In Assam, over a thousand Muslim families evicted from railway land – but not their Hindu neighbours

As the sun came out on the morning of July 6, Mamoni Begum laid out her sodden school textbooks to dry on railway tracks in Assam’s Jagiroad.

For close to two weeks now, the Class 10 student and her family members have been living under a tarpaulin sheet, watching helplessly as books and clothes are soaked by the heavy rain.

Surrounding them is the rubble of their former home, which had stood for 40 years on the foothills of the Silbhanga hill near the defunct railway line.

On June 24, the tin-roofed house was among hundreds of other residential buildings demolished by the Morigaon district administration. Around 8,000 people have been turned homeless by the eviction, residents and district administration officials said.

According to the residents, 1,500-odd families had been living in this settlement in Silbhanga village for four decades. District officials said they were evicted as they were “unauthorised encroachers” on railway land.

“We have been living here for three generations,” Mamoni said. “My maternal grandfather lived here. My mother was born in this house. My brothers and I were living here. But now we don’t have any land or place to go.”

A few hundred metres from Mamoni’s house, a cluster of houses, a school, a temple and an ashram stand amid the debris of other buildings.

“Those are the residences of Hindu families. But they are still standing,” said the Class 10 student, pointing to the structures. “The temple and the ashram are also on railway land. Why were they not pulled down?”

Several other residents of the settlement also alleged that Bengal-origin Muslimfamilies had been singled out. Almost all of the houses razed belonged to Muslim families, they said.

While a Kali temple still remains on the land, the houses adjoining it have been brought down. “They flattened the decades-old madrassa and broke the masjid wall but did not touch the Kali Mandir and the ashram,” said 52-year-old Abul Kashem, a resident whose house was torn down. Another madrasa and two masjids remain standing.

Monuwara Begum, a 45-year-old physically challenged woman, expressed her anguish at the alleged selective action of the government. “Why does the Assam government deprive and abuse us? Is it because we are Muslims?” she asked.

Many residents also alleged that the demolition was carried out even as the Gauhati High Court issued a stay order on the drive that morning.

Morigaon deputy commissioner Devashish Sharma told Scroll that the drive was stopped in the afternoon, when a hard copy of the court order was given to him.

Congress parliamentarian from Nagaon, Pradyut Bordoloi, alleged that the demolition was an instance of the Bharatiya Janata Party government punishing Muslims for not voting for the party in the Lok Sabha elections.

Several BJP leaders, including the legislator from Jagiroad, Pijush Hazarika, have blamed Muslims for the party’s performance in certain seats.

However, the party denied Bordoloi’s allegation. “Unauthorised encroachers ought to be evicted and there is no connection with voting,” said Bhabesh Kaita, who heads the state unit of the party. “Leaders like Pradyut Bordoloi encourage encroachment and want this place to be a dumping ground for Bangladeshi-origin people. But the BJP will not allow it.”

A quarry and a mill

Forty years ago, the settlement near the Jagiroad town had come up close to a stone quarry and the Nagaon paper mill owned by the Hindustan Paper Corporation.

Both the quarry and mill are now defunct, but in the 1980s, they were an attractive source of employment, residents recalled.

Many families had migrated from areas close to the Brahmaputra in Morigaon and Nagaon districts after losing their homes to floods and erosion by the river and settled on the slopes and in the foothills of the Silbhanga hill.

Mamoni’s grandfather, Jamal Sheikh, for example, moved from Laharighat, 45 km away, to work in the quarry after the land on which their home stood was eroded by the river. He built a tin-roofed house which eventually became home to Mamoni, her three sisters and mother.

“After the river broke us, we built a temporary house on the abandoned and useless railway land on the slopes of Silbhanga hill,” said Julhas Ali Ahmed, another resident of the village. “We lived here for about 40 years.”

“Many of us found work in the stone quarry or as daily wagers in the paper mill,” said 64-year-old Hazrat Ali, one of the residents who came here in 1980.

The mill shut down in 2017. The quarry was closed even earlier, said residents. As work became scarce, many residents migrated to nearby cities and towns. “But we all continued to live here,” said Ali, whose home was brought down in the June 24 demolition drive.

The JCBs roll in

On June 12, North East Railway officials issued formal eviction notices to most of the families, asking them to vacate the land within seven days.

Residents said the officials pasted the notice on several sheds, homes and trees on June 14. The Hindu residents of the settlement said no notices were pasted on their homes.

The notice, seen by Scroll, asked all residents of the area to vacate the railway land, according to the Public Premises (Eviction of Unauthorised Occupants) Act, 1971 as the railway authority had planned to carry out “ developmental activities” in the location.

On June 24, the Morigaon deputy commissioner Devashish Sharma arrived at Silbhanga, along with the district police chief, 200 police and central security personnel and 11 JCBs.

According to the officials, about 1,500 families had been living on 200 bigha or 124 acres of railway land in the Silbhanga area.

Other than the Bengal-origin Muslim residents, close to 80 Hindu families live on the eastern side of the settlement, close to the paper mill, said Sumila Medhi, a 42-year-old woman. Similarly, there are 40-odd Hindu homes near the Shankardev Vidya Niketan school and 60-odd families on the western side near the quarry.

“It is railway land according to land records and the railway track is proof of that,” Sharma told Scroll. “We had orders to clear the land. We could have just started immediately. But we made several announcements from 9 am to 1 pm, asking residents to dismantle the houses themselves. When we saw that some people were adamant, we started demolishing the homes around 1 pm.”

The drive continued for two hours. By then, all Muslim homes in the settlement had been brought down.

Several homes belonging to Hindu, Nepali and Tiwa families were not razed – even when they were standing near the Muslim houses. The Tiwas are a tribe who live in several areas in Assam and Meghalaya.

Asked about allegations of bias, deputy commissioner Sharma told Scroll: “We could not demolish the houses belonging to the majority community in certain portions because before we could reach there, the high court order came and we had to stop it.”

He added that 15-odd Tiwa families had demolished their homes on their own, after hearing the officials’ announcement.

Scroll also found that a couple of Hindu families near the paper mill – on the other side of the quarry – had dismantled their homes themselves voluntarily. Apart from this, not a single Hindu home in the settlement was demolished.

“As they razed our neighbours’ homes, we got frightened and broke the houses ourselves,” said Rinku Rai, in her 40s, who stays in a tin house. “No notice was shared with us. I have heard some Hindu families have got some money as compensation and left the place.”

Anju Bora, a 35-year-old resident, lives in a tin hut not more than 200m from where other Muslim homes stood. “We are afraid that we will also be evicted. But local leaders reassured us that they will not evict us as we were not given notices.”

Anajli Das, an elderly lady of the village, said that several of the evicted Bengal-origin Muslims had arrived at the settlement 40 years ago. “The government should have given some more time to relocate them,” Das said. “Where will these poor people go? There was no alternative given. Nobody has the capacity to buy land.”

The court order

On June 21, a number of Silbhanga residents approached the Gauhati High Court challenging the eviction notice. A few hours before the demolition was carried out, the court began hearing the matter.

Justice Soumitra Saikia stayed the eviction, asking the railways and state government not to proceed with the process until the next hearing.

The court also asked the senior government advocate representing the Morigaon deputy commissioner, Morigaon superintendent of police, Mayong revenue circle officer and officer-in-charge of Jagiroad police station to convey the court orders to the officials “forthwith”.

However, multiple residents told Scroll the eviction continued even after the stay order of the Gauhati High Court.

“The order was passed at 10.30 am,” Gauhati high court advocate Abdur Razzaque Bhuyan, who is representing the petitioners, told Scroll. “But the deputy commissioner did not answer the phone calls from the government advocate or other advocates representing the railways and the revenue department,” he said.

Nijam Uddin, a 48-year-old resident of Silbhanga and one of the petitioners, told Scroll: “I got the soft copy of the court order at 12.37 pm and I showed it to the deputy commissioner. He told me he will only accept the hard copy with the signature of the court.”

Uddin said he also tried to convince the deputy commissioner to talk with the advocate and the government advocate after the court announced the order.

“But he did not agree.” Uddin said the eviction was only stopped after they provided the signed court order after 2 pm.

Sharma, the deputy commissioner, did not contest Bhuyan and Sharma’s accounts. “They came to me and informed me that there is a stay order by the high court,” Sharma said. “But unless and until there is a signed order, we can’t stop. As soon as they handed over the signed court order in person, the eviction was stopped within one minute.”

Nijam Uddin rued that the deputy commissioner did not listen to their pleas. “Many houses would have been saved from demolition and destruction if the deputy showed some empathy and followed the court’s order. Maybe if we were not poor, he would not have allowed the demolition,” he said.

Sharma, however, countered this. He said that “never before in the history of Assam, have 8,000 people been evicted without a single act of violence or protest.” “This was because of the benevolence of the government, which allowed the residents time to remove their belongings before the demolition,” he told Scroll.

Punishment for Lok Sabha results?

Opposition leaders have blamed the BJP for selectively targeting Muslims after the Lok Sabha results in which the party lost the Nagaon parliamentary seat.

Pijush Hazarika, a close aide of chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and a legislator of Jagiroad Assembly, had campaigned in Nagaon, and pulled out all stops to woo Muslim votes.

After the loss in Nagaon constituency, Hazarika blamed Muslims for not voting for them despite getting the free rice and access to the development schemes. Chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma also alleged that while Muslims benefited from different welfare schemes, “development was not on their agenda when they voted.”

Congress parliamentarian from Nagaon, Pradyut Bordoloi, told Scroll that the government is targeting the Muslims with a vengeance as those communities did not vote for them.

“The pattern of religious persecution is similar everywhere and is emerging here as well,” Bordoloi said. “The demolition of Silbhanga Muslim settlement was carried out as the affected people apparently did not vote for the regime. It was part of the BJP’s hate campaign against the Muslims.”

Silbhanga’s residents said that they had heard some local BJP leaders suggesting that they were evicted as they did not vote for the BJP.

“We have heard this. But we are not sure as the BJP leaders did not explicitly say so,” Uddin said. “But it’s not true. Some Muslims did vote for the BJP.”

All photographs by Rokibuz Zaman.