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Journalism of Courage
When Silchar in Assam was submerged under a devastating flood in June 2022, Nikhil Das, 36, and his family spent 25 days on the tin roof of their kutcha house. He points to a bridge that was built later that year, over the ponds skirting his house that they earlier used to wade through to reach home. Flagging it as an example of “development”, he says this is one of the reasons for his support to the BJP.
Nikhil is a resident of Tapoban Nagar, a settlement largely of the Hindu Bengali migrants on the outskirts of Silchar in the Barak Valley. Like many locals, his name did not feature in the final draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, which was published in 2019.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the ruling BJP’s promise to ensure the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in the event of its return to power, garnered mass support from the Hindu Bengali community in the Barak Valley. This region – which shares over 125-km-long border with Bangladesh – saw the influx of a large Bengali Hindu population following Partition in a bid to escape persecution in what was then East Pakistan.
The BJP pledged that the Act would bring relief to the Bengali Hindus facing citizenship challenges by easing and fast-tracking the citizenship process for such migrants.
While the CAA was passed in December 2019, its rules were notified last month just ahead of the announcement of the 2024 Lok Sabha poll schedule.
However, the hopes among many Bengali Hindus that the CAA would bring relief to them seem to have dimmed now. The Indian Express has reported how the process for applying under the Act, which requires documentation to prove that the applicant is a Bangladeshi national, poses a new challenge to those grappling with the citizenship issues.
Recently, while campaigning for the Lok Sabha elections in the Brahmaputra Valley – where the CAA has been opposed for its conflict with the 1985 Assam Accord – Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that so far only one person applied for citizenship under the Act, a person from the Barak Valley.
The CAA pitch seems to be missing in the Barak Valley this time. However, Sarma has repeatedly stated in public meetings in the Silchar constituency that the citizenship issues of the Bengali Hindus would be resolved “within 6 months”, without going into specifics.
Addressing a public meeting in Dholai, Sarma said, “I want to tell you that we will solve within 6 months all the issues of the Bengali Hindus with citizen issues, tribunal issues, D-Voter (Doubtful Voter). There will be no more problems going ahead.”
Nikhil is holding on to such a promise. “The BJP is saying we will be able to apply (for citizenship) somewhere after the election. I don’t know what will be done but everyone is saying something will be done,” he says.
The support for the BJP is visible across his settlement. Dulona Das, 21, whose family moved there after several years spent in a refugee camp, points to several houses under construction there under the PM Awas Yojana. “The BJP is making all these houses. Our house is also being built and we hope it will be completed soon. We’ve been getting free rice. They’ve done a lot of work for us,” she says.
Kumud Das, a resident of the Kali Bari Char slum inhabited largely by Hindu Bengalis, sums up his stand on the citizenship matter. “Here we have been hearing of nagarikta (citizenship) issues our whole lives and we will continue to keep hearing about it. Parties which raise the issue, talk about it for a few days and then forget about it. So here, we all stand with the BJP. They have given us ration cards, made roads, and we want Modi ji to be PM,” he says.
Despite the perceived disappointment among a section of locals over the CAA affair, the BJP looks set to sail through in Silchar, one of the Barak Valley’s two Lok Sabha seats, with the backing of a large section of Bengali Hindus, goodwill towards its candidate Parimal Suklabaidya, even as the Opposition totters.
A BJP veteran and minister, Parimal is currently the MLA from the Dholai Assembly seat, which is part of the Silchar Lok Sabha constituency.
The Congress had been hit by the exit of its most prominent face in the region, Sushmita Dev, who was elected to the Lok Sabha in 2014 from Silchar but lost in 2019 to the BJP’s Rajdeep Roy by over 81,000 votes.
With the Silchar seat now reserved for the Scheduled Castes (SC) candidates in the wake of the 2023 delimitation exercise, and the Congress not having prominent Dalit leaders in the belt, the party has fielded a relatively unknown face, Suryakant Sarkar.
In 2021, Sushmita quit the Congress to join the Trinamool Congress (TMC), which has also fielded its candidate Radheshyam Biswas, former AIUDF MP from Karimganj, with an eye on the 2026 state Assembly polls.
“There is not much of a contest here. The main contest here is for second place and for Sushmita Dev, it’s a test of her leadership… The TMC doesn’t have much of an organisational structure here yet. It is basically a Bengali party, and it is pitching itself accordingly here,” says Joydeep Biswas, a teacher at Cachar College.
Last week, TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee made her first visit to Barak Valley since becoming the West Bengal CM in 2011 to address an election rally in Silchar, appealing to Bengalis – both Hindus and Muslims – to join hands over their linguistic identity to vote out the BJP, saying that if the TMC wins, there would be “no NRC, no CAA”.
However, the space for the Opposition parties seems to be shrinking in the constituency going to polls on April 26. In Madhubond, a Muslim settlement in East Silchar, several voters say they have decided to switch their support from the Congress to the BJP, since they do not yet see the TMC as a viable option in the region.
“We haven’t yet seen the development we hear about but I feel like it’s better to go for the BJP. We had voted for Sushmita Dev earlier but now we feel like even if we elect a Congress MP, tomorrow they might go and join the BJP. Seeing the case of Kamalakhya Dey Purkayastha (prominent Congress leader from the region and MLA who earlier this year ‘declared his support’ for the BJP government) has made us lose our faith,” says Sahil Laskar, 33, who works as a driver. “The TMC is not ready and we haven’t seen them anywhere here. Under the BJP at least some work is happening. Even Muslims are getting schemes like Orunodoi (an Assam government scheme) and houses,” he says, ehoing the BJP’s pitch on “inclusive development”.
Similar sentiments were expressed by voters in Sonai, a Muslim-dominated Assembly segment currently represented by an AIUDF MLA. “The BJP is doing well and their candidate is good. I voted for the Congress last time but the BJP’s candidate is much better… TMC is a West Bengal party, I don’t know about them here,” said 31-year-old Mudabbir Hussain Laskar, who has a footwear shop in Sonai market.
