‘Muslims in Assam must give up polygamy, child marriage’
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has asserted that Bengalispeaking Muslims must forsake practices like child marriage and polygamy to be considered khilonjiya — indigenous people of the State.
Mr. Sarma had also previously held the Bengalispeaking Muslim community of the State, most of whom have roots in Bangladesh, responsible for these social evils.
“Whether Miyas (Bengalispeaking Muslims) are indigenous or not is a different matter. What we are saying is that if they try to be ‘indigenous’, we have no problem. But for that, they have to forsake child marriage and polygamy, and encourage women's education,” Mr. Sarma said on Saturday.
Miya is originally a pejorative term used for Bengalispeaking Muslims in Assam and the nonBengali speaking people generally identify them as Bangladeshi immigrants. In recent years, activists from the community have started adopting this term as a gesture of defiance.
He said the Assamese people have a culture in which girls were compared to ‘shakti’ (goddess), and marrying twothree times was not Assamese culture.
“I always tell them, there is no problem in Miyas being indigenous. But they cannot have twothree wives. That is not Assamese culture. How can one encroach Satra (Vaishnavite monastery) land and want to be indigenous?” he maintained.
The State government had launched an intensive crackdown against child marriage in two phases last year and it was found that many elderly men married multiple times and their wives were mostly young girls, belonging to the poor section of the society, Mr. Sarma had said earlier.
The Opposition had termed the decision as a move to polarise voters ahead of Lok Sabha elections.