New Delhi: Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s recent remarks on Bengali-speaking Muslims living in his state challenge India’s core constitutional principles and his government’s actions “[bear] the hallmark signatures of ethnic cleansing”, a group of academics, activists and lawyers have warned.
In a statement bearing 188 signatures and which is reproduced at the end of this article, they also said that the chief minister’s “alarmingly divisive and despicable” statements “[usher] in a new era of impunity for hate speech in this state”.
Deeming the depiction of Bengali-speaking Muslims as ‘infiltrators’ or outsiders to be “deeply ahistorical”, they said that the Sarma government’s alleged “increased surveillance and policing” of the ethnic group, “weaponisation of citizenship determination/foreigner detection laws to declare [them] as foreigners” and “targeted demolitions of homes and public structures in Muslim-majority districts” characterise a “policy programme that now bears the hallmark signatures of ethnic cleansing”.
“The United Nations broadly defines ethnic cleansing as ‘a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas’. The actions of the Sarma government are perilously close to this definition,” the signatories said.
They also pointed to a report of many Muslim people being nominated en bloc for deletion from the voter rolls as well as of members of the Bengali Muslim community being evicted or summarily deported to Bangladesh.
Assam’s ongoing special revision has been in the spotlight due to reports of people in several Muslim-majority districts being nominated ‘in bulk’ for deletion, prompting “panic and anxiety among Bengal-origin Muslims”, as noted by Scroll. The claims and objections phase of the exercise, where election officials adjudicate on nominations for inclusion in and deletion from the rolls, concludes Monday (February 2) and the final voter list is to be published on February 10.
Unequivocally condemning the Sarma government’s policies and the CM’s remarks that “challenge the core constitutional principles of justice, equality and secularism”, the signatories expressed pride in Assam’s “rich multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-linguistic history” and insisted that elected leaders “[uphold] the democratic principles of pluralistic coexistence, equality and justice.”
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.
