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 | HISTORY REPEATS TO REUNITE GENERATIONS
The Telegraph A generation separates Benoy Choudhury and Tarapada Mahaladar. Their lives, too, were different before October 1, 2001. But this date - it was the day Bangladesh went to polls and decided to give the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led alliance of several fundamentalist parties a chance to rule the country - has united the two representatives from the two generations like nothing else. Choudhury fled Santoshpur, a village in the Nawabganj district of Bangladesh, soon after Zia-ur-Rahman (Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s husband) came to power in 1978. He set up home in Gaurangapur, a village near the river Ahora, after crossing over. A distant relative of Choudhury, Mahaladar is the newest resident of Gaurangapur. A week into the new Bangladeshi regime was enough to make him - and his wife Pramila - certain that they, too, had to follow in the around-two-decade-old footsteps of the Choudhurys. The Mahaladars - they are a family of five with three children, the youngest of whom is all of four years old - trekked the same route the Choudhurys took years ago. "We crossed the border through a point near the Mahadipur check-post on the night of October 19," Tarapada said, sitting at the Choudhurys’ home in Gaurangapur, today. Things were becoming worse by the day, his wife explained. "Two Hindus were murdered in Boalia and there have been three incidents of rape," she added, referring to the events in the village across the river Mahananda which forced them to make up their minds to leave. "A day more could have resulted in something worse than death," she added. Dhirendranath Rabidas is from Boalia, the village Pramila was referring to. He left on the night Bangladesh went to the polls. "From Boalia to Shibganj to Bakroli, where I had to halt for two days as the borders were sealed because of the polls, to Sabdalpur in Kaliachak to Alampur," he said breathlessly, chalking out the route to his current address. His condition is worse than the Mahaladars’; he has come alone, he can’t go back and he has no news of his wife and three sons. It was decided that his family, also consisting of his two brothers and their wives and children, would sell off their land and follow him to "India and dignity". Three weeks later - with the only news that’s coming through being a horror tale - he is in a fix. His family had decided to sell off the land at Rs 25,000 a bigha - the normal price is Rs 50,000 for a bigha - but even that might not be possible now, was how he tried to explain their delay. The Gajol area alone has several hundred more like Rabidas and the Mahaladars. But, for these refugees, the refugee status could spell danger. With the administration here still referring to the "problems" in Bangladesh as that country’s alone, they are actually "infiltrators" in the eyes of the administration. Singhapara, neighbouring Gaurangapur, has several such families. All of them are recent additions to the village but none of them would admit they are from Bangladesh. Most say they are from "elsewhere in Malda". But, unaware of their new home’s geography, they stare blankly when asked the name of their village. A bit of coaxing later, they admit the "from-elsewhere-in- Malda" line is a suggestion of local CPM leaders. "It’s the only way they can help us, they say," a refugee explained.
Like in everything else, the BJP and the VHP are suggesting a different line of approach. The VHP has begun
campaigning about the plight of "our brothers and sisters" in Bangladesh.
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