It was a wisdom not shared by authority until the other day when I read that New Delhi had at last decided to grant citizenship to Hindus who fled East Bengal, whether Pakistan or Bangladesh, and now live in 18 Indian states. Many of these refugees have probably already acquired Indian papers. It may be years before the rest are so empowered. I have no doubt, too, that many East Bengal Muslims will also benefit from the decision, if they haven't done so already. But setting aside negligence and abuse, the decision implies belated official acceptance of a principle akin to the Law of Return that allows any Jew anywhere - whether Ethiopia or Mizoram - to seek a home in Israel.
The religious aspect of East Bengal's tragedy was so determinedly suppressed that although living in Calcutta (now Kolkata) I had absolutely no idea until I actually visited the 1971 refugee camps that 99 per cent of the men, women and children who had fled to India were Hindus. That revelation placed a somewhat different complexion on what had been presented until then as a secular democratic upsurge against a theocratic military dictatorship. My article in London's Observer newspaper of June 13, 1971, under the headline, FLIGHT OF THE HINDU MILLIONS, in bold capitals across the top of the page contradicted the official and liberation narrative of a non-denominational Elysium emerging from the womb of Pakistani theocracy.
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"First they killed the Biharis," the Hindu refugees explained. "Then, when the Pakistani military came, they united and attacked us!" The drift to sectarian exclusiveness had to be pointed out because, as I wrote, "for a time last year (meaning 1970), the Hindus still inside East Bengal rallied to the heady promise of an equal life for people of all religions offered to them by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman."
His daughter might yet realise that dream. But Sheikh Hasina can't undo the past, and it seems cruel injustice if the millions of Hindus who have fled East Bengal since 1947 and whom the 1950 Liaquat Ali-Nehru Pact victimised continue to suffer discrimination in the only country to which they have a claim. India isn't a Hindu country. Neither is Nepal any longer. Since all Indians are the same irrespective of religion - which is as it should be - there can't be an explicit Law of Return for Hindus.
It's no secret, however, that, informally, there does exist some distinction between Muslim economic refugees and Hindus seeking security. It used to be - perhaps still is - first manifest at the border. If the illegal migrant was a Muslim, he paid less to the East Pakistani/Bangladeshi border guards and more to the Indian. The reverse applied to Hindus. India's border personnel were also expected to be tacitly more sympathetic to Hindu immigrants.
It was never quite so simple in practice. Bangladesh vehemently denies the existence of economic refugees and the late President Ziaur Rahman flew into a rage when I mentioned them. The Assamese objection was not to Hindus or Muslims but to Bengalis. Although ostensibly anti-foreigner, the agitation that paralysed Assam was a continuation of the old "Banga Kheda... Expel Bengalis" movement. Rajiv Gandhi bought peace in 1985 by agreeing to the demand of the All-Assam Students Union and All-Assam Gana Sangram Parishad that all those who came from Bangladesh after 1971 should be deported. It was never a desirable or feasible objective and is even more irrelevant after 30 years.
Another complexity is that many Muslim migrants were brought by the left parties - the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and its allies in West Bengal - to inflate their vote bank. The devil looks after its own, as they say, and those sponsors probably long ago rewarded their proteges with Indian citizenship. Finally, all central governments have understandably hesitated to act on the basis of religion.
The time has come now to set aside counter-productive squeamishness and right one of the remaining wrongs of partition. But it must be done without discrimination against Muslims, either those who are Indian or those who have infiltrated from East Bengal. Justice and the logic of partition demand the latter should be deported but I doubt if that will ever happen even under a Hindu revivalist government.