India takes steps to expel illegal Muslim immigrants

Calcutta, India - Mihir Kumar Basu hires construction workers for a low-cost housing project on Calcutta's east side. To find cheap labor, Mr. Basu travels about 60 miles northeast of the city to the villages and towns along India's border with Bangladesh. There, illegal Bangladeshi immigrants line up for the chance to make a few dollars a day at his site.

"A lot of the people who work here have come to India illegally, many of them within the past few years," Basu says. "They don't have proper documentation to be in this country, so they're very scared to talk about it."

That's because the Indian government is trying hard to find and deport them. India says 15 million to 20 million Bangladeshis have slipped across the porous 2,500-mile border over the past several decades, settling in border towns as well as in major cities like Calcutta (also known as Kolkata), Delhi, and Bombay (Mumbai).

The government says the migrants, most of whom are Muslims, pose an increasing security threat to the country. Indian intelligence authorities allege that some of these people are acting as agents for Bangladesh-based Pakistani spies and possibly even Al Qaeda terrorists. India has increased its spending on border security by 36 percent to $41 million.

But underlying India's much-trumpeted concerns about national security, many experts say, is a more subtle fear of the demographic changes that are reshaping the country's eastern front, creating majority-Muslim enclaves along the border. Now Indian politicians across the political spectrum are trying to capitalize on increasing anti-Muslim sentiment.

A government report published last December showed dramatic population increases in border areas throughout eastern states like Assam and West Bengal over the past 10 years. In some towns, the population increase was more than 20 percent, almost entirely from poor Muslim immigrants, according to the report.

"In some areas you can't find a Hindu family because the population mix has been so disturbed," says Tarun Ganguly, a former editor of a leading Calcutta newspaper whose research organization, the Center for Social Research, studies West Bengal's ethnic demographics. "There is a fear here among Hindus that they are being swamped by the Muslims."

While top politicians from the Hindu nationalist Bharitya Janata Party (BJP) are spearheading the campaign to weed out illegal immigrants, the effort is winning support from states and political parties that normally oppose the BJP.

That is partly because antiterrorism and border control initiatives are always popular, but also because Hindu nationalism has gained momentum in many parts of India over the past several months - all parties are eager to court Hindu voters. After Hindu-Muslim riots ravaged the western state of Gujarat a year ago, the BJP played the religious card in December's statewide elections and won an overwhelming victory. That victory may have encouraged the BJP and other political parties to cater to Hindu voters, who make up more than 80 percent of India's population.

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