New Delhi: Speaking at a rally in Jharkhand on July 17, Assam’s chief minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma — increasingly in the limelight for his divisive and communal speeches both inside and outside the north-eastern state — said that changing demography in Assam “is a matter of life or death” for him.
The reason why the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader cited that “matter” was he underlined “in Assam, Muslim population has reached 40% today.”
He compared that “40%” data (2011 census had said 34.22%) with the population of Muslims in 1951, saying, “In 1951, it was 12%.”
Later, on X, he claimed it was “14%” in 1951.
1951 में असम में मुसलमानों की आबादी सिर्फ़ 14% थी। आज उनकी आबादी लगभग 40% है।
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— Himanta Biswa Sarma (@himantabiswa) July 17, 2024
ANI quoted him as saying, “Changing demography is a big issue for me. In Assam, Muslim population has reached 40 per cent today. In 1951, it was 12 per cent. We (Hindus and indigenous tribes, etc) have lost many districts (to Muslims). This is not a political issue for me. It is a matter of life and death.”
As to how Sarma arrived at the “40%” is a mystery since the government in Delhi run by his own party for the last decade has failed to carry out a population census since 2021. This has been the first time since 1881 that India has skipped a census.
Far from facts
The first population census carried out in India after Independence in 1951, establishes that the population of Muslims in Assam was 24.68%. Not 12 or 14% as claimed by the Assam chief minister. Just as a reminder for Sarma, 12% was the population of Muslims in Assam in 1901, the first census that the British had carried out in undivided Assam.
The data is also on the website of his own state government on the portal for the Welfare of Minorities and Development.
The section, Report on Population Matters of Indigenous Muslims, under the head: Demographic Profile of Assam and Muslims reads:
“Islam is the second largest religion in Assam. It has been noticed that there is rapid change in religious demography since the beginning of the twentieth century. From 12.4 per cent Muslim population in 1901, it rose to 24.68 per cent in 1951 and in 2001, Muslim population became 30.92 per cent. As per the census 2011, Assam has 34.22 per cent (total of 10,679,345) Muslim population (by which, Assam is the second state in India which has the highest Muslim population after Kashmir). The rise in the number of Muslim population in Assam is primarily due to migration of a large number of Bengali speaking Muslim for various reasons from undivided Bengal in pre-independent era and later from Bangladesh.”
The Sarma government has accorded the status of indigenous Muslim to the Goria, Moria, Deshi, Jolha and Syed Muslims of Assam.
After Independence, thousands of Muslim families of East Bengal origin were forced to come into then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) because of communal riots triggered by Partition. As per the noted Assamese parliamentarian Hem Barua, the number of such families were 53,000.
Assamese scholar Monirul Hussain, also the author of an important book on Assam’s foreigner movement in 1993, The Assam Movement: Class, Ideology and Identity, had cited Hem Barua’s data to highlight the issue. In 2000, in an article in the Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), he had written: “Distinguished Asamiya (Assamese) parliamentarian Hem Barua admitted ’53,000 Muslim families were displaced’. One can imagine the actual number of affected people by multiplying 53,000 with an average of five to seven members in a family.”
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He further wrote, “All these displaced people involuntarily migrated to East Pakistan in the wake of the riots. However, following the Nehru-Liaquat Ali pact of 1950 involving India and Pakistan, which assured them safe return as well as rehabilitation, many returned home about two years later.”
Hussain had also pointed out that “in spite of its (Assam’s) record of communal harmony (Hindu-Muslim relation has been far better than that of the neighbouring colonial Bengal and northern India), Assam experienced communal riots in the wake of partition in India in 1947 causing displacement of more than hundred thousand Muslims living in lower Assam.”
As per a table provided by him in his 1993 book, at least 60,000 Muslims had left Goalpara district alone then. Data used by him, based on 1951 Census, had put the number of Muslim migrants from Assam to East Pakistan in the wake of the communal riots of 1950 at one lakh persons.
1951 Census left out some Muslims
As Hussain had pointed out, several of those who had to leave Assam “returned home about two years later”, they naturally must have missed adding their names in to the first census of 1951. Assam’s total population of Muslims between 1951 and 1961 censuses jumped from 1,99,5936 to 2,76,5509 and that reverse migration of Muslims must have also played a role in it.
Why Sarma is whipping up talk of ‘demography’
From a state Congress leader who was extremely critical of Narendra Modi-led BJP in 2014 and had invoked the Gujarat riots of 2002, to now relentlessly polarising speech stoking fear of the rising population of ‘Miya’ community on behalf of his new party, Sarma has, indeed, come a long way.
In a state where there was a six-year-long anti-foreigner (read Bangladeshi) agitation, the issue of demographic change remains an emotional hot-button for the majority Hindu Assamese community. This continues to get reflected even now, in election results. The agitation in the 1980s that had led to the birth of Assam Accord in 1985 is also the reason why thousands of people, inspite of voting for the BJP in the 2016 polls, had hit the streets of the state when the Modi government had brought in the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in 2019. CAA violated the core clause of that Accord which had set the citizenship date for the state in March 1971, the time East Pakistan became a new nation.
Unlike the Accord, the Modi government made a distinction between Hindu and Muslim foreigners residing in Assam, which is a sore point amongst large sections of Assamese, who are anxious about Axomiya identity, a regional sentiment, hinged on the fear of losing their home, hearth and language to ‘outsiders’ from Bangladesh, both Hindus or Muslims. As per CAA, the citizenship cut-off date is now 2014. The Modi government’s decision is backed by his party’s ideological fount, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), an organisation whose blessings Sarma certainly needs to keep his seat safe in the state.
No wonder then, just two days ago, Sarma had to announce in Guwahati that CAA is now being implemented in Assam, and therefore, the Foreigners’ Tribunals functioning in the state have been directed to register cases only against Muslims suspected to be Bangladeshis crossing over to Assam illegally. He said that no case must be made against Hindu Bangladeshis who had entered the state before 2014. That proved to be an announcement that has people bristling. It is clear that the issue is already gaining momentum in the state.
Sarma felt that he must, therefore, act quickly.
A need to somehow whip up, successfully, the fear of the ‘Muslim Bangladeshi’ amongst the Assamese voters by quoting dubious numbers, pushed as ‘data’, even though his own government’s committee, set up for the rights of indigenous Muslims in 2022, had highlighted in its report that poverty and illiteracy have been the major reasons behind rise of population among Muslims of East Bengal origin in Assam.
But with Assam set for elections in less than two years, the atmosphere is set to be vitiated by statements intended to make voters emotional, to deflect from incumbency issues in the state and the Centre, both ruled by the same party, the BJP. Going by the general election results in the state, the situation of unemployment and price rise, and visible restlessness for political change across the length and breadth of Assam, it is not going to be easy for chief minister Sarma and his party’s bosses in Delhi to repeat the win of 2021 in the 2026 polls.
More than being about Assam’s future, it is now “a matter of life or death” for Sarma’s political future.
