Himanta Biswa Sarma’s Unrelenting Proclivity For Hate Speech

“My job is to make the Miya people suffer.”

For a person who holds the highest constitutional position in the state of Assam - the chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma - this articulation of his job-description is extraordinary by any standards.  

And it is a job-description that he manifestly takes very seriously. Throughout his tenure as chief minister of Assam, he has been unwavering in his commitment to use his constitutional office to both persecute and incite hatred against people of Bengali origin and Muslim religious identity in Assam. They constitute, according to the 2011 census, a third of the population of Assam.

He pejoratively describes them as “Miya”. 

Miya or Mian is a widely used honorific for Muslim gentlemen in South Asia. However, Miya came to be deployed as a slur for Bengali-origin Muslims in Assam. Hafiz Ahmed, teacher and poet, wrote in 2016 a poem which stirred a deep chord among the persecuted Assamese people of Bengali origin. The first lines of Hafiz Ahmed’s poem are:

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?

This poem ignited a whole movement of protest Miya poetry. Miya poets in the last decade have defiantly embraced the slur Miya, and adopted it as a badge of pride, identity and assertion. 

Sarma proudly boasts of many ways in which he has “made the Miya people suffer”. He frequently showboats the removal of Miyas from 1.5 lakhs bighas of land. 

In his hostility to the Miya people, the chief minister declares that he has “nothing to hide”. “We will do some utpaat [mischief], but within the ambit of law… we are with the poor and downtrodden, but not those who want to destroy our jati [community].”

In the state assembly, when questioned about his rankly discriminatory policies, he declaims belligerently, “I will take sides, what can you do? Won't let 'Miya' Muslims take over Assam.” 

He urges the Assamese Hindu community to realise who is their “ real enemy”.The state government has announced a policy to give arms licences to “original inhabitants” living in “vulnerable remote areas”, who Sarma asserts were “feeling insecure”. “I want the situation in Assam to be explosive,” Sarma retorts when asked if the situation in the state could turn “explosive” by giving weapons to the residents.

Sarma announces that the quasi-judicial Foreigners’ Tribunals created to investigate citizenship would henceforth only hear cases of persons of Muslim identity, whereas cases against persons of six other non-Muslim religious identities - Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Christian, Parsi and Jain - would be withdrawn. Also of people of Gorkha and Rajbongshi identities.  He declares that only Miya Muslims are being served notices under the “special revision” of electoral rolls in the state. 

At a rally in Udalgiri, Himanta Biswa Sarma proclaims that there is no need to ask for documents from those he referred to as “our people.” He claimed that documents should be demanded from people who were recently evicted and alleged that people from Bangladesh were entering Assam daily. He urges the public to recognise who the real enemies of Assam are.

He exhorts the people of the state to “keep giving troubles” to Miyas. “Earlier, people were scared; now I myself am encouraging people to keep giving troubles”. This is because “only if they face troubles will they leave Assam” If you don’t trouble them, he claims, there will be “ love jihad in your own house.” 

He illustrates ways that the Miyas should be harried. “In a rickshaw, if the fare is Rs 5, give them Rs 4,” he says. Call them in the middle of the night. “Only if they face troubles will they leave Assam.”

These are not random, sudden, intemperate outbursts by an occasionally unhinged head of government. This has been the consistent tenor of Sarma’s pronouncements throughout the five years of his tenure as chief minister. 

He accuses the Miya people of an ever-expanding range of outlandish conspiracies or jihads. I describe here some of these:

Demographic invasion

Sarma’s most widely recurring claim is that the Miya people are illegal “infiltrators” from neighbouring Bangladesh, engaged in a sinister “demographic invasion” of Assam. What he deliberately obscures is the historical truth that most Miyas in Assam are descendants of people who lawfully migrated from East Bengal especially in the first decades of the 20th century. This was long before the separation of Pakistan from India, and of Bangladesh from Pakistan. They came to Assam when both East Bengal and Assam were part of one undivided country. 

Impoverished, land-hungry, hardy and industrious East Bengal workers were encouraged both by colonial administrators and Assamese landlords to migrate to the wastelands and riverine islands of Assam and convert these into paddy fields. Some of them were Hindu. Many of them were Muslim. 

Another wave of migration occurred during the bloody Bangladesh liberation struggle.

These Bengali-origin migrants - of both Muslim and Hindu identity - embraced after India’s Partition the language and culture of Assam. During the language movement, the large majority among them reported Assamese to be their language. They were called Na-Axamiya (or neo-Assamese). They send their children to Assamese-medium schools, and areas with high density of Na-Axamiya people do not have Bengali-medium schools. The 1961 Census Commissioner recorded their honest aspiration to integrate with Assamese culture and language.

However, anxieties about both land and culture ignited the Assam agitation from the late 1970s. The target of this popular movement was people of Bengali origin, both Hindu and Muslim. It is the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh which worked to transform a movement of language and cultural aspirations into a communal movement specifically attacking Muslims of Bengali origin and not Bengali Hindus. With particular virulence chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma carried further the transformation of this movement of Assamese cultural and land anxieties into an open war against Assamese Muslims of Bengali origin. 

It is instructive to note that Sarma was not raised in the staples of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh. He was, until his allegiance to the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2015, a Congress member. He was elected for three consecutive terms to the legislature on a Congress ticket, and served as a minister from 2006. But his discourse after he defected to the Bharatiya Janata Party rapidly became more ferociously anti-Muslim than that even of many pure-bred Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh workers. In this new avatar that he has donned since he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party, he resorts to an unflagging torrent of hatemongering, often with the most bizarre conspiracy theories.  

 Sarma used the platform of the country’s Independence Day celebrations on August 15, 2025 in Guwahati on Friday, to deliver an impassioned warning that the state’s indigenous identity is facing its greatest-ever threat from illegal infiltration. After raising the national flag, he urged every indigenous Assamese to stand together to protect their land, culture, and way of life against the enemy within. “This is not just a political issue, it is a battle for our very existence,” he professed. “If we remain silent, within the next decade we will lose our identity, our land, and everything that makes us Assamese. Even the sacred Kamakhya temple hills could be encroached upon if we do not act now.” He blamed successive governments over the past 78 years for ignoring infiltration, allowing demographic changes to take root in many districts. “We have already compromised in many districts. As a proud Assamese, I am not ready to compromise anymore.” 

Sarma prescribed over the next 30 years the practice of the “politics of polarisation”. This is essential, he declared, “if we (the non-Bengali Muslim Axomiya people) want to live”. The polarisation is not between Hindus and Muslims, but “between Assamese and Bangladeshis”. His policies, he vouched, are neither of hatred nor communalism but of a recognition of a “grave and long-standing” problem that “Assam has lived with for decades.” He adds that “Our effort is to protect Assam’s identity, security…” 

He said, “You will see that everywhere, the population growth among Hindus is coming down and the Muslim population is increasing in every block of Assam.” “In a way, a chapter of the Assamese people's surrender has begun,” he was quoted as saying. Sarma claimed that the Miyas now constitute 40% of the population of Assam. Since there has been no census since 2011, he does not explain the source of his data. He went on to allege that Muslim Bangladeshis are deliberately moving in large numbers into Assam in order to raise their share in the state’s population to 50 and then 60%. They will then, he scaremongered, demand a merger of Assam with Bangladesh. He alleged that Bangladesh “often says the northeast should be cut off and annexed to Bangladesh. They do not need to fight a war. Once their population (of Bengali-origin Muslims) crosses 50 per cent, it (Assam) will automatically go to them.” 

He elaborated this scenario further at a Bharatiya Janata Party State Executive Meeting. He warned that, within their lifetime, the Assamese people would witness the “takeover” of villages and towns one after another. Naming districts with significant Muslim populations, he claimed that Assamese people in these areas were living difficult lives and were being reduced to “second-class citizens.” He called for preserving “Sanatan” in the sacred land of Assam and India, demonising Muslims as a people who believe in exclusivism, placing religion above the nation. He demonised the political opposition as people who, after winning the election, do nothing but massage the ghuspaithiyas (infiltrators) with oil”. 

He spoke of this same alleged demographic conspiracy by Muslims in his election campaign in Jharkhand in 2024.  In a public meeting in Hazaribagh constituency in Ramgarh district of Jharkhand, Sarma said, “Infiltration from Bangladesh started in Assam 40 years ago. At that time, the Congress was in power. They could not figure out what would happen 40 years later. Now in Assam, the infiltrators’ volume is 1.25 crore. This has become a very big problem and Assamese people have lost their identity. That’s why I am coming to Jharkhand and saying, don’t make mistakes like us. We made a mistake 40 years ago, we didn’t protect our borders. You don’t let Rohingyas come in… Bengal and Assam made mistakes. What we should have done at that time, we were not able to do. At that time, we didn’t have Narendra Modi… Now Modi ji is with Jharkhand.”.

He drew comparisons with Assam and averred that the election is about “saving and safeguarding Sanatan.” He alleged that like in Assam, “ghuspetiye” (intruders) entered from Bangladesh through Bengal and were safeguarded by non-Bharatiya Janata Party governments, and have changed the social fabric of the state. He alleged that with the influx of ‘ghuspaithiye’, a particular community was trying to take control over Jharkhand’s state system and society. “These infiltrators marry our daughters, capture our land. We need to fight for our food, daughters and land.”.”  In another rally,  he asked, “If ‘ghuspaithiye’ (illegal infiltrators) keep coming, will Jharkhand belong to Adivasis or Hindus after 20 years? These infiltrators already have two marriages back home and they come and deceive to marry Adivasi daughters to snatch land; If the Bharatiya Janata Party comes to power, we will identify and expel all infiltrators through legal routes.”

Fighting this alleged demographic conspiracy “is not a political issue for me, but a matter of life and death,” he told reporters in Jharkhand

Land Jihad

Earlier, in the State Executive meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Guwahati in August 2024, he claimed, “One by one, people from a ‘particular community’ snatched land from the indigenous people and made us a minority in our own land. The state government has decided that we will bring in a law restricting the sale of land to people from that ‘particular community’ in the erstwhile Goalpara district,” he said. He further said that they have freed land equivalent to the city of Chandigarh from the ‘particular community’, but even now, the ‘particular community’ has occupied land equivalent to 20 Chandigarh. He also says that the Assam Government had decided that a Muslim cannot buy land from a Hindu or a Hindu cannot buy land from a Muslim. without the chief minister’s consent. 

Sarma said the government noticed the number of instances of the sale of land from Hindus to Muslims was very high, whereas the reverse scenario was less frequent. Because of this, in August 2024, the Assam Cabinet approved a proposal under which the government would scrutinise all land transfers between individuals of different religions. Sarma said that several permissions for land transfers to Assamese and indigenous Muslims, to which the government did not have any objection. However, he said, there has been a shift not just in the state’s demographics, but also in wealth creation, he claimed. “So far, we were thinking that only the numbers have risen, but now see that even the wealth pattern has changed.” he professed to PTI.

Sarma used the official celebrations of Independence Day in 2015 also to warn the Assamese people of his claim that the state was facing various forms of “jihad” — from love to land — which he claimed were aimed at weakening indigenous control. He called on (non-Bengali Muslim) citizens to take personal responsibility in safeguarding Assam’s future, by guarding against the alleged land jihad: “Do not sell even a small portion of land to unknown buyers.” He also said the government is working to grant land rights to landless indigenous families to strengthen their legal and economic stake in the state.

Love Jihad

Chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma also peddles the fantastical anti-Muslim conspiracy theory of “love jihad,” claiming that their women are being taken away from their homes through “love jihad.” He alleges that when Hindu men romance Hindu girls, there is love. But when Muslim men romance Hindu girls, there is no love. There is behind the veil of romance a sinister conspiracy. 

He announced plans to introduce a law under which anyone allegedly involved in “love jihad,” along with their parents, would be arrested. In a meeting of the BP executive in August 2024, he said, “We spoke of love jihad during elections. Within a few days, we will bring a new law making offence under love jihad punishable by lifetime imprisonment.”

Fertiliser Jihad

The chief minister accused the Miyas of launching a “chemical and biological attack” through their fish produce, resulting in an “increase” in kidney and liver disease. 

For this he coined the phrase “fertiliser jihad’. In a program for the development and implementation of natural farming in Guwahati, the chief minister said, “We have conveyed our resolve to fight against “fertiliser jihad” during our election campaign. We should use fertilizer but excess of it can harm the body.” Political opponents said that it was entirely the duty to prevent the harmful and excessive use of fertiliser, but there is no basis to blame just one community for over-using fertilisers. 

He suggested that Assamese consumers should instead buy fish produced in Upper Assam (with low presence of Miyas), where organic methods are encouraged (and where the fisher folk are not Muslim).

Sarma appealed to people to avoid buying fish produced by ‘Miya Muslim’ fish producers. The reason, he said, was that they use urea fertilizer to produce fish. This, he claimed, contributes to kidney diseases. He is the chief minister of the state who could take action against those who engage in such practices. Instead he overtly calls for a boycott of the Muslim community. Fish is a staple in Assam’s diet, with significant production centred in Nagaon, Morigaon, and Cachar, areas where Muslim entrepreneurs play a substantial role in the fishery industry. 

Amzad Ali, a farmer in Kharupetia area of Darrang district reacted sharply to his accusation. “People from our communities eat the same vegetables (and fish) we grow and sell. What does he mean by ‘fertiliser jihad’?”

Flood Jihad

As though the outlandish claim of fertilizer jihad was not enough, Sarma responded to extensive public criticism of the state policies that led to massive flash flooding of the city of Guwahati during the monsoons of August 2024 by claiming that this too was the result of a “flood jihad".   

He charged a private university of which the owner and chancellor Mahbubul Hoque is a Bengali-origin Muslim from Karimganj district in Assam, with waging this jihad. The University of Science and Technology Meghalaya (USTM), is located in Ri-Bhoi district in Meghalaya on a hill slope that descends into Guwahati. Sarma claimed that the university cut down trees from the slope to build a medical college and this caused the flooding of Guwahati. “I think that the USTM owner has started a jihad. We talk about land jihad, he has started a flood jihad against Assam. Otherwise, no one can cut hills in such a ruthless way.” He explained, “No one who loves nature, especially an education institution, can cut it in this way. I have to call it a jihad… I believe it is deliberate. Otherwise, they can call an architect and make a building even while keeping the hills and trees. They can make drainage… They have not used any architect. Just using bulldozers, they have relentlessly cut the land,” he said.

The university was awarded an NAAC “A” grade accreditation in its first cycle of accreditation in 2021, and had 6000 students. Sarma called for a boycott of the university by the staff and students, dubbing this as the “only solution” to the flood jihad. He went on to derecognise the university. Through all of this, the USTM was featured among the top 200 universities in the National Institutional Ranking Framework 2024 announced by the ministry of education. It is the only private university from the Northeast to make it to the list.

Weaponising Beef Against Hindus

Sarma claimed that Muslims deliberately are throwing beef waste and leftovers around, with the malign aim of driving away the Hindus who live in the same neighbourhood. This he alleged is a recent strategy deployed by Muslims.  "Earlier, if a couple of Muslim families lived in a Hindu neighbourhood, they would be careful not to create any problems for the Hindus. If they wanted to have beef, they would go to their people living in Muslim-majority areas." 

"But now, it has become such that they will throw away the leftovers and waste around so that the Hindus in the neighbourhood have to eventually leave that place," he added. In this way, he claimed that beef is being "weaponised" against Hindus in the state. 

 Vote Jihad 

Yet another jihad alleged by Sarma is what he called “vote jihad”. He says that votes from the Hindu community are distributed across multiple parties including Bharatiya Janata Party, Congress, and the Left.  He claimed that Muslims vote differently and communally.  90% of the votes cast by Muslim voters are a result of prior discussions in the community, indicating a collective decision rather than individual choice. It is this that he stigmatizes as “vote jihad”.

“If we analyse the 39 per cent votes of the Congress, it is not spread across the state. Fifty per cent of it is concentrated in 21 assembly segments which are minority dominated. In these minority-dominated segments, Bharatiya Janata Party got 3 per cent votes,” he claimed. “This proves that Hindus do not indulge in communalism. If anyone indulges in communalism in Assam, it is only one community, one religion. No other religion does it,” said Sarma.

Stigmatising The Religious and Cultural Practices of Miyas

I described how Sarma made a fanciful claim that a reputed private university owned by a Bengali-origin Muslim had waged a “flood jihad”. But he did not stop there. He further raised the pitch of his attack on the university, targeting the large main gate of the University that has three domes on it. He declared, “It’s embarrassing to go there, you have to go under ‘Mecca’. What we are saying is that there should be a namghar (community prayer hall, part of Assam’s neo-Vaishnavite tradition) also there. ‘Mecca-Medina’, church. Make all three… We will walk under all three, why will we walk under just one,” he asked. He insisted that the university was engaged in  jihaador baap (slang, translating to ‘father of jihad’). “I’m being mild by calling it jihad. It is destroying our education system. Whatever attacks our civilisation, our culture, that is called jihad.”

Sarma in this way often attacks, mocks and stigmatises the religious and cultural practices of Assamese Muslims of Bengali origin. 

In a move designed to publicly message official hostility to the Muslim people, the Assam Legislative Assembly voted to eliminate the two-hour Jumma prayer break on Fridays, an age-old practice symbolising respect for their religious practices. In a rally in Jharkhand, he boasted, “It’s not our job to make Mullas. I shut 700 Madrassas in one day”.

He sometimes openly mocks Islamic religious beliefs. He said to a group of Assamese villagers. “It is good to indulge in pig farming- that’s something Miyas won’t steal.” He urged people to rear more pigs, asserting that this would also stop land encroachment.

He stigmatised Bengali-speaking Muslims for allegedly perpetuating practices such as polygamy and child marriage. This is why they cannot claim to be the state’s “indigenous people”. “If Miyas try to become indigenous, we have no objection to that. But child marriage will have to stop, polygamy will have to stop, they will have to send girls to school. Indigenous people have a tradition. Assamese people have a tradition. Assamese people equate girls with shakti, they love girls… There is no objection to becoming indigenous but to be indigenous you can’t marry two, three people. That is not a custom of Assamese people. If they want to be indigenous, they can’t marry off girls at age 11-12. If they want to be indigenous, instead of making children study at madrassas, make them study to be doctors and engineers,” he said.

“People from Bangladesh come to Assam and create a threat to our civilisation and culture. I have closed 600 madrassas and I intend to close all madrassas because we do not want madrassas. We want schools, colleges and universities,” ANI quoted Sarma as saying. He was addressing a rally in Belgavi’s Shivaji Maharaj Garden, in poll-bound Karnataka. And speaking at an event organised by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in Delhi, Sarma said madarsas should cease to exist. “The word ‘madrassa’ should disappear. Teach the Quran at home, but children should be taught science and math in school”. He again deliberately obfuscates the reality that the majority of madrassas in the country do teach secular subjects in addition to religious teaching.

A Regime of Hate, Exclusion and Disenfranchisement

The chief minister never lets up on a discourse that suggests that the non-Bengali, non-Muslim Assamese people are locked in a decisive battle for survival. In the state assembly, he declared that he “will not let miya Muslims take over all of Assam”. 

Sarma told reporters in Guwahati that he has directed Bharatiya Janata Party members to file complaints against “Miya” voters during the voter list revision exercise underway in the state, The Indian Express reports. “There is nothing to hide about this, ” he said defiantly. “I have held meetings, I have done video conferences, and I have told people that, wherever possible, they should fill Form 7s”. The Election Commission’s Form 7 is a document that seeks a voter’s name to be deleted from a state’s electoral rolls. This will keep the Miyas under continuous pressure. The reason they should do this is “so that they (the Miya people) have to run around a little, are troubled, so that they understand that the Assamese people are still living.” Recurringly he excludes the Bengali-origin Muslims from the Assamese people. They are not Assamese, he says. They are Bangaldeshi. And it is not in Assam but in Bangladesh that they should vote.  “We are ensuring that they cannot vote in Assam,” he proclaims.  

He announced that between “four to five lakh Miya voters” would be removed from the electoral rolls during the Special Intensive Revision process in the state. He was not restrained by the fact that this was a patently unlawful claim, because it is only the Election Commission that is authorised to add or remove persons from the electoral rolls.

Openly defying India’s secular constitution, he also frequently declaims, “Bharat belongs to Hindus and will always remain…” Campaigning in the Delhi state elections in 2025, Sarma said, “After Ram Mandir was built, people have started understanding the power of Hindus. Hindus have birthed this country and Hindus have developed it. We were Hindus, we are Hindus and we will remain Hindu.” “India is a Hindu nation; it is a Hindu civilization. Hindus cannot be placed second. Hindus built and nurtured this country, and they will make it a Vishwaguru; Madrassa students should become doctors and engineers, why become Mullahs? In Assam, I have shut down the shops that produce Mullahs.”

The chief minister in an election speech said that he believes there are many “Baburs” hiding across the country and he specifically mentions Assam, Bengal, Nuh in Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh. He claimed that the country will be safe and developed once these people are kicked out. He also boasts repeatedly about shutting down madrassas in Assam, stating that his target is to close all the remaining madrassas. He also asks those upset with Modi’s action on the Waqf board to hold their displeasure, saying there’s more to come.

“I don’t know how far we can save ourselves politically, but if our society is united, if we take responsibilities for our institutions and if we keep people alive with the ideals of the two Mahapurush to our future generations then maybe we can live as Assamese”. Today the Miyas are “just in fear of something. The day that fear is broken, we will see the scene in Bangladesh ( referring to the recent lynching of Hindu men) today everywhere in Assam except upper districts of Assam. And that is the real truth of our lives”.

Sanjib Baruah, a professor emeritus of political studies at Bard College, New York, describes this discourse and public actions as a “worrying trend”. Bengali Muslims, he affirms, constitute a “significant part of the state’s working class in sectors such as construction”, and they move from one part of the state to another in search for work. “Illegality is now associated with a particular ethnic community. It is no longer a matter of the actual citizenship status of an individual,” he observes.  

Sarma exhorts the Assamese people to “learn from Israel. In the Middle East that country is surrounded by Muslim fundamentalists. With Iran and Iraq as neighbours, Israel with a small population has become an impregnable society using science, technology and labour.” He spoke of plans to remove Bengali-origin Muslim settlements and farmlands and handing these over instead to “indigenous Assamese”. In this way, he explicitly acknowledges that the massive removal of Bengali-origin Assamese Muslims from their farmlands and homes by his government is modelled on the Israeli settlements in Palestine.  

Sarma explicitly dismisses calls for communal brotherhood and religious harmony, describing them as a conspiracy to “weaken the community in a civilisational war.” The cumulative impact of the unremitting battery of hate speech emanating from the man who holds the constitutional office of chief minister, on the morale and the sense of security and belonging of the Bengali-origin Muslim Assamese people is inestimable. 

I am grateful for extensive research support from Omair Khan

(Views expressed are personal.)

Harsh Mander is an author, columnist, teacher, and social activist who started the Karwan-e-Mohabbat campaign in solidarity with the victims.