Battered by BJP rule, Assam’s Miya Muslims pin no hopes on the election
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“For people like us, the last five years have been very difficult,” said Shahjamal.
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The 55-year-old lives in a village on the banks of the Brahmaputra in Assam’s Bongaigaon district. He said he is worried about what will claim his home first – the Brahmaputra, which flows 50 metres away, or the bulldozer of the Bharatiya Janata Party government.
In the last five years of BJP rule in Assam, the community of Bengali-origin Muslims, also called Miya Muslims and often reviled as Bangladeshis and “illegal immigrants”, has faced enormous hardship.
Thousands of their homes, allegedly built on public land, have been razed by the Himanta Biswa Sarma government. Hundreds of people from the community were forced out into Bangladesh, in the dead of the night and sometimes at gunpoint – bypassing the legal process of deportation.
Shahjamal’s family in Tinkonia village dealt with both challenges.
In October 2024, Shahjamal’s brother’s home was torn down in a demolition drive, as it had been built on government land. Most of the village, home largely to Muslims of Bengali origin, has been submerged over the years. “There is no land for building permanent homes, no land for cultivation,” Shahjamal said. “We are just surviving.”
Worse followed in May last year, when his brother, Sahar Ali,...