What emerged through our conversations was a picture of migrants—all of those who spoke with were male—with two homes. The ability of the men to speak Assamese reasonably fluently was also a considerable advantage in the process of migrating. They appeared confident and comfortable with their accessibility to either side. If we are to believe Chakku Mian, not less than 400 to 500 people leave this belt of Kurigram for Assam every year.

But what of those who say, especially Bangladeshi officials, that no one is leaving Bangladesh at all? One of Bangladesh’s top demographers, Masihur Rahman Khan, remarked in a 1972 study that earlier efforts by demographers to ‘obtain the birth and death rates of the population on the assumption that the population of Bangladesh was closed to external migration and that the age-sex data . . . reflected a stable/quasi-stable rate of growth . . . met with frustration because the assumptions on which the estimates were based were found faulty.’2

‘Migration played an important role in the growth of the Bangladesh population,’ said Khan. With the exception of 1901-1911, the area now comprising ‘Bangladesh was losing population through net emigration mainly to India in all other decades.3 This figure rose from 100,000 in 1911-21 to around 1.2 million in 1951-61 and the exodus was ‘possibly high in 1964-66 due to and associated with the Pakistani war in 1965 with India.’ Given Bangladesh’s unsettled conditions in the 1970s, post-liberation and the trauma of the Pakistani crackdown as well as the war, the possibility of a ‘continued net emigration flow from Bangladesh, though a smaller magnitude compared to that in 1940s and 1950s, cannot be ruled out.’4

Thus, without quantifying the outflow—and one must acknowledge that these were early days after the Liberation—scholars such as Khan and Sharifa Begum have indicated the significance of the movement into India.

Begum’s figures, which one has written about and analysed in an earlier book, also must be taken note of. This we shall do in the next chapter.

But here one should return to Keramat Bhai.

Clearly, he was regarded as a spokesman for his people in the village. Few of the others were prepared to talk to us at any length because of the fear of being harassed by security officials for talking about a problem whose existence Bangladesh has officially and consistently denied. But even Keramat Bhai had limitations: his was a micro approach, based on his experiences. One could not expect much more than that.

But when I asked him about possible solutions to the issue of migration, he smiled and spoke rhetorically: ‘Can the river stop flowing? Can you block the rains? People who talk about such things do not know what they say. The Assamese need us, we need them.’