By Ajaz Ashraf
The Supreme Court, in April 2023, instructed all governments to register, suo motu, FIRs against the preachers of hate, without waiting for someone to file a complaint. This measure, the court thought, was necessary to preempt mob violence and foster communal fraternity. Perhaps it didn’t reckon with the possibility of a Chief Minister persistently engaging in hate speech.
This is precisely what Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has been doing, relentlessly demonising Miyas, a pejorative reference to Bengali-speaking Muslims accused of illegally slipping from Bangladesh into India. It’s implausible a police officer in Assam will have the courage to proceed against Sarma. Ask Kalparnab Gupta, a civil rights activist, who, in 2024, emailed the Cachar district police chief, asking for an FIR to be filed against Sarma over several instances of hate speech in Jharkhand. Nothing happened.
Sarma prefers abominable speeches to employing a dog whistle to trade in hate. Contrast his fate with that of academic Ali Khan Mahmudabad, who was arrested, in 2025, on the basis of two FIRs registered against him for two social media posts. One of his posts advised Hindutva commentators, jubilant over Colonel Sofiya Qureshi’s press briefings during Operation Sindoor, to also demand protection for the victims of the “Bharatiya Janata Party’s hate mongering”.
This story was originally published in thehindu.com. Read the full story here.