Commentary | Saurabh Saikia and Zubeen Sultana, Assam's Tangled Nationality Question: Politics and Semantics of Bideshi (Foreigners)
Recent political dynamics in Assam surrounding the issue of foreigners involves the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (2019), eviction drives (2025) primarily targeting East Bengali Muslims or Miya and a resurge of nationalist campaign over the foreigners issue. The CAA, which grants citizenship for non-Muslim minorities from neighbouring countries, sparked widespread protests and intensified fears about its impact on Assam’s demography, identity, and economy. However, it failed as a movement as many of its leaders joined BJP.
The Assam Gana Parisad (AGP), which came to power twice (1985, 1996) leading the six-year-long fierce Assam Movement against the foreigners issue continued its alliance with BJP even after the implementation of an anti-Assam and anti-constitutional act like CAA. Amidst these developments several nationalist leaders of Assam and their ranks and files have voiced against foreigners in a Hindutva norm, targeting Muslim identity.
Redrawing Assam’s tangled nationality question along communal line and reconstructing the semantics of bideshi, the present political regime allying with several nationalist groups is scandalously covering the backstage game from the citizens, which will have many more catastrophic impacts on Assam in the coming days. The BJP-led regime’s on-going displacement and eviction drives against the Miya and revision of CAA deadline upto December 2024 to grant citizenship to non-Muslim foreigners have further complicated the long-unsolved foreigners issue of Assam.
Thus, rearticulation of bideshi and covert politics have again intensified social tensions in contemporary Assam. However, this communal attitude is new to Assamese nationalism observed since the Assam Movement (1978-1985). The Nellie massacre (1983) is a testimony of this tendency developed within Assamese nationalism and continuing since the years. The AGP, an offshoot of AASU, though formed the state government twice, failed to solve the foreigners issue and it continues to be the burning question of Assam’s political landscape even today.
After the fall of AGP, Samujjal Kumar Bhattacharya, the All Assam Students Union leader, expressed his anxiety against Muslim identity in an interview (30 October 2004), where he stated: “Assam will become a Muslim state within 10 years.”[1] This religious angle has been followed by the Assamese nationalists since the Assam Movement to the present , further escalating Assam’s tangled nationality question.
The present active nationalist groups, such as the Veer Lachit Sena led by Shrinkhal Chaliha and the Jatiya Sangrami Sena led by Situ Barua, are openly spearheading drives to expel the Miya Muslims from Upper Assam—a programmed agenda that Assam’s BJP Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has publicly supported, often urging youths and citizens to take part in it through his repeated statements. In another note, the BJP leaders and a few rightwing academics have been over and again questioning the existence of Bagh Hazarika alias Ismail Siddiqui, the right hand commander of Lachit Borphukan (a mediaeval war hero of Assam) , and thus attempting to negate the role of Assam’s Muslims in the nation-building process.
The Assamese middle class, itself the culmination of colonial rule in Assam, had responded in a hybrid manner of support and opposition, to the colonial government’s policies of resource extraction and the marginalisation of Assam's identity, language, and political economy and tried to awaken national consciousness of the people of Assam since the 19th century. However, historical references show that the new Assamese Hindutva nationalism is a much later development.
Anandaram Dhekial Phukan, a prominent early Assamese intellectual, submitted a memorandum (1854) detailing the detrimental effects of using Bengali in Assam as a medium of instruction since 1837 to A. J. Moffat Mills, who was deputed to Assam to enquire into the administrative conditions of Assam. Phukan strongly advocated for the introduction of the Assamese language in education and administration arguing : “Learning in a “foreign language" (referring to the Bengali language), unfamiliar to Assamese students, hampered their progress.” [2] Phukan’s plea was rooted in a broader vision of linguistic nationalism, where language was seen as the soul of the nation and its preservation was essential for cultural identity and self-determination. Anandaram Dhekial Phukan’s articulation of Bengali as a foreign language did not necessarily mean the foreigners as understood by nationalists today. Bengal and Assam were then parts of the same Bengal Presidency under British Indian empire, but constituted two separate provinces in terms of linguistic and cultural identity.
In 1925, Gyannath Bora, a nationalist by attitude and a representative of the Assamese middle class in the early 20th century, wrote a book titled Asamat Bideshi (Foreigners in Assam). It addresses the growing concern among Assamese middle class about the influx of non-indigenous people into Assam and its socio-cultural, demographic, and economic impacts. Bora noted that the diversity and distinct cultural identity of the provinces are a core feature of India, and the provinces must unite as Indians, retaining their own identity. [3] He adds that for a province, development means the advancement of its language and culture, and that agriculture and business should be controlled by its native people. [4] Bora observes that Assam has become a very backward province which was once a prosperous territory. He notes with profound anxiety: “The businesses of Dhubri, Guwahati, Tezpur, Nagaon, Mangaldoi, Jorhat, Dibrugarh are all run by Bideshi (foreigners).” [5] It is important to note that when Bora used the term Bideshi, he referred to all outsiders, whether Marwari, Bengali, or other communities that have been controlling trade and commerce in Assam since the colonial rule, rather than foreigners as constructed since the Assam Movement.
Therefore, till the first two decades of the 20th century, the Bideshi in the Assamese middle class psyche comprised a substantial number of Marwari, Bengali, Bihari and other immigrants from different provinces of India that can be conceptualised more as “outsiders” rather than “foreigners.” Bora’s articulation of Assamese nationalism was clearly based on preserving the cultural identity and political-economy of Assam. The nationalism that was propagated by the colonial middle class was never identical to any religious entity. Bora’s work clearly reflects the cementing force of Assamese nationalism :
“Foreigners in Assam are a hindrance to progress—whether one is Hindu or Muslim. The country’s(Assam) economy is rapidly falling into foreign hands, and neither community has escaped their grip. Assamese Hindus cannot expect help from foreign Hindus, nor can Assamese Muslims rely on foreign Muslims. These outsiders have come only to earn. They have exploited us, taken our money, and indebted us. Thus, Assamese Hindus and Muslims must realise they share the same values. Religion is secondary—nationality must come first for Assam.” [6]
Regarding Hindu-Muslim relations in Assam, he noted: “Muslims who settled in Assam were not seen as infidels by either the king or the people. They were granted land, bandi-betis, and totally lived like Assamese. Some even held official positions such as Barua, Saikia, Hazarika, and Bora, participating in administration. They regarded the Assamese king, governance, and the land itself as their own. In the war against the Mughals, the Assamese Muslims never sided with their Muslim counterparts but with the Ahoms. The formation of Assamese nationality does not imply religious identity.”
This formulation is also evident from the 17th-century Persian work Twarikh-e-Assam by Shahabuddin Tailsh where he wrote about the Muslims of Assam:
“The Muslims we have met in this country are fully Assamese in manners, Muslims only in name. In fact, they are close to Assamese people more, than to us.” [7]
However, this inclusive and secular vision of Assamese nationalism has undergone a significant transformation from the colonial to the post-colonial period through the semantic construction of Bideshi along the Hindutva line. This rearticulation of Assamese nationalism is responsible for the disintegration of a broader "Assamese" identity.
While the communal-nationalist nexus is trying to streamline Assamese nationalism along the Hindutva line, the Muslims in Assam are never a homogeneous social category. Set aside Miya even the “Assamese Muslims” are not a homogeneous identity but consists of several sub-groups and has its inner dynamics. Therefore, the false psychosis of a united muslim threat to Assamese identity is nothing but an orchestrated political agenda of Hindutva forces, allying with the post-Independence Assamese middle-class nationalists.
Immigration of outsiders, both Hindus and Muslims, has been a serious problem for Assam since the colonial period, a process that had always been encouraged by the British from the early colonial period. The large-scale immigrants, both Hindus and Muslims, from other provinces during the colonial period threatened the linguistic-cultural identity of the Assamese, and the trade and economy were taken up by these outsiders. This process of immigration continued in the post-colonial period under successive political regime. The Assamese middle class, at the same time, struggled to preserve their cultural identity and overcome their economic marginalisation in the post-colonial period also. This anxiety culminated in the Assam Movement—an organic anxiety of the Assamese which was materialised by Hindu communal forces reconstructing the semantics of bideshi identical with the Muslim religion. Since the Assam Movement, this tendency has increasingly equated with a specific Muslim identity (Miya)—a classic case of contraction of meaning—not only as linguistic concept but also as a propagated ideology. This reframing of bideshi has been so deeply internalised within the Assamese socio-political psyche that, in many cases, a “Muslim-sounding name” and “linguistic tone” alone is sufficient to trigger suspicions of foreignness.
The AGP and allied nationalist groups, rooted in Assam’s anti-foreigner upsurge, are now an ally of the BJP’s communal agenda. By undermining the Assam Accord and denouncing the NRC update, the present regime erases historical demands while deepening the unresolved nationality question.
This communal positioning reflects a broader failure on the part of the Assamese regional nationalists to uphold a broader nationalism articulated by nationalist thinkers like Gyannath Bora in the 1920s. They not only failed to strengthen the Assamese identity and culture but also to protect indigenous’ rights over land and resources.
When semantics of bideshi has been projected to mean a “particular muslim community” as land usurpers and a threat to Assamese identity and culture, the silent encroachment in Assam by corporate capitalists through political mechanisms is kept away from public debate. Rapid capitalisation and the transformation of peripheral agrarian landscapes reveal a deeper political-economic crisis in present-day Assam. Peasants being landless labourers and their lands being acquired by corporates, pushing them into precarious wage labour and landlessness— a process currently accelerated under the BJP’s majoritarian and corporate-friendly governance. The process of capitalist industrialisation has also brought along with it many socio-environmental disasters to the urban centres like Guwahati and the surrounding rural and forest areas of Assam. These include the denudation of the hills, eviction of local inhabitants, artificial flooding, loss of biodiversity, acute groundwater crisis, and a large amount of air and noise pollution. Rapid industrialization in the agri-fields and beels (water body) of the hinterlands is deeply affecting the biodiversity of these areas and the local inhabitants, social relations, livelihoods, and the local food sovereignty.
While concerns over illegal immigration cannot be overlooked in the context of cultural and demographic anxieties, reducing Assam’s nationality question to an imagined muslim threat diverts attention from the structural pattern of capitalist accumulation and state complicity that are redrawing the region’s socio-economic fabric. In a recent article (the Wire ) farmer, researcher Bonojit Hussain outlines how the Geological Survey of India’s (GSI) Handbook "Geological Potential of Northeast India: A hidden trove of mineral prospect beneath majestic landscape" quietly redraws the region – not as a complex tapestry of Indigenous people, histories and ecologies, but as a mineral-rich frontier primed for capitalist exploitation.
Amidst these ongoing tensions, Assam witnessed a rare moment of unity following the sudden demise of its heartthrob and legendary singer, Zubeen Garg (52), who openly questioned caste, religion, and God, often calling himself socialist, leftist, and above all, a human. Millions of people from all communities—irrespective of caste, religion, or language—mourned Zubeen Garg, shed tears, and marched together as nothing but human beings. In a time of divisive politics, the death of Zubeen Garg united and redefined a broader, inclusive Assamese nation—a jolt to the current regime.
At a moment when the masses of Assam stood united, denouncing communalism and embracing Zubeen Garg’s ideals through the spontaneous “Justice for Zubeen” movement, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma once again stirred controversy by claiming that the Muslim population in the state is now approaching 40% posing a demographic threat. He also declares that he will follow the “3D” (Detect, Delete, Deport) policy more boldly in the coming days. The ruling regime has even begun circulating narratives alleging that a “third element” is instigating the “Justice for Zubeen" movement to make the state unstable. The historical solution to Assam’s long-standing tangled nationality question has become crystal clear from the present situation—unity, inclusiveness, and the protection of its culture and political economy. Yet, the current regime stands in complete opposition to this synthesis, weaponizing Assam’s nationality question as part of its divisive political and corporate-friendly agenda— that will have catastrophic consequences in future Assam.
References
[1] “News Cutting” Natun Dainik, 30 October, 2004.
[2] Mills, A. J. Moffatt., Report on the Province of Assam, Appendix J, 1854. “Education and Schools” and “ Language of the Courts”, Publication Board of Assam. Pp.105-108 and Pp.131-132.
[3] Bora, Gnananath., Asamot Bideshi, Barua Agency, Dighalipukhuri, 1925, pp. 1–2.
[4] Ibid. pp.3-4
[5] Ibid
[6] Ibid. pp.55-63
[7] Asif, Mazhar (Tr.) Tarikh-e-Assam, Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, Guwahati, 2009. p.60.
Saurabh Saikia is a PhD researcher in the Department of History at Cotton University. His areas of research include working class movement, nationalism, cultural and literary history of Assam and North East. He can be reached at saikiasaurabh@gmail.com.
Zubeen Sultana is a PhD researcher in the Department of History at Gauhati University. Her areas of research include Muslim communities of Assam, identity politics, ethnicity among minorities of Assam. She can be reached at sultanazubeen@gmail.com.
To cite this essay, please use the bibliographic entry suggested below:
Saurabh Saikia and Zubeen Sultana, “Assam's Tangled Nationality Question: Politics and Semantics of Bideshi (Foreigners),” criticalasianstudies.org Commentary Board, November 1, 2025. https://doi.org/10.52698/KGZE1320.