Mass Hindu migration from B'desh unlikely in face of current crisis: Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee

Kolkata: The current and evolving situation in Bangladesh is unlikely to trigger a fresh round of exodus of minority Hindus into India, Nobel laureate economist Abhijit Banerjee said.

Historically, the academic explained, migration is mainly driven by social networks and economic opportunities, rather than persecution, even in the context of the crisis faced by minorities in Bangladesh.

Speaking exclusively to PTI during his recent visit to the city to participate in a curtain-raiser event of the 16th edition of the Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival, where his latest title ‘Chhaunk: On Food, Economics and Society’ was launched, Banerjee said he felt India’s "explicit political preference for Hindu migrants from Bangladesh" is what prompted the population to leave their homeland in the past, rather than the attacks on the community.

"People always leave for another country where they have their families or to a richer nation where the economic opportunities are higher," the Nobel laureate said, "I am not surprised that Hindu Bengalis have left Bangladesh and settled in, say, large pockets of Assam because of India's overt preference for Hindus instead of Muslims."

"I am not saying that persecution would, under no circumstances, lead to exodus on a large scale. But it's a presumption I don't agree with. The reasons for mass migration have been widely documented by both economists and sociologists across the globe. Persecution has never been the primary determinant. I would actually like to see some data on that before passing a judgement," he continued.

'Chhaunk', Banerjee's latest work, is a cookbook with a difference.

Part memoir, part cookbook, 'Chhaunk' playfully uses food explore themes of economics, society, and India. The book makes unexpected connections, such as linking savings with shami kebab and women’s liberation with the Bengali dish ‘ghonto’, as described on its cover.

Replete with corresponding illustrations by French illustrator Cheyenne Olivier, her second collaboration with Banerjee after 'Cooking to Save Your Life' and the one following Nobel laureate economist and Banerjee's spouse Esther Duflo's 'Poor Economics for Kids', 'Chhaunk' sprinkles ideas of social sciences around desi recipes akin to spicing up the dishes to add extra flavour.

"Food is a great way to make lighter conversation about big issues," Banerjee smiled.

Taking that idea forward, the academic agreed that the migration of the elite Hindus from Dhaka over the past many decades has changed the food culture in that city, just as it has for the average Bengali household in an urban Indian hotspot like Kolkata.

It is estimated that around 10 million East Bengali refugees had fled to Indian territories on account of conflict during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War.

Displacement of Bengalis on both sides of the border had a severe demographic and long-lasting political impact in India during the 1947 partition of Bengal when an estimated 2.2 million Bengali Hindus left then East Pakistan to West Bengal while some 1.9 million Bengali Muslims were forced to cross the border for a reverse exodus.

In the 77 years since Independence, the Hindu population in Bangladesh has dropped from 22 per cent to less than 8 per cent, mainly due to mass exoduses and on account of sustained crossing over of refugees, mostly Hindus, during the interim period citing persecution.

Bangladesh shares over 4,000 km of land border with India, more than half of which is with West Bengal and the remaining length running past the four North Eastern states of Tripura, Assam, Meghalaya and Mizoram.

"The scale of migration in 1971 was created because the armed forces of multiple nations were involved. I don't think non-crisis migration can ever reach that scale," the Nobel laureate said.

According to Banerjee, Indians have been relatively ineffective in using food as a form of "soft power" to influence geopolitics.

"For example in the West, both in Europe and the US, Japanese techniques of cooking are widely adapted and used whereas Indian styles of cooking are used by a handful of non-Indian chefs only in pockets in the UK," he explained.

Speaking of the challenges in illustrating for an unconventional cookbook which has more than its fair share of economics, just the way she wanted the book to be, French illustrator Cheyenne Olivier said non-specificity of the essays to a particular time or place made her job different from what she did in the past.

"This was the opposite from what I had been illustrating in the previous books," she said, adding, "Also, I felt that the average reader needed to easily relate to the pictures and so they had to be different from the pieces in the previous books which were more abstract."