As the BJP reaches out to some 4 million Muslims in the poll-bound northeastern Indian state, many remain sceptical of the party’s agenda.
By Arshad Ahmed
Assam, India – Akram Ali stood by the ruins of his four-room house under the scorching April heat, sifting through the debris where his life once stood.
“This was my home built more than 45 years ago,” Ali, 50, said, his eyes tearing up. “Now it’s all rubble.”
On the morning of March 14, bulldozers descended on Islampur, a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood in Bongora on the outskirts of Guwahati, the main city in the northeastern Indian state of Assam.
For the next four hours, more than three dozen bulldozers razed down homes, including Ali’s, rendering 400 families homeless from 177 hectares (437 acres) of land allegedly protected for Assam’s Indigenous people under a state government law.
Ali now lives in a makeshift tarpaulin shanty a few kilometres (miles) from his demolished home.
Playing a viral video of him crying inconsolably on his mobile phone, the daily wage worker told Al Jazeera his home, like others in Bongora, was demolished despite his Indigenous identity.
“I am Goriya, son of the soil, but my home was still flattened,” Ali said. “It was my entire life’s hard work.”
