Modi Shows his Hindutva Color

Well, when a bird flies like a duck, swims like a duck and sounds like a duck it is no brainer that it is a duck. Narendra Modi, the BJP leader, has for some time tried to sell his 'development' image that he is pro-business, hiding his true Hindutvadi self until, of course, very recently.

In his recent visit to India's north-east corner, Assam, a state bordering Bangladesh, which always had a sizable number of Bengalis - Hindus and Muslims - for hundreds of years since before the British colonization and has been the scene of multiple pogroms against Bengali Muslims at the hands of murderous Assamese racists and bigots since the early 1980s, Modi sounded like a fanatic Hindu leader stoking fear amongst the state's Muslim population. The state has a history of denying citizenship rights to anyone who is Bengali speaking as if it belongs to its Assamese people only. As such, even the Hindus who had lived there for decades, or migrated to the region after the Partition of India in 1947, are viewed as outsiders. They continue to be denied citizenship rights, and can't vote. Modi wants to give that right to Hindu inhabitants of Assam but not Muslims in spite of the fact that historically many parts of Assam had sizable number of Muslims. [See below the 2001 Indian census data on Assam. Note that 2011 census shows that overall population has grown by 1.6% to 31.2 million.]

#	District	Total Population	Muslim Population	% Muslim
1	Dhubri	1637344	1216455	74.3%
2	Barpeta	1647201	977943	59.4%
3	Hailakandi	542872	312849	57.6%
4	Goalpara	822035	441516	53.7%
5	Karimganj	1007976	527214	52.3%
6	Nagaon	2314629	1180267	51.0%
7	Marigaon	776256	369398	47.6%
8	Bongaigaon	904835	348573	38.5%
9	Cachar	1444921	522051	36.1%
10	Darang	1504320	534658	35.5%
11	Kamrup	2522324	625002	24.8%
12	Nalbari	1148824	253842	22.1%
13	Kokrajhar	905764	184441	20.4%
14	Lakhimpur	889010	143505	16.1%
15	Sonitpur	1681513	268078	15.9%
16	Golaghat	946279	74808	7.9%
17	Sibsagar	1051736	85761	8.2%
18	Jorhat	999221	47658	4.8%
19	Dibrugarh	1185072	53306	4.5%
20	Tinsukia	1150062	40000	3.5%
21	North Cachar Hills	188079	4662	2.5%
22	Dhemaji	571944	10533	1.8%
23	Karbi Anglong	813311	18091	2.2%
	Total:	26,655,528	8,240,611	30.9%

Such a prescriptive formula for the Hindu population while denying the same right to Assam's Muslim population is discriminatory and cannot be the acceptable trait of a leader in modern India where Muslims comprise nearly 15% of the population.

The Bengali population in Assam should have the same right of citizenship irrespective of their religion, caste or creed enjoyed by any other Indian who live or decided to migrate there. Surely, the decades of living as a refugee have earned them that right.

As I have noted elsewhere, Indian Muslims living in bordering states of Bangladesh are mistakenly and deliberately portrayed by opportunist political leaders within India as infiltrators, and more so during an election year to polarize the voters and use them as vote-banks. As I have also shown recently the facts are quite the opposite. There are half a million Indians illegally residing and working inside Bangladesh that are remitting nearly 4 billion dollars to Indian economy annually. These facts must be relayed by the politicians and concerned Indians to their fellow countrymen so that people are aware of the truth, and not become victims of propaganda to stir up communal, race and ethnic riots.