Assam and West Bengal, India – Ufa Ali could barely stand.On May 31, the 67-year-old bicycle mechanic returned to his home in India’s northeastern state of Assam after spending four harrowing days stranded in Bangladesh, the neighbouring country he claims he had only heard of “as a slur” since birth.
Ali’s weeklong ordeal began on May 23 when he was picked up by the police from his rented house in Kuyadal, a small village in Assam’s Morigaon district, during a government crackdown on “declared foreign nationals” – a category of people unique to Assam. The state is a tea-producing hub where the migration and settlement of Bengali-speaking people from neighbouring areas for more than a century has led to ethnic tensions with the Indigenous natives, who mainly speak Assamese.
The tensions have gotten worse since 2016, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power for the first time in Assam. More than a third of the state’s 31 million population is Muslim – the highest percentage among Indian states.
Ali is among the more than 300 Muslims in Assam “pushed back” into Bangladesh since May, according to state Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma. “These pushbacks will be intensified. We have to be more active and proactive to save the state,” Sarma told the state’s legislative assembly earlier this mont …
