Evictions as the Latest Tool of Citizenship Exclusion in Assam
In December 2022, the government of Assam bulldozed the home of 17-year-old Jesmina Khatun. Along with 250 other families, Jesmina and her three younger siblings were left with no provision of resettlement or rehabilitation. Their late parents were wage labourers who died landless, leaving three orphans to work as child labourers to survive. This is the story of hundreds of thousands of landless people in Assam, one of India's poorest states.
The eviction drive unleashed in December last year in Bhumuraguri, Lalong Gaon, and Haidubi of Nagaon district forcibly removed families from homes they had been living in for half a century. Nothing was spared. School bags and books of students preparing for board exams were thrown into ponds – even plants were destroyed.
Jesmina Khatun. Photo: Nazimuddin Siddique
After the eviction, the victims had no place to go, and they end up taking shelter on the sides of the village roads. The administration also removed them from the village roads. They survived with Chira- Muri (flattened rice-puffed rice) for three days without food. They did not have even water to drink. This author saw them drinking water from dirty ponds. It wasn’t long before another brutal eviction was carried out against 47 families in the Satra Kanra area of Baghbar, Barpeta.
These 'criminal' eviction drives have been continuing in different places. What do these evictions all have in common? They are against Miya Muslims who moved from erstwhile Bengal. Instead of solving the underlying problems of poverty, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the state has been using disproportionate force and targeted threats against the so-called "illegal encroachers". While the homes of Muslims are selectively demolished, in reality, landless people belonging to different tribes, religions, and linguistic groups have been living on government lands.
Recently in the Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR), an autonomous council of Assam under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, eviction notices were selectively issued predominantly to Muslims in several areas of different districts. These include Hasraobari, Mauzabari, Donshiapara of Chirang district, and Nk Darranga of Tamulpur district.
List of people who were served eviction notices in Tamulpur district, Assam.
Osman Ali from the village says, "We are living in the village for over 100 years, and the government has put a notice in our local market to vacate our land. Though our land is in a tribal belt and block area, there are other communities too in this protected belt and block, including Bengali Hindus and Rajbanshis; however, only we got the notice of eviction in a selective manner. We have been living in this land since a time when there was no concept of tribal belts and blocks.”
Anti-Muslim bias
The brutal tactic of evictions has increased in frequency against families such as Jesmina’s, causing irreparable damage to their livelihoods and psyche. In 2021, police opened fire on unarmed landless peasants before bulldozing at least 5,000 people’s homes in the Darrang District. Moinul Haque was shot dead in cold blood, his body barbarically stomped on, depicted in a gruesome video that will remain a blot in the memories of the marginalised Miya people forever. Destroying children’s educational rights and futures is fine by chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who "doesn’t need Miya Muslims vote". Othering and oppressing the Miyas successfully garnered the support of a sizable section of the majority. It is an evil tactic, with national implications.
Also read: Assam Firing: What Happened During the Government's Eviction Drive in Darrang?
Ironically, the unabated destruction of homes is the newest development in 'Amrit Kaal,’ the new slogan to describe Modi’s vision of ‘100% development’ in the ‘New India’. The government is celebrating 'Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav'. As the country is going to celebrate another Independence Day, thousands of Miya Muslims have been left in a state of limbo – without a piece of land, a home, and a future. Some more have received eviction notices in different parts of Assam. These targeted evictions are not only against humanity but also against Article 23-24 of the Indian constitution, which guarantees fundamental rights against exploitation. The preamble of the Indian constitution guarantees equality and individual dignity.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the ‘threat’ they pose is not “illegal encroachment” on land or public resources. If the government can allot lands to controversial Indian yoga guru turned businessman Baba Ramdev and to owners of private enterprises, including tea gardens, why can it not give land to the poor citizens of the country just to survive? The Auditor General reported, are 993 police officers illegally living in government housing – probably the very same officers who are evicting families such as Jesmina’s.
These questions, like Miya Muslims’ homes, are squashed in the public sphere. The godi-media falsely terms innocent families "illegal immigrants", aligning with the BJP’s violent campaign to remove citizenship rights in the violent project of building a Hindu Rashtra. When the international media revealed this agenda in a recent BBC documentary The Modi Question, the video was banned, and those who attended screenings were detained. The families who face the brunt of this violent agenda are doing so in the dark, unheard, with no medium to tell their stories of extreme sorrow to the international community, let alone their fellow citizens.
In post-colonial Assam, Muslims, especially the Miya Muslims, have always been on the margin and under systematic persecution. Especially with the rise of the BJP in power in Assam, the government has been using various mechanisms such as 'Doubtful-voter' and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) to harass the Miya community. Recently, the government of Assam has started utilising the eviction tool to make the people homeless, landless, jobless, and to strip them of their citizenship rights.
More recently, the government came out with the idea to arrest people in the name of child marriage, and hundreds of youth were arrested from the marginalised community. Such exclusionary mechanism of the government of Assam finds resonance in the policies of the Modi government at the Centre as well as the BJP governments of various other states, including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Jammu and Kashmir (currently under President's rule). Modi's central government is known for its anti-Muslim policies, such as the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and revocation of Article 370, and down-gradation of the statehood of Jammu & Kashmir.
The number of landless people is growing thanks to annual floods and erosion of the river banks. One is yet to understand what message the Vishwaguru Bharat wants to send by aggravating the threat of landlessness with the vast state machinery and its mighty force. This dark chapter of human rights violations is unfolding in a state where new murals and paintings came up to host the G-20 summit.
Posters lined with Modi’s face and slogans ‘the Mother of Democracy,’ are nothing to be proud of. It is high time for the people of Assam to note that targeted communal actions will irreversibly damage the promise of democracy in India. Not just for Miya minorities. Let us understand that by keeping the Miya Muslims under a deep cycle of poverty and state violence, Assam is unlikely to flourish. Ever.
Nazimuddin Siddique teaches Sociology at Nagaland University.
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