Nazimuddin Mondal (34) remembers that he was slapped earlier than being requested to sing the nationwide anthem. “On the police station they advised me to sing it after which checked my telephone to see if there have been any telephone numbers from Bangladesh,” he says.
Mr. Mondal says life had been going easily for a few yr and a half in Mumbai’s Nalasopara space, the place he lived on lease. With a day by day wage of ₹1,300, the migrant from Tartipur village in Murshidabad district, West Bengal, had come to Maharashtra to work. On June 9, 2025, there was a knock on his door. Males in uniform had come for him. They took him to the native police station. Mr. Mondal remembers that there have been 13 Bengali-speaking males on the police station. Then started a journey of about 2,500 kilometres spanning six days.
From the police station in Mumbai, Mr. Mondal says he and some others had been taken for a medical check-up, then pushed to Pune the subsequent morning. He remembers that they had been placed on a flight from Pune to West Bengal, their arms in zip-ties.
After touchdown someplace in north Bengal, Mr. Mondal says he was pushed alongside the worldwide border within the early hours of 1 morning and pushed into Bangladesh.
“The lads in plainclothes pressured me to cross the border. It was the scariest day of my life,” he says. He was handed ₹300 in Bangladeshi foreign money, a packet of meals, and a bottle of water. “‘You all are Bangladeshis,’ the person advised me in Bengali, threatening to shoot me if I attempted to return.”
Three migrant staff from West Bengal picked up from Maharashtra and allegedly pushed into Bangladesh in June 2025.
On June 14, 2025, a video of him and two others, Minarul Sheikh and Mostafa Kamal Sheikh, each additionally migrant staff from West Bengal, allegedly picked up by the police in Maharashtra, surfaced on social media. Sitting in an open area, the lads cried out to the West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for assist: “Mamata (Banerjee) Didi please save us… Now we have been pushed into Bangladesh.” The subsequent day, the three had been repatriated by way of the India-Bangladesh border near Mekhliganj city of Cooch Behar district, West Bengal.
Throughout India, hundreds of Bengali-speaking migrants are being requested for documentation to show their Indian citizenship. The crackdown started, say sources within the Residence Ministry, after the regime change in Bangladesh in August 2024. The questioning intensified after the Pahalgam assault on April 22, 2025. Ms. Banerjee alleges that the depth of it’s felt most within the Bharatiya Janata Celebration (BJP)-ruled States.
The Delhi Police has checked paperwork of over 16,000 Bengali-speakers over the previous few months. The Haryana authorities had arrange detention centres in July the place they allegedly held individuals. In Gujarat, over 1,000 had been detained in Ahmedabad and Surat. By way of June and July, migrant staff have been leaving jobs in different States to return to West Bengal.
Virtually a month after the incident, Mr. Mondal is again dwelling. He wears the identical shirt through which he was seen within the video, and is struggling to search out work in his village. “The contractor (in Mumbai) is looking me often, however I’ve no paperwork; they had been all taken by the police. Right here, even when I get work, I don’t get even ₹500 a day,” the migrant employee says.
The village, positioned alongside one of many distributaries of the Ganga, has a standing crop of jute in July, rising to virtually 5 toes. The roads are full of potholes so deep that geese swim in them. Most males within the village migrate out of West Bengal for work, although there isn’t a dependable knowledge on what number of do.
Going again to work
Lower than a kilometre from his home, is a locality the place different migrant staff have been pressured to return from their administrative center. They had been detained for 3 days within the neighbouring state of Odisha. They had been a part of a bunch of about 400 who had been detained by the Jharsuguda police in Odisha through the second week of July.
On July 9, 2025, the Trinamool Congress (TMC), the ruling social gathering in West Bengal, posted a 55-second video of the employees on social media. Within the video, Samiul Ansari (31) is describing how they had been picked up in the dark.
At their village in Murshidabad, Mr. Samiul Ansari is joined by 4 others: Yeasmin Ali Ansari (50), Manaruzzaman Ansari (41), Newton Ansari (33), and Amanat Ansari (31). They sit in a circle and narrate their ordeal throughout detention for 72 hours. By Indian regulation, police can detain an individual for not than 24 hours, earlier than which they have to be produced earlier than a Justice of the Peace.
“The police didn’t beat us on the detention centre, however saved saying that that they had orders from above to detain us,” Mr. Samiul Ansari says. The lads, who had been detained in Jagatsinghpur district in Odisha, say they’ve been going to the State for a decade to work; this was the primary time that they had confronted bother. Odisha’s authorities is run by the BJP that got here to energy final yr.
“There isn’t a work right here. Perhaps we gained’t go to the place the police had detained us,” they are saying. The three youthful males within the group went again to Odisha 11 days later.
Their biggest concern is what identification paperwork they need to carry in order that the police doesn’t detain them. Within the village, Razzak Sheikh, the daddy of two migrant staff, has filed a habeas corpus petition earlier than the Calcutta Excessive Court docket, when his sons had been detained elsewhere in Odisha. “I bought a name from the police there, who threatened to push my sons into Bangladesh if we failed to provide delivery certificates.”
In Murshidabad, Razzak Sheikh, the daddy of two migrant staff, has filed a habeas corpus petition on the Calcutta Excessive Court docket.
| Photograph Credit score:
Shiv Sahay Singh
Having an Indian delivery certificates is, nonetheless, no assure say migrant staff, that they won’t be harassed. Amir Sheikh, 19, from Malda’s Kaliachak space, who was allegedly jailed in Rajasthan for every week earlier than being pushed into Bangladesh in Might 2025, had one, say his mother and father.
As much as 1,000 individuals had been recognized as suspected Bangladeshi nationals, detained, and despatched to 6 detention centres, within the State. The mother and father have produced their passports too, however say their son continues to be caught in Bangladesh. On August 7, 2025, the daddy filed a habeas corpus earlier than the Calcutta Excessive Court docket.
Amir Sheikh 20, yr previous migrant employee was allegedly picked up from Rajasthan in Might 2025 and pushed into Bangladesh by safety companies.
On July 30, 2025, the Maharashtra authorities claimed that 42,000 ‘pretend’ delivery certificates issued to ‘Bangladeshis’ had been cancelled, and the quantity to be additional cancelled by August 15 can be far larger.
Politics at play
Within the first week of Might 2025, weeks earlier than these tales of migrants alleging detention and pushing into Bangladesh surfaced, TMC Rajya Sabha MP Samirul Islam wrote a letter to Mr. Shah. In it he claimed there was a “disturbing sample of focused hostility” in opposition to Bengali staff in BJP-ruled States comparable to Gujarat. Mr. Islam is the chairperson of West Bengal Migrant Welfare Board.
By the second week of July, studies of migrant staff in several components of India started surfacing virtually day by day in West Bengal. On July 16, 2025, Ms. Banerjee hit the streets in Kolkata and warned that protests would rage throughout the nation if Bengali migrants proceed to be harassed.
Two days later, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whereas talking at a public assembly in Durgapur within the southern a part of West Bengal and one in all India’s primary steel-producing centres, mentioned that “Bengali asmita” (identification and tradition) was paramount to the BJP, however emphasised that “whoever has infiltrated into the nation will probably be handled as per regulation”.
Kolkata’s youth, on Bengali ashmita
“As a non-binary particular person, I discover probably the most freedom in expressing myself by way of Bangla. It doesn’t confine me to gendered pronouns: I can merely be a ‘tui’ or ‘tumi’ to these I like. My Bengali identification thrives in Satyajit Ray’s movies, within the consolation of aloo-sheddho bhaat, and within the Durga Pujo essays I wrote yearly at school, guided by my grandfather’s handwritten notes.” —
Zoya Khan, filmmaker, 27
“Political actions, intelligence, tradition: Bengalis have all the time been on the forefront of these items.” —
Pratyasha Pal, a post-graduate scholar of Historical past, 23
“Bengali identification is the Bengali language, Durga Pujas, and soccer. The best way we categorical ourselves in Bengali, our mom tongue, is essential to expressing our true feelings.” —
Guddu Adhikari, hospital intern, 21
“Now we have quite a bit to be pleased with, as Bengalis, like our literature and our freedom fighters.” —
Soumit Choudhury, journalism scholar, 19
“To me, anybody who speaks Bangla is Bengali. There isn’t a divide in case you are Hindu or Muslim or the place your place of birth is. As a scholar of Bengali literature, I’m very hooked up to our nice writers: Rabindranath Tagore, Jibanananda Das, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay.” —
Riya Nayak, Bengali literature scholar, 19
“Bangla is our mom tongue, and to me, that’s an important facet of being Bengali.” —
Aniket Pal, voice actor and blood financial institution workers member, 25
“Bengali identification is everybody who speaks in Bengali, be it in West Bengal, Tripura, or Bangladesh. It’s our mom tongue, and that’s the place our identification lies; it’s a shared identification.” — Abhinab Das, scholar of philosophy, 20
“If there’s something referred to as Bengali ashmita, then it’s a response to what’s occurring in our nation proper now. Earlier than, this identification was extra cultural; now it’s a matter of ego as effectively.” — Rushati Saha, illustrator and graphic designer, 25
“For me, my Bengali identification is related to Durga Pujas, soccer, and staying in Kolkata. I used to be raised in Lucknow, so my exploration of the standard Bengali tradition has been restricted.” —
Pritam Sarkar, learning Comparative Literature, 20
“Bengal’s tradition and heritage are nice, however the present charge of unemployment and lack of alternatives in West Bengal make me marvel if I’ve sufficient to be pleased with.” —
Shinjini Guha, MBA scholar, 21
“My favorite a part of being Bengali is being in love and expressing love in Bangla. That is the sweetest language on the planet.” — Swarnali Adhikari, medical scholar, 24
“Even when our textbooks are in English and we be taught within the English medium, one of the simplest ways for me to know an idea is thru Bengali. My mom tongue is behind my elementary understanding of the world.”
— Saikat Duari, scholar of Arithmetic, 20
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On July 21, 2025, Ms. Banerjee addressed her social gathering’s annual Martyrs’ Day rally. This can be a commemoration of the day 13 individuals had been killed in 1993, when police fired on the Youth Congress, then led by Ms. Banerjee. Earlier than lakhs of supporters in Kolkata she claimed that the BJP authorities on the Centre “was unleashing terror on the Bengali language” and introduced {that a} “language motion” would proceed till the Meeting polls, due in 2026.
From the stage of the mega Trinamool occasion, the social gathering chairperson learn excerpts from what she referred to as a secret notification issued by the Union Authorities in Might 2025, and despatched solely to BJP-ruled States, which acknowledged that if somebody was suspected of being Bangladeshi, they need to be detained for a month and despatched to detention or holding camps.
Amidst hundreds of migrants returning and the disruption of labor, the talk on Bengali language and identification continues to rage. On August 3, 2025, the Delhi Police issued a letter referring to the Bengali language as Bangladeshi, which the Trinamool took up as an insult to the “Bengali-speaking individuals of India”.
The very subsequent day, whereas justifying the motion of Delhi Police, BJP IT cell chief Amit Malviya mentioned, “There may be, in truth, no language referred to as Bengali.”
The West Bengal BJP management mentioned that the drive is to establish Bangladeshi infiltrators and never migrants of the State. Chief of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari and newly appointed State BJP president Samik Bhattacharya communicate of “sanitising the voter checklist and eradicating lakhs of Bangladeshi voters”. They insist on a Particular Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voter checklist on the strains of what’s occurring in Bihar.
Economically talking
The flight of industries and unemployment stay main challenges in West Bengal. The Nationwide Statistical Workplace’s (NSO) Annual Survey on Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE) made public in 2024 identified that West Bengal misplaced 3 million jobs in unincorporated enterprises from 2015-16 to 2022-23.
In 2024, the Union Finance Minister had mentioned that the share of business manufacturing in West Bengal had declined from 24% on the time of independence to three.5% in 2021.
Economist Abhirup Sarkar, the chairperson of the West Bengal Infrastructure Growth Finance Company, says, “There are historic causes behind the decline of industries in West Bengal. One of many greatest components is that Kolkata was dominated by British corporations, which left after independence. Then, through the Left regime, militant commerce unions and strikes performed a task within the flight of capital.” He provides that productiveness is low in West Bengal, however there’s additionally a notion battle in regards to the State.
Greater than a shared border
West Bengal shares a 2,216-km border with Bangladesh, and about 450 km of the border stays unfenced, making it porous in components. Union Residence Minister Amit Shah has mentioned that is largely as a result of the West Bengal authorities will not be offering land to take action.
Nevertheless, there are cultural, historic, and geographic ties between the Bengalis on each side of the border. The partition of Bengal passed off on Rakshabandhan day in 1905, when the then Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, divided the Bengal Presidency into west (predominantly Hindu, together with Bihar and Orissa) and east (predominantly Muslim, together with Assam). This was annulled in 1911, when the capital was moved to Delhi.
Nevertheless, there was additional turmoil in 1947, when East Pakistan was fashioned, and other people moved throughout the newly-formed border, on the premise of faith. In 1971, when Bangladesh was fashioned, one other wave of individuals got here to India.
Ten years in the past, in 2015, a Land Border Settlement was signed between the 2 international locations, the place land parcels had been exchanged, as a result of there was Indian territory deep inside Bangladesh and vice versa. Folks in these parcels got the selection to change into Bangladeshi nationals or Indian residents.
Shamshul Haque and Rabiul Haque selected India, and migrated to Gurugram, in Haryana, to work. They had been arrested on suspicion of being Bangladeshi nationals.
“We selected to return to India leaving our place of origin behind as a result of we all the time considered ourselves as Indians. I had by no means thought, even in my goals, that I might be held on suspicion of being Bangladeshi,” Shamshul says, exhibiting a citizenship certificates issued by West Bengal’s Cooch Behar district administration.
Whereas nearly all of migrant staff detained or pushed into Bangladesh are Muslims, there are some from the Matua group, a sect of Hindu Namashudras, Dalits who migrated from Bangladesh, who’re additionally going through detention.
In Nadia district, two migrant staff from a Matua household, who had brazenly introduced their allegiance to the BJP, had been arrested by the Maharashtra police a number of months in the past. Manishankar Biswas (23) and Nirmal Biswas (22) had left their dwelling to work as carpenters in Akola district.Their father, Nishikanta, is an agricultural labourer. He and his spouse, Pushpa, should not have the cash to journey to Maharashtra. They stay in a home put along with tin sheets.
Pushpa and Nishikanta Biswas, the mother and father of Manishankar Biswas and Nirmal Biswas, who had been arrested by the Maharashtra police allegedly on suspicion of being Bangladeshi nationals.
| Photograph Credit score:
Shiv Sahay Singh
“Now we have had a number of instances of individuals of the Matua group being held by the police in Maharashtra. When the police decide up individuals on the premise of language, each Hindus and Muslims will probably be arrested,” says Nikhilesh Adhikari, a Nagpur-based lawyer who’s making an attempt to rearrange bail for the 2 males.
On June 28, 2025, Ms. Banerjee urged migrant staff to return to West Bengal and warranted them of labor. Just a bit over a month on, there are serpentine queues of migrant labourers at Howrah Station, reserving tickets to go away once more.
Rakesh Alam, 27, is boarding the Howrah Ahmedabad Superfast Categorical, leaving his four-month-old daughter behind. He says, “I can’t keep in Bengal when I’ve a household to feed.”
shivsahay.s@thehindu.co.in
Edited by Sunalini Mathew
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