Indian authorities in Assam have intensified a brutal campaign of home demolitions and expulsions targeting Bengali-speaking Muslims, bulldozing over 3,400 homes in the past month alone, the largest such operation in decades. The crackdown, orchestrated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), aims to brand these communities as "illegal infiltrators" from Bangladesh ahead of critical state elections in early 2026. Families now huddle under makeshift tarpaulin shelters in scorching heat, with hundreds displaced near the Bangladesh border in Goalpara district. Opposition leaders and human rights groups condemn the actions as state-sponsored Islamophobia designed to polarize Hindu voters.
The evictions leverage Assam’s discriminatory Foreigners Tribunals and the BJP’s 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act, which fast-tracks citizenship for non-Muslim migrants while excluding Muslims. Since 2021, BJP Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has evicted 50,000 people, overwhelmingly Muslims from 160 square kilometers of land. Tribunals have declared 30,000 residents "foreigners," often based on flimsy documentation, despite many having lived in India for generations. Those expelled include Aran Ali, 53, who was born in Assam yet faces relentless harassment: "We are accused of being encroachers and foreigners".
Sarma openly fuels anti-Muslim hysteria, falsely claiming on social media that "Muslim infiltrators" will make Hindus "a minority in their own land." His rhetoric escalated after an April attack on Hindu tourists in Kashmir, which BJP states exploited to round up thousands of Bengali Muslims as "security threats." The demolitions have sparked deadly protests, killing a teenager days ago. Opposition lawmaker Akhil Gogoi asserts: "These measures are politically beneficial and profitable for the BJP".
Assam has "pushed back" hundreds of Muslims into Bangladesh without due process, violating international law. India’s Foreign Ministry admits compiling a deportation list of 2,369 individuals, pressuring Dhaka for "expedited verification." Many deportees are later returned because courts hear appeals challenging their status, a cycle Human Rights Watch’s Elaine Pearson calls "discriminatory policy disguised as immigration enforcement". Bangladesh has refused to cooperate, leaving families in legal limbo.
While Modi shared "concerns" about Bangladesh’s political shift with Trump during a recent White House visit, neither leader addressed Assam’s atrocities. Analysts note the BJP’s merger of Assam’s historic "ethnonationalism" with Hindu supremacy has made Bengali Muslims, once viewed as outsiders targets of annihilation. As the Congress party vows to rebuild homes if elected, displaced mother Salima Khatoon pleads: "Where do they want us to go? Our children are dying here".