There is a growing acceptance and frankness about the outward movement of Bangladeshis to places such as the North East, West Bengal, New Delhi and other parts of India as well as to Pakistan. Indeed, the Bangladeshi migrant is moving illegally to new frontiers. With the tacit approval of host governments and communities, he is travelling to fast-developing countries such as Malaysia, as well as to one of the strongest economies in the world: Japan. These migrants include semi-skilled and unskilled workers as well as highly proficient specialists.21

These figures do not show up in Bangladeshi statistics. Nor do the remittances, or the movement to India. But there are ways of computing the number of people who have moved, with data from both countries.

In 1988, the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies published a joint paper by three scholars who had studied poverty situation in the country. One of the issues they looked at was migration. Although out-migration to India did not figure, they referred to the size of the ‘life time migrants’ population in Bangladesh at four million (4.5 per cent of the enumerated population).22

One way to calculate the out-migration to India is to look at the history of Hindu and Muslim population growth, first in the area that is now Bangladesh and then in neighbouring Assam. In 1951, the population of East Pakistan was 41.9 million. Of this, 76.9 per cent was Muslim and 22 per cent was Hindu. The rest included Buddhists and Christians. In 1961, of a population of 50.8 million, the proportion of Muslims 80.4 per cent and that of Hindus fell to 18.5 per cent.

Every census year, the number of Muslims has risen, that of Hindus has fallen substantially. In 1974, the first census after the Liberation, Bangladesh counted 71.4 million people of which 85.4 per cent were Muslims and 13.5 per cent were Hindus. The proportions assumed greater disparity in the 1981 and 1991 censuses: 86.6 per cent for Muslims and 12.1 per cent for Hindus (1981) and 88.3 per cent for Muslims and 10.5 per cent for Hindus.

At the current rate of growth, it would not be surprising if the proportion of Hindus drops well below the double digit figure in the next years.

However, what makes these figures come alive is the fact that the physical number of Hindus have virtually remained at the same level for nearly thirty years. In 1991, the number of Muslims was placed at 93.8 million; that of Hindus was 11.1 million. In 1974, which was the first headcount after independence in 1971, the population of Hindus was 9.6 million. In 1981, it was 10.5 million. In 1991, it was barely 600,000 over the previous census. If we go to the pre-Liberation days, in 1961, there were not less than 9.3 million Hindus.