The 'Indigenous' Label: BJP’s High-Stakes Gamble with Assam’s Muslim Voters
As Assam goes to the polls, the BJP's attempt to woo "Indigenous" Muslims faces skepticism following a wave of home demolitions and identity politics.
Between Recognition and Rubble: Assam’s Indigenous Muslims Face a Polarized Ballot
In the sweltering April heat of Bongora, Akram Ali stands amidst the ruins of the four-room home he built 45 years ago. On March 14, three dozen bulldozers reduced his life’s work to rubble as part of a state-led demolition drive.
Ali, 50, is not an "illegal migrant" or an "infiltrator"—labels often used by the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to describe Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam. He is a Goriya, one of five subgroups officially recognized by the state as "Indigenous" in 2022.
"I am Goriya, a son of the soil, but my home was still flattened," Ali told Al Jazeera from a makeshift tarpaulin shanty. "Weren’t our homes demolished simply because we are Muslims?"
The BJP’s Strategic Divide
As Assam prepares for legislative assembly elections, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is pursuing a surgical electoral strategy. The BJP is aggressively courting the state’s approximately 4 million "Indigenous" Muslims (subgroups including Goriya, Moriya, Syed, Deshi, and Julha) while simultaneously ramping up a crackdown on the 6.3 million Bengali-origin Muslims, often pejoratively called "Miyas."
The political motivation is twofold, according to analyst Bonojit Hussain:
In the sweltering April heat of Bongora, Akram Ali stands amidst the ruins of the four-room home he built 45 years ago.
- Softening the Image: The BJP aims to dilute its "anti-Muslim" reputation by showing it can embrace "native" Muslims.
- The Numbers Game: In key constituencies in northern and eastern Assam, Indigenous Muslims make up 25% to 30% of the electorate—a decisive margin for the BJP’s quest for a third consecutive term.
In the Nalbari constituency, Indigenous Muslims account for over 25% of the 195,100 voters. In the Upper Assam region, researchers suggest this demographic could determine the outcome in up to eight crucial seats.
"We Are New Miyas"
Despite the official "Indigenous" status granted in 2022, many community members feel the label offers little protection against a rising tide of Hindu nationalism.
Beyond the evictions in Bongora, Lakhimpur, and Golaghat, the community points to the "erasure of legacy." Recently, Chief Minister Sarma changed the name of a medical college in Barpeta that honored Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed—a Goriya Muslim who served as India’s fifth president and a prominent freedom fighter. Sarma defended the move by stating institutions should be named after their locations, but critics view it as a symbolic purging of Muslim contributions to the state's history.
"The BJP’s exclusionary policies will not persuade us," says Moinul Islam, spokesperson for the Sadou Asom Goria Jatiya Parishad. He argues that the distinction between "native" and "migrant" Muslims is collapsing under the weight of the government's broader religious agenda.
Denial and Defiance
The BJP maintains that its actions are strictly legal and not communal. BJP spokesman Kishore Upadhyay dismissed allegations of targeted evictions as "malicious and politically motivated," insisting that the party's outreach is genuine.
However, for men like Akram Ali, the political nomenclature of "Indigenous" feels hollow when viewed from the shade of a plastic tent. As the state heads to the polls this Thursday, the central question remains: will the BJP’s recognition of "native" Muslims win their votes, or has the trauma of the "bulldozer justice" created a new, unified opposition among Assam’s Muslim population?
"They call us Indigenous," Ali says, looking at the debris of his home. "But they treat us like strangers."