Opinion: In Assam, vicious communal rhetoric is putting democracy at risk

Never has politics been so nasty, brutal and vindictive. Political language is marked by slights and slurs that were unknown in the past despite politicians holding contesting ideologies and contradictory viewpoints.

Today, the space for conversation between politicians representing Assam in the state assembly has shrunk beyond measure. The space for dissent in society has also shrivelled. The narrative that undocumented migrants are the bane of all that’s happening in Assam today; the relentless drive to dehumanise Bengali-speaking Muslims, thousands of whom are now homeless and without a country, has crossed out “human rights” from the political discourse.

Most of those rendered homeless in the state’s campaign against those it claims are encroachers are not necessarily Bangladeshi migrants but they carry the weight of being the consumers of what rightfully belongs to the sons of the soil (read Assamese).

Social media has only amplified such drivel. The latest burst of propaganda – that anyone speaking Sylheti is a Bangladeshi – by the functionary running the Bharatiya Janata Party’s media cell, Amit Malviya, has crossed all boundaries of political decency.

Bengal was the largest province in British India. Lord Curzon partitioned the Bengal province in 1905 on the plea that it was too large to be governed properly. Post...

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