What’s next for evicted families in India’s northeast?

On Tuesday, October 19 at 19:30 GMT:
Thousands of people in India’s northeastern Assam state are now destitute after authorities evicted them from government-held land as part of a renewed ‘anti-encroachment’ drive.

More than 1,200 families in Assam’s Darrang district are camped together in makeshift sheds after police forced them from their homes and sent in bulldozers to make way for an agricultural project. The vast majority of those evicted are Muslims of Bengali origin.

In one eviction operation on September 23, police killed two villagers protesting against being evicted from lands where they have lived for decades. The Assam government helmed by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has since announced an inquiry into the incident but is planning further evictions.

The latest wave of evictions follow comments by the state’s chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma that “squatters” would be evicted from government-held land to “protect the Assamese identity”. Many families evicted from their homes say they bought the land from indigenous Assamese when they arrived in the state years ago, but the purchase agreements carry little weight with local authorities.

Critics of the BJP-led state government say the evictions are further evidence that Muslims of Bengali origin in Assam are being singled out for victimisation by BJP-led authorities and their supporters. They say language by politicians that characterises Muslims of Bengali origin in Assam as “illegal immigrants” and “intruders” is an attempt to capitalise on simmering resentments among some indigenous Assamese. The BJP is looking to win several by-elections in late October that could move them closer to gaining a majority in the state assembly.

In this episode of The Stream, we’ll look at the impact of evictions on people who now face an uncertain future.

In this episode of The Stream, we are joined by:
Jury Sharma Bordoloi, @jury_sharma
Spokesperson, BJP Assam State
bjp.org

Abdul Kalam Azad, @abdulkazad
Human rights researcher and activist
abdulkazad.wordpress.com

Kaustubh Deka, @kaustubhdeka
Professor of Political Science, Dibrugarh University