Sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind in Assam

New stories of inhumanity are coming from Assam, the frying pan of racial hatred in India. Assam is a place where the Sangh Parivar 's attempts to evict unwilling natives in the name of citizenship law from time to time turn into riots and eventually into government project. The horrific Nellie riots of the 1980s and the Barpeta riots of the 1990s became some of the most horrific genocides in the world. It is at this point that the systematic extinction programme under the guise of the Citizenship Amendment Act was expedited. The BJP government led by Himanta Biswa Sharma in Assam is now entering its second phase. For the past few days, the state government has been evicting those who had been living in slums for decades without any prior notice and without saying anything about rehabilitation. When the victims were left with no option to hold on and ventured to protest, the police fired at them in which two men Saddam Hussain and Fareed lost their lives. In another incident shorn of any humanity, a man purported to be a photographer trampled one who was shot on his chest by the police and danced over his body – whose heart-rending video has become viral.Though the police initially pretended not to know, they later arrested the accused and saved their face when the protests intensified.

At the same time, the government is moving ahead with a campaign to forcibly evict illegal squatters in various parts of Assam. The Chief Minister, who announced the acquisition of 602 hectares of land for the government yesterday, has announced that the mission will continue. Since last Monday, the government has bulldozed 800 houses of Bengali-speaking Muslim families in the Sipajar Revenue Circle in Darang district on the Brahmaputra coast. The families, who have been living on government-owned land since the 1970s, were forcibly evicted on Monday after being given an eviction notice on Saturday.The government had not arranged for the rehabilitation of families living here for more than half a century. The Sangh Parivar government in Assam has been carrying out a brutal crackdown on the entire habitat of an area, including houses, shops and places of worship, by issuing notices one day to vacate the next day, without even giving them time to look for a safe haven during the epidemic.

According to the Himanta Biswa government, 10,301 hectares of land is to be evicted in the Sipajhar circle alone. For the BJP, this is in keeping with the promises made during last May's assembly elections. The BJP had announced that the government would evict all 'infiltrators' from the land and give it to the 'indigenous landless' to cultivate. This was earlier demanded by the 'anti-immigrant' ethnic agitators in Assam. In 2016 and 2017, the anti-Prabhajan Manch initiated evictions against "illegal intruders" and triggered clashes. After the new BJP government came to power, it was announced last June that these areas would be set aside for agricultural projects. It was demanded right then that this must be done only after finding means to rehabilitate the residents. Last June, 70 families in Lanka, Hojai and 25 in Sonitpur were evacuated. The Assam Minority Students Union (AMSU) repeatedly discussed the matter with the Chief Minister in view of the inhumane attitude of the government.

On May 10, the Guwahati High Court had ordered a temporary halt to the evictions of locals. But none of this has deterred the Himanta government. It is interesting to note that the victims of evictions in the name of agriculture are workers, the backbone of the region's agricultural system. The matter is not the focus on agriculture or the desire to improve the economy; on the contrary, the Sangh Parivar government is looking for some way to drive away the section they want to expel from the state. They are looking for new ploys for Muslim eviction in Assam after the Citizenship Amendment Act did not go the way they had hoped. The latest news suggests that the situation in the worst-hit state of Assam will only get worse.