Editorial

Demographic Invasion

Sentinel Digital Desk

Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s statement made on Friday that Assam would become a Muslim-majority state by 2041 if the growth of the Muslim population keeps the current pace has nothing surprising in it. While Sarma made this claim on the basis of “data-based statistics,”  the fact remains that a well-designed conspiracy has been going on for the past 120 years to convert Assam into a Muslim-majority state through a demographic invasion. And there are several historic reasons behind this. The Muslim power in the world has never been able to compromise with the fact that the Assamese successfully thwarted a series of Mughal invasions, resulting in keeping Assam off the Mughal map. Secondly, though it was clubbed with Eastern Bengal in 1905 by Lord Curzon after Bengal was partitioned, Assam managed to come out of Dhaka’s rule in 1910 when the Bengal partition order was revoked. Though Sylhet was clubbed to Assam after 1910, Lokapriya Gopinath Bardoloi and his team of nationalist leaders ensured that Sylhet was finally transferred to East Pakistan through a referendum in which the majority people there opted not to remain with an independent India. But, while Jinnah’s Muslim League had failed to include Assam in East Pakistan, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto is on record saying that apart from Kashmir, “the issue of (including) Assam” had remained unresolved even after several decades of Pakistan’s creation. This newspaper has, since its inception in 1983, pointed out that an international conspiracy to convert Assam into a Muslim-majority state has been going on for decades through a strategy of demographic invasion. The dream of “lad-ke lenge Pakistan” (“Will take Pakistan by force”) has been, over the decades, converted into a silent demographic invasion. The same was also very lucidly described in the famous report of then Assam Governor SK Sinha (a former Lt Gen who had served as the vice- chief of the Indian Army) to the President of India submitted in November 1998. The Supreme Court of India too had made similar observations in its historic judgement of July 2005 while striking down the notorious IMDT Act that Indira Gandhi had enacted in Parliament in order to ensure the protection of lakhs of illegal migrants from erstwhile East Pakistan and present-day Bangladesh. One must, however, keep in mind the fact that these Muslims are the immigrant Muslims whose roots lie in a neighbouring country, who registered themselves as Bengali-speaking in the 2001 Census, and a large section of whom had entered Assam/India illegally. And, most importantly, there are at least three major political parties in the country that stand for protecting them at the cost of the patriotic and indigenous communities of Assam.