleansing, abduction of women, land grabbing by Enemy Property Act and other acts of terror.
Bangladeshi muslims have formed Eurabia type enclaves in many bordering states of India. And here, they harass the local Hindus by stealing women, cattle, and land.
Illegal immigrant Bangladeshi muslims have already formed islamist secessionist groups like MULTA, trying to slice off a few more districts from India.
Bangladesh gave up secularism in 1975 and Islam is the state religion.
Hindus, Christians and Buddhists from Bangladesh are welcome in India.
As far as Bangladeshi muslims, they have no further rights on India. They made their choice in 1946 and they can enjoy their karma.
Mexican illegals are christian not muslims like the Bangladeshi muslims.
Bangladeshi muslims , living in UK, have made many parts of London into Eurabia.
FP swallows Indian Propaganda whole
It is a shame that US magazines still remain so undiscerning and uncritical of Indian policy objectives and propaganda aimed at its South Asian neighbors. India's border fencing policy with Bangladesh has nothing to do with climate change or illegal immigration. India would be a far worse sufferer of climate change than Bangladesh with the ocean on three sides (i.e. the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea covering India's eastern and western flanks) and the tsunami of 2004 clearly showing that a rise in sea levels would have extremely devastating consequences for India. Bangladesh was completely unharmed by the 2004 tsunami because of the shallow waters on its coastal regions. India will sink long before Bangladesh does in the case of climate change and a corresponding sea rise. This does not mean that Bangladesh will remain unaffected by climate change as cyclones could become more violent and deadly but there is an even chance that such a storm could hit India or Myanmar without ever reaching Bangladesh shores (look at a map).
As for illegal immigration there were only two periods where Bangladeshis/East Pakistanis emigrated to India en masse - in 1947 and 1971. Most of the emigres in these two periods were Hindus and have settled nicely in Hindu majority India without any intention of retuning to Bangladesh. After 1971 illegal immigration to India from Bangladesh has been limited and the overall figure of 20 million immigrants to India is highly exaggerated. If so many Bangladeshis had tried to emigrate to India in the last 30 years then the death rate on the border (from BSF shootings) would be far far higher. It also makes no economic sense for Bangladeshis to emigrate to India. All the Indian states surrounding Bangladesh are far poorer in GDP/PPP terms excepting one - Meghalaya which has virtually no Bangladeshi immigrants. Bangladeshis would also not prefer to go to other parts of India because of cultural, religions and linguistic differences as well as increasing Hindu chauvinism in financially lucrative and wealthy states such as Maharashtra and Gujarat. So in conclusion the argument about illegal immigration to Bangladesh is a fallacious one.
So what is the real reason for India's inhuman border fencing policy with Bangladesh? The obvious rationale for the policy (apart from India's inherent hegemonic tendencies) is preparation for war with China. Under the subservient regime of the present Awami League government under Sheikh Hasina there have been several strategically significant deals already signed or under negotiation with New Delhi such as transit facilities and access to ports as well as other vital infrastructure. These are all intended to help supply the Indian military located in the North East who are presently in a face off with Chinese troops (across the border from disputed Arunachal Pradesh) in Tibet. In the event of war, India could easily access Bangladesh to reach its army positioned in the North East but which is presently limited by the narrow Shilguri pass (or chicken neck) which could be easily blocked during a protracted conflict with China. Having access through Bangladesh provides a convenient alternative route to the North East region. But what has any of this to do with the border fencing policy? The fencing policy has a military objective to fence in Bangladeshis who might prefer to side with China and who could help incite rebellion in the insurgency prone North East states of India in time of war. It is in India's vital national interests to completely isolate and hermetically seal Bangladesh from the North East states. Bangladeshis generally resent Indian expansionist and hegemonic policies (see The India Doctrine (1947-2007)) and could easily find common cause with a sympathetic China. The strategic alignment of Bangladesh under the Awami League with India also has some obvious negative consequences for the country. Bangladesh would be inevitably drawn into a war it does not want and against a country it does not want to fight and has no serious differences with (i.e. China).
In a recent article in PROBE news magazine it was asserted that India was turning Bangladesh into a huge prison through its border fencing policy. It is my assertion that in the event of war India will in fact turn Bangladesh into a giant concentration camp.
FP swallows Indian propaganda claims on border fencing policy
It is a shame that US magazines still remain so undiscerning and uncritical of Indian policy objectives and propaganda aimed at its South Asian neighbors. India's border fencing policy with Bangladesh has nothing to do with climate change or illegal immigration. India would be a far worse sufferer of climate change than Bangladesh with the ocean on three sides (i.e. the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea covering India's eastern and western flanks) and the tsunami of 2004 clearly showing that a rise in sea levels would have extremely devastating consequences for India. Bangladesh was completely unharmed by the 2004 tsunami because of the shallow waters on its coastal regions. India will sink long before Bangladesh does in the case of climate change and a corresponding sea rise. This does not mean that Bangladesh will remain unaffected by climate change as cyclones could become more violent and deadly but there is an even chance that such a storm could hit India or Myanmar without ever reaching Bangladesh shores (look at a map).
As for illegal immigration there were only two periods where Bangladeshis/East Pakistanis emigrated to India en masse - in 1947 and 1971. Most of the émigrés in these two periods were Hindus and have settled nicely in Hindu majority India without any intention of returning to Bangladesh. After 1971 illegal immigration to India from Bangladesh has been limited and the overall figure of 20 million immigrants to India is highly exaggerated. If so many Bangladeshis had tried to emigrate to India in the last 30 years then the death rate on the border (from BSF shootings) would be far far higher. It also makes no economic sense for Bangladeshis to emigrate to India. All the Indian states surrounding Bangladesh are far poorer in GDP/PPP terms excepting one - Meghalaya which has virtually no Bangladeshi immigrants. Bangladeshis would also not prefer to go to other parts of India because of cultural, religious and linguistic differences as well as increasing Hindu chauvinism in financially lucrative and wealthy states such as Maharashtra and Gujarat. So in conclusion the argument about illegal immigration to Bangladesh is a fallacious one.
So what is the real reason for India's inhuman border fencing policy with Bangladesh? The obvious rationale for the policy (apart from India's inherent hegemonic tendencies) is preparation for war with China. Under the subservient regime of the present Awami League government under Sheikh Hasina there have been several strategically significant deals already signed or under negotiation with New Delhi such as transit facilities and access to ports as well as other vital infrastructure. These are all intended to help supply the Indian military located in the North East who are presently in a face off with Chinese troops (across the border from disputed Arunachal Pradesh) in Tibet. In the event of war, India could easily access Bangladesh to reach its army positioned in the North East but which is presently limited by the narrow Shilguri pass (or chicken neck) which could be easily blocked during a protracted conflict with China. Having access through Bangladesh provides a convenient alternative route to the North East region. But what has any of this to do with the border fencing policy? The fencing policy has a military objective to fence in Bangladeshis who might prefer to side with China and who could help incite rebellion in the insurgency prone North East states of India in time of war. It is in India's vital national interests to completely isolate and hermetically seal Bangladesh from the North East states. Bangladeshis generally resent Indian expansionist and hegemonic policies (see The India Doctrine (1947-2007)) and could easily find common cause with a sympathetic China. The strategic alignment of Bangladesh under the Awami League with India also has some obvious negative consequences for the country. Bangladesh would be inevitably drawn into a war it does not want and against a country it does not want to fight and has no serious differences with (i.e. China).
In a recent article in PROBE news magazine it was asserted that India was turning Bangladesh into a huge prison through its border fencing policy. It is my assertion that in the event of war India will in fact turn Bangladesh into a giant concentration camp.
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RAJSINGH
5:06 AM ET
June 20, 2011
such a bigotry and one sided article
this article is so one sided with not proper evidences and fels like a accusation ..
You compared it with US/Mexican border .. but India is not US .. we are a poor country and cannot support 20 million bangladeshi immigrants , you do know that in many states or assam and West bengal the "illegal" immigrants are now a big voting block and have become influential, You should also know that Bangladesh is not Mexico and there are many extremist organization there .. from LET to ULFA , a lot of insurgent s in India lived and trained there ( though the situation is much better now with the present bangla govt.)
you said that Bangladesh does nto respond .. do you ever follow news .. let me give you one example : http://www.rediff.com/news/2001/apr/18bang3.htm
and search more you will find dozen of such articles .. in one case 16 BSF soldiers were killed and then carried like animals by BDR.
The border fence is a necessity and don't try to drum it up as a humanitarian issue ... we are a sovereign country and have all the rights to protect our borders .. just see all the western countries adn how they protect their borders from immigrants ...
I can't believe this article is called "Reporting" , what a shame !!!