Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Tuesday made another series of remarks targeting “Miyas”, or Muslims of Bengali origin, amid the “special revision” of electoral rolls underway in the state.
Addressing reporters in Guwahati, the chief minister said that he has directed Bharatiya Janata Party members to file complaints against “Miya” voters during the voter list revision exercise underway in the state, The Indian Express reported.
“There is nothing to hide about this,” he was quoted by the newspaper as saying. “I have held meetings, I have done video conferences, and I have told people that, wherever possible, they should fill Form 7s. So that they have to run around a little, are troubled, so that they understand that the Assamese people are still living.”
The Election Commission’s Form 7 is a document seeking the deletion of a voter from a state’s electoral rolls. Making a false objection about a voter on the electoral ballot is an offence that is punishable by imprisonment for up to a year, or a fine.
Sarma also said that in the next 30 years, it would be necessary to “practice politics of polarisation if we want to live”. However, he claimed that polarisation in the state is not between Hindus and Muslims, but “between Assamese and Bangladeshis”.
The BJP leader said that he himself was encouraging people to “keep giving troubles” to Miyas. “In a rickshaw, if the fare is Rs 5, give them Rs 4,” he said, according to The Indian Express. “Only if they face troubles will they leave Assam.”
Sarma was further quoted as saying: “If you don’t trouble them, yesterday I found that they have even reached Duliajan (a town in Eastern Assam). So you all should also trouble, and you should not do news that sympathise with them. There will be love jihad in your own house.”
In Assam, “Miya” is a derogatory word used to refer to undocumented immigrants and is exclusively directed at Muslims of Bengali origin. They are often accused of being undocumented migrants from Bangladesh.
Once a pejorative in Assam, from the common use of the honorific “Miya” among South Asian Muslims, the term has now been reappropriated by the community as a self-descriptor to refer to Muslims who migrated to Assam from Bengal during the colonial era.
In recent days, Sarma has made a slew of statements targeting “Miyas”, including threats of disenfranchisement and evictions.
Earlier on Tuesday, the chief minister also claimed that four lakh to five lakh “Miya” voters will be deleted when the special intensive revision of electoral rolls takes place in the state and said that his job is to “make them suffer”.
On January 24, Sarma said that only Miya Muslims were being served notices under the “special revision” of electoral rolls in the state. On the following day, he went on to say that the eviction drives in the state were only targeting Miya Muslims and not Assamese people.
Since the BJP came to power in Assam in 2016, several demolition drives have been conducted in the state, mostly targeting areas populated by Bengali-speaking Muslims.
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