Bleeding Borderline

On August 15, India observed the 79th anniversary of the Partition of its two most prosperous provinces—Bengal and Punjab. On that day, in 1947, two new countries were created as dominions within the British Commonwealth, with the British monarch as the symbolic head of state. This dominion status lasted until each country adopted its own constitution, India in 1950 and Pakistan in 1956. The main provisions of the act included, among others:

• The provinces of Bengal and Punjab were to be dissolved—Bengal was to be divided into West Bengal and East Bengal, and Punjab into West Punjab and East Punjab.
• Pakistan was to comprise the territories of East Bengal (became East Pakistan; now Bangladesh), West Punjab, Sindh, and Balochistan. The North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) would become part of Pakistan if a majority of people in the province voted to join the new dominion.

With the partition of British India scheduled for August 15, Mountbatten appointed a Boundary Commission, led by Cyril Radcliffe, to divide the provinces of Bengal and Punjab. The commission, with limited time and little familiarity of the land, hastily drew borders that cut through the heart of communities and shared lands. Soon, entire families, neighbors, and livelihoods were torn apart. Partition also divided the common rivers and the natural ecosystem of these two regions. Ironically, Bengal and Punjab were the two major epicenters of the Indian freedom movement.

The unplanned division of Bengal not only destroyed the economy of Bengal but also created a landlocked region in North east India, which is now connected to mainland India via a narrow corridor in Siliguri, West Bengal. A sovereign state of Pakistan (Bangladesh since 1971) stood between North East India and West Bengal.

The Indian Parliament passed the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The CAA grants a pathway to Indian citizenship for certain religious non-Muslim immigrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. In addition to CAA, the families who migrated to India from West Punjab and East Bengal after the Partition have been facing a major challenge to prove their citizenship in India since the Bajpayee government amended the Citizenship Act of 1955 in December 2003, and mandated the creation of a National Register of Citizenship (NRC) to identify and potentially deport ‘illegal’ immigrants. Currently, only Assam has such a National Register of Citizens (NRC) which has been implemented since 2014.

The new Act of 2003 introduced and defined the notion of “illegal migrant”, making illegal immigrants ineligible for citizenship by registration or by naturalization. According to the Act, an illegal immigrant in India is a foreigner who has entered India either without valid documents or who initially had a valid document, but has overstayed the permitted time, as per the general provisions of the Citizenship Act as amended in 2003. They are also liable to be imprisoned for 2-8 years and fined.

India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh in conflict

Since 1947, India and Pakistan have fought five wars: 1948, 1965, 1971, 1999, and 2025. With Bangladesh, India now shares a complex relationship, especially since August 2024, when the pro-Indian Sheikh Hasina government had to abdicate power due to students’ protests.

Political commentators argue that, though the social fabric of Pakistan is complex and multifaceted, woven from diverse ethnicities, languages, and cultures, the Punjabi community holds a distinctive position, often perceived as the dominant ethnic group within the country’s socio-political landscape. This dominance has given rise to what many describe as a Punjabi superiority complex — a phenomenon that significantly influences inter-ethnic relations and perpetuates racial discrimination. Colonialism never left South Asia; it merely transformed into internal colonialism after independence. This is true for both India (D. Dey, 2019) and Pakistan (Q. Abbas, 2025). Pakistan’s ruling elites have carved out a unique system to govern and thrive, which has been instrumental in sustaining their power and control over the last seven decades.

The first province to break free from this colonial hegemonic structure of Pakistan was East Pakistan (East Bengal until 1955). Bangladesh emerged as an independent nation-state through the Liberation War of 1971, when it officially separated from Pakistan. Cultural resistance, through Bengali poetry and songs, gave impetus to the armed struggle for national liberation against the ‘internal colonisation’ of Pakistan.

It may be recalled that India and Pakistan separated and emerged as two nations because it was believed that Hindus and Muslims in India were two distinct communities that could not exist within a single state without constant conflict. Significantly, in 1971, Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) — a Muslim-dominated province — gained its freedom from Pakistan, highlighting its distinct Bengali identity and cultural heritage. Unlike India and Pakistan, Bangladesh was created on the basis of language (mother tongue), not religion.

If one compares the achievements of these three nations over the last five decades, Bangladesh has definitely outperformed (refer to the Table) the other two larger nations. Economic logic suggests that human migration from Pakistan to India is more likely than migration from Bangladesh to India, contrary to what many leaders of India’s ruling party allege. Significantly, in 1973, Pakistan’s Gross National Income (GNI) per capita was the highest among the three nations. After five decades, Bangladesh has outperformed the others, with a GNI per capita of USD 2,860 — nearly double that of Pakistan. Bangladesh’s performance in managing hunger and inequality is also much better than India’s.

Punjab and West Bengal since the Partition

The hasty and ill-planned Partition led to widespread communal violence between Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs. According to the British Red Cross, at least 14 million people were displaced and as many as one million were killed in the violence. Cholera, dysentery, malaria, plague, smallpox, typhoid, and typhus were all widespread, adding to the suffering.

Nearly 80 per cent of arable land is controlled by Jats, a dominant caste constituting nearly 21 per cent of the rural population. Jats are also largely Sikh by religion. Jat Sikhs, one of the core mobilis

ing forces among farmers, dominate political and other institutions of governance. In post-Independence India, the tenant movement against princely states for proprietorship, the anti-betterment levy movement by peasants against the Punjab government during 1958–59, and the more recent farmers’ agitation at Delhi’s borders from November 2020 to December 2021 against the three agricultural laws are examples of peaceful mass movements by farmers. But the Naxalite movement of the late 1960s and the Sikh militant movement of the 1980s are instances of the militant streak in Punjab’s history. These movements were largely concentrated in rural areas; the popular belief is that the Green Revolution package was introduced in Punjab to curb armed resistance by Naxalites.

Contrary to this view, Vandana Shiva, in her book The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology and Politics, explains how the “quick fix” promise of large gains in output through the Green Revolution pushed aside serious pursuit of an alternative agricultural strategy grounded in respect for the environmental wisdom of peasant systems and building an egalitarian, needs-oriented agriculture consistent with the village-based, endogenous political traditions of Gandhism. Dr. Shiva documents how the destruction of genetic diversity and soil fertility also contributed to the acute social and political conflicts tearing Punjab apart. An epidemiological study (2008) revealed alarmingly high incidences of cancer among the rural agricultural community of Punjab—the hidden cost of the Green Revolution.

From 1980 to 1992, the Indian state of Punjab was riven by an internal, anti-state conflict involving a movement to establish a separate independent Sikh state of Khalistan. It is estimated that upward of 25,000 people were killed in this period, the majority of whom were Sikhs. During anti-Sikh violence in Delhi and other cities of India in 1984, around three thousand innocent Sikhs were killed. The attack on India’s Sikh communities followed the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards, after which rioters began targeting Sikhs in Delhi. The news of her death sparked violent attacks on Sikhs by her supporters in Delhi and beyond.

A study by Professor Ranjit Singh Ghuman, titled Walking with the Ups and Downs of Punjab Economy, revealed that despite early agricultural success, Punjab’s failure to diversify its economy—combined with low investment, industrial stagnation, and fiscal mismanagement—pushed the state into a “development ICU.” Punjab’s Gross Domestic Capital Formation (GDCF) as a share of GSDP has consistently remained below the national average since 1994–95. According to NITI Aayog’s 2025 assessment, Punjab ranks last among 18 major states on the Fiscal Health Index.

Prior to the Partition of the Bengal province on August 15, 1947, Bengal Presidency was partitioned twice by the British rulers. On February 6, 1874, Assam, including Sylhet, was severed from Bengal to form the Assam Chief-Commissionership (also known as the North-East Frontier Agency—NEFA). In the same year, Goalpara (present-day Kokrajhar, Bongaigaon, Dhubri, and Goalpara districts of Assam), which came under the Bengal Presidency in 1765 from its former rulers, the Koch kings, was annexed to Assam.

After the second partition of Bengal in 1905, Assam became part of the new province of East Bengal and Assam, headquartered in Dhaka. The Chittagong, Dhaka, and Rajshahi divisions, the Malda district, and the states of Hill Tripura, Sylhet, and Comilla were transferred from Bengal to the new province of Eastern Bengal and Assam. Beginning in 1905, peasants from East Bengal began settling in the riverine tracts (char) of the Brahmaputra valley, encouraged by the colonial government to increase agricultural production.

The East Bengal and Assam province was annulled in 1911, following a sustained mass campaign for the unification of Bengal. On April 1, 1912, the two parts of Bengal were reunited, and a new partition — Assam and Sylhet — based on Assamese-speaking areas, was created to form a new administrative unit under a Chief Commissioner.

On April 1, 1946, Assam Province was granted self-rule, and in July 1947, the Sylhet referendum was held in Sylhet Division to decide whether Sylhet would remain in Assam and join the new country of India or join the province of East Bengal in the new country of Pakistan. The referendum decided in favour of joining Pakistan’s East Bengal. However, the Barak Valley remained in India’s Assam. On August 15, 1947, when Bengal was again partitioned, Assam became part of the Indian Union.

The ethno-religious geography of Bengal was such that the Hindu-majority and Muslim-majority areas of Western and Eastern Bengal could not be demarcated purely on the basis of contiguity. This was because the districts on the western bank of the Hooghly River — Barddhaman, Hooghly, Medinipur, Bankura, Birbhum, and Howrah — were overwhelmingly Hindu, but the eastern bank had a mixed population.

On June 20, 1947, the legislators of the Hindu-majority and Muslim-majority areas of Bengal decided to partition the province along religious lines by a majority vote. A Boundary Commission was established on June 30, 1947, with British lawyer Sir Cyril Radcliffe appointed as its Chairman. The four members of the Bengal Boundary Commission sat in two sessions — from July 18 to July 24, and from August 4 to August 6 — and determined a territorial demarcation of more than 2,500 miles across Eastern India in just nine days. Total migration across Bengal during the partition is estimated at 3.3 million.

Repeated reorganization and Partition of Bengal have made the Bengali-speaking people of India vulnerable since 1947. The suffering still continues. Recent incidents of persecution of Bengali speakers in different parts of the country are a case in point. Thousands of Bengali-speaking Indians are labelled as Bangladeshi infiltrators and imprisoned in detention camps. Many have even been pushed back to Bangladesh. ]Indian Home Ministers have often termed them ‘termites’. In many states, the administration has dubbed the Bengali language as the Bangladeshi language, and a top leader of the ruling party even claimed that the Bengali language does not exist.

By the first week of August, the West Bengal government had brought back more than 2,000 migrant workers, while many others continue to languish in detention camps in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled (BJP) states after being labelled as Bangladeshis, reports Hindustan Times. According to The Hindu, as thousands of Bengali-speaking migrants across some Indian states are questioned on their citizenship, detained, or pushed into Bangladesh, a wave of fear has brought them back to West Bengal, reigniting the debate over Bengali identity.

Annihilation of the Bengali-speaking Indians started in Assam and adjoining North Indian states as early as the 1950s. Here are a few examples:

• The Goreswar massacre (July–September 1960): Over 50,000 Bengali citizens took shelter in West Bengal. At least nine Bengalis were killed, many were raped, and over 1,000 huts were gutted.
• May 19, 1961: Eleven Bengali youths, who were protesting against the Assam government’s decision to make Assamese the sole official language, were killed by the Assam police.
• The Nellie genocide (1983): Around 600–1,200 Bengalis — mostly children — were killed while they had gathered to exercise their voting rights on election day. Genocide Watch reports that the actual figure was between 1,800 and 3,000.
• The Khoirabari massacre (February 7, 1983): An ethnic massacre in which an estimated 100 to 500 Bengalis were killed in the Khoirabari area of Assam.
• Ongoing NRC process in Assam: Thousands of Bengalis face the risk of losing their citizenship status, and many have been sent to detention camps. Genocide Watch has issued a Genocide Watch alert for Assam State — a status declared when early warning signs indicate that a genocidal process is underway.
• The Mandai massacre (June 8, 1980): In Mandai village near Agartala, Tripura, 255 Bengalis were officially reported killed. However, foreign press reports, independent sources, and eyewitness accounts put the figure between 350 and 400.
• The Bagber massacre (May 20, 2000): A massacre of unarmed Bengalis by NLFT (National Liberation Front of Tripura) militants.

The annihilation and harassment of Bengali speakers still continues in India.

Despite many odds, West Bengal ranks 6th in terms of GSDP contribution and is the largest producer of rice in India. After Partition, West Bengal faced an influx of millions of refugees from the erstwhile East Bengal and persecuted Bengalis from Assam and other parts of India, accommodating them in a much smaller, bifurcated land. With just 2.7 per cent of India’s land area, West Bengal now contributes nearly 6 per cent to India’s GDP and houses 7.25 per cent of the country’s population.

It is increasingly perceived that Indian rulers now consider West Bengal as an internal colony of India — much like how Pakistani rulers treated East Pakistan/East Bengal before the independence of Bangladesh. Delhi should learn from the mistakes of Karachi and Rawalpindi.

The writer is a professor of Business Administration who primarily writes on political economy, global trade, and sustainable development.
Views expressed are personal