THE RIVER BEARS OUR HISTORY

The Citizenship Amendment Act [CAA] has become a contentious legislation in India after the President’s green signal to have it implemented on December 11, 2019. As per the Act, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities who have migrated from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan until December 31, 2014, and who “have faced religious persecution there” will not be treated as illegal immigrants but given Indian citizenship. This bill, driven by religious biases is clearly initiated by Right-wing parties and is a discriminatory act against Muslim migrants who have been threatened to be sent back to wherever they arrived from. As of now, those most impacted in the Muslim community are from Assam in North-east India. Journalist Shalim Hussein gives us an insight into the targeted minority community from the region.

- Shalim Hussian

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descendents from immigrants and revolutionists.” ——Franklin D. Roosevelt [1882-1945], 32nd Presisent of United States

‘Miyah’ is street slang in Assam for the Bengalorigin Muslims of Assam. The word has gained new meaning and relevance in the light of ‘Miyah poetry’ written by poets from the community. The older, more widely accepted term for the community was ‘Char Chapori Muslims of Assam’. The chars and chaporis are riverine islands and riverbank villages of the Brahmaputra which flows through a stretch of 860 kilometres in Assam and cleaves the state almost through the middle. According to the 2001 NSSO census, there are 2251 chars and chaporis or riverine islands in 23 districts of Assam spread across the length of the state. About 9.37% of Assam’s total population lives in these chars, consisting of a majority of Muslims.

The villages of the chars are of a temporary nature. I grew up in a village situated not directly on the river bank but a couple of kilometres inward. The difference between our stable village and the char-chapori villages was stark. Like most villages in the Brahmaputra valley of Assam, our own village was inundated by floods every year. It was an inevitable part of our existence, as inevitable as the fact that the floods would recede and the land would resurface. These chapori villages, on the other hand, were continuously eroded through the dry months and the chars got submerged one year and resurfaced another year, making the lives of the people who dwelled there, very transitory.