The Trinamool Congress (TMC) has come down heavily on Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma over his recent remarks linking the Bengali language to the identification of illegal immigrants. The party accused Sarma of promoting linguistic discrimination and demanded a public apology or his resignation from the constitutional post.
TMC spokesperson and party IT wing head Debangshu Bhattacharya criticised the Assam government’s decision to issue an NRC notice to a member of the Rajbanshi community, calling it an overreach of jurisdiction.
He also condemned Sarma’s statement that speaking Bengali could help identify Bangladeshis, saying it reflects the BJP’s larger pattern of targeting Bengali-speaking individuals.
“Bengali is the third most spoken language in India and second most spoken in Assam,” said Bhattacharya. “It is shocking that the Chief Minister forgets the contributions of Bengali speakers to the freedom movement and the existence of a state like West Bengal where Bengali is the primary language. The BJP has shown time and again that it is against Bengali-speaking people. Their disrespect towards the language is being noticed.”
Echoing similar concerns, TMC MP Sushmita Dev called Sarma’s comments a direct attack on the Bengali language and its speakers. She claimed that the BJP has a pattern of harassment against Bengali-speaking individuals in several states.
“In Delhi, Odisha and elsewhere, people have been arrested and evicted for merely speaking Bengali. Now, the Assam CM has practically said that listing Bengali as one’s mother tongue could make one a suspect illegal migrant. This is linguistic profiling,” she said.
Dev demanded that Sarma retract his statement and issue an apology. “If he refuses, he must step down. A constitutional post-holder must not encourage division or discrimination based on language,” she added, warning that such rhetoric could reignite unrest in linguistically diverse states like Assam.
TMC MLA Udayan Guha also expressed concern that not just Muslims, but Bengali-speaking Hindus and members of the Rajbanshi community were being targeted. “Bengali speakers – regardless of religion – are being marked simply for their language,” he said.
The remarks from the Assam CM come amid rising tensions around identity and citizenship in the state. On July 10, Sarma had stated that Bengali-origin Muslims not listing Assamese as their mother tongue would help the government identify the number of foreigners.
He dismissed concerns that fewer people choosing Assamese would threaten the language’s existence, asserting, “Assamese will remain where it is.”
The backlash also comes as the Assam government intensifies eviction drives. In Goalpara district, authorities recently cleared 140 hectares of forest land in Paikan Reserve Forest, displacing over 1,000 families. Opposition parties claim many of those affected were Bengali-speaking Muslims.
In Dhubri, the government has reportedly demolished homes of around 1,400 Bengali-origin Muslim families to make way for a power project, further fuelling allegations of targeted displacement.
TMC leaders warned that linguistic discrimination, coupled with forced evictions and profiling, could deepen alienation and trigger unrest. They urged the public to see through what they called the BJP’s divisive politics and reject the targeting of any group based on language.
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