By Harsh Mander
The frontier state of Assam – incidentally the land of my birth – is today seething with animosity, fear and resentment. It is tearing apart. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has done all he can to weaponise the legitimate anxieties of the Assamese people concerning indigeneity and land, to manufacture and stoke hatred against Assamese Muslims of Bengali origin. This is a community that is both a religious and linguistic minority in Assam. He constructs them as the foremost enemy of the indigenous Assamese people.
The parallels that he draws with Israel are particularly telling. Indigenous Assamese people, who he says are in a minority in 12 of the state’s 35 districts, should learn from Israel ways to survive and prosper despite being surrounded by “enemies”. He declared at a programme to commemorate the martyrs of the Assam agitation of the 1970s and ’80s, “I would urge Assamese to learn from Israel. In the Middle East that country is surrounded by Muslim fundamentalists. With Iran and Iraq as neighbours, Israel with a small population has become an impregnable society…”
What he unfailingly glosses over is that the Assam agitation was never a struggle against people of any religious identity. It opposed Bengali immigrants in Assam, agnostic if they were Hindu or Muslim. The Assam agitation and the Assam accord of 1985 made no distinction between Hindu and Muslim “foreigners” residing in Assam because, as Sangeeta Barooah underlines “the popular anxiety was about Axomiya identity, a regional sentiment, hinged on the fear of losing their home, hearth and language to ‘outsiders’ from Bangladesh, both Hindus or Muslims”.
Sarma instead portrays just Assamese Muslims of Bengali origin as the dangerous “other”, the “infiltrator”, the enemy that threatens the future of the people to whom Assam rightfully (and exclusively) belongs. This is a profound shift transforming an ethno-nationalist movement to a stridently communal one, targeting only people of Bengali origin of Muslim identity. He has gone so far as to direct the Foreigners’ Tribunals to drop all cases of Hindu Bangladeshis who entered Assam until 2014, and pursue cases only against Muslims.
Take his Independence Day speech while raising the national flag. He chose this occasion to passionately warn that the state’s indigenous identity is facing its greatest-ever threat from “illegal infiltration”. He urged every indigenous Assamese to stand together to protect their land, culture, and way of life.
“This is not just a political issue, it is a battle for our very existence,” he pronounced. “If we remain silent, within the next decade we will lose our identity, our land, and everything that makes us Assamese”. He added that the state was facing various forms of “jihad” – from love to land – which he claimed were aimed at weakening indigenous control. “This is the biggest challenge Assam has ever faced. Our fight today will inspire the next generation to keep our identity alive.”
His speech in many ways echoed that of the prime minister from the Red Fort. Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned the nation about a “well-thought-out conspiracy” to alter India’s population composition. “These infiltrators,” he alleged, “are snatching the livelihood of the youth of my country. They are targeting our sisters and daughters. They are misleading the Adivasis and grabbing their lands. This will not be tolerated.”
This story was originally published in scroll.in. Read the full story here.