Assam바카라�s Descent Into Darkness: Arming Hate, Silencing Dissent

Assam today stands at a dangerous crossroads. Under Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, the BJP-led state government is taking the region down a path of militarised communalism and ethnic vigilante politics that poses a grave threat to democracy, secularism and human rights.

The recent announcement to arm the so-called 바카라�indigenous바카라� civilians to defend against the 바카라�illegal immigrants바카라� is not just another policy decision. It is a signal. A signal that the state is no longer even pretending to be neutral바카라�that it now openly seeks to empower one section of the society to dominate another.

This is not just about borders. This is not about security. This is about the state sanctioning civilian-led communal violence, reactivating historical memories of bloodshed, and laying the groundwork for something that echoes all too closely the language of ethnic cleansing.

The logic is chillingly simple: create an enemy, label them as outsiders, strip them of their rights and protections and, finally, arm the population against them. In Assam바카라�s case, this enemy is the Bengali-speaking Muslims, particularly from the working-class Sylheti-speaking population. They have long been made the scapegoat for everything that ails the region바카라�from unemployment and environmental distress to demographic fears.

In truth, these strategies are nothing new. They are part of a longer history of state complicity and ethnonationalist anxiety that has existed in Assam since the colonial period. But under the current regime, it is reaching a point of irreversible danger.

The move to arm civilians is being sold as a measure to curb 바카라�infiltration바카라� from Bangladesh. This term is vague, loaded, and historically violent. And this has been repeatedly used in Assam to criminalise an entire population whose only fault is that they speak a different language, have different surnames, or appear to be Muslim. In this climate of paranoia, citizenship becomes a weapon and the mere act of existing becomes a threat.

The arming of civilians should set off alarm bells far beyond Assam. History is replete with examples of what happens when the state encourages vigilante justice. From Nazi Germany바카라�s Brownshirts to Rwanda바카라�s Interahamwe, we know what it looks like when regimes legitimise civilian violence along ethnic or religious lines. It begins with fear, accelerates through propaganda, and ends in unspeakable horror.

The question of who is 바카라�indigenous바카라� in Assam is itself a deeply contested and politically charged issue. But rather than addressing that question through democratic dialogue and constitutional ethics, the state has chosen to reduce it to a binary: one group deserves arms and protection, the other is to be surveilled, policed, and ultimately expelled.

This is not an abstraction. This is real policy with deadly historical precedents. One cannot talk about the present without invoking the spectre of the Nellie massacre in 1983, when over 2,000 Bengali Muslims were brutally murdered by mobs. That violence, fuelled by the same rhetoric of 바카라�foreigners바카라� and 바카라�indigenous rights바카라�, took place with the silent complicity of state forces. No one was held accountable. The ghosts of Nellie were never laid to rest. Today, they are being awakened once again.

And the tools of that awakening are not just words. They are weapons. The government바카라�s decision to arm civilians effectively deputises them into a vigilante force. The job of the police, the responsibility of the army, is now being handed over to private actors whose training, motives, and accountability remain unclear. In this move, we see the collapse of the constitutional framework of law and order. When the state begins to outsource violence to citizens, it abdicates its role as the guardian of justice and instead becomes the instigator of fear.

This cannot be separated from the broader ideological project of the RSS-BJP regime. At its core lies the vision of a Hindu nation, where Muslims are not only second-class citizens, but perpetual outsiders. Assam, with its mix of languages, religions, and migration histories, is being used as a site to test how far this ideology can be implemented. It is no coincidence that the state has been at the forefront of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), and the proposed nationwide National Population Register (NPR).

These instruments are not just about documentation. They are about constructing illegality. They are about turning the accident of birth, the choice of a name, the language one speaks into proof of disloyalty. As the Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe reminds us, 바카라�The ultimate expression of sovereignty resides, to a large degree, in the power and capacity to dictate who may live and who must die.바카라� What we are witnessing in Assam is precisely this deadly logic of necropolitics at work, a state deciding, not just in theory, but in practice, who deserves life, citizenship, protection, and who must disappear.

The judiciary, which should act as a bulwark against such authoritarianism, has instead paved the way for its deepening. A recent Supreme Court decision ruled that declared foreigners can be deported even in the absence of confirmed identity from Bangladesh. This is a stunning abdication of judicial responsibility. It allows for the wholesale production of statelessness through bureaucratic error, linguistic misunderstanding, or outright prejudice. The legal fiction of 바카라�foreignness바카라� is being used to dispossess thousands of people of their homes, their rights, and their dignity.

And this is not limited to courtrooms. On the ground, the machinery of the state is engaged in extra-judicial actions that resemble forced disappearances. Reports allege that individuals, many of them poor, illiterate, or without legal counsel being taken from their homes in the dead of night and pushed across the border. Others are being detained in makeshift centres, awaiting deportation with no clarity on process or timeline. Appeals are ignored. Court orders are flouted. The law is used not to protect, but to persecute.

What is unfolding in Assam today is not only a regional crisis. It is part of a global pattern. Across the world, authoritarian regimes are turning inward, blaming migrants, minorities, and the poor for the systemic failures of capitalism and governance. From the camps at the US-Mexico border to Fortress Europe and the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, we see how migrants and Muslims are made into the figure of the 바카라�illegal바카라�, the unwanted, the disposable. Assam is the Indian manifestation of this global fascist moment, where Islamophobia, economic despair, and cultural anxiety coalesce into a politics of hate.

Yet, in Assam, the crackdown is not limited to Muslims alone. Anyone who speaks against this machinery of repression is marked. Following Operation Sindoor and the rising militarisation of Assam, it is alleged that student leaders, peace activists, and civil society members who voiced anti-war sentiments were arrested, intimidated, and surveilled. The very act of dissent has been criminalised. Speaking for peace, speaking against communal division, or simply calling for democratic accountability is now seen as sedition.

This is the hallmark of fascism, not just the silencing of voices, but the transformation of dissent into a criminal offence. The state no longer tolerates disagreement. It sees in every critic an enemy, in every questioner a traitor. As historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote, 바카라�The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction no longer exists.바카라�

In Assam today, truth itself is being manipulated by the state to justify exclusion, violence, and fear. The line between fact and manufactured paranoia is fast disappearing.

And what of the people? The working-class populations of Assam, across all religions and languages, continue to suffer from chronic neglect. Floods destroy homes year after year. Crops fail. Employment dwindles. Healthcare remains abysmal. Yet, instead of addressing these structural crises, the state offers only one answer: hate. It blames the migrant. It blames the Muslim. It blames the other. All the while, wealth continues to be extracted, forests are cleared, rivers polluted, and communities left to fend for themselves in a collapsing ecological landscape.

This is the cruelest irony. Those who have contributed to Assam바카라�s economy for generations, who have farmed its land, built its infrastructure, spoken its many tongues are now being told they do not belong. Their citizenship is questioned, their rights revoked, their lives reduced to mere numbers on a detention list. And the rest of India watches silently. Assam is not an exception. It is the blueprint. What is unfolding here is not confined to the state바카라�s borders, but is a test-case for a nationwide experiment in ethnic control, communal violence, and authoritarian governance.

But how long can this silence hold? How long before this experiment in armed communalism spills over into other states? How long before this militarised citizenship regime becomes the new normal across India?

If the state begins to arm civilians along ethnic and religious lines, what happens to the idea of equal protection under law? If courts turn away from those being illegally detained and deported, who will defend the Constitution? If speaking for justice becomes a crime, what is left of democracy?

And if we, as a people, refuse to speak out now, what will we say when this darkness reaches our own doorsteps?

The writing is on the wall. Assam is not just in crisis. Assam is a warning.

(The author is a writer and researcher based in Delhi, focusing on Muslim identity, communalism, state violence, caste and the politics of marginalisation)

(Views expressed are personal)