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Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has asserted that Bengali-speaking Muslims must forsake practices like child marriage and polygamy to be considered ‘khilonjiya’ indigenous people of the state.
Sarma had also previously held the Bengali-speaking Muslim community of the state, most of whom have roots in Bangladesh, responsible for these social evils.
“Whether ‘Miyas’ (Bengali-speaking Muslims) are indigenous or not is a different matter. What we are saying is that if they try to be ‘indigenous’, we have no problem. But for that, they have to forsake child marriage and polygamy, and encourage women education,” Sarma said.
‘Miya’ is originally a pejorative term used for Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam and the non-Bengali speaking people generally identify them as Bangladeshi immigrants. In recent years, activists from the community have started adopting this term as a gesture of defiance.
He said the Assamese people have a culture in which girls are compared to ‘shakti’ (goddess), and marrying two-three times is not an Assamese culture.
“I always tell them, there is no problem in ‘Miyas’ being indigenous. But they cannot have two-three wives. That is not an Assamese culture. How can one encroach Satra (Vaishnavite monastery) land and want to be indigenous?” he maintained.
If the Bengali speaking Muslims can follow the Assamese customs, they too will be considered ‘indigenous’, the CM added.
The state government had launched an intensive crackdown against child marriage in two phases last year and it was found that many elderly men married multiple times and their wives were mostly young girls, belonging to the poor section of the society, Sarma had said earlier.
In the first phase in February last year, 3,483 persons were arrested and 4,515 cases registered while 915 persons were arrested and 710 cases registered in the second phase in October.
Sarma had asserted that the practise of underage marriage will be eradicated from the state by 2026 when the next Assembly elections are due.
In a bid to end child marriage, the state Cabinet had last month also approved a decision to repeal the Assam Muslim Marriages and Divorces Registration Act, 1935.
