So, what has changed? The cattle still trundle on. Dawki is still an entry and exit point. People still sneak in and out of India and Bangladesh. But what has dramatically and irrevocably changed in the past decades has been the seamlessness, the speed and the scale of this movement and the devastating way it has made international borders so vulnerable. I’ve lost track of Mahesh so I don’t know if he goes to Sylhet any longer or even where he is.

These days, there are tens of thousands of people like him who move in steady file, visible only when they emerge in statistics in the villages of Assam, the North East and other parts of India, marching in unison to the beat of an unseen but loud drummer. That drummer is poverty; the land they flee is Bangladesh—but it could be anywhere in the world. Their numbers are surging and growing, frightening ‘local’ people into fearing for their future and their identity. It is a relentless march and as it moves across the subcontinent, it reflects a phenomenon as old as time and visible across the planet: migration, unstoppable.

Understandable and unstoppable.

The march is made more complicated, and is difficult to tackle because now the walkers have among them Ring Wraiths, as in J.F. Tolkien’s magnificent fable, The Lord of the Rings—the shadowy dealers of death: in weapons, explosives and drugs. Some dance to the tune of a different piper in a different land, not Bangladesh. And there are stirrings of anger, of violent claims, of demands for religious and ethnic supremacy and fundamentalism.

The seamlessness of the movement, added to these spasms, give it a critical, even dangerous, edge especially as they take place in an area already troubled by insurgencies. A fundamentalist Islamic front in the soft underbelly of eastern India, where governance is poor and infrastructure close to collapse, has the potential of causing havoc. Where will it head? Who will direct it? Can its formation be curbed, if not stopped? Are there opportunities for change, for social mobilization, for hope?

We must face these issues head-on if we are not to despair.

Chapter Three

Crossing Thresholds: Land and People