Aside from the much noted 2000-odd castes, there are eight “major” religions, 15-odd languages spoken in various dialects in 22 states and nine union territories, and a substantial number of tribes and sects. When India won independence in 1947, it became the world’s largest socialist democracy. India did not go on to solve poverty or hunger, as its founders had hoped. Its success was more moral than material: establishing equal rights and a shared identity for people who belonged to different religious, ethnic, and linguistic groups.
Over hundred years ago when India was still India and not India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, there was large scale migration of Bengali Muslims from East Bengal (which is now Bangladesh) into Assam. This was the result of deliberate policies of the government of British India which wanted to colonize Assam and exploit its natural resources and expand agriculture in an area where tribal communities – like Bodos, Koch Rajbongshis and others – lived. These tribal were outside the pale of society as it was then and were not seen to be part of the market economy. The Bengali peasant, on the other hand, had been exposed to the world of colonialism/capitalism in eastern Bengal. Thus they were game to be part of this strategy. So began the process of migration of Bengali Muslims into Assam impelled undoubtedly also by the increased pressure on land in East Bengal.
The division of Bengal carried out by the British viceroy in India, Lord Curzon, despite strong Indian nationalist opposition. It began a transformation of the Indian National Congress from a middle-class pressure group into a nationwide mass movement. Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa had formed a single province of British India since 1765. By 1900 the province had grown too large to handle under a single administration. East Bengal, because of isolation and poor communications, had been neglected in favour of west Bengal and Bihar. Curzon chose one of several schemes for partition: to unite Assam, which had been a part of the province until 1874, with 15 districts of east Bengal and thus form a new province with a population of 31 million. The capital was Dacca (now Dhaka, Bangl.), and the people were mainly Muslim.
Islam spread during the era of the Sultans of Bengal (1342-1576) and the rule of the Mughal Empire in Bengal (1576-1757). By the late eighteenth century, the British East India Company (EIC) emerged as a major military power, and in 1757 defeated the last Nawab of Bengal at the Battle of Plassey, thereby gaining control over Bengal. In 1905, the British administration partitioned Bengal for administrative reasons. The Muslims of the province largely supported the move as they felt that their aspirations were being expressed through the creation of a Muslim-majority province in the east. However, when this move was reversed in 1911 due to anti-partition protests, Bengal’s Muslims felt alienated as they saw the government compromising their interests. This led to the rise in popularity of the Muslim League Party in the region, which ultimately spearheaded the movement for the creation of Pakistan in the years to come.
Relative communal harmony, a feature of Indian politics during the Khilafat and the early phase of the non-co-operation movement, broke down in the mid-1920s, to be succeeded by communal antagonisms which frequently took the shape of gruesome communal killings. To attribute these unpleasant realities to mere ‘false consciousness’ on the part of Indians or to the British policy of ‘divide and rule’ is only a partial explanation of the phenomenon; the growth of communalism has to be related more fundamentally to the structural changes in the polity and the uneven development of various communities in British India. Its central argument is that the political changes initiated by the Act of 1919 encouraged communal alignments and further strengthened existing communal solidarities. The devolution of political power, so vociferously demanded by the nationalists, ironically widened the divisions in Indian society and hampered the socio-economic integration of various castes and communities.
Hindu nationalism, and accompanying anti-Muslimism, arose alongside resistance to British imperialism during the early 20th century. While anti-Muslimism was relegated to the fringes of Indian political thought for most of the 20th century, its role has re-emerged with the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The party’s “political roots lie in a Hindu nationalist movement that emphasizes the religion’s supremacy.” Since the BJP’s Narendra Modi “took office in 2014, government bodies have rewritten history books, lopping out sections on Muslim rulers, and changing official place names to Hindu from Muslim.” The rise of communal tensions has also strengthened the BJP’s position and it won control of Assam in 2016, two years after sweeping into power nationally. Muslims in India have been increasingly at risk since the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was first elected in 2014. The move created fear among Muslims whose fundamental rights as Indian citizens are under risk they believe.The targeted people are mostly uneducated, poor and unaware of what is happening regarding citizenship.
In a country where 84% of the population is Hindu, and just 14% Muslim, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has achieved the astonishing feat of creating a deep sense of Hindu victimhood, stoking the othering of Muslims via disinformation, hate speech, opening old religious wounds, manipulating a servile media, silencing progressive voices, and empowering Hindu supremacist vigilante groups. “Hindu khatre mein hain” (Hindus are in danger) is a right-wing refrain that resonates deeply today. Muslims faces exclusion and systematic discrimination at multiple levels. It’s a victim of poverty, lack of access to public services and civic amenities, educational and social backwardness, and severe under-representation in government jobs. The pre-Partition percentage of Muslims in West Bengal is estimated to be at about 29%. This fell sharply due to the mass movements caused by Partition, and the first census of independent India, in 1951, puts the number at 19.85% (Levy’s essay erroneously claims this figure to be 12%). The Muslim share of population continued to rise over the years, and the respective census data are 20.00% in 1961, 20.46% in 1971, 21.52% in 1981, 23.61% in 1991, 25.25% in 2001, and 27.01% in the latest census of 2011.
The Periodic Labour Force Survey 2018-19 data on employment and unemployment in India show that 52.7 per cent of Muslims in West Bengal are self-employed, a figure that is almost the same as the corresponding national statistic. Only 13 per cent of Muslims have regular salaried jobs in West Bengal, while the corresponding figure for India is 22.1 per cent. Around 34.3 per cent of Muslims in West Bengal work as casual workers, while the figure for India is around 26 per cent. In other words, compared with the rest of India, greater numbers of Muslims are engaged in precarious casual employment or self-employment in West Bengal. As a result, the earnings of Muslims in West Bengal are lower than those of Muslims in the rest of India. For example, on an average, a Muslim self-employed worker in West Bengal earns Rs.6,197 per month as compared with Rs.10,192 a month in other States. Similarly, a regular salaried Muslim worker in West Bengal earns on an average Rs.9,460 a month while she /he earns Rs.12,906 a month elsewhere in India.
In common perception, Left parties in India have been seen as “secular” at best and “pro-Muslim” at worst. This perception was part of the phenomena that brought the Left parties to power, and resulted in the defeat of Congress in two out of three states (West Bengal and Kerala) with the highest percentage of Muslim voters in post-partition India. Muslims constitute over a quarter of voters in both Bengal and Kerala. Specifically in West Bengal, where they came to power in 1977, the Left front enjoyed consistent and overwhelming support from Muslims; it was one of the primary reasons that they enjoyed uninterrupted power for over 34 years there. It would be expected that with all their secular rhetoric, Left governments would have helped Muslims enjoy a significant share of power and equal opportunities in the economic and social spheres. However, when we take a closer look, a different picture emerges.
For decades, Assam has been afflicted by divisive fears that outsiders, mainly those from neighbouring Bengal and Bangladesh, are settling illegally. But tensions have worsened since the BJP came to power in the Assam state government in 2016, with Bengali Muslims finding themselves increasingly ostracised and demonised as the “outsiders” and “infiltrators”.
Bengali Muslims have suffered most from the National Register of Citizens (NRC), a citizenship survey carried out by the BJP government in 2019, on all residents of Assam to identify those deemed to be illegal immigrants. While over a million Bengali-origin Hindus and Muslims, many who had been born in Assam, found themselves left off the register, an amendment to the citizenship law by the BJP government means that Hindus not on the NRC will likely be able to apply for citizenship anyway, leaving Muslims facing statelessness, expulsion or detention.
The BJP has continued with a very aggressive anti-Muslim campaign. Last year, the party’s Bengal leader, Dilip Ghosh, said if they come to power, the party would “identify five million Muslim infiltrators and deport” them to Bangladesh. His rhetoric was in line with the party’s stand against undocumented migrants from Bangladesh and Rohingya refugees. Senior party leader and home minister Amit Shah has in the past called Bengali immigrants “termites”.
For Muslims in Assam, ‘identity’ and the politics over it has an extra layer of complications. The community features a clear distinction between Assamese-speaking and Bengali-speaking an ethnic divide that has been the subject of people’s movements and politics for decades, with milestones along the way being the student-led movement that resulted in the Assam Accord, and then the National Register of Citizens exercise in the state.
On August 29, a public notice surfaced, signed by the Superintendent of Police of Siwan, a district in India’s northern state of Bihar, asking people to report “suspected illegal migrants, especially Bangladeshis” to the nearest police stations. The impression that the government is targeting a particular community, not just clearing land that it claims is illegally occupied, was strengthened by last week’s evictions in Sipajhar. Farms and homes were burnt down, mosques were demolished to make way for an agricultural project that is to employ youths belonging to communities considered indigenous to Assam. Plans for the project were announced in the state budget presented earlier this year. An amount of Rs 9.60 core was earmarked for it. Padma Hazarika, a legislator with a track-record of anti-immigrant politics, was elevated to a cabinet rank position so that he could lead the project.
