Scores of Muslims have been killed and thousands of them have been uprooted from their homes in sporadic violence in several places in the Bodo region of the Indian state of Assam.
The Muslims driven out from hearths and homes have been put up in camps and face an uncertain future.
Anti- Muslim riots are a common feature of life in India. But the case of Assam is different from the rest of the country. There a sinister scheme of ethnic cleansing has been going on for a long time in which the main targets are Muslims. The current violence is actually a continuation of anti-Muslim violence that erupted right after the independence of India from the British.
The Muslims are branded as outsiders, now generally 'infiltrators from Bangladesh' and forced to leave the state. They are persecuted and killed by tribesmen and other communal elements who claim exclusive right to land, jobs and business opportunities in state. In the process thousands of Muslims have been killed or driven out from the state.
The current violence is the third carnage of Muslims since the independence of India in 1947.
The worst killings of Muslims took place in February 1983 which is known as Nellie massacre. Thousands of Muslim men, women and children were brutally murdered in a matter of a few days, a large number of them in one single night. The Indian government appointed a commission to enquire into the matter. But the Assam state government dropped all the cases against the culprits and the report of the commission was never published. That only show how powerless is the Indian government before the anti- Muslim elements in Assam, and the bleak future that the Muslims face in that province.
Historically, Assam is one of those places in India which received the light of Islam in the very early days. Chronicles show that some Arab preachers and traders had reached Assam in 800 CE. Not long after that, small groups of Muslims from Turkestan reached Assam via China and settled there. The Muslims received a boost during the Mughal era in the sub-continent.
However, larger number of Muslims as well as Hindus settled in Assam during the 19th century beginning from 1820s with the advent of the British. They came as laborers from Bengal to work on tea plantations and on agricultural farms in the absence of local labour. By 1874 the Muslim population in Assam had reached a little over a million, which formed more than one quarter of the population of the province. Their number increased to three million according to 1941 census.
At the time of independence, the number of Muslims in Assam had reached such a large proportion that the densely populated Sylhet district became part of the then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). However, by that time a strong movement had been started in Assam by the communal elements demanding wholesale expulsion of 'settlers', particularly Muslims from the province. During the post partition riots in 1948-50 thousands of Muslims were killed or made to flee from Assam to the then East Pakistan. According to one estimate between 1952 and 2000 more than three million Muslims were expelled from Assam.
The latest carnage should therefore be seen in perspective of the systematic persecution of Muslims in Assam.
It is high time that the world community, the Muslim countries in particular, take up the case of Assamese Muslims with the government of India lest we have another problem like that of the Rohingyas of Burma, on our hands.
