The Indian state has made Bengali Muslims outsiders in their own land

Reading news reports in recent weeks has made one thing clear: being a Bengali-speaking Muslim has, by itself, become incriminating in today’s India.

Simply having this ethno-linguistic identity is enough to trigger the suspicion of state officials. Amid the fervid political rhetoric about “ghuspetiya” – infiltrators – and supposed demographic change, being a Bengali-speaking Muslim has come to be associated with being an outsider.

Across the country, Bengali-speaking Muslim marginal workers are being picked up for questioning, detained and even deported to Bangladesh. For instance, last month in Bengaluru, 3,000-odd Bengali Muslim garbage and waste workers were picked up by the police as part of a massive verification drive against allegedly unauthorised migrants.

Only 31 of them were eventually determined to be Bangladeshi nationals and sent to West Bengal to be deported to Bangladesh. In Chhattisgarh, 23 workers from West Bengal – only one Hindu and the rest Muslims – were detained on suspicion of being Bangladeshi nationals this month.

In July, a Muslim woman tracing her roots to North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal was detained and deported to Bangladesh in July.

These three episodes are a continuation of a phenomenon that began last summer, when the authorities detained thousands of Bengali Muslim workers across the country, deporting hundreds to Bangladesh – mostly without trial...

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