Assam's Bengali Muslims' Struggle Is Mainly Bangladesh's Struggle Too: Nahid Islam

The struggle of Assam's Bengali Muslims is mainly Bangladesh's struggle as well, National Citizen Party (NCP) Convener Nahid Islam has said. The demolition of homes in Assam's Nagaon and the char areas is not merely an attack on a few families, he said, but a conspiracy to erase the historical presence and political existence of Bengali Muslims. He made the remarks in a post on his verified Facebook account on Monday (26 October).

Nahid Islam said that 100 years ago a 'line' was drawn in Assam's Nagaon to determine where Bengali Muslim farmers could live and where they could not. A hundred years later, he said, bulldozers are running again in that same Nagaon; the rulers have changed and the language has changed, but the target of the attack remains the same.

He said that in just two days, on 17 and 18 October, more than 1,100 homes of Bangla-speaking Muslims were demolished in Assam, along with more than 10 mosques. This is no isolated incident, he said, noting that between 2021 and 2026 at least 33 drives have left more than 22,000 families homeless.

In Nahid Islam's words, the answer is clear in Himanta Biswa Sarma's Hindutva politics. Assam's historical debate was 'Assamese versus Bengali', but the BJP has now trapped that ethnic politics inside its frame of religious nationalism, whose main target has become the Bangla-speaking Muslims, he said.

On the pattern of the evictions, he said the names of thousands of evicted people are suddenly disappearing from the voter list. Issuing new Aadhaar cards to those over 18 has been stopped; exemptions are given to many, but there is no exemption only for Bangla-speaking Muslims, he said.

Noting that 1.9 million people were excluded from the NRC, Nahid Islam said the CAA has kept the path to citizenship open for non-Muslims. On top of that has come illegal 'pushback', with district commissioners given the power of expulsion bypassing the tribunals, he said.

He also said Assam is in fact a laboratory of Hindutva. Across India, Bangla-speaking Muslims are being harassed with the label of 'infiltrators', he said, and even after living there for generations over a hundred years, they are being deprived of citizenship rights simply for being Bangla-speaking Muslims.

Raising the historical relationship between Assam's Karimganj and Bangladesh, Nahid Islam said that in 1874 Karimganj, along with Sylhet, was cut from Bengal and joined to Assam, and people protested at the time by submitting a memorandum to the Viceroy. In the 1947 referendum, Sylhet joined East Bengal with 57 percent of the vote, but Karimganj and some other parts remained in Assam, he said. For the people of Sylhet, therefore, Barak and Assam are not foreign news but news of relatives, he said.

He said Karimganj, once part of Sylhet district itself, is one of the three districts of Barak hit hardest by the NRC. On the language movement, he said the Bengali language movement was not confined to Dhaka: on 19 May 1961, 11 Bengalis were martyred by police firing at Silchar railway station in the demand for the Bengali language, and blood was shed again in 1972 and 1986. Most of Silchar's martyrs were children of Bengali Hindu families, which proves that Bengali Hindus and Muslims stood in the same ranks on the language question, so Barak's language martyrs are also a joint heritage, he said.

On the Bengali Muslims of the Brahmaputra valley, he said that to survive they gave up their mother tongue and adopted the Assamese language and movement so that Assam would accept them as its own, but the result has been the opposite. Even today they are branded 'Bangladeshi' and their homes are demolished, he said. In his words, Bengali Muslims in Assam are now attacked from two sides — as Bengalis by Assamese ultra-nationalism and as Muslims by hardline Hindutva — and the two currents have now merged to corner them.

In this context, Nahid Islam described Maulana Bhashani's struggle as exemplary and historic. A century ago Bhashani fought to protect the rights of the exploited people of Assam's char areas, he said; after a farmers' gathering at Bhasan Char on the Brahmaputra in 1924, he became known as 'Bhashani'. Through eight imprisonments and his final expulsion from Assam, Bhashani proved that the existence of Bengali Muslims in this region is no accident but a historical reality earned with blood and sweat, he said, adding that Bhashani's movement against the 'line system' and 'drive out the Bengalis' politics was the main foundation for protecting this community's civic dignity.

Nahid Islam said Assam's Bengali Muslims are residents and citizens of that country, and their legal status must be ensured within India's constitution. Their demand is clear, he said: recognition of history and the self-respect of a geographical community.

Questioning Bangladesh's role, he said this is not merely news from a neighbouring country for Bangladesh; it is directly a question of existence and sovereignty. Those being made 'stateless' across the border and pushed through it are trapped between two countries facing an uncertain future, he said. The BGB is guarding the border and several letters have been sent to India, he said, but he questioned whether bulldozers can be stopped with diplomatic letters alone. No firm and clear international or national diplomatic position on the Nagaon eviction is yet visible, he added.

Nahid Islam said the BNP government should publish a white paper on push-ins at the border and the current situation. He also called for raising this inhumane risk of statelessness at international forums including the United Nations, and for a formal declaration that no push-in or repatriation will be accepted. At the same time, the NCP convener urged strict vigilance so that the security of no minority community in Bangladesh is disturbed as a fallout of the Assam situation.