“Operation Pushback”: Sangh Parivar, State, Slums And Surreptitious Bangladeshis In New Delhi

Abstract

The remarkable ease with which the xenophobic tenor of the Hindu Right nationalist organizations or Sangh Parivar found favour with many privileged Indians in the early 1990s cannot be easily or comfortably discounted. Indeed, it even perniciously swayed a moderate secular central government led by the long dominant Congress Party. By mid–1992, when Sangh Parivar made the manifold dangers of the unsanctioned immigration by growing numbers of poverty–stricken Bangladeshi Muslim peasants their rallying cry, the lenient attitude of the Indian state towards these immigrants had hardened with astonishing rapidity. Unsettled by this sweeping tide of Hindu chauvinism, a hurriedly enforced “Action Plan” to locate and identify these undocumented immigrants was followed by brisk efforts under “Operation Pushback” to deport them from New Delhi — India’s capital city and locus of bureaucratic, political and financial power. Haphazard and sporadic in implementation, Operation Pushback, while unmasking partisan dispositions coursing through the Indian bureaucracy, also exemplified Congress’ belated attempts at redeeming its enervated standing. It is also worth noting that the highly circumscribed material realities of the Bangladeshi immigrants residing in Delhi’s numerous slums made them easy targets of these perverse politics, and that subsequent opposition, internally and from neighbouring Bangladesh, to the gratuitous brutality displayed towards the first groups of deportees contributed to the Operation’s abrupt truncation.

Anti-trafficking and its discontents: women's migrations and work in an Indian borderland

“…Creed (2000), in an comprehensive survey of literature, has observed that the understanding that migration is tantamount to a breakdown in kinship ties and familial links has been replaced by a view seeing migration, particularly women's migrations, as maintaining the family economy. See Ramachandran (2003) on the plight of Bangladeshi migrants in India, eking out a precarious life usually in informal sectors as a part of the vast numbers of urban poor, and Moodie (2010) on renewed raids in the aftermath of terrorist bombings in India. Nevertheless, after a woman has been trafficked into sex work, there is an assumption of complete severance in family ties (Agarwal 2006).…”

Introduction. Imagining Bangladesh: Contested Narratives

“…This migration route is considered 'illegal' by the Indian authorities and has stirred up several clashes between the Bangladeshi and Indian governments (see Samaddar 1999, Chatterji 1999, Rahman & van Schendel 2003, Ramachandran 2003, and generated tensions between the Indian Central and State (West Bengali) governments (Chatterji 2007). Finally, a fourth type of migration has as its destinations several Southern European countries.…”

Transnational Flows and Permissive Polities

“…It was mostly directed at Bengali-speaking Muslims and Bangladeshis living in squatter settlements in New Delhi (Ramchandran 2003: 325-326). These deportation drives landed many 'suspected Bangladeshi' immigrants in the 300 yards border zone between the two states and also entailed the harassment of impoverished Indian Muslims (Ramachandran 2002(Ramachandran : 18, 2003Roy 2009: 17). Along the international boundary in India, are ad-hoc deportation checkpoints called 'push-back' centres.…”