Us and Them-The Illegal Immigrants

This post is not about the NRC or the CAA or the wall at the Mexico border. It is a conversation to understand why would anyone choose to be an immigrant.

That too an illegal one?

Have you known any of the boat people, the Rohingya or the dreaded Bangladeshis?

The family of the Syrian boy whose body floated on to the seashore? 

(I could not bring myself to use that photo)

Why would any parent take that risk with their child?

To escape a fate worse than that.

To escape death and torture or starvation or worse if they did not take the risk. Or maybe because they do not have a choice. Like the Rohingyas and the boat people they are just forced out of the country where their grandparents lived and worked and now have no home to go back to.

What makes them different from us?

Chance or Luck

It is sheer chance that we were born on one side of the border, into a religion or nationality or economic class which keeps us out of that cage (for now). Privilege that has come to us by chance. It is privilege that lets us move through cities and countries with dignity, to go abroad and work, to send our children to another country for education, for a job, for business. We have the means, they do not. That’s the only difference.

But we don’t have enough resources for our own. How can we take care of them? If their own country cannot take care of them, why should we have to bear the burden?

Why should Europe open their borders to fleeing Syrians? Why does America have to let the Mexicans in? Why does Assam have to accept the Bangladeshis?

What is the solution? Put them in cages and force them back in to whatever hell they came from?

Look into the eyes of a fleeing immigrant child and her hopeless mother and then answer. Think of what your own exalted religion, your humanity says and then answer.

I honestly don’t know the answer to that. What I know is that separating families, putting people in concentration camps and pushing them back across the border for something anyone of us would have done in their place is not the answer either.

Does any of you have the answer?

The village where I come from

How can we say for sure where a person has come from? And no, I am not talking of the last 70 years. That’s a tiny span of time since humans started immigrating.

DNA mapping and the study of languages show that humans have been immigrating right from the time they existed on this planet. There are some very interesting maps and timelines to show how we spread all over the globe from one tiny speck on the map. And of course, then there are the stories and legends and history and interpretations.

This is what I have re-constructed from what I read and heard about the valley my mom’s, dad’s side of family came from. After Africa, one early branch of humans reached what is known the Indian subcontinent (they came without documentation, but there were no countries back then so we can’t call their immigration illegal). They took a coastal route but manage to cover the country and reach the now Assam-Bangladesh region. Then there were some who moved northwards first, reached the Steppes and then walked eastwards, crossed the North-Indian planes and reached the same area. 

There was no religion back then, but I am assuming they started by worshiping nature and were later Hindus by default. Then came the kings and this land was a part of multiple kingdoms at different points of time. From the known history of the region, we know it was first ruled by Hindu and Buddhist rulers, and then by the Delhi Sultanate, followed by the Bengal Sultanate and then petty rulers of Afghan descent. Islam came here through rulers and Pirs. Masses changed their Gods and their names, but their lives continued to revolve around farming and fishing. 

During one of the phases when the Hindu ruler of Tripura conquered this area, he imported Brahmins from Bengal to change the religious matrix. I guess they would be considered legal migrants by the rulers. Don’t know how the local population felt because the history was written mostly by the rulers.

Now I don’t know which branch of migrants my ancestors belonged to.

What I know is that their homes were a part of East Bengal when the British sliced up the Bengal based on religion. Then they were a part of Assam when the British transferred the district to balance revenues of provinces. Then the district was transferred to East Pakistan in 1947, which later became Bangladesh in 1971, because of religion (and because Assam wasn’t too keen on retaining a slice of Bengal). But a tiny sliver of the valley remained in Assam because of the geographical boundary.

Thousands, who had no role to play in this game of power, were forced to move from one side of the river to another based on their religion. They left behind their homes, their lands and their history and became immigrants once again.