Anti-Muslim rhetoric in Assam

Still smarting from the electoral drubbing in Bihar, the Bharatia Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi now seems busy sharpening its tools to confront its challengers in Assam where elections are due in April. After it received a major blow to its electoral fortunes in Bihar, where Mr Modi conducted a no-holds-barred campaign addressing 30 rallies and promising voters billions in development funds and yet had to taste a bitter defeat, the BJP appears in no mood to let Assam shatter the myth of its nationwide popularity, and is getting ever more confrontational in its tone and tenor. One such display of rancour is the party’s resolve to disenfranchise millions of Muslim immigrants in Assam, in a bid to form its first government there. Its local leaders have also vowed to identify and deport younger “illegal migrants” in a bid to mollify and win over the Hindu majority.

As the state goes to the polls, a close to 10 per cent of its 20 million voters will be Muslims who have migrated since the 1950s from the former East Pakistan, and gained Indian citizenship. The BJP is at the forefront to exploit the discontent the majority feels towards those who have crossed over into the state over the years, most of whom are Muslims. The party’s campaign manager in the state minces no words in saying that if the party is elected, it will try to bar Muslims of Bangladeshi origin who entered India between its first census in 1951 and 1971, when Bangladesh became independent, from voting. They can stay but would have to re-apply for citizenship, he said. Ironically, the BJP’s campaign does not target millions of Hindus who have also left Bangladesh for Assam. Be that as it may, the rising intolerance in India generally and the BJP government’s tendency to tolerate the kind of extremism its allies and its own party members have been displaying in the recent past is quite disturbing. The anti-Muslim rhetoric in the Assam state elections is a continuation of this trend and does not augur well for India’s traditional pluralist ethos. 

Published in The Express Tribune, March 14^th, 2016.

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