Himanta calls Miya Muslims declaring Assamese their mother tongue a ‘fraud’. Assam writers disagree

On June 12, three literary bodies representing the Muslims of Bengali origin in Assam asked members of the community to declare their language as Assamese in the ongoing Census.

There was nothing exceptional about the statement. Since the 1950s, Muslims of Bengali origin, whose ancestors had settled in the region in the late 19th century, have been enlisting themselves as Assamese in every Census. They have done so to assimilate with the native population, as well as to blunt the hostility of the larger Assamese society towards “outsiders”.

But a day later, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma dismissed the appeal by the organisations and called it a “fraud” by the Bengali-origin Muslim community, who are also sometimes derogatorily referred to as Miya Muslims.

“What is the benefit if one doesn’t speak Assamese at home but writes Assamese as their mother tongue?” Sarma said at a press conference in Dispur.

The Assamese language, Sarma said, will survive even if only 20% of the state’s population declare it as their language.

But Assamese authors and civil society groups have sharply criticised the chief minister, arguing that the historical role of the Muslims of Bengali origin in protecting the language cannot be denied. If Assamese is spoken by only 20% of the population, “the Assamese-speakers will become a linguistic minority in Assam,” said Harekerishna Deka, a writer and the former director-general of police. “Hindutva may win, but Assameseness will not.”

The neo-Assamese

Language is a highly emotive subject in Assam and intertwined with Assamese subnationalism and identity.

In 1836, the British government had declared Bengali the official language of the state, leading to widespread protests. The decision was eventually withdrawn, but it seeded an anxiety about linguistic identity that has persisted to this day.

Assam is also home to several linguistic communities, and in the 1931 Census, Assamese speakers accounted for only 31.4% of the population.

Two decades later, the proportion of Assamese speakers in the state went up sharply to 56.7%, as a large number of Muslims of Bengali origin identified themselves as Assamese speakers.

In their June 12 statement, the three literary bodies – Char Chapori Sahitya Sabha, Char Chapori Sahitya Parishad and Char Chapori Axomiya Samaj – laid out a historical account of how the dwellers of chars, shifting riverine islands in the Brahmaputra, adopted the Assamese identity. They were described variously as “Na-Asomiya” or Neo-Assamese, Assamese of East Bengal origin and by the derogatory epithet of Miya Muslims.

“Our ancestors decided, from the third and fourth decades of the 20th century, that the mother tongue of the Char-Chaporis would be written as Assamese in the Census,” the bodies said. “Not just that, our ancestors established the first Assamese medium school in 1899, and we have been studying in Assamese medium schools to be part of Assamese society since then.”

The literary bodies asserted: “[Our] mother tongue is still Assamese and will remain Assamese in the future.”

For most of Assam’s history, the Bengali-origin Muslims have stuck to this decision, with many of them refusing to identify as Bengalis. An exception arose in 2019, during the contentious updating of the National Register of Citizens, when a campaign urged Bengali-origin Muslims not to enlist themselves as Assamese, as adopting the language had not prevented their citizenship to be called into doubt.

However, that stayed a minority view.

The appeal by the prominent literary bodies came weeks after the remarks of Basanta Kumar Goswami, who heads the Asam Sahitya Sabha, the apex literary body in the state.

Goswami had lauded the role of the Muslims of Assam’s chars in “strengthening the Assamese linguistic community” as their continued identification as Assamese speakers in the Census is “crucial for safeguarding” the language and cultural identity of the state.

“If the Muslims of char-chapori areas do not support the Assamese language movement, Assamese people may one day become second-class citizens,” he said. “We consider the people of the chars as Assamese and as sons of the soil. A large section of Assamese speakers today comes from these areas,” Goswami said.

Who is Assamese?

The Assam chief minister, who has repeatedly targeted the Bengali-origin Muslim community throughout his tenure, appeared to downplay that history.

Sarma said that debates surrounding the survival of Assamese based on percentage calculations were outdated. He accused Muslims of Bengali origin of “declaring Assamese as their mother tongue to stop being called Bangladeshi”.

The Muslims of Bengali origin are often reviled as Bangladeshis and “illegal immigrants” in Assam, where the anxiety about being swamped by outsiders has shaped politics for decades.

Sarma’s statements, however, also open up the larger question of who is Assamese in a state with several linguistic communities and fierce contestations over language.

Khabir Ahmed, who heads the Char Chapori Sahitya Sabha and is one of the signatories of the June 12 statement, told Scroll: “Sarma has said that to be an Assamese, one has to speak Assamese at home. So, do the Bodos, Bengali Hindus, Karbis, Dimasa, Rabhas, Biharis, tea-garden communities speak Assamese at home? Those who speak the language at home would be not more than 30 %. Does it mean that the remaining 70% people in Assam are not Assamese?”

Ahmed pointed out that in another interview, Sarma had conceded that the resistance to making Assamese language compulsory in the state’s schools comes not from residents of the chars but from other tribal communities.

Both Bodos and the Bengalis of Barak Valley have in the past opposed the “imposition” of Assamese as the official language. In 2020, Bodo was conferred the tag of “associate official language” in the state while Bangla is one of the official languages in Barak Valley.

Ahmed added: “We do not need the CM’s appreciation. We are carrying the legacy of our ancestors while the CM is carrying the ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party. That is his compulsion.”

The numbers and the future

Author and social commentator Mayur Bora dismissed Sarma’s statement as “pompous” and “flawed”.

“The stellar role played by a substantial section of the people of East Bengal origin in embracing Assamese in schools and in declaring the language as the mother tongue in successive censuses from 1931 onwards can’t be wished away because of political convenience of a party,” he added.

He also said that if the linguistic basis of forming states continues to hold in the future, it was important for Muslims of Bengali origin to identify as Assamese-speakers. “Otherwise, who can guarantee the continuation of Assamese as the state language after 30 years?”

Deka, the writer, said that a drop in the number of enlisted Assamese speakers would be a “serious socio-political and economic setback for the Assamese speaking community”.

Deka warned that Sarma’s “communal” political stand on language weakens the standing of Assamese people in the state and opens it up to more powerful communities. “If Himanta Biswa Sarma’s power wanes, he may see the day when a non-Assamese Hindi-speaking politician usurps his place.”

The debate within

For Miya Muslims, the debate only exemplifies how vulnerable their standing is in Assam.

“Whatever the outcome, politicians will spin it against our community, that’s for sure,” said an author from the Char Chapori community, who teaches in a government college. “If Bengali becomes the majority language, politicians will highlight the areas where the number of Assamese speakers fell and say, 'See Bangladeshis have taken over'. Otherwise, they will say they do not need us.”

The teacher said that the three organisations’ appeal is “pragmatic” but criticised them for their silence during the community’s crises. “During the worst of times for us, from pushbacks to hate speech, they never got together to make a statement. How is the Census a bigger issue than the pain and suffering of the common people?” he said.

Academic Abdul Kalam Azad argued that the appeal made by the three literary bodies was unnecessary. “We should trust the community's own acumen,” he said. “Had this appeal come from allies within the leadership of the so-called mainstream Assamese community, that would have been a different matter.”

He also questioned the idea or utility of “assimilation”. “Language and dialect are a community’s cultural identity – as they are for the Bodos, Rabhas, Adivasis, and other ethnic groups. They are Assamese too. Historically, Assam has welcomed every community with open arms. To be Assamese, one does not need to assimilate completely.”