If your food is policed, housing denied, identity questioned, is it freedom?

As India enters its 79th year, the questions of who the Republic belongs to and who belongs in the country stare its citizens in the face in multiple ways. The day has somehow come to be one of enforced vegetarianism, with several municipal bodies across the country ordering the closure of meat shops. The simple freedom to eat what is a normal part of traditional diets has thus been taken away from Indians in those areas who eat non-vegetarian food – ironically, on Independence Day.

The majority of Indians are not vegetarians. Yet the creeping enforcement of vegetarianism by municipalities, airlines, and institutional canteens raises a larger question: Does India belong more to the vegetarian minority than to the non-vegetarian majority? Are vegetarians somehow more Indian than non-vegetarians?

Food is only one of many fault lines dividing the country. The older divides of religion, language, and caste often overlap with the vegetarian–non-vegetarian binary, since vegetarianism in India is usually inherited by birth into certain communities and castes, rather than chosen. Jains, Brahmins, and Baniyas from most parts of India tend to be vegetarians, while Muslims, Christians, tribal communities, and many Hindu castes tend to be non-vegetarians – though there are significant regional variations.

Bengali Brahmins are among the few exceptions within Brahmins; they traditionally eat fish and meat. This makes them outsiders from the heartland Hindi-Hindu perspective twice over: as non-Hindi speakers and as non-vegetarians. Since meat-eating is viewed in terms of purity and pollution by those who practise caste-based vegetarianism, the Bengali Hindu is sometimes considered impure – unworthy, for instance, of renting a flat in a Mumbai building or a unit in a Delhi house dominated by vegetarian castes.

This pre-existing social prejudice against Bengalis has also taken a political turn, amplified by narratives about illegal immigration from Bangladesh. These narratives, once concentrated in Assam, have spread to other parts of India. The result is visible in regular news reports of discrimination against Bengalis – whether they are domestic workers and waste collectors in Gurugram, or middle-class professionals seeking hotel rooms in Noida.

In Assam, the roots of these tensions stretch back to the mid-1800s, when British colonial authorities made Bengali the official language there as part of a broader shift from Persian to English and local vernaculars. Assam, newly annexed to the British Indian empire, was then part of Bengal Presidency and had Bengali thrust upon it.

The first major post-Independence movement to evict Bengalis began after Partition, with the arrival of Hindu Bengali refugees from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Anxieties about Bengali domination, simmering since colonial times, erupted in 1960 in the “Bongal kheda” agitation, which primarily targeted Bengali Hindus.

From there, the political trajectory ran through decades of agitation, culminating in the National Register of Citizens exercise. Generations of politicians in Assam and across the Northeast built careers on opposing migration from Bangladesh, whether Hindu or Muslim. At times, movements expanded to target other “outsiders” from mainland India. Marwari and Bihari migrants, as well as Nepali speakers, also faced attacks as militant outfits mushroomed.

The rise of Hindu nationalism and its spread into Assam has changed the dynamics. On one hand, political ideas that long shaped Assam’s politics – such as identifying and evicting migrants from Bangladesh – have gained national traction. On the other, Hindu nationalist narratives that frame Muslims as the primary outsiders have filtered into Assam. Historically, discrimination here was rooted in language, not religion; now it operates on the basis of both – specifically, the Bengali language and the Muslim faith.

That the issue is not solely religious is evident from the Assam government’s 2022 decision to classify five Muslim communities – Goriya, Moriya, Deshi, Jolha, and Syed – as “indigenous.”

In Assam and across the Northeast, being recognised as indigenous carries significant social and political weight. To be indigenous is to truly belong. Failing to make the cut can have serious consequences.

The Assam government is currently conducting an “eviction drive” in which, by its own figures, more than 50,000 people have been displaced. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has said the drive targets only Miya Muslims, meaning Muslims of Bengali origin. He has also launched a scheme to issue arms licences to recognised indigenous people and to grant them land rights.

The problem is that there is no clear legal definition of “indigenous” in Assam. In India’s constitutional usage, the term is associated with communities listed as Scheduled Tribes. The Government of India does not officially use “indigenous peoples” in the international sense and is not a signatory to treaties such as the International Labour Organisation’s Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989.

Recognition of indigeneity in India thus comes via inclusion in the Scheduled Tribes list. In that sense, only tribal communities can be officially indigenous – and even that is complicated by historical migrations. For example, the Tea Tribes of Assam were brought from places such as present-day Jharkhand, Odisha, and Chhattisgarh in the 19th century to work on tea estates. In their home states, many of these communities are recognised as Scheduled Tribes; in Assam they are not, and thus lack the associated benefits.

The government’s move to classify the Goriya, Moriya, Deshi, Jolha, and Syed Muslims as indigenous broke precedent. By contrast, the state’s Bengali Hindu minority has not received such recognition – even though Sylheti speakers from the Barak Valley can claim deep historical roots there. Instead, they received an unwanted unofficial ‘recognition’ from BJP IT Cell head Amit Malviya, who referred to Sylhetis as Bangladeshis. This prompted a public rebuke from Dr Rajdeep Roy, a former BJP Lok Sabha MP from the Barak Valley who is himself Sylheti.

That leaves the case of the Assamese themselves. Are they indigenous in Assam? Strictly going by India’s constitutional position, the answer is both yes and no. Yes, because India recognises all Indians irrespective of language or religion as indigenous; no, because there is no official recognition, in Assam or nationally, of their indigenous status.

Nonetheless, the politics of indigeneity is back in roaring business in Assam, decades after it first began. Despite the exhaustive National Register of Citizens exercise in the state, which took more than four years of hard work to complete and cost Rs 1,600 crore as well as several lives, the “Bangladeshi” question remains unresolved. A study of colonial census records indicates that the bulk of the migration of Bengal-origin Muslims occurred in the pre-Independence period, long before the birth of Bangladesh, but suspicions about their citizenship continue to haunt the community generations on.

With the issuing of arms licences and the ratcheting up of political temperatures as the state heads towards its assembly elections next year, there is a danger that the situation could explode into violence with the suddenness and irretrievability of Manipur. 

That would bring chaos to the borders of West Bengal. It may not stop there.

The surrounding geopolitical situation is concerning. Myanmar and Bangladesh, which border Northeast India, are both severely destabilised. At a broader level, the post-World War II world order itself has come unstuck.

Now is the time of monsters.

Samrat is the author of three books, including Northeast India: A Political History.

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