After being sworn in under the Constitution with a declaration that he would stand by all people irrespective of religion, caste and creed, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma repeatedly seemed to be breaching it by targeting the Muslim community in the state, and has now claimed that the Muslim community is becoming richer, referring to this as the surrender of the Assamese people, besides pointing out the growth of the Muslim population and the decline of the Hindu population.
The Assam Cabinet on Sunday approved the draft of a bill seeking to ban polygamy in the state, a move that critics say is aimed at criminalising practices protected under Muslim personal law. In effect, the law will apply primarily to the non-tribal population, a category that, in Assam’s social composition, largely includes the state’s Muslim residents.
Sarma, however, said that Muslims residing in a Sixth Schedule area prior to 2005 would be exempted from the proposed law, a clause that observers view as a token safeguard intended to soften criticism while masking selective targeting. Alongside the bill, the chief minister also announced the creation of a state fund to compensate women affected by polygamy, describing it as a welfare measure to ensure that no woman faces hardship due to marital practices.
The measure, he said, was meant to empower Muslim women, though rights groups and legal experts argue that its selective framing reflects the BJP-led government’s consistent attempt to intervene in Muslim personal law under the pretext of reform. Polygamy, permitted under Muslim personal law, governs marriage and family matters within the community, but the proposed bill seeks to criminalise it through state legislation.
On the same day, Sarma reignited his earlier rhetoric about demographic and cultural change in Assam, asserting that the state was not only witnessing a demographic transformation but also an “economic shift,” as he claimed Muslims were becoming wealthier than before.
Linking this alleged economic rise to what he termed as the “surrender” of the Assamese people, the BJP leader said that Hindu population growth had been declining while that of Muslims continued to rise across the state. Citing population data between 2001 and 2011, he maintained that the growth rate among Hindus had fallen while that of Muslims had increased in every block of Assam.
According to the 2011 Census, Hindus constituted 61.47% of Assam’s population, while Muslims accounted for 34.22%, compared to 64.89% and 30.92% respectively in 2001.
Sarma, who has long accused undocumented migration from Bangladesh of driving demographic changes in Assam, repeated his claim that this transformation had gone beyond population figures and had extended into the state’s economic structure.
However, several academics and demographers have previously asserted that higher birth rates within the community, rather than undocumented immigration, explain the shift in demographic trends. Despite this, the chief minister claimed that there had been a noticeable rise in instances of land sales from Hindus to Muslims, which he described as indicative of a larger socio-economic change in the state.
In August 2024, the Assam Cabinet had already approved a proposal allowing the government to scrutinise all land transfers between individuals belonging to different religions, a move widely criticised as discriminatory. Sarma said that while the government did not object to transactions involving indigenous Muslims, the overall pattern reflected a deeper transformation in wealth distribution.
He added that earlier discussions on demographic change had focused only on population, but recent data on land transactions revealed a parallel economic realignment. The chief minister said he would present a detailed analysis on the matter at a later date, reinforcing his continued narrative that links demographic and economic trends with cultural erosion.