... The faithful in the five districts bordering Bangladesh - Dinajpur, Malda, Murshidabad, Nadia and North 24 Parganas - seem to be on a mosque-building spree. Before December 1992, when the Babari Masjid in Ayodhya was pulled down, there were 325 mosques in the 27 police station areas adjacent to the border. A recent survey by a Central intelligence agency revealed that "more than 350" new mosques have come up in the area since then. And new madrasas as well. There were 47 of them in 11 police station areas before December 192. Since then 10 new madrasas have sprung up in just five police station areas. The Central and state government have no clue why so many mosques and religious institutions are being built along the border. Nor have they tracked down the agencies which are ostensibly funding their construction and maintenance. But the intelligence agency knows one thing for sure: a liberal flow of funds from abroad, which it estimates at Rs. 200 crore, is fuelling the frenzied building activity.

It is no secret that some of these institutions have become training centres for the fundamentalists ...

Interestingly all the mosques and madrasas have come up within 15 kms. from the international border.

While the sleuths suspect that funds for building most of the mosques have come from abroad, that is not true in the case of the Islipara mosque at Aurangabad. It was built by the owners of the local Pataka Bidi Company, which is the second largest such venture in the country. Though Islipara already had four mosques the owners of the company wanted to build another ... to keep its 1,000-old employees together and to prevent them from taking off under the pretext of offering prayers. Caretakers of the new or renovated mosques say that funds have hardly been a problem. The Al-Mahad- us-Salafi mosque at Lalgola ... was built with aid from the Islamic Development Bank ...

The money ... comes from "public donations" Smuggling of cattle to Bangladesh is a lucrative business in Murshidabad district: unofficial estimates put the annual turnover at Rs. 200 crore.

The politician-police-smuggler nexus is so strong here that government decisions are allegedly implemented only with their approval. it is also alleged that the politicians provide protection to the fundamentalists who in turn encourage infiltration ...

According to a census report the highest rates of population growth during 1981-91 were registered in seven border districts: among them 24 Parganas (North and South) recorded 30.8%, Nadia 29.8, Malda 29.6 and Murshidabad 28% when the state average was 24.5%. (Source: The Week, 15 February, 1998)