Our Politics of Dispossession- part 2

The missing Hindus
In order to quantify the total loss of Hindu population through forced migration, Barakat's study looks at official population statistics as well as Tahsil office records. Based on this analysis, Barakat and his team have concluded that the Hindu population, as share of total population, has dropped from 18% in 1961 to 12% in 1981, and finally to 9% in 2001.

The rate of decline was most pronounced in six districts: Chandpur, Feni, Jamalpur, Kishoreganj, Kushtia, Pabna and Narayanganj. In the districts which historically had high Hindu population (Khulna, Dinajpur, Faridpur, Sunamganj, Jhenaidah, Barisal), the average decline over forty years was 12%.

Looking at the absolute number of Hindu population over forty years is not enough to calculate how many of them have left the country. It is also necessary to factor in birth rates. Looking at historic data of lower birth rates among Hindus as compared to Muslims (something that, ironically, played into scare-mongering by the Hindu right during Partition riots), the study assumed 13% lower fertility rate for Hindus compared to Muslims.

Factoring this in, the Hindu population should have been 11.4 million in 1971, but it was reported as 9.6 million. In 1981 it should have been 14.3 million, but it was 10.6 million; in 1991 it should have been 16.5 million, it was 11.2 million; finally in 2001 it should have been 19.5 million, but it was 11.4 million. Therefore, Barakat estimates the total missing Hindu population from 1964-2001 as 8.1 million, i.e. 218,819 missing Hindus each year.

While there are many factors that may have contributed to this ongoing hemorrhaging of the Hindu population, including small-scale communal riots in the 1960s and again in the 1980s and 2001, and lack of opportunities in work and business. But above all else, the research team argues that the Vested Property Act is the singular factor that leads to minority departure from the country.

Stubborn persistence of Vested Property Act
The transformation of "Enemy" to "Vested" is a circuitous one, and poorly understood outside the legal profession. What was first created to encourage and solidify the facts of the first Partition, has been systematically enhanced to become a tool of forced migration through the decades. The two major periods of forced migration of Hindu population from East Bengal were in 1947, and then again in 1965. But as we see, the laws that were formed around these periods continued to be used up to 2006, and beyond.

As over 2 million Hindus left for India, the new Pakistan government passed the "Requisition of Property Act" (Act XIII of 1948), which was supposed to last for three years. Giving the power for takeover of abandoned property "needful for the purposes of the state," this act has continued and evolved into something abused by citizens and state.

In the year of expiry, a new law "East Bengal Evacuees Act" (1951) was passed, that defined any resident of East Bengal who left for India due to "communal disturbance or fear thereof" as an "evacuee" whose land could be appropriated.

In 1964, the Hazrat Bal incident in Kashmir resulted in new communal disturbances in East Pakistan, which then led to "East Pakistan Disturbed Persons Rehabilitation Ordinance" (1964). This new ordinance restricted transfer of "immovable property of minority community" without permission of the authorities. This, in effect, meant that any Hindu person wishing to leave East Bengal for any reason would now face significant barriers to even the lawful sale of their property -- they would have no choice but to "abandon" their land.

So far, the laws passed were stop-gap measures, with the mass exodus of 1948 and the communal disturbance of 1964 as the stated rationale. The laws were presented as simply ratifying the ground reality. But the 1965 India-Pakistan war brought a frightening new dimension, with the equation of Hindu-Muslim/India-Pakistan/Enemy-Friend now being in the public space. The war ended in only 17 days, after the Tashkent Declaration, but the "Enemy Property Order" (1965) would continue for decades. The signal importance of this law, which continued the trajectory of various ordinances since 1947, is shown by the manner in which it has survived each change of governance. Pakistan was under a military state of emergency from 1965 to 1969. But on the day the emergency was lifted, the government passed "Enemy Property (Continuance of Emergency Provisions) Ordinance" (Ordinance 1 of 1969). Again, following the 1971 liberation of Bangladesh, this law miraculously survived via "Laws of Continuance Enforcement Order" (1971).