Bangladeshi migration into Assam has taken place for more than a century. It began with the British using low-cost Muslim laborers for Assam's tea industry and developed into a steady influx of Muslim immigrants escaping the negligible economic opportunities and crushing population density in the flood-prone delta of Bangladesh. Since the 1990s, Bangladeshi intellectuals have described the need for lebensraum, or "living space," for Muslims. They found that space in neighboring regions like Assam, but it came at the cost of upsetting deeply entrenched tribal identities.
Compounding matters in the northeast is the ongoing ethnic violence in neighboring western Myanmar, where clashes between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhist Rakhines have displaced tens of thousands of residents. Many Rohingya Muslims have been seeking sanctuary in the Indian northeast, thereby exacerbating already deep demographic tensions. In the most recent clashes in Assam, dozens of people have died and roughly 400,000 have been displaced over five days of ethnic violence. A curfew was imposed Aug. 16 in the Assamese town of Rangiya after a mob set fire to a bridge. Meanwhile, violent protests have continued in other parts of the state. Rumors are circulating that Bodo tribals are now arming themselves before entering India through the country's porous border with Bangladesh.
The violence is no longer confined to the northeast. On Aug. 11, Islamic groups carried out demonstrations in India's financial hub of Mumbai to protest violence against Muslims in Assam. Urban dwellers in India's major cities do not typically pay much attention to unrest in the northeast. The main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party claims that the protesters in Mumbai consisted of Bangladeshi migrants. Comprising an estimated 2,000 protesters, the crowd seemed to catch Mumbai police by surprise. Some protesters — reportedly armed with Molotov cocktails, hockey sticks, bamboo sticks and iron rods — began attacking police cars, public buses and television crews.
Following the Mumbai riots, threatening text messages from alleged Islamist groups were reportedly disseminated to Assamese laborers throughout the south in cities like Pune, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Nashik and Chennai. The rapid dissemination of events via social networking websites has generated hysteria among Assamese, who work mostly in the service sector in big cities and are now abandoning their jobs to return home to the northeast, even as violence persists there.
The potential for further political exploitation of this ethno-sectarian conflict is high. There are lurking suspicions that the Mumbai riots were premeditated and designed to stoke sectarian tensions, invoking memories of the deadly 1992 riots in Mumbai and the 2002 riots in Gujarat that pitted Hindus against Muslims. Islamist militant groups in India, such as Indian Mujahideen and their affiliates, have struggled over the past decade in trying to ignite sectarian violence through attacks. Though these Islamist groups have little to do with the Bodo conflict, they have a strong interest in exploiting the current atmosphere to try to remain politically relevant and attract recruits.
Hindu nationalist groups will indirectly facilitate the Islamist agenda through provocative actions against Muslims. The main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party and far-right Shiv Sena are seizing the opportunity to condemn the ruling Congress party for allowing Islamists to exploit the tensions in Assam and cause disturbances in Mumbai. These groups will call for stronger crackdowns against Muslim communities and engage in rhetoric that will likely heighten communal tensions. With current drought conditions, persistent corruption scandals and negative economic news already troubling Congress, a communal crisis will further undermine the ruling party. And with more Assamese returning home, violence will persist in the northeast and provide more opportunity for political exploitation in other parts of the country.
Editor's note: A previous version of this analysis was published in an incomplete form.
