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UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 NEW DELHI 000079 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR SCA/INS, DRL, DS/IP/SCA 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: ASEC IN PGOV PREL KDEM PINR
SUBJECT: NEUTRALIZING PARTITION? CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS IN 
PUNJAB 
 
REF: NEW DELHI 1063 
 
 ¶1.  (SBU)  SUMMARY:  Sporadic violent clashes and riots in 
2009 involving migrant laborers in Punjab have highlighted 
the changing demographics of India's wealthiest state. 
Punjab has historically imported labor to fuel its high 
agricultural and industrial growth rate.  According to 
Embassy contacts, labor from states like Uttar Pradesh and 
Bihar has been increasingly replaced in the last decade by 
migrants from further afield, including Muslim 
Bengali-speaking laborers.  Although landowners and 
businesses have largely welcomed and encouraged the migration 
into Punjab, cultural, religious, caste and class difference 
are fueling fears of political and social tension.  The 
possibility that many or most of these Muslim migrants may be 
from Bangladesh adds another layer of complexity to the 
political mix.  END SUMMARY 
 
Muslims return to Indian Punjab 
---- 
 
¶2.  (SBU)   Tarun Vij, Director of American India Foundation 
(AIF), asserted that Dalit (former untouchables) laborers 
from Bihar and U.P. have been replaced by even cheaper 
un-skilled Bengali-speaking Muslim labor since 2000.  "On a 
visit in 2004, I heard the Muslim call to prayer in Ludhiana 
for the first time in my life" said Pradeep Kashyap, 
Vice-Chairman of AIF during a recent meeting with PolOff. 
Mosques in Punjab, once padlocked after the partition of 
Indian in 1947 and the ensuing mass exodus of Punjabi Muslims 
into Pakistan, are reopening and thriving.  "Punjab, on both 
sides of the border, experienced what we would call ethnic 
cleansing today.  There were almost no Muslims left in Indian 
Punjab, today, that is no longer true.  Partition based on 
religion seems irrelevant in the face of economics" said 
Kashyap.  (Note: The district of Malerkotla is a historical 
anomaly.  Its Punjabi Muslim community was not displaced 
during Partition and has since prospered because of the 
protection guaranteed to it by the Sikh community, payback 
for a 17th century act of kindness by the Muslim Nawab of 
Malerkotla to the family of a Sikh guru.  End Note.) 
 
 
The Contentious Issue Of Nationality 
---- 
 
¶3.  (SBU)  Not all observers view this side-effect of 
economic development positively.  Nakul Bharadwaj, a young 
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) activist and former president of 
the BJP,s youth wing, believes that many migrants are not 
Indian nationals.  He accused the Indian National Congress 
(INC) party of facilitating ration cards for Bangladeshi 
migrants living in Haryana and Punjab.  A ration card serves 
as  proof of identity and grants card holders the right to 
vote.  "These workers are working in India illegally and they 
cause trouble.  The local people are angry, but Congress has 
given them (the Bangladeshi migrants) the vote illegally and 
made Indians powerless in their own country." 
 
¶4.  (SBU) Most NGOs working on the ground in Punjab, Haryana 
and the greater New Delhi area don't want to address the 
contentious issue of nationality among the communities. Anita 
Ahuja, director of Conserve India, an NGO working with 
"rag-pickers" (informal garbage collectors who live in slums) 
admitted that she has had to make special provisions to 
address the changing language needs in New Delhi and urban 
Punjab.  "Most of the rag-pickers we work with don't speak 
Hindi or Punjabi, they speak Bengali.  So, I have to either 
hire Bengali speakers or train my staff to communicate in 
Bengali, otherwise we cannot communicate in the slum areas." 
 
Discomfort with Differences 
 
NEW DELHI 00000079  002 OF 003 
 
 
---- 
 
¶5.  (SBU)  Herkawaljit Singh, of the Punjabi language Ajit 
Group, echoed the discomfort many Punjabis feel with the rise 
of Muslim and Dalit migrant communities.  He told PolOff that 
the migrants were "culturally different" from Punjabis and 
did not integrate into mainstream Punjabi society.  Although 
some Dalit migrants have converted to Sikhism, mainstream 
Sikh orthodoxy - dominated by the land-owning, wealthier Jat 
community - views the religious practices of these converts 
as sacrilegious; some Dalits worship living Sikh "gurus", 
directly contradicting mainstream Sikh belief.  The poor and 
displaced migrant workers feel excluded from the religious 
mainstream (Reftel).  The inherent tension occasionally 
spills over into emotive outbursts, confrontations and 
violence. The mix is particularly volatile in a state like 
Punjab, which has the highest proportion of Dalits and 
transitory workers among its population in India. 
 
"Making Us Look Bad" 
---- 
 
¶6.  (SBU)  Singh argued that the mostly uneducated migrant 
workers are responsible for many negative social trends, 
including "skewing the birth rate" in Punjab.  Punjab has one 
of the highest male to female birth ratios in India, a 
phenomenon generally attributed to the traditional Punjab 
preference for male heirs over female infants.  Singh claimed 
that most migrants are male workers and come to Punjab 
without their families, blaming their numbers for coloring 
demographic surveys and "making Punjab look bad in all the 
development surveys, they make Punjabis seem backward". 
Bharadwaj also accused migrant workers of civic unruliness 
since they do not belong to a strong social network which 
will restrain anti-social behavior.  "After they get paid, 
they drink, they become rowdy.  They don't care about law and 
order, about clean neighborhoods, about streets, because this 
is not their home." 
 
Support for Migrant Labor 
---- 
 
¶7. (SBU)  Many Punjabi business owners are grateful for cheap 
labor, praising migrant laborers for becoming "the backbone 
of both industry and agriculture in Punjab" after each 
instance of violent clashes in Punjab.  The December 2009 
clashes in Ludhiana occurred between police and migrant 
workers when laborers complained they were robbed of their 
salaries and accused the local police of inaction on their 
complaints.  S.P. Sharma, of Ludhiana's Apex Chamber of 
Commerce and Industry, urged the police to provide better 
security to the migrants.  According to the Chamber of 
Industrial and Commercial Undertakings, Ludhiana alone has 
700,000 migrant workers.  For Punjab as a whole, the numbers 
comfortably run in the millions.  According to media reports, 
most of these laborers make between USD $80-$130 a month, and 
live in dingy rooms with eight to ten occupants to save 
money.  Avtar Singh, general secretary of the Chamber of 
Industrial and Commercial Undertakings said that industry in 
the city is already facing a 25% labor shortage because 
migrants had left Punjab fearing increased violence. 
Industrial and agricultural organizations joined forces and 
urged greater security for migrant workers from state 
government officials. 
 
Keeping the Lid on Foment 
---- 
 
¶8.  (SBU)  COMMENT:  In all three of the violent clashes 
involving migrant communities in 2009, Punjab police reacted 
quickly, restoring law and order by preventing the riots from 
getting worse.  However, Punjab, which has seen a relatively 
 
NEW DELHI 00000079  003 OF 003 
 
 
homogenous Punjabi-speaking population since 1947, will have 
to adjust to the changing religious and cultural demographic 
pattern on the ground.  Given the scars of partition and 
enduring memories of the communal violence in modern-day 
Punjab, this may not be easy.  Dealing with a permanent labor 
underclass, viewed as ethnically and culturally different 
from the mainstream, could become a long-term issue for the 
prosperous state.  It will bear watching how the Punjabi 
population (and the state government) react if the Muslim 
call to prayer becomes more pervasive across the state in the 
years ahead.  END COMMENT 
ROEMER