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India expels Muslims to Bangladesh before Assam state polls
Bengali Muslim evictions reveal rising anti-immigrant sentiment, criticised as politically motivated and discriminatory
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Beneath a sea of blue tarpaulin in a corner of northeastern India near Bangladesh, hundreds of Muslim men, women and babies take shelter after being evicted from their homes, in the latest crackdown in Assam ahead of state elections.
They are among thousands of families whose houses have been bulldozed in the past few weeks by authorities – the most intense such action in decades – who accuse them of illegally staying on government land. The demolitions in Assam, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party will seek re-election early next year, have coincided with a national clampdown on Bengali-speaking Muslims branded “illegal infiltrators” from Bangladesh, since the August 2024 ouster of a pro-India premier in Dhaka.
“The government repeatedly harasses us,” Aran Ali said, 53, speaking outside a patch of bare earth in Assam’s Goalpara district that has become the makeshift home for his family of three.
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“We are accused of being encroachers and foreigners,” Ali said, who was born in Assam, as the scorching July sun beat down on the settlement.
Assam accounts for 262km (163 miles) of India’s 4097km-long (2546 miles) border with Bangladesh and has long grappled with anti-immigrant sentiments rooted in fears that Bengali migrants – both Hindus and Muslims – from the neighbouring country would overwhelm the local culture and economy.
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The latest clamp-down, under Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has been exclusively aimed at Muslims and led to protests that killed a teenager days ago. Assam’s firebrand Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who was among a slew of ambitious BJP leaders accused of fomenting religious discord to stir populist sentiments ahead of polls across the country, said “Muslim infiltrators from Bangladesh” threatened India’s identity.
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