On July 25, 2025, in a stunning admission of political intent, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told reporters, “I want the situation in Assam to be explosive.” This statement was not made in the heat of an election rally or under provocation. As per the report of The Wire, it was uttered calmly on the side-lines of a government event at Gorukhuti—an agricultural project built on land cleared after a deadly eviction drive in 2021 that killed a protestor, whose dead body was stomped on by a state-hired cameraperson in a now-infamous video.
The Chief Minister’s remark came in response to a query on whether the state could become volatile if his government proceeded with its plan to issue gun licences exclusively to “original inhabitants” of Assam. His answer: not only is an explosive situation expected, it is welcome.
This is not political theatre. It is policy-as-provocation. Sarma’s statement, and the policies that surround it, point to a deliberate campaign of ethnic polarisation, state-backed dispossession, and Islamophobic scapegoating—paired with corporate interests and executed through a language of legality and security. This exposé traces the calculated threads of that campaign.
Weaponising Identity: The gun licence policy
On May 28, 2025, Sarma first declared that from August 1, the government would allow online applications for arms licences, but only for “indigenous” people—khilonjia—living in “vulnerable remote areas” of five districts: Dhubri, Barpeta, Morigaon, Nagaon, and South Salmara-Mankachar.
One should note that these districts are not arbitrarily chosen. They are overwhelmingly populated by Bengali-speaking Muslims, who the BJP-RSS ecosystem consistently labels as “infiltrators” or “illegal immigrants.” Two of them—Dhubri and South Salmara-Mankachar—border Bangladesh. Sarma cited vague feelings of “insecurity” among indigenous groups as justification, but no evidence of law-and-order breakdown was provided. Instead, the justification seems rooted in demography and fear.
As per The Assam Tribune, Sarma told the media “Someday the situation will be explosive. How will our people survive if there is an explosion?”
He paired this rhetoric with assurances that the “final approval” for gun licences would rest with district commissioners after police verification, as per the Indian Arms Act. But the context, armed mobilisation of one ethnic group in regions where another is numerically dominant, is what makes this policy chilling. It is not about self-defence. It is about creating authorised paramilitarisation of Assamese Hindus in Muslim-majority districts.
The Asom Jatiya Parishad (AJP) condemned the statement as “reckless and dangerous,” saying it “betrays the constitutional duty of a Chief Minister to ensure law and order, not incite unrest.”
“Urging people to bear arms is not just irresponsible—it’s an admission that the government can no longer ensure basic law and order,” said AJP leaders Lurinjyoti Gogoi and Jagadish Bhuyan while addressing a press conference, reported GuwahatiPlus. They further stated that “This is the same government that came to power pledging to protect Jati, Mati, and Bheti, but now it’s propagating fear instead of security.”
Evictions and Ethnic Targeting: The ground beneath the guns
The gun licence policy cannot be separated from another state project unfolding in parallel: massive, violent eviction drives targeting Bengali-speaking Muslims and marginalised tribal populations across Assam.
These evictions, carried out under the guise of forest protection or encroachment removal, have surged dramatically since the Advantage Assam 2.0 Investor Summit in February and the Rising Northeast Investors’ Summit in May 2025.
As provided by Liberation, a central organ of CPI(ML), fact-finding team from CPI(ML) visiting Goalpara’s Ashudubi village on July 16–17 uncovered the scale and cruelty of these operations:
- Over 1,100 houses demolished with 60 bulldozers
- Entire village encircled with trenches to block humanitarian aid
- At least two deaths: Monirul Islam, who committed suicide after receiving an eviction notice; Anaruddin Sheikh, who died of a heart attack as his house was razed
- No rehabilitation or resettlement, despite High Court orders mandating it
The CPI(ML) called the eviction campaign a “war-like operation”. Their report revealed that the eviction area, Ashudubi, had been renamed “Paikan” solely to label it as forest land and circumvent existing settlement rights.
“The victims are poor peasants and working-class Muslim families who have lived in the area for 60–70 years. Government buildings existed there too, but it was renamed and cleared,” the report said.
In the past four years of Sarma’s regime, over 1.19 lakh bighas (roughly 160 sq. km) have been cleared, often with lethal force. These are not isolated instances but part of an escalating trend.
Corporate colonisation behind the curtain
While the public justification for evictions rests on fears of “illegal Bangladeshi settlers,” the actual beneficiaries of the land-clearing campaigns are large corporates:
- Dhubri & Goalpara: 4,000 bighas cleared for Adani’s 3,000 MW thermal plant
- Dima Hasao: Adani cement factory being set up
- Kokrajhar: Adani power project underway
- Karbi Anglong: Reliance constructing compressed biogas plants
The chronological proximity of eviction escalations and investment summits is no coincidence. It reflects a state-backed project of corporate land acquisition, achieved through ethnic cleansing. Communal rhetoric is the political mask for a deeper economic dispossession.
A detailed report on the same may be read here.
Torchlight rallies and calls for exclusion
On July 25, thousands of Assamese and tribal residents in Dhemaji district held a torch rally shouting slogans like “Bangladeshi Go Back” and “Bangladeshi Hosiar.” Their demands: vacate the district in 15 days—or else. The state government has neither condemned the threats nor responded with restraint.
The signs from Assam all indicate an impending mass ethnic cleansing – from the statements of the CM to the social media posts.
And every single institution that is supposed to prevent this is either helpless or unwilling to act. https://t.co/NGkKWrsH5d
— Sarayu Pani (@sarayupani) July 27, 2025
Assamese Awakening 🔥🔥🔥
Thousands and Thousands of Assamese and tribals people came out on streets of Dhemaji district with ‘Mashals’ shouting “Bangladeshi Hosiar” “Bangladeshi Go Back” in support of @himantabiswa Government for eviction of suspected Bangladeshi Muslims from… pic.twitter.com/1ckDVSvvLO— Oxomiya Jiyori 🇮🇳 (@SouleFacts) July 25, 2025
আপাদমস্তক আত্মসম্মান-বিহীন একটি জাতি। Meanwhile an actual ethnic cleansing similar to the one in 70s and 80s is imminent in Assam. This is what happens when people think of history only in terms of religion and forget that violence and ethnic cleansing can take other forms too. pic.twitter.com/Je4Tt5H2Dn
— Jayati (@Jayati_M93) July 27, 2025
These visuals are chillingly reminiscent of the early 1980s. In 1983, just before the Nellie massacre, in which over 2,000 Bengali-Muslims were butchered, then-BJP leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee gave a speech in Guwahati warning that a “river of blood” would flow if elections were held. In one of his speeches, Vajpayee was quoted as saying, “Foreigners have come here and the government does nothing. What if they had come into Punjab instead? People would have chopped them into pieces and thrown them away.” His words were read into the Lok Sabha record by former CPIM MP Indrajit Gupta in 1996. Today, Sarma’s rhetoric follows the same pattern, this time coupled with arms and state backing.
NRC Weaponisation: Bengali Hindus not spared
This manufactured polarisation is not confined to Muslims. Bengali-speaking Hindus are also being targeted through revived NRC-linked harassment.
As per media reports that emerged on July 28, in Cooch Behar, West Bengal, 72-year-old egg-seller Nishikanta Das received a Foreigners Tribunal notice from Assam accusing him of illegally entering India between 1966 and 1971. His voter ID, Aadhaar, and ration card were rejected. Though Das proved his citizenship during a police detention in 2001, the tribunal now demands documents in his deceased father’s name.
“My father passed away 45 years ago. I’ve now found the document but will not return to the tribunal. I’ve had enough,” he told The Times of India.
Das’s story highlights that even working-class Hindu migrants are not immune. The Trinamool Congress has alleged that the BJP is using NRC-linked harassment to manufacture fear among all borderland Bengalis—Muslims and Hindus alike. Rajbanshis and Matuas, both marginalised communities, are now in the crosshairs.
Conclusion: A recipe for chaos, not governance
At the heart of Assam’s current political project lies not administrative reform or inclusive development, but a sustained strategy of majoritarian consolidation anchored in fear, suspicion, and cultural dominance. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has overseen a carefully layered campaign: one that marries communal dog-whistling with structural violence, cloaking targeted exclusions as policy, and presenting repressive crackdowns as law and order imperatives.
The “indigenous-first” gun licensing policy is not about citizen security but about engineering a psychological state of siege, where “indigenous” Hindus are imagined as under attack and armed self-defence becomes both justified and state-endorsed. Eviction drives, often militarised, disproportionately target Bengali-speaking Muslims, branding them as “encroachers” without legal inquiry or rehabilitation. At the same time, land is quietly handed over to industrial houses or infrastructural projects with opaque benefits for local communities. What is sold to the public as “development” is, in fact, a reordering of land and belonging, violently enforced through bulldozers, police firings, and a language of ethnic hierarchy.
The State’s actions do not exist in isolation. They are embedded within and legitimised by an ideological climate in which Bengali-speaking Muslims are persistently labelled as infiltrators, encroachers, and outsiders, regardless of their legal status, decades of residence, or community contributions. The NRC has left millions in limbo. Yet, no political will has emerged to remedy the resulting humanitarian crisis. Instead, Sarma’s administration continues to leverage this uncertainty as a tool of coercion and compliance.
Worse still, under the guise of this polarisation, it is the poor — across communities — who suffer the most. Whether it is a landless Muslim family evicted from their home at gunpoint, or an Adivasi worker displaced by corporate land takeovers, or a low-income Hindu villager pushed to arm themselves out of fear, the brunt of the state’s divisive politics is borne by those with the least protection and voice. Public resources are redirected to militarisation, surveillance, and spectacle. Welfare is replaced by repression. Governance becomes theatre. The poor become collateral damage in a battle for ideological dominance.
This is not just the story of one Chief Minister’s political ambitions. It is the anatomy of a regime that is weaponising statecraft to redraw the boundaries of citizenship, belonging, and fear. Assam today stands at a precipice where pluralism is under siege, dissent is criminalised, and the very idea of India’s constitutional promise is being hollowed out—bulldozed, one community at a time.
Related:
The contested interpretation of the Immigrant Expulsion from Assam Act, 1950
Pushed Out of Sight: The covert deportation and detention crisis at Assam’s Matia detention centre