Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Thursday said that if people write Bengali instead of Assamese as their mother tongue in the census, the government will be able to identify the number of “foreigners” in the state, The Hindu reported.
“Nobody is affected by the threats ahead of every census about listing this or that language,” the chief minister told reporters. “They were made to believe that if more people do not speak Assamese, the language will become extinct. But the Assamese language will remain where it is.”
“Providing false information in the census is an offence,” the Bharatiya Janata Party leader warned.
His remark came following a statement by student leader Mainuddin Ali who, during a protest against the state’s eviction drives, urged Bengali-origin Muslims not to list Assamese in census documents.
“We, the Bengali-origin Muslims, clearly state that we will not write Assamese as our mother tongue in this census,” the leader of the All Bodoland Territorial Council Minority Students’ Union had said on Wednesday. “We will remove the Assamese language. The Assamese language as well as the Assamese community will become a minority.”
Ali’s remarks sparked backlash from groups such as the Assam Sahitya Sabha and the All Assam Students’ Union, who accused him of linguistic blackmail.
Following this, the All Bodoland Territorial Council Minority Students’ Union suspended Ali and a police case has been filed against him.
Taison Hussian, president of the union, said that Ali had made the statement in his capacity. “Only president or general secretary of the ABMSU can make official statement [on behalf of the group],” Hussian said.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Sarma emphasised that Assamese is the permanent state language. He claimed that writing Bengali in census entries would simply “quantify the number of foreigners in the state”, not threaten the standing of the Assamese language, PTI reported.
“Language cannot be used as a tool for blackmail,” he said, adding that eviction drives would continue regardless of the outcome of the census.
Gauhati High Court advocate Oliullah Laskar told Scroll that Sarma’s statement revealed that “the main criterion to determine or suspect nationality in Assam is the language that one speaks”.
“This is racism,” Laskar said. “Discrimination on the basis of language and linguistic identity. Pure racism.”
The Assam government has been forcing persons over the border into Bangladesh since May. Many of those “pushed” into the country claim they are Indian citizens.
On June 9, Sarma said that more than 330 persons who were declared to be foreigners by the state’s Foreigners Tribunals have been “pushed” back into Bangladesh.
The Foreigners Tribunals in the state are quasi-judicial bodies that adjudicate on matters of citizenship. They have been accused of arbitrariness and bias, and declaring people foreigners on the basis of minor spelling mistakes, a lack of documents or lapses in memory.
On May 20, Sarma said that the state was “duty-bound to protect the interests” of Assam and “expel all illegal immigrants from the state through any means and as per directions of [the] Supreme Court”.
The chief minister was referring to the court’s February 4 ruling that the state must deport persons who had been declared foreign nationals.
Also read:
- ‘Please take me to Assam’: What a distress call from Bangladesh revealed
- Why experts contest Assam CM’s use of 1950 law to justify forcing out people into Bangladesh
- India’s ‘pushback’ policy violates domestic and international law – but won’t face global censure
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