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Modi Shows his Hindutva Color


Well, when a bird flies like a duck, swims like a duck and sounds like a duck it is no brainer that it is a duck. Narendra Modi, the BJP leader, has for some time tried to sell his 'development' image that he is pro-business, hiding his true Hindutvadi self until, of course, very recently.

In his recent visit to India's north-east corner, Assam, a state bordering Bangladesh, which always had a sizable number of Bengalis - Hindus and Muslims - for hundreds of years since before the British colonization and has been the scene of multiple pogroms against Bengali Muslims at the hands of murderous Assamese racists and bigots since the early 1980s, Modi sounded like a fanatic Hindu leader stoking fear amongst the state's Muslim population. The state has a history of denying citizenship rights to anyone who is Bengali speaking as if it belongs to its Assamese people only. As such, even the Hindus who had lived there for decades, or migrated to the region after the Partition of India in 1947, are viewed as outsiders. They continue to be denied citizenship rights, and can't vote. Modi wants to give that right to Hindu inhabitants of Assam but not Muslims in spite of the fact that historically many parts of Assam had sizable number of Muslims. [See below the 2001 Indian census data on Assam. Note that 2011 census shows that overall population has grown by 1.6% to 31.2 million.]

# District Total Population Muslim Population % Muslim
1 Dhubri 1637344 1216455 74.3%
2 Barpeta 1647201 977943 59.4%
3 Hailakandi 542872 312849 57.6%
4 Goalpara 822035 441516 53.7%
5 Karimganj 1007976 527214 52.3%
6 Nagaon 2314629 1180267 51.0%
7 Marigaon 776256 369398 47.6%
8 Bongaigaon 904835 348573 38.5%
9 Cachar 1444921 522051 36.1%
10 Darang 1504320 534658 35.5%
11 Kamrup 2522324 625002 24.8%
12 Nalbari 1148824 253842 22.1%
13 Kokrajhar 905764 184441 20.4%
14 Lakhimpur 889010 143505 16.1%
15 Sonitpur 1681513 268078 15.9%
16 Golaghat 946279 74808 7.9%
17 Sibsagar 1051736 85761 8.2%
18 Jorhat 999221 47658 4.8%
19 Dibrugarh 1185072 53306 4.5%
20 Tinsukia 1150062 40000 3.5%
21 North Cachar Hills 188079 4662 2.5%
22 Dhemaji 571944 10533 1.8%
23 Karbi Anglong 813311 18091 2.2%
  Total: 26,655,528 8,240,611 30.9%


Such a prescriptive formula for the Hindu population while denying the same right to Assam's Muslim population is discriminatory and cannot be the acceptable trait of a leader in modern India where Muslims comprise nearly 15% of the population.

The Bengali population in Assam should have the same right of citizenship irrespective of their religion, caste or creed enjoyed by any other Indian who live or decided to migrate there. Surely, the decades of living as a refugee have earned them that right.

As I have noted elsewhere, Indian Muslims living in bordering states of Bangladesh are mistakenly and deliberately portrayed by opportunist political leaders within India as infiltrators, and more so during an election year to polarize the voters and use them as vote-banks. As I have also shown recently the facts are quite the opposite. There are half a million Indians illegally residing and working inside Bangladesh that are remitting nearly 4 billion dollars to Indian economy annually. These facts must be relayed by the politicians and concerned Indians to their fellow countrymen so that people are aware of the truth, and not become victims of propaganda to stir up communal, race and ethnic riots.

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