![]() |
CRPF personnel on patrol in Chhagolia in Assam. Picture by Himangshu Ranjan Deb |
Cooch Behar, Nov. 23: Heroes are not born, they are made, and it takes a crisis for some to discover the stuff of heroism within them.
As Assam burned in the backlash against Biharis, Babu Hossain, an Assamese in his thirties, found the courage to shelter 13 such migrants in his house at Shantinagar in Kokrajhar district. After fiercely protecting them for several days, he sneaked them out last night and brought them to neighbouring north Bengal.
Hossain heaved a sigh of relief as his friends bade him goodbye here this evening — after several days of tension, all 13 were finally on the bus that would take them to Muzzaffarpur in Bihar.
Noor Islam, 50, Amirul Islam, 19, Sushil Yadav, 21, and Purnilata, 12, were among those that the youth bravely protected from the anti-Bihari backlash, linked to the railway recruitment controversy and the subsequent attacks on rail passengers from Assam in Bihar.
Just before his friends boarded the bus to Bihar, Hossain said: “I will breathe easy once these people board their bus safely, not before that. I will have to return to Kokrajhar.” Noor, who makes mattresses and quilts for a living, said he and his son, Amirul, went to Shantinagar recently, as they do each year, and rented a room there. “We and people belonging to the same profession work in Assam each year and return to our homes once winter is over. But we could not ply our trade this year,” Islam said.
All 13 migrants whom Hossain escorted here had rented rooms in his house and elsewhere in the locality. “After November 17, some of the local residents began threatening them, I told those staying in my house that I will provide them all the protection they needed; the rest took shelter in my house the very next day,” the Assamese youth said. For the next few days, the migrants were cloistered in Hossain’s house. “I brought them here by bus last night under the cover of darkness,” their benefactor said.
Sushil Yadav, who sells items made of lac, said he would never forget Hossain’s help. “It was on November 19 that some Assamese youths came to my shop and threatened to burn it down if I did not leave. I ran away and took shelter along with my daughter Purnilata in Babu Hossain’s house, where Islam was staying as a tenant. Hossain told me that I had nothing to fear and he would help us get to Bengal at the first opportunity.”
However, Hossain was modesty personified. “I have not done this to make a name for myself. I have been seeing these people since my childhood, they come each year and stay in my house and I have come to like them all. I thought it was my responsibility to see that they did not come to harm at the hands of senseless people.”