Dalit Matuas in Bengal are seething. CAA is failing them, and others in Bangladesh

Dalit members of the Matua sect say CAA rules have crushed their citizenship hopes. ‘Fellow Matuas in Bangladesh are being targeted for being Sanatanis.’

Howrah: At 75, Howrah resident Amrito Gayen is tired of waiting. A member of the marginalised Matua community, he’s spent years hoping for the Citizenship Amendment Act to deliver on its pledge. Now, with news of Hindus being attacked in his homeland, Bangladesh, the familiar cycle of fleeting hope and frustration is boiling over into fury.

“Our hearts bleed for our lakhs of Matua sisters and brothers who are being raped, killed, and forcibly converted after Sheikh Hasina fled Bangladesh. But India has kept us as untouchables all these decades even after the passing of the CAA,” Gayen said at his tin hut in Kaijuri colony— one of dozens clustered around stagnant ponds used for both bathing and dumping waste. Like most others here, Gayen belongs to a Hindu sect of the Dalit Namasudra caste, long treated as outsiders in both Bangladesh and India.

The violence in Bangladesh has renewed Gayen’s anger over India’s ‘broken promises’ about the CAA. Passed in 2019, the Act was supposed to grant citizenship to refugees like him who entered India on or before 31 December 2014. But rollout delays and red tape have left thousands, including Gayen, in limbo.

For the Matua community, citizenship isn’t just about documents—it’s a shot at dignity, stability, and shedding labels like “infiltrators” once and for all.

It’s a symbolic end to the marginalisation they’ve faced on both sides of the border. With an estimated 30 million residents—and among them 15 million voters—in West Bengal, the Matuas are a powerful voting bloc, courted by both the BJP and TMC. But trust in political promises is wearing thin, especially as fears grow for their kin across the border, with whom they maintain close ties.

        In today’s Bangladesh, our fellow Matuas are being targeted for being Sanatanis. If only the CAA rules were simpler and the cut-off date could be advanced to 2024

        -Mritunjoy Biswas, Matua temple priest

“What hope do (Matuas across the border) have in India when CAA does not even extend beyond 2014, and has not even helped those of us who came before?” Gayen asked.

With his black curly hair belying his age, he was among the wave of Matuas to flee to India in 1971, escaping the violence of Bangladesh’s Liberation War. The Matua sect, founded in the 19th century by social reformer Harichand Thakur, is comprised mostly of people from the Namasudra caste, primarily farmers and labourers. Its followers were originally concentrated in districts that became East Pakistan after Partition.

In Kaijuri, where more than 90 per cent of residents are Namashudras and followers of the Matua sect, assurances of pucca houses and clean drinking water made during elections have come to nothing. Gayen, a Matua ‘dalapathi’ or local leader, scrapes by selling a ‘mixture masala’ to neighbouring localities.

While many Matuas in West Bengal have become “de facto citizens”, managing to obtain voter IDs, Aadhaar cards, and ration cards, they still face practical hurdles, said Ayan Guha, author of The Curious Trajectory of Caste in West Bengal Politics and whose research focuses on the Matuas of Bengal.

The CAA rules require at least one document proving original nationality, or evidence that a parent or grandparent was a Bangladeshi citizen. These demands have left many residents of Kaijuri colony unable to apply.

Poly Burman, a second-generation Kaijuri colony resident, thought the CAA would finally make her feel like a “full citizen”. Married off and a mother before 18, Burman already had a voter ID and Aadhaar card issued by the Indian government, but she was convinced the Act would “somehow better the lot” of people like her. That hope didn’t last.

“When CAA was announced, we felt as if we belong here. The genocide we escaped from Bangladesh for being Hindu was finally being recognised,” Burman, who’s in her 30s, told ThePrint. “We thought we would be given the dignity of being citizens, which we deserve after decades of staying like outcasts in India.”

Matua colony in Howrah

But in this Matua-dominated colony, the reality has been far more complicated. Like many others, Burman found the process riddled with obstacles she couldn’t overcome. Because her parents’ documents aren’t in order, neither are hers.

After the Bangladesh Liberation War, the Indian government, overwhelmed by a massive refugee crisis, decided not to grant citizenship to anyone who arrived after 24 March 1971. The Citizenship Amendment Act of 2003 made things even tougher.

“The 2003 Act revived the problem by categorically declaring all migrants without valid travel documents as ‘illegal immigrants’. Since then, refugees like the Kaijuri colony residents have been facing difficulties in acquiring documents like passport and caste certificate,” Guha said.

When the CAA was passed in 2019, it rekindled hope, promising a fast track to citizenship for persecuted religious minorities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.

But when the rules were notified in March this year, they came as a blow to many Kaijuri residents, already burdened by caste and class disadvantages.

        During his Bangladesh visit in 2021, PM Modi went to the Orakandi Thakur Bari. It’s the birthplace of Harichand Thakur and our most sacred place. But all that may be lost to the rise of radicalism in Bangladesh. Modi must tweak the CAA rules to make us citizens

        -Amrito Gayen, Matua dalapathi

To apply for Indian citizenship under CAA, Burman would first have to declare herself a foreign citizen and produce identity documents from Bangladesh to prove she or her family were citizens there.

“Most of us came with nothing except a few rupees hidden inside a bundle of clothes,” Burman said. “The years have been tough on us, moving from place to place, finding odd jobs, raising families, and trying to make this extended dump yard our home. We do not have any documents from Bangladesh. And then there is the question of filing applications on a computer!”

Matua colony

The CAA rules require at least one document proving original nationality, such as a passport, birth certificate, land or tenancy records, or evidence that a parent or grandparent was a Bangladeshi citizen. These demands have left many residents of Kaijuri colony unable to apply.

For many, their struggles go beyond citizenship. Without land ownership documents or ‘pattas’, they have no secure foothold in India and also have to contend with the apathy of the local municipal authorities. Lodging complaints with higher officials or the police feels risky—there’s always the fear that even asking for help could raise questions about their citizenship.

Eight-year-old Ritika suffers every monsoon when filthy water floods her family’s hut. Her father, Ritesh Singh, said repeated pleas to municipal authorities for proper drainage have gone unanswered.

“If we press too hard, they say you are not even from here. This, even after having voter ID card and other documents. CAA was supposed to give rightful citizenship to those of us at the margins of society, because even the authorities know we are still de facto citizens,” said Singh.

For 60-year-old Sandhya Bala, squalor and indifference have become routine.

“Every monsoon, the water level of the dirty ponds rise up and enter our homes. Our kids and elderly die from dengue and malaria. So many decades have gone by, we do not even have basic living conditions,” she said.

Until five years ago, the Matuas largely supported TMC, drawn by Mamata’s outreach efforts, including plans for a university named after sect founder Harichand Thakur. But the BJP’s introduction of the CAA shifted the tide.

Politics and neglect

The Matua community has been a ping-pong ball in Bengal’s electoral game for years.

Ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Matua leader and Union minister Shantanu Thakur exhorted his community to trust CAA, promising it would grant them “legal citizenship” and protect them from being labelled as foreigners in any future National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise—even a “hundred years” from now. He also said he would apply for citizenship under CAA rules to debunk Mamata’s “disinformation campaign”.

Shantanu Thakur

Mamata, meanwhile, has remained staunchly opposed to the CAA, branding it a poisoned “laddoo” tied to the NRC. She has repeatedly asserted that the Matuas are “already citizens” and warned that applying under the Act would invalidate IDs like Aadhaar, disrupt welfare access, and get people “thrown out” for lacking proper paperwork.

Until five years ago, the Matuas largely supported TMC, drawn by Mamata’s outreach efforts, including plans for a university named after sect founder Harichand Thakur. But the BJP’s introduction of the CAA shifted the tide. Citizenship, after all, was something only the central government could deliver.

By 2019, the BJP had seized the narrative with what Ayan Guha, writing in India Today, called the “politics of memory”— reframing the Matuas as persecuted Hindus rather than a marginalised caste group, with the CAA central to this strategy.

        While many upper caste refugees rehabilitated themselves in West Bengal, the Matuas remained marginalised both as class and caste

        Satanik Pal, doctoral researcher on caste

Today, even the All India Matua Mahasangha, the apex body of the community, is split—with one faction led by BJP’s Shantanu Thakur and the other by TMC’s Mamata Bala Thakur.

But in this political tug-of-war, many marginalised refugees have fallen through the cracks. Between 2019 and 2022, Mamata’s government distributed 27,000 land pattas and regularised 261 refugee colonies, but settlements like Kaijuri were left out.

For Satanik Pal, doctoral researcher on caste at the National University of Singapore, Kaijuri colony symbolises the failures of successive governments, including the Left, to cohesively address caste, class, citizenship issues.

“These immigrants came to West Bengal after the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971. The Left came to power in 1977 and stayed on for 34 years. With their obsessive focus on class struggles, the Left failed to see that most upper caste Hindus had already migrated to India during 1947 and those who came after were lower caste Hindus like the Matuas of Kaijuri,” he said. “While many upper caste refugees rehabilitated themselves in West Bengal, the Matuas remained marginalised both as class and caste.”

The conditions in Kaijuri and the tenuous legal status of its residents also reflect the TMC’s neglect of the Matuas’ plight. Against this backdrop, the BJP and the CAA briefly represented a real change.

On 11 March 2024, when the Ministry of Home Affairs notified the Citizenship Amendment Rules, celebrations erupted the Matua headquarters at Thakurnagar in North 24 Parganas. Many called it  their “second independence day”.

That jubilation quickly died down

“The process has become the punishment,” said Pal.

Notably, the CAA rules came just months before the Lok Sabha elections, stirring speculation that the timing might benefit the BJP, given that the Matuas dominate at least 30 assembly seats in Bengal, with significant populations in North and South 24 Parganas, Nadia, Jalpaiguri, Siliguri, Cooch Behar, and East and West Bardhaman districts.

However, the BJP didn’t have a clean sweep. Winning margins in some Matua-heavy constituencies shrank compared to 2019, and in July the TMC won in two assembly bypolls—Bagda and Ranaghat Dakshin.

“Not all Matuas voted for the BJP this time,” said Pal, attributing it to the CAA application process.

The sect’s deep ties to Bangladesh are now overshadowed by reports of growing violence against Hindus.

Across the road from Kaijuri colony, the Sarbojanin Sri Sri Hari Mandir, built in 1990, houses a statue of Harichand Thakur, the sect’s founder, alongside those of his disciples. Among them is a statue of Teen Kodi Miyan, a Muslim follower who spread Harichand’s teachings of equality to the “untouchables” of undivided Bengal.

Matua temple in Howrah

“Harichand did not discriminate on the basis or caste or religion or any other man-made differences. Which is why Muslims also became part of this sect,” said Mritunjoy Biswas, 60, a priest at the temple. “But in today’s Bangladesh our fellow Matuas are being targeted for being Sanatanis. If only the CAA rules were simpler and the cut-off date could be advanced to 2024.”

Until recently, Matuas from Orakandi—the sect’s spiritual hub in Bangladesh—would come across the border to pay their respects at the Kaijuri temple. Those visits ended after 5 August, when Sheikh Hasina fled Bangladesh and Hindus came under targeted attacks by radicals. Many Hindus who tried crossing into India were turned back by security forces.

Now, claims Biswas, even phone calls are risky.

“We were in touch and I had also made plans of visiting Orakandi. But now only speak over the phone and too rarely. They are afraid their phone might be tapped,” Biswas said.

Matua temple

His plea to the Indian government is to let persecuted Hindus from Bangladesh cross the border.

“But these are matters for the powerful to decide. I can only pray to Harichand,” he said.

For Arindam Goswami, convenor of the Howrah BJP refugee cell, Harichand Thakur’s teachings offer a way to stem rising communalism both in West Bengal and Bangladesh.

“What ails Bangladesh is also a problem in West Bengal. There were instances of attacks on Durga puja pandals within West Bengal also. Harichand’s teachings are more relevant now than ever before,” he said. However, Goswami had no answers to issues arising from the CAA rules and the 2014 cutoff date.

Meanwhile, Kaijuri residents are convinced that Hindus in Bangladesh will eventually have no choice but to leave.

“During his Bangladesh visit in 2021, PM Modi went to the Orakandi Thakur Bari. It’s the birthplace of Harichand Thakur and our most sacred place,” said Amrito Gayen. “But all that may be lost to the rise of radicalism in Bangladesh. Modi must tweak the CAA rules to make us citizens and be ready to welcome those we left behind in Bangladesh.”

Courtesy: The Print

Note: This news is originally published in theprint.in and is used completely for non-profit/non-commercial purposes especially for human rights.