Assam Initiates Concrete Measures To Protect Indigenous Communities, Institutions From Bangladeshi Muslim Immigrants

The Himanta Biswa Sarma government in Assam has initiated a landmark move to preserve indigenous institutions and places, as well as the state’s tribal and backward communities, through two new laws approved by the state cabinet this week. 

A new law is being enacted not only to protect old structures and sites of religious, cultural, and historical importance but also to preserve the demographic composition of the communities living around these structures and sites.

The other law is about the creation of micro belts around villages where more than 80 per cent of the population are tribals or scheduled castes (SCs). Only tribals and SCs will be allowed to purchase or sell land and immovable properties in those villages and the belts around the villages.

“These laws are being enacted to preserve our heritage and our tribal and backward communities,” Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told Swarajya. 

The need to create a ‘heritage block’ — a 5 kilometre (km) radius around important structures and “places of religious, cultural and historical importance” that are more than 250 years old — was felt due to Bangladeshi Muslim immigrant communities settling down around such structures and places. 

Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants, or their descendants, now form a sizable section of the population around many such structures and places. It is widely feared that once they gain numerical strength, the significance and character of such places and structures will be altered and lost.

“We have seen that many ancient places of religious and cultural importance have come under threat from Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants who have settled down in large numbers around these places. For instance, this community has encroached on land belonging to old Xatras (Vaishnavite institutions of Assam) and are posing a grave threat to the Xatras. This cannot be allowed,” said state Information Minister Pijush Hazarika.

Hazarika said that a new provision is being included in the Assam Land and Revenue Regulation Act, 1886, that will restrict ownership, sale, and purchase of land and immovable properties in a 5-km belt around such structures and places to only people of indigenous communities who have been residing in that area for at least three generations. 

This new law is being enacted to preserve Assam’s cultural and religious heritage, said Chief Minister Sarma. 

“It has been often observed that Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants and their descendants who settle down in such areas slowly try to change the character of the place and create fake narratives about such places to portray themselves and long-time residents of such places. Some such places have even been destroyed by the Bangladeshi settlers,” said Nabarun Goswami, a sociologist who had taught at Gauhati University.

Hazarika said that the designation of ‘heritage blocks’ around places of historical, cultural, and religious importance will serve to protect them from the onslaught of Bangladeshi Muslims. 

The other law approved by the cabinet provides for the creation of ‘micro belts’ of a radius of 3 km around villages where at least 80 per cent of the population are tribals or SCs. 

A three-member cabinet committee headed by Education Minister Ranoj Pegu has been formed to identify such villages. The committee has been asked to draw up a list of such villages that can be declared ‘tribal’ or ‘SC villages’ by 15 September. 

Once again, this law has been brought about to protect the habitats of tribals and backward communities from being swamped by Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants. 

“The Muslim immigrants have been settling down in large numbers around tribal and SC villages, especially in the Bodoland Territorial Administration (BTA) areas, and have been buying up lands belonging to indigenous communities and displacing them from the lands of their forefathers. This new law will prevent the indigenous tribal and backward communities from becoming hopeless minorities in their own lands,” said Pegu. 

Chief Minister Sarma has, ever since coming to power, launched many anti-encroachment drives all over the state, especially in forest and tribal areas. Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants have, under successive Congress regimes, encroached on such lands and claimed them as their own.

In many areas, the immigrants created false narratives to claim that the lands they had encroached on belonged to their forefathers. 

While Bangladeshi Muslims have been successfully evicted from forest and community lands, and lands belonging to Xatras that they had encroached on and occupied illegally, the state government has now set its sights on evicting them from areas of cultural, religious, and historical importance and areas inhabited by tribals and indigenous communities. 

Chief Minister Sarma has termed the propensity of the Bangladeshi Muslim immigrant community to occupy lands illegally and even legally as ‘land jihad’ and has promised laws to stop it. 

“These Bengali-speaking Muslims start encroaching on forest and community lands and lands belonging to tribals and indigenous communities in small numbers and then get more community members to come and settle down. Once they become numerically strong, they start asserting themselves,” said Chief Minister Sarma. 

The Assam government is mulling another law that will make it mandatory for Hindus and Muslims to seek the permission of the state government to sell and purchase lands and immovable properties belonging to each other. 

The intent behind this proposed law is to prevent land and properties belonging to Hindus from passing on to the hands of Bengali-speaking Muslims, who have become a majority in many districts of Assam. 

“The problem is that other communities are finding it very difficult to stay in areas where these Bengali-speaking Muslims have become a majority. They become very assertive and try to restrict social, cultural, and religious practices and rituals of the Hindu and indigenous communities," said sociologist Goswami.

"The entire intent is to make it difficult for the other communities to stay on in such areas and drive them away so that those areas become exclusive zones for Muslims. Vast tracts of Assam have become exclusively Muslim zones where other communities do not even dare to venture. The radical Islamists in such areas have even dared to raise demands for implementation of the sharia (Islamic laws and tenets) in their areas,” he added. 

Assam's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Bhabesh Kalita told Swarajya that “such measures are necessary to protect jati, mati, and bheti (identity, land, and homes) of the indigenous communities of Assam.”