7, 2011, Felani Khatun and her father arrived at the barbed wire a little after the early morning call to prayer had rung out from a nearby mosque. This has created a situation where many say India’s border guards are trigger-happy. Like Mexican undocumented migrants in the United States, their Bangladeshi counterparts are the favored scapegoats of the Indian right - blamed for unemployment, crime, terrorism, 'low-key Talibanization,' and 'disturbing our indian sex-ratio statistics.' A number frequently reported in India media is 20 million.

Official estimates are that there are 2 million undocumented Bangladeshi migrants in India. Little progress has been made over decades between the two countries on hot-button issues like smuggling, supplying arms and refuge to Indian insurgents, and control of the numerous rivers that flow through both countries.īut the standout crisis dominating Indian discourse is undocumented migrants. Partition resulted in a bloodbath, with over 1 million killed in the space of a few months and more than 10 million Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs displaced in one of the largest mass migrations in human history. Despite India helping Bangladesh gain independence in 1971, relations between the two countries have remained strained since the 1947 partition of India, when the subcontinent was split along religious lines, creating East Pakistan where present-day Bangladesh is. Rahim claims the BSF routinely harasses him and has occasionally beaten him on suspicion of aiding or sheltering illegal Bangladeshi migrants and smugglers. Shiva Rules: Will the elderly bring down India? But it’s not the possibility of getting caught trespassing by Bangladeshi border guards that worries him.īehind Rahim, a couple hundred meters into the Indian side of the border, is the world’s longest - and bloodiest - barbed wire fence.ĭubbed the “wall of death” by locals, the 4,000 km barrier spans the length of the fifth-longest border in the world, and is manned by India’s Border Security Force (BSF), whose guards kill both Bangladeshis and Indians with impunity. Standing at the very edge of his property on the Bangladesh-India border, the 48-year-old Indian farmer is half a step away from illegally crossing into the Bangladeshi village of Chander Haat.

RANGPUR, Bangladesh - “If they see me talking to you, they’re going to give me a lot of trouble,” says Abdul Rahim.

Barbed wire fence 7 days to die