Thus, the wheel of migration turned full circle, adding to the hurt and pain of the story. Economic migrants of one religious group were pushed back from a neighbouring country, resettled in their own, and then they went about forcing another religious community out of their own country. In times of migration, there is always one group which is ‘more aggrieved’ than the next one. It was a point to which Arun Shourie referred in his essay on Nellie and the bloodletting of 1983.

The religious cleansing had the support of the East Pakistani government. This was also evident in the brutal anti-Hindu riots that erupted across that part of Pakistan in 1964, forcing hundreds of thousands of Hindus to flee assault, murder, kidnapping, robbery and rape. These refugees were housed in temporary camps before being allowed to settle permanently in different parts of the North East and West Bengal. There were corresponding anti-Muslim attacks in these areas and in parts of Bihar as well.

The riots in both countries were so serious that the home ministers of Pakistan and India held talks in New Delhi on the issue. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru wanted the Assam Chief Minister, Bimala Prasad Chaliha, to go easy on the deportations and even stop them. Chaliha refused, saying that the problem was so critical that Assam’s demography and culture would be permanently changed. The Delhi talks broke down but eventually the violence ebbed and abated.

The 1965 war between India and Pakistan also changed perceptions of the issue. The Pakistanis then adopted a policy of aggressively rejecting everyone the Indians sent across. There were push backs. Concern about the immigrants also diminished. ‘It just fell by the wayside because we got involved in tackling law and order situations’ with new campaigns by the All Assam Students Union.3 Chaliha’s health was failing and he had enough problems on his hands with a furious revolt by Muslim MLAs against another anti-migrant programme.

But Gill says—and this is an extremely controversial position—that the Congress was not involved in settling immigrants. Whenever men like Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed or Moinul Huq Chowdhury received complaints about harassment of Muslims, they would pass them on to the concerned district officers. They did not interfere even once in Gill’s district or, to his knowledge, anywhere else. The former police official blames corrupt land revenue officers who would take money from settlers to place them on records and thus give them the sanction for getting on voters lists. That was the equivalent of ‘virtual citizenship’ without signing any papers for it!