Shouldn’t encourage Bangladeshi Hindus to migrate to India: HImanta Biswa Sarma

“It is true that Hindus from Bangladesh migrated here in the past but they are not coming now. They are handling the present situation maturely and we should not encourage them to leave their country,” Sarma told reporters on Wednesday, stressing that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was working overtime to ensure their safety in Bangladesh.

There have been reports of attacks on the homes, businesses and temples of the Hindu minority in different parts of Bangladesh after Sheikh Hasina stepped down in August last year and fled to India. New Delhi has taken a serious note of these incidents and shared its concerns with Dhaka.

In Assam, there have been a string of protests over the last few months against the attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh leading several organisations like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal to demand shelter for Hindus of Bangladesh in Assam.

On December 30, Rashtriya SwayamSevak Sangh (RSS) pracharak Suman Kumar asked the central government to allow Hindus from Bangladesh to take refuge in India.

On Wednesday, the chief minister said nearly 1,000 people from Bangladesh had been caught in Assam over the last five months, and a similar number in neighbouring Tribpura, but none of them were Hindus from Bangladesh.

Instead, Sarma said, it was mainly the people working in Bangladesh’s textiles sector who were coming to India for jobs in the country’s textiles industry.

“After the unrest in Bangladesh, the textiles industry virtually collapsed there. So the labourers who were working in those industries started coming to India. Many textile industry owners in our country started incentivising them and spent money to import the cheap labourers from Bangladesh,” he said.

“This is an alarming issue because we never detected this much infiltrators in the past. The majority community is more affected in Bangladesh, who are minorities here. We are not arresting them, we don’t want to fill our jails with them, so pushing them back,” he said.

Last year, Sarma said Bangladeshi infiltrators were going to Tamilnadu and other South Indian states to find work in textiles units.

He also expressed concern over China’s proposed dam on Brahmaputra. “If the dam is built, Brahmaputra will dry and the flow will be dependent on rain in Arunachal Pradesh and Bhutan. We have raised this concern before the central government,” he said.

On his recent visit to Bhutan, Sarma said, “We have discussed water related projects, improving road and railway connectivity etc. The Prime Minister of Bhutan has been invited to our business summit and the Bhutan King has assured that he’d visit Assam again.”

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