Law opinion
Vested Property Act a tale of injustice
Samir Bhowmik
The
British empire in the Indian Sub-continent was divided into two
separate independent states, India and Pakistan. India was assigned for
the Hindus and the Pakistan for the Muslims. Since then, the
discrimination on the basis of religion has been working in this
region. In 1965, a 17-day long war took place between India and
Pakistan. On September 6, 1965 Pakistan proclaimed a state of emergency
under the Defense of Pakistan Ordinance. The Central Government of
Pakistan promulgated on the same day the Defense of Pakistan Rules.
Under the Rules, the Governor of East Pakistan passed an Order on
December 3, 1965 regarding enemy property by which the property of
minorities was declared 'Enemy Property'. The Government of Pakistan
took the advantages of the war as a pretext and enacted this provision
to seize the property of the Hindus with a declaration that the Hindus
were the enemy of the Muslims and Pakistan also. The law allows the
government to seize the property of individuals it deems enemies of the
state. The military rulers had enacted this law to drive Hindus out to
neighboring India after grabbing their lands. A lot of Hindu families
have been deprived of their ancestral property after the enactment of
this inhuman and black law. In 1974 the law had been renamed as the
Vested Property Act, 1974. But the law still retains the fundamental
ability to deprive a Bangladeshi citizen of his/her property by
declaring that person as an enemy of the state. The encroachers have
misused the law with the help of corrupt state authorities, political
elements and locally influential people to grab property of the Hindu
minorities.
“Bangladesher Grameen Samaje
Arpito Sampatty Ainer Probhab” Ekti Anusandhan”, a report prepared by
Prof. Abul Barkat and Shafiquzzaman presented to the National Seminar
of Association for Land Reform and Development, 13 April, 1996, said:
“On the devastating effects of the Vested Property Act on the material
and psychological conditions of the Hindus it was calculated that from
1964 each day on average 538 Hindus have vanished.” The basis of
calculation was the uniformity of the death rate for all religious
communities in Bangladesh, the birth rate among the Hindus which has
been 13 per cent less than that of the Muslims, and the difference
between migration figures coupled with total Hindu population and the
figures of the census. Thus, had there been no migration, the Hindu
population in Bangladesh would have been 16,500,000 instead of census
figure 11,200,000. The same report calculated that the vanishing rate
has not been uniform over periods; in 1964-71 it averaged 703 per day,
between 1971 and 1981 it was 537, and in 1981-91 the figure stood at
439. The report further said, “The sample survey, on the basis of which
the report was prepared, showed that out of 161 dispossessed, 13 per
cent were near landless whereas 40 per cent became landless through
dispossession, and 15 per cent of the surveyed persons were rich before
dispossession but the figure came down to 6 per cent later.”
A
comprehensive work was published in 1997 by Prof. Abul Barkat and his
co-authors on 'An Inquiry into Causes and Consequences of Deprivation
of Hindu Minorities in Bangladesh through the Vested Property Act.'
This showed 9,25,050 Hindu households (40 per cent of Hindu families in
Bangladesh) have been affected by this act. This included 7,48,850
families dispossessed of agricultural land. The total amount of land
lost by Hindu households as a result of this black act was estimated at
1.64 millions acres which is equivalent to 53 per cent of the total
land owned by the Hindu community and 5.3 per cent of total land area
of Bangladesh.
Prof. Abul Barkat in his
research paper 'Deprivation of the affected million families: Living
with Vested Property in Bangladesh' said some 12 lakh or 44 per cent of
the 27 lakh Hindu households in the country were affected by the Enemy
Property Act, 1965 and its post-independence version, the Vested
Property Act, 1974. Barkat points out that 53 per cent of the family
displacement and 74 per cent of the land grabbing occurred before the
country's independence in 1971.
Dr
Barkat's work showed that since 1948, 75 per cent of land of religious
minorities in East Pakistan and subsequent Bangladesh had been
confiscated through provisions of this Act. It is frequently the case
that Hindu families who have one or several members leaving the country
have their entire property confiscated for being labelled as enemies.
The
massive appropriation of Hindu property took place immediately after
the independence during 1972-75 and 1976-1980. In 1977 the government
empowered the tahsilders to find out the lands for enlisting as enemy
property. Since there was a provision for rewarding the successful
tahsilders they felt encouraged to bring undisputed properties of the
Hindus under the list. Finding no alternative Hindu peasants thus
started migrating as they could not expect any remedy from the
authority concerned. The ADCs, SDOs, COs were also promised for reward
like the tahsilders. In many cases the tahsilders enlisted any land as
vested property only if, it was owned by a Hindu person during 1965-69
even if that owner never left East Pakistan or Bangladesh.
'Deprivation
of Hindu Minority in BangladeshLiving with Vested Property', a recently
published work by Prof. Abul Barkat and his co-authors, tells the
stories and events that actually took place to deprive the Hindu
minorities of their rights and titles of property ownership. In this
outstanding research work the authors show that about 1.2 million
households and 6 million people belonging to Hindu community have been
directly and severely affected by the Vested Property Act. The
community has lost 2.6 million acres of its own land in addition to
other moveable and immoveable property. The approximate money value of
such loss (US$ 55 billion) would be equivalent to 75 percent of the GDP
of Bangladesh (at 2007 prices). Assuming the 1961 population share of
the Hindu population was 18.4 percent, the absolute size of this
population in 2001 would have been 22.8 million rather than the 11.4
million reported in the census. In other words, the actual current
(2001) figure is half the expected size. Thus the missing Hindu
population was estimated to be 50 percent with the mass outward
migration from the mid-1960s onward as an effect of the Enemy Property
Act and its post independence version, the Vested Property Act.
Dr.
Barkat does not think the land grabbing is a problem of 'Hindu versus
Muslims' polarisation. He emphasised that less than 0.4 percent of the
population of Bangladesh has benefited from the EP/VP Act.
The
best persons have been affected by the most inhumane law. Shaheed
Dhirendranath Dutta, the veteran political leader from Comilla, freedom
fighter against British Raj, and a member of the Pakistan Constituent
Assembly who raised the first voice of protest in the Parliament
against imposition of Urdu as the only state language of Pakistan and
demanded Bangla be recognised as a state language and dedicated his
whole life to the people and fought to his last breath for the cause of
the country is one of the prominent persons affected by the Vested
Property Act. The other eminent persons who have been affected by the
EP/VP Act are Masterda Surya Sen, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, Prof. Dr.
G.C. Dev., Mr. Amal Sen and Mr. Barin Majumder. The stories of common
persons are less known.
On April 2001,
30 years after the independence, the Awami League government passed the
Vested Property Return Act, 2001 in a session boycotted by the then
opposition BNP and Jamaat. But the government could not implement the
Act as it was passed in the last stage of its tenure. But the
successive governments could not prepare and publish the list of vested
property even after seven years of the enactment of the law.
The
non-party caretaker government should immediately prepare the list and
publish the gazette of vested property. The Vested Property Act is a
law against human rights, justice, democracy and the spirit of our
constitution. In our constitution the people of Bangladesh are pledge
bound to establish “a society in which the rule of law, fundamental
human right and freedom, equality and justice, political, economic and
social will be secured for all citizens.” Article 27 provides that, all
citizens are equal before law and are entitled to equal protection of
law and Article 28 provides the state shall not discriminate against
any citizens on the grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex or place
of birth. These are fundamental rights which are enforceable under the
Constitution. So the Vested Property Act is a clear violation of the
fundamental rights guaranteed in our constitution. People want to see
the returning of the so-called vested property to real owners and their
descendants. The non-party caretaker government should immediately take
effective steps regarding this man-made problem that is contrary to the
spirit of humanity.
Samir Bhowmik is a freelancer on legal and rights issues.
