A peek into Bangladesh through the integrated check post in West Bengal at the Petrapole-Benapole border shows that a mural of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, which was visible from the Indian side before August 5, has been whitewashed. The flag of Bangladesh unfurls where the mural of Rahman, the founding leader of Bangladesh who has now fallen out of favour, used to be.
Change is visible not only in Bangladesh, but also in India. It is early December. Trucks pass by as usual and people can be heard bargaining with transporters, but the buzz is drowned by slogans of ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ and ‘Jai Shri Ram’.
Anjuna Begum, a Bangladeshi national, is trying to cross the border. Many of her relatives married Indians and stay in West Bengal, so she often visits India. “I heard rumours that the border may be sealed. But our lives cut across the border,” Begum says, as she checks her belongings.
As hundreds of people cross over, thousands of saffron-clad men gather at the spot in Petrapole to protest against the attack on Hindus in Bangladesh and demand the release of Chinmoy Krishna Das, a monk from ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness), who was arrested in Bangladesh in November.
By afternoon, the Leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, arrives and releases saffron balloons in the air. In his speech, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader threatens to stop all trade between India and Bangladesh through Petrapole if the ISKCON monk is not released.
Just five weeks earlier, Adhikari had visited Petrapole with Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who inaugurated a new passenger terminal and Maitri Dwar (friendship gate). Shah had said that trade between India and Bangladesh had increased by 64% between 2016-17 and 2023-24. He had also pointed out that 70% of India’s total trade (₹30,000 crore) with Bangladesh through land is via Petrapole and stressed that the new infrastructure will increase the passenger capacity to 25,000 daily.
Hindu groups protest against the attacks on minorities in Bangladesh.
| Photo Credit:
Debasish Bhaduri
When Adhikari threatened an economic blockade of Bangladesh at Petrapole, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee urged the Union government to take up the matter of attacks on minorities in Bangladesh with the United Nations, so that peacekeeping missions may be deployed. Ever since the West Bengal unit of the BJP and Hindutva groups began protesting against the treatment of Hindus in Bangladesh, Banerjee has been claiming that this is a bilateral issue that should be dealt with by the Union government.
Tourists go back home
Among the most popular spots for Bangladeshi tourists in Kolkata is located in the centre of the city, just a couple of kilometres from the State Assembly. Every morning, air-conditioned buses with ‘Destination Dhaka’ written on them line up at Sudder Street, Free School Street, Colin Street, and Marquis Street in central Kolkata, to take tourists back home across the border.
By the end of November and early December, as reports of violence against minorities in Bangladesh piled up, and protests erupted in West Bengal, frightened Bangladeshi nationals started leaving the area, popularly called ‘mini-Bangladesh’ by the locals. Many of them were receiving frantic calls from home, given the now-strained ties between India and Bangladesh.
On December 2, in response to a Lok Sabha question by BJP MP Jagannath Sarkar, the Ministry of Tourism informed Parliament that the number of foreign tourists from Bangladesh in 2023 was 21.19 lakh and 12.85 lakh until August 2024. The drop in the number of Bangladeshi tourists was 20.26% in July and 38.08% in August compared to the same month of the last year, the Ministry said.
Montosh Sarkar, who runs several hotels and travel firms on Marquis Street, is worried. “About 90% of our hotels are generally occupied by people from Bangladesh; now it is down to 5%. I have more than 35 employees and their families to feed,” he says. Sarkar adds that there are about 150 registered hotels in the area which are dependent on Bangladeshi nationals. The situation is likely to worsen if political tensions do not ease and the Indian government does not grant visas to Bangladeshi nationals, he says.
Md Alauddin, 38, who runs the Marquis Calcutta Guest House on Marquis Street, is keen to show how he has transformed an old dilapidated building into a guest house. “There are 13 rooms and only three are occupied by Bangladeshi nationals now. In August, the business was affected, but now the impact is even worse. The movement of people should not stop,” he says.
Alauddin emphasises that hotel operators go the extra mile in ensuring the safety and security of people from neighbouring countries, such as by installing CCTV cameras. He then barges into the room of Sadiqullaqh Mirsalim, a resident of Dhaka, without knocking. “He is like my brother and will not mind,” Alauddin says, smiling, as he introduces his guest from Dhaka.
Mirsalim is on a medical visa and plans to stay for a month at the guest house. “We don’t consider India as a foreign country,” he says. “We get everything here. If there is a marriage in the family, people come to shop here.”
Asked about the political rhetoric, Mirsalim says, “How can we dislike India? This country helps us in so many ways.”
Thousands of shops in the area and in the adjoining British-era New Market complex primarily cater to Bangladeshis. Travel agents, garment sellers, traders dealing in spices, and restaurant owners are all counting their losses and hoping that the situation will change.
The ripple effect
The impact is not limited to trade in central Kolkata; it cuts across sectors, including health. For decades, patients from Bangladesh have come to hospitals in Kolkata for treatment. Tour operators say the number of visas granted to Bangladeshi citizens by the Indian High Commission has dropped, affecting medical tourism.
The fast-deteriorating ties between the two countries has clearly aggravated the situation. A little-known 130-bed hospital in Kolkata, the J.N. Ray Hospital, said that it would not treat patients from Bangladesh. Though it is well known that a prominent BJP leader in Kolkata owns a stake in the private hospital, the remarks created panic for Bangladeshi patients visiting Kolkata.
However, other private hospitals in Kolkata say they have not changed their policy. “Every patient deserves equal care, regardless of nationality or background,” says Rupak Barua, Managing Director and CEO, Woodlands Multispecialty Hospital. He adds that the number of outpatient department patients from Bangladesh has fallen by 60% in the last four months at Woodlands.
Sudipta Mitra, CEO of Peerless Hospitals, says on a regular day, the hospital receives around 150 outpatients from Bangladesh and 25 admissions. “The number of Bangladeshi patients has now reduced due to visa issues, but when they come back, we will treat them just as we treat other patients,” he says.
With Bangladeshi patients in Kolkata’s private hospitals dropping by 60% to 80%, several hospitals in Kolkata are rescheduling the dates for surgery and other procedures for patients from the neighbouring country.
An eye for eye
The political developments have also brought religious organisations, monks, and Hindutva organisations into the limelight.
Protesters including Radharaman Das, vice president of the ISKCON Kolkata Centre demand the release of Chinmoy Krishna Das in Bangladesh.
| Photo Credit:
Debasish Bhaduri
Journalists would visit the ISKCON Centre, located in the posh neighbourhood of south Kolkata, only during the annual Rath Yatra festival. But since November 25, when a monk of the order was arrested in Bangladesh, Radharaman Das, the vice president of the Kolkata Centre, has been giving interviews regularly to the media.
Seated in his office on the second floor, Das explains before TV cameras why he has advised ISKCON monks in Bangladesh not to wear saffron or tilaks. “We have hundreds of centres and thousands of monks in Bangladesh. ISKCON has been a target ever since the Sheikh Hasina regime fell,” he says. But Das admits that he is receiving second-hand information and that telephone networks don’t work most of the time in Bangladesh.
Monks from other orders, and Hindutva organisations, have also been organising protests across West Bengal. Kartik Maharaj, of the Bharat Sevashram order from Beldanga, has been seen with Adhikari at several protests. The Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha, led by Chandrachud Goswami, has been going to hotels and shops in Kolkata asking them to boycott products and people from Bangladesh. Three or four people of the group burned products from Bangladesh, especially potato chips, which are quite the rage in markets in Kolkata.
The Bangladesh Deputy High Commission has became a popular protest spot. A mural of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on the outer wall of the Deputy High Commission has been covered by cloth. Security has been stepped up at the venue after protests by Hindutva groups on November 28 turned violent — protesters broke barricades and burnt an effigy of Mohammad Yunus, the Chief Advisor to the Government of Bangladesh.
Clashes erupt outside the Bangladesh Deputy High Commission in Kolkata where Hindu religious groups demanded the release of Chinmoy Krishna Das.
| Photo Credit:
Debasish Bhaduri
By the second week of December, the Trinamool leadership started reacting to reports. Every remark made by politicians in Bangladesh found a reaction from politicians in West Bengal. Both Banerjee and Adhikari demanded that the Indian government intervene in Bangladesh even as India’s Foreign Secretary, Vikram Misri, visited the country on December 9 for the first time after the fall of the Sheikh Hasina regime.
Days after Bangladesh National Party leader Ruhul Kabir Rizvi said in Dhaka that if India claims Chittagong, Bangladesh will occupy Bengal, Bihar, and Odisha, Banerjee said, “You will take all this and we will sit and eat lollipops?” When Rizvi burnt sarees from India in Bangladesh, Hindutva organisations set Dhakai sarees from Bangladesh on fire in Kolkata and Durgapur.
Life comes to a halt
Along the border with Bangladesh, the Border Security Force has been pushed to the zero line in at least three battalions of Murshidabad. Of the 4,096 kilometre-long border with Bangladesh, West Bengal shares 2,216 km.
The heightened activity at the border, the war of words, threats of economic blockade, and the burning of imported goods makes Pabitra Sarkar, 87, sad. “Both Bengals (West Bengal and Bangladesh) were inheritors of the composite culture legacy of undivided Bengal. Everything about our culture — our language and all the songs of Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam — are part of our shared history,” says the former Vice Chancellor of Rabindra Bharati University.
The academic, who was born in Dhaka, says he was in that city when the Sheikh Hasina regime fell in August this year. “My friends there kept me protected in August 2024. I have been to Bangladesh 100-150 times. Bangladeshis are such welcoming people,” he says. Sarkar is concerned that extremists are gaining ground in Bangladesh.
Academics, artists, publishers, and filmmakers are also upset. Bangladeshi publishers have not confirmed whether they will come to the Kolkata International Book Fair in January 2025. There are hardly any Bangladeshi filmmakers participating at the Kolkata International Film Festival. Clubs at Kolkata Maidan, such as the East Bengal club, have issued statements against the “systemic targeting of minorities” in Bangladesh. Many supporters of the East Bengal Club trace their ancestry to the country.
While the strain in relations peaked in the last week of November, disruptions in the movement of people and goods began in July, when the bus and railway services were suspended. The two trains running between West Bengal and Bangladesh were halted on July 19. The trains are run by the Sealdah Division of the Eastern Railway.
An official of the Railway Division says, “The names of the two trains — Bandhan Express and Maitree Express — are synonyms of our bonds and friendship (‘bandhan’ means bond and ‘Maitree’ means friendship), whereas the train between India and Pakistan was called the Samjhauta Express (‘samjhauta’ means understanding).”
Just outside the Sealdah Railway Station, one of the largest in the State, stands a 20-foot bust of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman alongside one of Mahatma Gandhi. This is probably the only sculpture of his which has not been covered, whitewashed, or removed. The marble busts were erected only a year ago by a local Trinamool MLA, to celebrate the ties between the two countries and particularly between Bangladesh and West Bengal.
shrabana.chatterjee@thehindu.co.in; shivsahay.s@thehindu.co.in
Published – December 14, 2024 02:00 am IST
