India’s journey as a nation began with the massive task of resettling a humongous number of refugees streaming in from Pakistan and East Pakistan. Refugees worked hard to establish themselves. Competition for land and preservation of culture became triggers for bloody violence between refugees and locals. It reverberated across north India.

A few West Pakistan refugee families were settled in Goran village in UP with cultivable land and plots for house. Skirmishes started as the cattle of the unwelcome refugees grazed on locals’ land. The Supreme Court in Balludin vs UP [AIR 1956 SC 181] records how mayhem followed on February 7, 1952, when enraged locals killed six male refugees in cold blood.

Things settled down for north India as the refugee influx was a one-time event. But north-eastern states are caught in a quagmire of continuous influx of refugees and illegal migrants since the 1960s from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh ), seriously threatening their rich culture and jeopardising the region’s unique demography.

Congress, in power at the Centre and most of the troubled N-E states, oversaw cooking of this dangerous potion for decades. It poisoned the social fabric and filled ‘original inhabitants’ of these states, particularly Assam, with suspicion, apprehending danger to their land, bread and identity.

Facing persecution and displacement by Kaptai Dam in East Pakistan, thousands of Buddhist Chakmas took refuge in Assam and Tripura in 1964. With Assam unable to cope with this massive influx, North-Eastern Frontier Agency (now Arunachal Pradesh) agreed to settle 4,000-odd Chakma families.

The 50-odd families settled in Gautampur and Maitripur in 1966 had swelled to 788 families by 1981 and encroached on 872 hectares in Miao district. When they sought citizenship encouraged by the Centre’s promises, the state government opposed it and asked them to vacate the encroached areas and get back to their allotted land.

The matter reached the SC [Arunachal Pradesh vs Khudiram Chakma, 1993 SCR (3) 401]. The SC rejected their claim for citizenship. It noted that they had been indulging in illegal procurement of arms and criminal activities to constantly trouble the locals.

The 4,000-odd Chakma refugee families of the 1960s had by 1991 grown into 65,000 units in Arunachal Pradesh. As their numbers grew, their relations deteriorated with the locals.

In August 1994, All Arunachal Pradesh Students Union (AAPSU) gave quit notices to Chakmas, asking them to leave the state by September 30, 1995, or face forced eviction. ‘Atithi Devo Bhava’ had transformed into ‘Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge’ (when will you leave, my guest). Assam inhabitants threatened to block Chakmas from entering their areas.

Three years after Khudiram Chakma case, the SC again dealt with the issue as the NHRC sought protection for Chakmas from AAPSU. The NHRC underlined the abject failure of Congress-led Centre and state governments to address grievances of locals and protect the refugees.

In NHRC vs Arunachal Pradesh [1996 (1) SCC 742], the SC said, “State is bound to protect the life and liberty of every human being, be he a citizen or otherwise, and it cannot permit any body or group of persons, like AAPSU, to threaten Chakmas to leave the state.”

Importantly, the SC said, “No state government worth the name can tolerate such threats by one group of persons to another group of persons; it is duty bound to protect the threatened group from such assaults, and if it fails to do so, it will fail to perform its constitutional as well as statutory obligations.”

So true. Did the SC factor in that massive and continuous illegal Bangladeshi migration is irreversibly changing the demography of Assam and other N-E states to gradually undermine their identity and culture? The threat was not as overt as that by AAPSU but its effect is palpable on the ground.

A decade later, the SC realised it in Sarbananda Sonowal-I case [2005(5) SCC 665]. It termed the massive influx as an “external aggression” on Assam, severely criticised the Centre and the state government for adopting an ostrichlike approach towards the problem and struck down the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act. It ordered the Centre to form tribunals under the Foreigners Act to identify Bangladeshi migrants and deport them.

How did the Centre react to the SC judgment which said Bangladeshi migrants had overwhelmed the local population in border districts of Karimganj, Cachar and Dhubri? Vote-bank politics kicked in as foreigners tribunals fastpaced identification of Bangladeshis. The Manmohan Singh-led government nullified the judgment by amending the Foreigners Act to exempt only Assam from its purview.

The SC in Sonowal-II [2007 (1) SCC 174] angrily struck down the amendment. It ordered setting up of adequate number of foreigners tribunals to determine illegal migrants, keeping in mind the March 24, 1971, cut-off specified in the 1985 Assam Accord .

With the Narendra Modi government’s amended Citizenship Act setting a December 31, 2014, cut-off for accepting Hindu, Christian, Sikh, Parsi, Buddhist and Jain refugees as citizens, it is but natural for residents of Assam and other N-E states to apprehend a fresh attempt to legally settle many Bangladeshi migrants in their already crowded lands.

Assam and other N-E states for decades practised ‘Atithi Devo Bhava’ to accommodate refugees. Do not force them to violently ask ‘Atithi tum kab jaoge’? It is now the turn of politicians, bureaucrats, activists, lawyers and democratic institutions, each of whom function from acres of land in the national and state capitals, to practice ‘Atithi Devo Bhava’ by earmarking small portions of their sprawling residences for refugees. That will calm frayed tempers and growing apprehensions in NE states.

