Darrang district, where an eviction drive last month left two dead, was one of the first flashpoints of the Assam Movement in the 1980s. Th...
Darrang district, where an eviction drive last month left two dead, was one of the first flashpoints of the Assam Movement in the 1980s. The six-year-long agitation had been driven by the demand to eject so-called foreigners in Assam and remove their names from electoral rolls. It was essential to safeguard the economic and political rights of communities considered indigenous to Assam, the agitators claimed.
Last month’s evictions were in Sipajhar in Darrang district. The area has seen mass evictions before, including in 2016. The local media had legitimised the 2016 evictions as the fulfilment of long-standing demands made by communities considered indigenous to Assam. Then, as now, Assamese nationalist groups claimed Sipajhar’s chars – sandbars in the middle of the Brahmaputra river – mostly home to Muslims of Bengali origin, were “illegally” occupied.
This year, the government claimed it needed to clear 77,000 bighas, about 25,454 acres, to make room for an organic farming project. A similar claim was made in 2016. The Sangrami Satirtha Mancha, a group founded by former members of the All Assam Students’ Union – which had spearheaded the Assam Movement – claimed 77,420 bighas in and around Sipajhar were “illegally occupied”. The 2016 evictions in Fuhratoli,...
