Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma ostensibly does not have any issue if 20% to 30% of medical or engineering seats are taken by people of Ajmal after he said, “A few days ago you saw that Ajmal Foundation conducted exams for medical and engineering around 250 students passed the exam. If this continues, who will take the medical/engineering seats? People of Ajmal” while addressing a public gathering in Lakhimpur district.
“But if they take all, it will hurt us, won’t it?”, CM Sarma appeared distasteful at the growing number of Muslim students in medical and engineering education.
Sarma’s reference to the “people of Ajmal” obviously meant the coaching provided to meritorious students, many of whom are Muslims, by Ajmal Foundation’s Ajmal Super 40 institute.
Ajmal Foundation is the charitable trust of business tycoon, politician and All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) supremo Badarudding Ajmal. The CM’s oblique phrase also meant the Miya Muslims (Bangali-speaking Muslims) of Assam.
The BJP’s Kingmaker in the Northeast, Sarma also usurped former American President Barak Obama’s name (though he misspelt the middle name of the president) to train guns at Indian Muslims. After journalist Rohini Singh sarcastically tweeted whether an FIR was filed in Guwahati against Obama for hurting sentiments and whether the Assam Police was off to Washington to get Obama, Sarma replied “There are many Hussain Obama in India itself. We should prioritize taking care of them before considering going to Washington. The Assam police will act according to our own priorities”.
The former US President in an interview referred to the deteriorating human rights situation in India and proposed that if he was in Joe Biden’s position of meeting PM Narendra Modi, he would bring in front Modi “if you do not protect the rights of ethnic minorities in India, then there is a strong possibility that India, at some point, starts pulling apart”.
Sarma is infamous for targeting Muslims, an accomplishment that makes the Northeastern leader rub shoulders with BJP’s top brass.
During the initial phase of closing down government-funded madrasas in Assam, Sarma said, “Madrassa, the word itself, should cease to exist. Till this madrassa will be in mind, children can never become a doctor or an engineer…If you ask a child while admitting him to a madrassa…no children would agree. Children are admitted to madrassa by violating their human rights”.
He also said, “Muslim girls cannot study in schools and Muslim men will merry 2-3 women, we are against this system. We want ‘Sabka Sath, Sabka Vikas’” while he was indicating that he wanted Bengali Muslims to become doctors and engineers instead of becoming Imam or Junab by studying in Madrassa.
Sarma, who was a former Congressman till 2014, also targeted madrasas saying, “Interestingly, the hub of all ‘jihadi’ activities, as of now, appears to be ‘madrasas’. I am not generalising but whoever has been arrested to date, has had some connection with madrasas or was acting as preachers in some mosques,” following the arrest of alleged members of Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) and Bangladesh-based terror outfit Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT).
The Assam CM also targeted Bangla-speaking Muslims of Assam in his speeches while campaigning in Karnataka for the BJP. “People from Bangladesh come to Assam & create a threat to our civilization & culture”, Sarma stoked fear against the Miya Muslims at Belagavi in March this year.
In another address during the election campaign in Karnataka, he also said, “A lot of change is happening in our country. Once there was Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, now at the time of Modi ji Ram Mandir is being built there. Once PFI people used bombs and fired bullets across the country, now in Amit Shah’s days all those PFI are in prison.”
Citing the example of the gruesome murder of Shraddha Walker, the Assam CM said, “There are many Aftabs in the country” in an election rally in Gujarat referring to the conspiracy theory of “Love-jihad”.
He has also weaponized “Love Jihad” to further target Muslims and madrasas in Assam. Moreover, he manipulated the so-called “love-Jihad” into “Fertilizer-Jihad” to target Muslim farmers in the Darrang district.
During the Miya Museum controversy, Sarma had exhorted that the larger Assamese community should resist such an assertion of culture. “Moreover, the Assamese community should think about the resistance to these tendencies; in the coming days, we may face more such challenges. If you see the voter list of Barpeta district some 50 years ago, you will find out that there were historic places in almost all villages by name but everything has ‘disappeared’ now. I have spoken about the Barpeta Satra too, but many ‘Assamese intellectuals’ have criticised me. They (Miya Muslims) are holding 1/3 of all lands in Assam, the government can demolish one house but how many more can we do? There should be a spontaneous resistance from the people”, he had said apparently suggesting that Miyas are taking over land and culture in Assam.
Claiming that the Muslim population was 35 percent in the state Sarma said “There is no need to encroach the lands of tribal people residing in the sixth schedule areas. If Das, Kalita, Barman, Gogoi, and Chutia (considered mainstream Assamese people) have not settled on their lands, Islam and Rahman must also refrain from settling in those lands” indicating Miyas encroach lands.
While evicting landless people settled on sandbars in the Darrang district, Sarma, in 2021, referred the people as “intruders”.
He tweeted, “120 bigha land of the temple under encroachment of illegal occupants in the area have been freed by @assampolice and district administration. Such squatters would be evicted from all parts of Assam to protect our land and the Assamese identity from encroachers & intruders”. The CM claimed that the land belonged to the “pre-historic” Shiva Temple was contested by a fact-finding team which examined the area soon after the eviction in June 2021.
