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Abstract
How did the Muslims of Assam become outsiders in Assam? This essay attempts to answer this question by probing the colonial and post-colonial history of categorising people that has located Muslims outside the category of ‘Assamese’. The political effort to make the Assamese into a homogenous Hindu group undoes the xanmiholi or blended humanity of Assam. By focusing on two Muslim communities—the Goriyas or Assamese Muslims and the Miyas or Muslims of East Bengali origin—this essay explores the project of making Muslims outsiders in Assam. Finally, the essay examines the inclusion of the transplanted tea-tribe communities as a possible resolution to the Muslim situation in Assam.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Kama Maclean and the three anonymous South Asia reviewers for their comments and suggestions for improving the essay.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Shahabuddin Talish, Fatiyah-i-Ibriyah. Talish refers to the people of Assam as Achamers. The original manuscript is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. H. Blochman published an abstract of the work in the Journal of the Bengal Asiatic Society in 1872. An unpublished translation of the first six chapters by E. Higgins is available in the S.K. Bhuyan Library, Guwahati. This epigraph is from Higgins, pp. 51–3.
2. Amit Shah repeated this demand during the election campaigns in 2016 and 2019: Devjyot Ghoshal, ‘Amit Shah Vows to Throw Illegal Immigrants into Bay of Bengal’, Reuters, 12 April 2019 [https://www.reuters.com/article/india-election-speech/amit-shah-vows-to-throw-illegal-immigrants-into-bay-of-bengal-idUSKCN1RO1YD, accessed 10 May 2021].
3. There is no substantiating government record of indigenous and immigrant Muslim numbers in Assam: see Monoj Kumar Nath, ‘Muslim Politics in Assam: The Case of AIUDF’, in Studies in Indian Politics, Vol. 7, no. 1 (2019), pp. 33–43 [42].
4. See Suryasikha Pathak, ‘Tribal Politics in the Assam: 1933–1947’, in Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 45, no. 10 (6–12 Mar. 2010), pp. 61–9 [63].
5. Miya is a new term for the Muslims of East Bengal origin who came to Assam in the early twentieth century. Previously they were referred to as Mymensinghias.
6. Nani Gopal Mahanta, Citizenship Debate over NRC and CAA: Assam and the Politics of History (Delhi: Safe Publications Pvt. Ltd, 2021).
7. During his national address on 15 August 1947, even Jawaharlal Nehru, who was a beacon of secularism, claimed affinity with those Hindus who had been ‘cut off from us by political boundaries’ during Partition. For a critical reading of the failure of Nehru’s secular policy even within the INC, see B. Rao, ‘Between Promises and Performance: A Critique of Nehru’s Contribution to Secularism in India’, in Journal of Asian and African Studies, Vol. 41, no. 4 (2006), pp. 359–66.
8. On xanmiholi, see Yasmin Saikia, In the Meadows of Gold: Telling Tales of the Swargadeos at the Crossroads of Assam (Guwahati: Spectrum Publications, 1997); Yasmin Saikia, Fragmented Memories: Struggling to be Tai-Ahom in India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010); and Yasmin Saikia, ‘The Muslims of Assam: Present/Absent in History’, in Y. Saikia and A. Baishya (eds), Northeast India: A Place of Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 111–34.
9. Such slurs cannot be attributed to a single source, but they are used widely in popular discourse.
10. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, founder of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), popularised this idea in his book, Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu? (Bombay: Veer Savarkar Prakashan, 1923). Madhav Sadashiv Gowalkar, also of the RSS, appealed for a theocratic Hindu state inhabited by Hindus in his book, We and Our Nation Defined (Nagpur: Bharat Publications, 1949).
11. The 25,000 RSS-run Vidya Bharati schools throughout India, which enrol over 45 million students, teach the concept of Akhand Bharat (undivided India) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidya_Bharati, accessed 10 May 2021]. According to this view, Pakistan and Bangladesh occupy Indian land.
12. Joya Chatterji, ‘South Asian Histories of Citizenship, 1946–1970’, in The Historical Journal, Vol. 55, no. 4 (Dec. 2012), pp. 1049–71.
13. I draw from Keith Tester, The Inhuman Condition (London: Routledge, 1995), to distinguish between making and finding, and argue that creating the outsider happens through various methods, including census, history-writing, law, border policies, surveillance and bureaucratic policies.
14. The number of Muslim ministers in the Assam government was proportionally much lower than the number of Muslim electorates. During the tenure of Chief Minister Hiteswar Saikia, an Ahom, the number of Muslim ministers increased (six of 13–29 in 1983–85 and seven–eight of 36–39 in 1991–96). The lack of adequate political representation led Muslims to found the Eastern India Muslim Association, the Eastern Zonal Muslim League, the All Assam Minority Students Association and the Assam branch of the Jamiat-ul-Ulama-e Hind, which spawned the Assam United Democratic Front (AUDF) led by Badruddin Ajmal.
15. Madhumita Sengupta, Becoming Assamese: Colonialism and New Subjectivities in Northeast India (Delhi: Routledge India, 2016). The Kamarupa Anusandhan Samiti (KAS) pioneered Aryanisation: see Arupjyoti Saikia, ‘History, Buranjis and Nation: Suryya Kumar Bhuyan’s Histories in Twentieth-Century Assam’, in The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 45, no. 4 (2008), pp. 473–507 [482].
16. See Haliram Dhekial Phukan, Assam Deshar Itihas yani Buranji (Assam History and Buranji) (Calcutta: Samachar Chandrika Press, 1829); Gunabhiram Barua, Assam Buranji (Guwahati: Assam Prakasan Parishad, 1972 [1884]); Anundoram Borooah, Ancient Geography of India (Guwahati: Publication Board, Assam, repr., 1971 [1877]); and Harakanta Barua, Asom Buranji (Gauhati: Directorate of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, 1945). By contrast, Padmanath Gohain Barua, Asamar Buranji (Guwahati: Assam Prakashan Parishad, repr., 1976 [1899]), emphasises Assam’s connection with regions of Southeast Asia.
17. For a critical analysis of the history-rewriting project in Assam, see Hiren Gohain, ‘Positions on Assam’s History’, in Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. LXV, no. 8 (20 Feb. 2010), pp. 37–42. For the Aryans in India, see Bal Gangadhar Tilak, The Arctic Home in the Vedas (Pune: Tilak Bros, 1903).
18. See Suryya Kumar Bhuyan, ‘East India Company’s Relation with Assam, 1771 to 1826’, unpublished PhD dissertation, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1938; and Nagendra Nath Acharyya, ‘The History of Medieval Assam (1228 to l603)’, unpublished PhD dissertation, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1957, which present Muslims as defeated invaders who settled in Assam.
19. In 1930, communities not fitting the Hindu caste system’s classificatory division became ‘tribals’ in the colonial registers, a generic term for groups such as the Kachari, Bodo and Mikir. They were deemed lower than the caste Hindus. In post-colonial India, tribal status provides certain ‘affirmative action benefits’, prompting many communities that did not get this designation earlier to apply for it now. Assam has a variety of ‘plains tribes’, while other Northeast Indian states are inhabited by ‘hills tribes’.
20. Invoking the 1985 Assam Accord between the leaders of the All Assam Students Union (AASU) and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, a new committee has recommended implementing Clause 6 of the Accord. It demands that the land should be returned to the ‘indigenous’ people, and that all land owned by immigrants should be re-evaluated against their claims: see Kaushik Deka, ‘Report on Assam Accord Clause 6 Opens a Pandora’s Box’, India Today (12 Aug. 2020) [https://www.indiatoday.in/india-today-insight/story/report-on-assam-accord-clause-6-opens-a-pandora-s-box-1710564-2020-08-12, accessed 23 July 2021]. Although Clause 6 uses the term ‘Assamese people’ rather than ‘indigenous’, it is argued retrospectively that ‘Assamese’ stands for ‘indigenous’. Becoming indigenous is time-based for the majority in Assam, excluding the Miyas.
21. Rajat Sethi and Shubhrastha, The Last Battle of Saraighat: The Story of the BJP’s Rise in the Northeast (Delhi: Penguin Viking, 2017).
22. Until 2021, Sonowal was the chief minister of Assam and Sarma was a minister in his cabinet. Today their roles have changed: Sarma is the chief minister and Sonowal is a Union minister in Delhi.
23. Express News Service, ‘Himanta Biswa Sarma: NRC, CAA No Longer the Discourse’, The Indian Express (23 Nov. 2020) [https://indianexpress.com/article/india/himanta-biswa-sarma-nrc-caa-no-longer-the-discourse-issue-now-is-conflict-of-cultures-this-claim-of-miya-identity-7061653/, accessed 10 May 2021].
24. Syndicates backed by political actors control many illicit businesses, for example in coal, betel nuts, eggs, cows and logging. The oil and gas drilling ventures of OIL (Oil India Limited) have caused irreparable environmental damage in Upper Assam. Local people are being displaced by the government’s Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) policy and the private companies run by Patanjali and Adani.
25. See Jahnu Bharadwaj and Chandana Deka, ‘Love, Desire and Void: Reading “The Tale of Nomadic Soul” by Syed Abdul Malik’, The Wire (28 April 2020) [https://thewire.in/books/syed-abdul-malik-novel-aghari-atmar-kahini, accessed 10 May 2021].
26. See Angshuman Choudhury, ‘Saving “Jaati, Maati, Bheti”: Assamese Civil Society Needs to Recognise Where the Real Threat Lies’, Scroll.in (13 July 2020) [https://scroll.in/article/966869/saving-jaati-maati-bheti-assamese-civil-society-needs-to-recognise-where-the-real-threat-, accessed 10 May 2021]. On the shared homeland, see Jyotirmoy Talukdar, ‘How Global Academia Represents Assam and Northeast India: A Comment’, RAIOT (27 July 2020) [https://www.raiot.in/how-global-academia-represents-assam-northeast-india-a-comment/?fbclid=IwAR3WwfIhEgwF2cXdpf8pLREjigHhVtzVq6BIW_iMYkyJAXfRSrHA-sgIQsk, accessed 10 May 2021].
27. See, for example, ‘12 More Test Positive for COVID-19 in Assam, All Attended Tablighi Jamaat Meet in Delhi’, Business Standard (1 April 2020) [https://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/12-more-test-positive-for-covid-19-in-assam-all-attended-tablighi-jamaat-meet-in-delhi-120040101726_1.html, accessed 27 July 2021]; and ‘Assam COVID-19 Cases Rise to 13 After 8 Tablighi Jamaat Attendees Test Positive’, IndiaTV (1 April 2020) [https://www.indiatvnews.com/news/india/assam-coronavirus-cases-nizamuddin-markaz-attendees-603516, accessed 27 July 2021]. In his daily press briefings, Himanta Biswa Sarma read out the names of each Muslim affected by COVID-19, detailed their ‘bad behaviour’ in quarantine hospitals, and urged the Assamese public to shun contagious Muslims. These statements were made from 29 March onwards on television. See also Gaurav Das, ‘As Assam Gets First COVID-19 Patient, “Nizamuddin List” Violates Privacy of Many’, The Wire (31 Mar. 2020) [https://thewire.in/rights/assam-coronavirus-nizamuddin-list, accessed 10 May 2021).
28. Manoj Nath, ‘Assam Muslims after the 2016 Assembly Elections’, in International Journal of Research in Social Sciences, Vol. 8, no. 2 (Feb. 2018), pp. 353–63.
29. Awwal Momin divides Muslims into khilonjia (indigenous) and immigrant. In his view, calling the whole community ‘Muslim’ would harm the local Muslims as opposed to the immigrant Miyas. When I pushed him to explain, Momin gave a convoluted response that all Hindus are khilonjia, but Muslims who settled in Assam after 1826 cannot claim khilonjia status: Awwal Momin, telephone interview, Guwahati, Assam, 17 July 2020. On 15 April 2021, the Janagosthiya Samannay Parishad, Assam (JSPA), an affiliate of the BJP led by Momin, launched a census portal to identify ‘Assamese Muslims’ who have to prove they have been in Assam since 1800: see ‘Online Census of Assamese Muslims Launched’, The Hindu (15 April 2021) [https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/online-census-of-assamese-muslims-launched/article34325747.ece, accessed 10 May 2021).
30. John Peter Wade wrote the first colonial account of Assam in 1792. The Assamese translators who assisted with his text based on Buranji material identified the Koch kingdom as Bongali: see John Peter Wade, An Account of the History of Assam, Benudhar Sharma (ed.) (Madhupur Tea Estate, North Lakhimpur: R. Sarmah, 1927 [1800]).
31. The Ahoms migrated to Assam from the Shan territories of Upper Burma (Myanmar): see Saikia, Meadows of Gold.
32. In March 1948, on the floor of the Assam Legislative Assembly, Gopinath Bordoloi, the first chief minister of independent Assam, argued that ‘in Assam there is no community which may be called majority community’: see M. Kar, Muslims in Assam’s Politics (Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1997), p. 46.
33. Based on conversations with Imran Shah, Sibsagar, Assam, July 2010 and Jan. 2012.
34. The Mughals annexed Goalpara in 1613 and the East India Company occupied it in 1765. Since the time of the Mughals, Goalpara has had a large Muslim population.
35. See Suryya Kumar Bhuyan, ‘East India Company’s Relations in Assam (1771–1826)’, unpublished PhD dissertation, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, 1938 [https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/docview/1986473596?pq-origsite=summon, accessed 10 May 2021].
36. S.K. Bhuyan, Swargadeo Rajeswar Singha (Gauhati: Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, 1975), p. 168; and S.L. Baruah, ‘The Muslim Population in Pre-British Assam: Their Social Status and Role in Cultural History’, in Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Vol. 39, no. 1 (1978), pp. 570–80.
37. Saikia, Meadows of Gold.
38. Bhuyan, Swargadeo Rajeswar Singha, p. 166.
39. This is the first epigraph in Talish, Fatiyah-i-Ibriyah.
40. The districts of Morigaon, Nagaon, Karimganj and Hailakandi have large concentrations of Muslims, comprising nearly 50 percent of each district.
41. Kabir Firaque, ‘Explained: Who Is Assamese? A Proposed Definition and Several Questions’, The Indian Express (14 Aug. 2020) [https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/who-is-assamese-a-proposed-definition-and-several-questions-6552329/, accessed 10 May 2021].
42. E. Gait, A Report on the Progress of Historical Research in Assam (Guwahati: Spectrum Publications, 1999 [1891]). Even today, BJP workers rewriting Assam’s history accept Gait’s assessment as the most ‘reliable account’, as Sanjib Goswami, a member of this study group, explained.
43. Candrakanta Abhidhana: Asamiyi Sabdara Butpatti aru Udaharanere Asamiya-Ingraji Dui Bhashara Artha thaka Abhidhana (Assamese Dictionary: The Origin of Assamese Words and Their Meaning in English) (Guwahati: Guwahati University, 2nd. ed., 1962 [1933]).
44. Nagen Saikia, Asamar Manuhar Itahaas (The History of the Assamese People) (Guwahati: Katha Publication, 2013); and Lila Gogoi, Ahom Jati Aru Asamiya Sanskriti (The Ahoms and Assamese Society and Culture) (Sibsagar: Jeuti Prakash, 1961). Rafiual Islam Baruah asserts that place names were called goriya in the Koch and Ahom kingdoms: see Rafiual Islam Baruah, Islamiya Aytijya aru Axam (Nalbari: Jai Jawan Printers, 1989), p. 52.
45. Sylhet was attached to Bengal from 1905 to 1911, then from 1912 to 1947, it was part of Assam province. In 1947, Sylhetis voted to become part of East Pakistan, although social and personal interactions continued after 1947. From 1905, the colonial administration encouraged peasants from the Bengal district of Mymensingh to migrate to Assam to increase agricultural production, and this continued even after 1947. Mymensingh is in Bangladesh now; thus, the people who emigrated from there have become outsiders—Bangladeshis—in Assam.
46. Ali Haidar Laskar and Atiqur Rahman Barbhuiya, The Indigenous People of the Barak Valley (Chennai: Notion Press, 2019).
47. See Arunabh Saikia, ‘Why Assam’s BJP Government Is Counting Members of Four Muslim Communities’, Scroll.in (12 Feb. 2020) [https://scroll.in/article/952753/why-assams-bjp-government-is-counting-members-of-four-muslim-communities, accessed 10 May 2021].
48. Satyanarayan Borah of the RSS has called for the economic and social strangulation of Muslims. His incendiary speeches are available on social media and YouTube. Here is one of his news videos in Assamese in which he makes explosive comments against Muslims [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faTi6uJoD-c&t=17s, accessed 21 June 2021].
49. I borrow the concept of ‘fraudulent’ from Zygmunt Bauman, ‘Jews and Other Europeans, Old and New’, in European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe, Vol. 42, no. 1 (2009), pp. 121–33.
50. Yasmin Saikia, ‘The National Registry of Citizens: Violating Muslims, Violating Humanity in Assam’, Global Citizen Observatory (18 Oct. 2019) [http://globalcit.eu/the-national-registry-of-citizens-violating-muslims-violating-humanity-in-assam/, accessed 10 May 2021].
51. Scholars and public intellectuals like Jyoti Prasad Agarwala, Homen Borgohain and Monirul Hussain, as well as the Assam Sahitya Sabha and the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), have used the term na-Axomiya. Ambikagiri Raichoudhury calls them pamua na-Asamiya, while Bishnu Prasad Rabha addresses them as natun Asamiya. The militant organisation ULFA accepted Miyas as na-Axomiya.
52. Two Miya poets, Shalim Hussain and Hafiz Ahmed, have asserted that the name Miya embodies their ‘lesser’ lives as ‘illegal outsiders’: see Jabeen Yasmeen, ‘Bengali Muslims in Assam and “Miya” Poetry: Walking on the Shifting Terrains of “Na-Asamiya” and “Infiltrator”’, in Journal of Migration Affairs, Vol. 1, no. 2 (Mar. 2019), pp. 69–84. This essay uses the term similarly, as a refusal to accede to the othering and dehumanising of the Miyas.
53. M. Kar, ‘Muslim Immigration to Assam’, in Social Scientist, Vol. 8, no. 7 (Feb. 1980), pp. 67–75 [70].
54. Amalendu Guha, Planter Raj to Swaraj (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 102.
55. By World War II, Assam was India’s third largest jute producer: see Debarshi Das and Arupjyoti Saikia, ‘Early Twentieth-Century Agrarian Assam: A Brief and Preliminary Overview’, in Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 46, no. 41 (8–14 Oct. 2011), pp. 73–80.
56. See particularly Md. Mofidur Rahman, ‘Living at the Margin: A Comparative Study on Majuli and Alopati River Island, Assam’, unpublished PhD dissertation, Gauhati University, Gauhati, Assam, India, 2018, Chap. 3 [https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/267643/12/12_chapter%203.pdf, accessed 10 May 2021].
57. The Line System demarcated two distinct areas; Muslim immigrants were not allowed beyond the ‘line’. By the 1930s, the system had been instituted in most districts of eastern Assam. The same rule did not apply to the settlement of Hindu immigrant communities.
58. In 1874, Muslims in Cachar accounted for 36.3 percent of the population, rising to 50 percent by 1881: see Kar, ‘Muslim Immigration to Assam’, p. 70.
59. Kar, Muslims in Assam’s Politics, p. 86.
60. See Pathak, ‘Tribal Politics in the Assam’, p. 63.
61. Gopinath Bordoloi was chief minister of Assam from 1946 to 1950.
62. Quoted from ‘Census of India, 1961’, in Kar, Muslims in Assam’s Politics, p. 7.
63. Vallabhbhai Patel regretted that ‘we cannot fully enjoy freedom…unless we can share it with the Hindus of North and East Bengal’: see Kar, Muslims in Assam’s Politics, p. 108.
64. Kar, Muslims in Assam’s Politics, p. 101.
65. Goriyas are now joining forces with the government to ‘punish’ the Miyas. When I ask them why they are supporting the government’s divide-and-rule policy, their general response is ‘the Miyas should be punished because they are becoming too bold. They are dirty, they marry several times and have lots of children. We don’t want them in Assam’. Using the Goriyas to threaten the Miyas is a new and extremely devious strategy by the government: telephone conversation with Awwal Momin, 19 July 2020, and personal email communication with members of the Sudow Assam Goriya Jatiya Parishad (All Assam Goriya Association), Guwahati, 21 June 2021.
66. Home to nearly three million people (9.3 percent of Assam’s population), chars occupy 4.6 percent of Assam’s total land area. Char dwellers face shrinking cultivable land because of erosion from annual floods and they receive little government care in the way of human development: see Manoj Goswami (ed.), Char Settlers of Assam: A Demographic Study (Guwahati: MRB Publishers, 2014).
67. Express News Service, ‘Himanta Biswa Sarma’.
68. Parvin Sultana, ‘The Nowhere People: Tales of the “Missing Villages” in Assam’, The News Mill (2 Aug. 2020) [https://thenewsmill.com/nowhere-people-missing-villages-in-assam/, accessed 10 May 2021]. For further reading about economic conditions in the chars, see Baliram Kumar and Debarshi Das, ‘Livelihood of the Char Dwellers of Western Assam’, in Indian Journal of Human Development, Vol. 13, no. 1 (2019), pp. 90–101.
69. The discussion took place in Guwahati on 15 May 2020. For the sake of anonymity, the names and police station are not revealed.
70. The first lines of the poem read: ‘Write / Write down I am a Miya / My serial number in the NRC is 200543 / I have two children / Another is coming / Next summer. / Will you hate him / As you hate me?’. Miya poetry has emerged as the voice of the community and faces a backlash from the Assamese: Hafiz Ahmed, ‘Write Down “I Am a Miya”’, Miyah Poetry Series—Part 3, Shalim M. Hussain (curator), The Sunflower Collective [http://sunflowercollective.blogspot.com/2016/12/poems-miyah-poetry-series-curated-by.html, accessed 25 June 2021].
71. Kabir Deb, ‘This Is Why FIRs Filed against 10 “Miya” Poets’, Counterurrents.org (12 July 2019) [https://countercurrents.org/2019/07/this-is-why-firs-filed-against-10-miya-poets/, accessed 10 May 2021].
72. Express News Service, ‘Himanta Biswa Sarma’.
73. Being ‘stuck’ in Assam from March to July 2020 due to the COVID-19 lockdown, I engaged a variety of people on the Miya problem. Almost all expressed fear of the ‘Bangladeshis’. During the first lockdown, 22 March to 15 April 2020, when there was a food shortage in Guwahati, boatmen from Miya villages surreptitiously sold goods. I befriended some of them and, after the lockdown, invited them to my apartment, which shocked my neighbours. They did not fear COVID-19 but were certain the ‘Bangladeshis would steal and rob the residents’. Only one eventually remarked that ‘Bangladeshis are just like us’.
74. Discussion with Hafiz Ahmed, Guwahati, Assam, 18 May 2020.
75. Kar, Muslims in Assam’s Politics, p. 52.
76. Amalendu Guha, ‘East Bengal Immigrants and Bhasani in Assam Politics: 1928–1947’, in Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Vol. 35 (1974), pp. 348–65 [354].
77. Kar, Muslims in Assam’s Politics, p. 52.
78. Ibid., p. 91.
79. Bidyut Chakrabarty, ‘The “Hut” and the “Axe”: The 1947 Sylhet Referendum’, in Indian Social and Economic History Review, Vol. 39, no. 4 (2002), pp. 317–50; and Ashfaque Hussain, ‘The Making and Unmaking of Assam–Bengal Borders and the Sylhet Referendum’, in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 47, no. 1 (2013), pp. 250–87.
80. By March 1950, there were 114,501 Hindu ‘refugees’ (later called ‘displaced persons’) in Assam: see Kar, Muslims in Assam’s Politics, p. 109.
81. Ibid., p. 139.
82. Satyendra Prasad Deka, ‘Illegal Migrants Law (Repealing & Amending)’, Assam Tribune (28 Nov. 2004), cited in Muhammad Hasibor Rahman, ‘Illegal Migrants and Indian Muslims in Assam’, The Milli Gazette (31 Jan. 2005) (https://www.milligazette.com/Archives/2005/16-31Jan05-Print-Edition/163101200535.htm, accessed 25 July 2021).
83. The government created a new category called ‘doubtful’ or ‘dubious voters’ in 1997. More than 370,000 of these ‘D-Voters’ must prove they are genuine citizens of India or they stand to be expelled.
84. Bimal J. Dev and Dilip K. Lahiri, Assam Muslims: Politics and Cohesion (Delhi: Mittal Publication, 1985), p. 8.
85. Rahul Karmakar, ‘Of 31 Muslim MLAs Elected to Assam Assembly, None Belong to BJP and Allies’, The Hindu (3 May 2021) [https://www.thehindu.com/elections/assam-assembly/of-31-muslim-mlas-elected-to-assam-assembly-none-belong-to-bjp-allies/article34471024.ece?utm_source=taboola, accessed 10 May 2021].
86. For a detailed analysis of the Assam Agitation and the shift toward communalism, see Monirul Hussain, The Assam Movement: Class, Ideology and Movement (Delhi: South Asia Books, 1993). Generally, scholars who have written on Assamese identity politics have glossed over the anti-Muslim agenda: Sanjib Baruah, India against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), focuses on ethnic problems; Arupjyoti Saikia, A Century of Protest: Peasant Politics in Assam since 1900 (London: Routledge, 2014), documents the struggles of the ‘Assamese peasants’ against the landlords. In a more recent article, Arupjyoti Saikia opines that the ‘Assembly’s Advisory Committee on Fundamental Rights, Minorities and Tribal and Excluded Areas chaired by Vallabhbhai Patel helped the Gopinath Bordoloi-led sub-committee to imagine the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution of India’, which could help to protect the economic rights of Assam. This suggestion does not address the fears of the minority Muslims of Assam: see Arupjyoti Saikia, ‘Citizenship Law Is Seen as an Antithesis of the Ideas of Regional, Linguistic Nationalism’, The Indian Express (19 Dec. 2019) [https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/assam-cab-protests-citizenship-bill-tripura-protests-northeast-bandh-6172252/, accessed 25 June 2021].
87. For further reading on the Assam Agitation and communalism, see Yasmin Saikia, ‘People’s Peace at Stake: An Assamese Experience’, in Yasmin Saikia and Chad Haines (eds), People’s Peace: Prospects for a Human Future (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2019), pp. 248–67.
88. Jabeen Yasmeen, ‘Denying the Animosity: Understanding Narratives of Harmony from the Nellie Massacre, 1983’, in Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, Vol. 14, no. 2 (2020), pp. 2–19; and Salah Punathil, ‘Between Hope and Fear: Migrant “Illegality” and Camp Life in Assam, India’, in Birgit Meyer and Peter van der Veer (eds), Refugees and Religion: Ethnographic Studies of Global Trajectories (London: Bloomsbury Collections, 2021), pp. 198–216 [https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/refugees-and-religion-ethnographic-studies-of-global-trajectories/ch11-between-hope-and-fear, accessed 25 June 2021].
89. Manoj Nath, ‘Muslim Politics in Assam: The Case of AIUDF’, in Studies in Indian Politics, Vol. 7, no. 1 (2019), pp. 33–43.
90. Telephone conversation with Advocate Atifur Rahman, Guwahati, 30 Dec. 2020.
91. Bauman, ‘Jews and Other Europeans, Old and New’, pp. 121–33.
92. Mohammed Arkoun, Rethinking Islam: Common Questions, Uncommon Answers, Robert D. Lee (trans.) (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994).
93. Saikia was a title given by the Ahom king to a commander of a hundred men. In the early seventeenth century, the Ahom kingdom was sparsely populated and a commander of a hundred men was a high-level officer. Later, as the population increased, Muslim commanders were given the elevated rank of Hazarika or commander of 1,000 men.
94. See Wendy Brown, Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).
95. See Sachar Committee Report for India (2006) [www.minorityaffairs.gov.in/sites/default/files/Sachar_comm.pdf, accessed 10 May 2021].
96. Telephone conversation with Jinul Ahmed, Sibsagar, 5 Mar. 2020.
97. Ibid.
98. Jayeeta Sharma, ‘Lazy Natives, Coolie Labour, and the Assam Tea Industry’, in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 43, no. 6 (2009), pp. 1287–1324 [1318].
99. D.K. Taknet, The Marwari Heritage (Jaipur: IIME, 2016).
100. Malini Bhattacharjee, ‘Tracing the Emergence and Consolidation of Hindutva in Assam’, in Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 51, no. 16 (16 April 2016), pp. 80–7.
101. ‘Cabinet Approves ST Status to 6 Assam Communities’, Business Standard (8 Jan. 2019) [https://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ani/cabinet-approves-st-status-to-6-assam-communities-119010801462_1.html, accessed 25 July 2021].