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| Villagers carry airlifted relief supplies back to their homes in Patargata, Bangla¬desh, in the wake of cyclone Sidr last
month. Increasingly severe storms may push populations across borders. Pavel Rahman/AP |
Global warming may heat up conflicts, too
Surviving in a warmer world, Part 6: The worst effects of climate change may destabilize regions that were already shaky. The prime example: Bangladesh.
from the December 6, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
"This is an added stress on a country that doesn't necessarily have the capacity" to deal with it, Mr. Ogden says.
More certainly any increase in migration will increase competition for land, water, and jobs. In India, the border district of Dhubri is already being pushed to its limits. Many of the environmental trends that stress Bangladesh are present here, too. For instance, Dhubri is losing huge swaths of land each year to the wandering course of the Brahmaputra River.
Like many in Bangladesh, Ramzan Ali has lost his livelihood because of it. He squats on an embankment of silt above what used to be his farmland. Today it is under water. Of the four acres he once had, he now has less than one, and that is fallow because of siltation. The family's only income comes from his son, who works in a mill in Dhubri town.
Squeezed by erosion and the arrival of Bangladeshi migrants, other families have had to move upriver permanently – where, ironically, they, too, are seen by the people there as Bangladeshis. According to recent voting records, 99 percent of the residents in the area nearest the Bangladeshi border are migrants.
"Our land is shrinking," says Abdul Hamid Sheikh, standing in a shallow skiff that ferries locals to the river island of Bhasani Char. "If this migration continues, it will affect us, too."
Experts expect the effects to intensify as global warming intensifies, with more Bangladeshis being forced into India.
The fear is that this fate awaits every state in the Northeast. In the wake of the turmoil of Bangladeshi independence in 1971, one state, Tripura, saw its indigenous people consigned to a minority by Bangladeshi refugees. In India, virtually every state has its own lineage of kings, literary heritage, and language. Migration threatens to extinguish local cultures. This has made the people of the Northeast fierce guardians of their cultural identity.
On one hand, it has given rise to numerous anti-Indian, pro-independence insurgencies. On the other, it has created a climate of paranoia about Bangladesh, a country of 150 million people packed into an area roughly the size of Iowa.
For this reason, the debate about Bangladeshi migration here is often based not on fact or reasoned analysis, but "on conjecture and perception," says R.N. Mathur, director-general of police in Assam, the state at the heart of the Northeast – and the migration debate. "The issue is mainly political."
Politicians stoke local fears
And politicians have used it, stoking local fears and heightening tensions.
"This [migration] is a design," says Prafulla Mahanta, a member of the state assembly of Assam and one of the leaders of Assam's antimigrant protests during the 1980s. "Their aim is to convert Assam into an Islamic state."
Police official Mr. Mathur has not seen evidence of this. The Bangladesh border has been a corridor for small numbers of terrorists to enter India, security officials say – a primary reason for the construction of a 2,100-mile fence. But migration and security "are separate issues," he says.
Militants have not found haven among migrant communities, he adds: "They are not using areas of Assam as a base of terror operations."
The depth of the distrust is compounded by the almost total isolation of the two communities from each other. Sitting on his porch amid the primary colors of Dhing's British-era bungalows, D.N. Hazarika says that he does not know what to make of the "many new faces."
"The newspapers are always telling us that they are coming with weapons in their hands, and the government always says that they are up to something," says the former high school principal with equal measures of consternation and confusion. "But I cannot give you any proof."
"We do not know where they come from," he adds. "What is their ambition?"
The divide is not the traditional Indian divide: Hindus versus Muslims. Like Mr. Hazarika, few in Assam draw any distinction between the Hindus and Muslims who have been here for generations. The concern surrounds Muslims who are more Bengali in custom and speech – and who, it is feared, will usurp the Assamese, either by migration or higher birthrates.
At this point, the potential for global warming to add to the trend has not reached the streets. "I have not come across views on this subject at all," says Mathur, the police official.
Memories of killings
But the past offers a window into what happened the last time the Assamese felt in danger of being overwhelmed by Bangladeshis. In 1983, at the height of a six-year antimigrant campaign of protests and strikes, a band of Assamese killed some 3,000 Muslims believed to be Bangladeshi migrants.
For Loknath Das and other former residents of the riverside village of Sutargaon, though, 1983 brings back different memories. It was the year that they say migrants killed Chandra Kanta Das as he walked back to his home alone. Within two years, all the original villagers had fled.
Tonu Ram Das, another displaced resident, points out landmarks in the village: the pond where he fished as a boy; the place where his house stood – now two shacks by a stand of bamboo; his family's farmland, where he harvested rice and jute. At last, he stands gingerly on a small causeway. This is the place where Chandra Kanta Das was murdered, he says.
"I hardly come here anymore," he says. "It is painful because I remember my childhood."
Loknath Das is even more cautious. Seated under the shade of a simul tree, he says: "We don't dare to venture into their village after nightfall."
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