Part of the oath of the Chief Minister’s office is an assurance of fairness and impartiality in the discharge of duties — “… that I will do right to all manner of people in accordance with the Constitution and the law without fear or favour, affection or ill-will.” It is a section that evidently escaped Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s notice. In the state Assembly on Tuesday, CM Sarma said that he will “take sides, this is my ideology”. And that “… Miya Muslim people will insist on taking all of Assam. We will not let you take”. Sarma was responding to adjournment motions by Opposition MLAs on the security situation in Upper Assam’s Sivasagar, where, following an incident of gang rape of a minor in Nagaon allegedly by Bengali Muslim youths, ethnic tensions have exacerbated, with threats made to those labelled as “Bangladeshis” to leave the region. At a moment such as this, the CM should call for communal harmony, and work towards it. Instead, Sarma’s statements could encourage divisiveness and deepen faultlines in the state.
The incident in Nagaon deserves condemnation and the law must take its course. But the other-ing of a whole community, especially in a state historically plagued by vexed questions of identity, is disturbing. Bengali Muslims, pejoratively referred to as “Miyas”, have been beleaguered by xenophobic attacks. Part of the problem is a narrow politics that takes a zero-sum view of the state’s diversity and paints them as locked in constant competition and conflict with indigenous people, who largely live in Upper Assam, on matters of jobs and resources, culture and language. A sizeable section can trace their roots to Bangladesh, and many settled in the riverine Brahmaputra valley or Lower Assam. Many Bengali Muslims had migrated from erstwhile East Bengal during British rule and later, after the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War — the cut-off year set by the Assam Accord of 1985, which followed a six-year-long Assam Andolan against “illegal” immigrants to the state. Since his induction in the BJP, Sarma has consistently tapped into simmering insecurities and weaponised them. From painting a spectre of Assam becoming a Muslim-majority state by 2041 to bizarre allegations of fertiliser and flood “jihad”, the CM’s politics has been marked by a kind of communal dog-whistling that goes against norms of political and constitutional morality.
Soon after he won a third term to office, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had underlined that the “Constitution is our guiding light…” The Assam CM appears not to have heard or heeded the PM’s message. It is essential that the Centre reminds Sarma of his duty and responsibility to address and respond to all, not some, people of his state.
