Guwahati, July 10: Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Thursday said that attempts by a section of minority organisations to replace Assamese with Bengali in electoral rolls or census forms would only help quantify the number of foreigners residing in the state.
Sarma said that threats by some minority organisations to refrain from listing Assamese as their mother tongue in the census would merely expose the extent of illegal immigration.
The All Bodoland Territorial Council Minority Students’ Union (ABMSU) recently threatened to replace Assamese with Bengali in the upcoming census.
“They have threatened to replace Assamese with Bengali,” Sarma told reporters. “But language cannot be used as a tool for blackmail. In Assam, Assamese is permanent — both as the state and official language. However, if they write Bengali in electoral rolls or the census, it will only quantify the number of foreigners in the state.”
ABMSU leader Mainuddin Ali stated that Bengali-speaking Muslims would now opt to declare Bengali, not Assamese, in official documents, arguing that Assamese would no longer remain the majority language.
The ABMSU’s warning came in protest against an eviction drive carried out in Assam’s Dhubri district on Monday.
Sarma added, “Muslims who came from Bangladesh have always written Bengali as their language. Indigenous Muslims write Assamese as their language. This is an established fact in Assam. I thank ABMSU leaders for suggesting a new mechanism to quantify the population of immigrants in the state.”
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