Opinion Assam evictions: Himanta Biswa Sarma government must not trade empathy for political expediency

The recent wave of eviction drives in Assam raises troubling questions. In the past month alone, the state has conducted five major drives across four districts, including Dhubri, Lakhimpur, Nalbari and now, Paikan reserve forest in Goalpara, removing at least 3,300 families from forest land, grazing land and government revenue land. These have been framed as an exercise in reclaiming encroached land in accordance with the standing order of the Gauhati High Court to minimise man-animal conflict. However, from Darrang and Lumding in 2021 to Barpeta in 2022 to now, the execution of these drives, and the polarising political rhetoric surrounding them, serve to underline a troubling reality: In Assam in the recent past, all too often, governance appears to function through the prism of exclusion, not inclusion.

To be sure, underlying the state’s initiatives are legitimate concerns — environmental degradation, land management, and deep-seated anxieties around migration and identity that have persisted since Partition and the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. According to the Union Environment Ministry, as of March 2024, Assam had the second highest encroachment of forest land in the country, after Madhya Pradesh. But weaponising these concerns to target specific communities — most eviction drives have focused on areas with large populations of Bengali-origin Muslims — underlines a politics of dispossession. Over the past weeks, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has spoken of “demographic invasion” by “people of one religion.”, of “land jihad”, and of his determination to “protect Assamese constituencies” in places where “an effort has started to change the demography of Upper Assam”. Such rhetoric from the chief minister — not for the first time — stands to transform administrative action into communal performance. It recasts vulnerable citizens as outsiders, an especially cruel turn in a state where, post-National Register of Citizens, nearly 19.6 residents had been rendered suspect, forced to prove their citizenship without state support. According to the state government, over 1.19 lakh bighas of land have been reclaimed since Sarma came to power in 2021 and over 50,000 people have been evicted. These statistics encompass homes, schools, livelihoods, lifelines and lifetimes. Many of the evicted are displaced victims of river erosion, economic marginalisation, or historical neglect. An absence of humane policy response stands to render eviction not as an administrative necessity, but as a form of institutional violence; not enforcement but erasure.

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With assembly elections less than a year away, the Assam government’s campaign against purported outsiders in the state has gained political urgency. But electoral arithmetic must not override constitutional responsibility and due process. If the aim is environmental or administrative correction, it must be carried out without inflammatory rhetoric or partisan action, and with a commitment to transparency. It means building trust, offering rehabilitation, and recognising that the rights to shelter, belonging and dignity are fundamental. When the state trades empathy for political expediency, it is the notion of justice that gets bulldozed.