The northeast’s most populous state, Assam, is a veritable museum of competing tribes, sub-tribes and ethnicities. Bablu Nandi, a Hindu Bengali man whose community is now staring at a looming identity conflict, has added one more community to that simmering list: “Assamese Bengali.” The birth of this new identity can be attributed to the Modi government’s push to the Citizenship Amendment Bill, which seeks to give citizenship to any non-Muslim who wishes to settle in India from Bangladesh, Pakistan or Afghanistan. “We are Assamese Bengali. We are not only Bengali,” Nandi says, sipping tea in his village, Ganesh Valley, on the edges of a small tea garden in the central Assam district of Morigaon.
Reporting Credit: Zia Haq Associate Editor, Hindustan Times
