“For people like us, the last five years have been very difficult,” said Shahjamal.
The 55-year-old lives in a village on the banks of the Brahmaputra in Assam’s Bongaigaon district. He said he is worried about what will claim his home first – the Brahmaputra, which flows 50 metres away, or the bulldozer of the Bharatiya Janata Party government.
In the last five years of BJP rule in Assam, the community of Bengali-origin Muslims, also called Miya Muslims and often reviled as Bangladeshis and “illegal immigrants”, has faced enormous hardship.
Thousands of their homes, allegedly built on public land, have been razed by the Himanta Biswa Sarma government. Hundreds of people from the community were forced out into Bangladesh, in the dead of the night and sometimes at gunpoint – bypassing the legal process of deportation.
Shahjamal’s family in Tinkonia village dealt with both challenges.
In October 2024, Shahjamal’s brother’s home was torn down in a demolition drive, as it had been built on government land. Most of the village, home largely to Muslims of Bengali origin, has been submerged over the years. “There is no land for building permanent homes, no land for cultivation,” Shahjamal said. “We are just surviving.”
Worse followed in May last year, when his brother, Sahar Ali, was sent to the Matia detention camp in Goalpara district – and “pushed” into Bangladesh six months later. The family last spotted him in a Facebook video from Bangladesh. “We don’t want anything,” Shahjamal said. “Just have mercy on us and bring him back.”
Ali is a declared foreigner – typically long-term residents with families and properties in Assam, who have failed to prove that they are Indian citizens before the state’s foreigners tribunals.
“Before the BJP came to power, we did not live in such fear,” Shahjamal said. “The BJP government has turned us into foreigners, demolished our homes, punished us by removing us from voter lists.”
The community has found no sympathy from Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who has in the past accused them of carrying out “land jihad” to capture land from indigenous Assamese and “fertiliser jihad”, selling crops laced with excessive fertiliser and insecticide.
In 2021, Sarma repeatedly said the BJP did not need the votes of the community . This time, the party has not fielded a single Muslim candidate.
This story was originally published in scroll.in. Read the full story here.