Jayanta Kumar Ray

Jayanta Kumar Ray (born 9 December 1934 (East Bengal, Undivided India); died 18 December 2021 (Kolkata, India)) is an Indian historian and National Research Professor.

Quotes

• [Dr Jayanta Kumar Ray, former Centenary Professor of International Relations, Calcutta University, and former Vice-Chairman, Maulana Azad Institute of Asian Studies, found a pattern in the nature of land encroachment or gradual takeover of land in Assam. According to him, in Assam and some areas of West Bengal,] whenever Muslims form a majority in a specific area, they try to evict Hindus from that or a nearby area and often succeed. For this purpose, infiltrators initially try to resort to thefts, dacoities, murder and molestation of women. But, eventually, they do not hesitate to stage large-scale riots.
  • Dr Jayanta Kumar Ray, Ray, ‘Migration from (East Bengal/East Pakistan) Bangladesh to India’, 36 Ray, Jayanta Kumar. ‘Migration from (East Bengal/East Pakistan) Bangladesh to India’. In Illegal Migration from Bangladesh, edited by B. B. Kumar. New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company, 200 quoted in Nani Gopal Mahanta - Citizenship Debate over NRC and CAA_ Assam and the Politics of History (2021, SAGE Publications India) in 285

• While discussing migration from Bangladesh to India, it is politically as well as ethically important to distinguish between refugees, i.e. Hindus, and infiltrators, i.e. Muslims. Circumstances of the 1947 Partition, assurances given by top-ranking political leaders of India to Hindus staying on in Pakistan (including East Bengal), and an uninterrupted squeezing out of Hindus from East Bengal/East Pakistan/Bangladesh since 1947 in contrast to the care with which Muslims are safeguarded in the secular-democratic polity of India, a contrast that is even compatible with the appeasement of, or blackmail by, minorities (mainly Muslims) in India—sustain this categorisation of migrants from Bangladesh into refugees and infiltrators.
  • Ray, ‘Migration from (East Bengal/East Pakistan) Bangladesh to India’, 36 quoted in Nani Gopal Mahanta - Citizenship Debate over NRC and CAA_ Assam and the Politics of History (2021, SAGE Publications India) 308