[Assam] Nehru favoured flow of migrants to NE

[umesh sharma]

Xourav-da,
   
  Really?
   
  The question which you have to answer is that whether nehru favored illegal migration from Bangladesh, Burma or China etc into Assam. Bangladeshi illegal immigrants are all over India --even about 200,000 in Delhi slums and even on Western border in Rajasthan. Did Nehru favor all that. Was that because he hailed from Kashmir from where the Hindus had to run as refugees into rest of India?
   
   
  Umesh

xourov pathok <xourov at yahoo.com> wrote:
  http://www.assamtribune.com/oct0806/at02.html

Nehru favoured flow of migrants to NE
By Prabal Kr Das
GUWAHATI, Oct 7 – “The refugee problem is one of
the two or three problems to which we give first
priority in India at present. This applies to the
utilisation of our financial resources also. Our
development schemes are thought of in terms, to some
extent, of refugees. If Assam adopts an attitude of
incapacity to help in solving the refugee problem,
then the claims of Assam for financial help obviously
suffer.”

The peculiar pro quid pro finds mention in a letter
written to former State Chief Minister, the late
Gopinath Bardoloi by the then Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru. The communication to Bordoloi dated
New Delhi, May 18, 1949 and bearing number 413 –P.M.
was in response to a letter the Assam Chief Minister
had written on May 7 that year.

The letter was found among the dossiers belonging to
the eminent politician late Gauri Shankar
Bhattacharya, who shared close ties with Bardoloi.
Handing it over to The Assam Tribune today, his son
Siddhartha Bhattacharya, senior lawyer at the Guwahati
High Court, attested its authenticity.

Apart from linking financial flow to the issue of
refugees, Nehru in his two-page correspondence
expresses his surprise that Bardoloi was finding it
difficult to deal “with influx of Muslims into
Assam.” He then becomes somewhat tentative and says,
“I do not think there is a permit system in regard
to Eastern Bengal and Western Bengal and possibly no
such system exists in regard to Assam either.”
Later, Nehru hints at devising ways and means to deal
with it.

In his letter Nehru takes note of Bardoloi’s belief
that dearth of land in his state was an issue, and
contends that if availability of land was a problem in
Assam, “it is still less available in the rest of
India which is very heavily populated, barring the
deserts and mountains.”

Nehru’s posture is in stark contrast to Bardoloi’s
concern in protecting the interest of his State when
the Chief Minister is asked, “Where are these
[refugees] to go if each Province adopts the attitude
that Assam apparently has done?”

Subsequently, the Prime Minister makes his position
clearer on the issue and states what appears like
words of finality – “Therefore, we have to absorb
them and make provision for them so that they might be
good citizens. In doing this all provinces have to
help and cooperate and it will do no good to a
province to refuse cooperation in the national
work.”

Nehru took exception to the stance of one minister of
Bardoloi’s Cabinet, “I understand that Medhi, your
Finance minister, is a strong opponent of any further
refugees coming to Assam. I think he is wrong in
this.”

>From the letter it becomes patently obvious that Nehru
favoured Assam to act as host to refugees flowing in
from erstwhile East Pakistan. Some other parts of the
letter highlight corresponding views approving an easy
acceptance of migrants flowing into the region.

On the other hand, Gopinath Bardoloi’s concerns
revealed a deeper understanding of contemporary
reality. In retrospect, no less manifest is the fact
that what once was perceived as “national work” by
a statesmanlike figure has now become the root cause
of a grave problem afflicting the State.

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Umesh Sharma
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1-202-215-4328 [Cell Phone]

Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005

weblog: http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
website: www.gse.harvard.edu/iep
 		
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