Erosion of Land and Citizenship: A Case of Chars of Assam,India

Abstract

This article, based on my doctoral ethnographic fieldwork, will look at the chars in western Assam, India. It will examine how continuous erosion and increasingly devastating floods are directly contributing to the citizenship crisis of the Bengali Muslim char-dwellers by making them landless and forcing them to migrate to nearby grazing reserves or cities where they provide cheap labour and keep the capitalist economy running while their own socio-economic and political rights remain precarious. Through the tropes of embankment politics and eviction and politics of the majoritarian state, this article shows how Muslim bodies are devalued. This article argues how a historically migratory community has been systematically turned landless, deskilled and made politically precarious by the majoritarian state using environmental factors wherein old histories and memories of migration of char-dwellers have been systematically destroyed to be replaced by new ones.