Anti-Bangladeshi drive, Trump tariff: A double whammy for Bengali migrants in Gujarat

For Abdul Hassan, Ahmedabad has always been a home away from home. The 43-year-old goldsmith from Hooghly in West Bengal has been a resident of the city in Gujarat for over two decades now, having learned the trade from his father, who once worked in Mumbai’s Zaveri Bazar.

Hassan, who currently works at the city's Sarif Ornaments, a tiny gold jewellery manufacturing unit, earns around 500 rupees a day, and visits Bengal once or twice a year. With weekly payments, the earnings are sufficient not only to sustain a living in Gujarat but also to send money to their families back home.

However, a series of unrelated geopolitical events is threatening to disrupt his seemingly normal life. There are many more Hassans, caught between India's crackdown on undocumented Bangladeshi immigrants and US President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs on Indian goods.

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The dingy lanes of Ratanpole market in Ahmedabad see around 1.5 lakh Bengali migrants employed in gold, silver, and imitation jewellery units who have made Ahmedabad their home for many decades.

“If you ask around here, every worker will have a similar story to tell. We had nothing to eat back home, so we came here in search of a job. Our family owns a patch of land in our hometown, but that is not fertile. So we can’t depend on agriculture for livelihood,” Hassan, who spoke with The Federal as he huddled up on his work platform along with several other colleagues to give form to a necklace from a gold bar with a blowtorch, said.

Hassan’s son and nephew also work in gold jewellery manufacturing units in Ratanpole, a busy market in the Kalupur area, which is also home to many jewellery showrooms.

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But developments over the last several months, both at home and abroad, have suddenly posed an existential threat to these communities. The Bengali migrant workers, particularly, have found themselves at the receiving end of twin challenges – eviction drive against illegal Bangladeshi immigrants and Donald Trump’s decision to impose steep trade tariffs on India.

Bengalis held as Bangladeshis

The first challenge surfaced in April, when, following the deadly terror attack on tourists in Pahalgam, Kashmir, authorities in Gujarat, like in many other Indian states, launched a hunt to track illegal Bangladeshi immigrants living within its boundaries.

Some of Gujarat’s major cities, including Ahmedabad, saw sweeping police action against illegal Bangladeshi migrants. Thousands of individuals were detained, and as many allegedly illegal settlements were razed. While these actions have raised serious debate about legality, human rights violations, and communal action, the ground reality hasn’t changed for Hassan and his ilk for the better.

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As the Gujarat home department carries out an extensive drive for verifying documents of Bengali workers in cities such as Ahmedabad, Rajkot, and Surat, Mufiz Hussain, treasurer of Bangali Sonali Samaj, a body which represents the migrant workers in Rajkot and primarily those employed in the silver sector, said such actions have left them worried and could go to the extent of breaking the industry’s backbone.

The Bengali migrant workers have a reason to be worried.

As a part of the drive, the Rajkot Police on April 28 this year barged into Bangali Waas, a place where migrant workers from Bengal live, in Hathikhana area of the city. Some Muslim men were detained, and among them was Shahidul, a 31-year-old migrant worker from Midnapore, Bengal, who had been working in a silver-manufacturing unit in Rajkot for a decade.

“It was 2 in the night when I heard a loud knock on the door. As soon as I opened, three policemen pulled me outside and barged in. They hit two other workers who used to live with me. The police were here till 7 in the morning. Around 6 am, Mufiz bhai (Mujif Hussain) intervened and assured them that our documents would be sent to the local police station for verification. The police left only after that,” Shahidul told The Federal.

The artisan said the police were in no mood to believe that they were not illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, despite receiving the documents. “The police would tell us that we are all suspects as we speak Bangla,” he said, adding that they had to appear before the local police station whenever they called them.

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“The harassment stopped after a month when they (police) were assured that we were not Bangladeshis,” Shahidul, who makes a daily earning of Rs 400, said.

The Gujarat Police arrested around 7,000 Muslim men across the state, suspecting them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Among them, more than 1,000 were Bengali migrant workers employed in the gold and silver sectors in Ahmedabad and Rajkot.

Trump’s tariffs double the trouble

Trump’s tariffs haven’t helped things either. Ever since his announcement to impose 25 per cent tariffs on Indian goods (later hiked to 50 per cent which would come into force on August 27), around 250 units of gold jewellery manufacturing in Ahmedabad and around 100 silver jewellery manufacturing units in Rajkot have shut down.

This has left many without jobs.

One of them has been Inamul, the son of Hassan. The 24-year-old told The Federal that he and his father used to work in the same manufacturing unit. But four of the eight workers were asked to go in the last week of July, which included him. He got a job in another unit, but that too shut down indefinitely on August 6. Inamul, who used to earn 300 rupees daily as a junior 'karigar', hasn’t been third time lucky since then.

The panic button has been pressed across the quarters.

Abdul Rauf Yakub Shaikh, president of Samast Bengali Samaj Association, which represents the migrant Bengali workers of Ahmedabad, said, “Business has been slow lately. Last week, the gold price touched an unprecedented Rupees 1,04,300 per tola (10 grams) in Ahmedabad, while the price of silver shot to Rupees 1.15 lakh per kilogram.

“Owing to the increased prices, the units have not been getting as much work this week. Small units that couldn’t afford the expense have been shut down, while many units are working at half of their usual capacity. As a result, many workers have been out of work.”

Shaikh added the new tariff on jewellery would mean their cost would head north and a lesser number of items would be sold in the US, India’s biggest market. He said the medium and large-scale units will also take a hit if the new tariff is not rolled back.

Sujeet Banerjee, vice president of Samast Bengali Samaj Association and the owner of a gold-testing unit in Ahmedabad, echoed similar thoughts.

“For units that are still taking orders, the cost of manufacturing has already shot up considerably. With the new tariff, the price of jewellery will increase further and might not remain affordable at all,” he said.

Banerjee added that even the upcoming festive season might not see a change in mood either, and facing job uncertainty, many workers have already started leaving Gujarat.

In Rajkot, the situation is no better in the silver market. The workers there are mostly from Bengal, and they too have started taking a turn towards their homes.

“Around one lakh workers from West Bengal work in the silver and a few gold units in Rajkot. Since the beginning of August, around 1,200 of them have been out of work. Many have decided to go back home as they are left with no money to sustain,” Hussain said.

Recalling past challenges such as the 2016 strike against a percentage point hike in excise duty or the COVID-19 pandemic, when some workers returned home but the majority stayed back, he said the situation is different this time as the units have shut down with no immediate solution in sight.

“We don’t know if they will be able to be back in business again,” Hussain told The Federal.

The tariff imposed by Trump has already dealt a blow to the diamond industry in Gujarat, with several companies in Surat forced to put on hold orders they had earlier received from clients in the US. Nearly a lakh diamond-cutting and polishing workers in the state have lost their jobs because of the tariff.

Banerjee said a serious problem was brewing in the gold and silver markets because of the twin challenges. He said the gold and silver markets employ the second-largest number of Bengali migrant workers after the embroidery sector and these workers have been working for a long time and possess local identities.

“There was no issue till April. Now, on one hand, they are staring at job losses, and on the other, are being made to produce documents to prove they are not illegal immigrants. In our business, we recruit workers for the long run since trust is a major factor here as it involves precious metals such as gold. But now with old workers leaving, the unit owners are hesitant to hire new ones. This is not helping those who are looking for employment,” he said.