THE NEW FAULT LINES

Efforts by Bangla-speaking Muslims in Assam to assert a distinctive identity through a museum give a new twist to old fears of a threat to indigenous culture

- Kaushik Deka

Inside a one-room house with a tin shed in a nondescript village in Assam’s Goalpara district, a few items such as a hand towel, traditional fishing gear, a plough and a lungi are placed over a table. This is the Miya Museum that was shut down by the Assam government just two days after its inauguration on October 23. Set up by the All Assam Miya Parishad (AAMP), reportedly at a cost of just Rs 7,000, in a house that belongs to its president Mohor Ali, the museum was meant to showcase the culture of Muslims of Bengali origin in Assam. But the initiative seems to have irked the state’s indigenous communities and provided political parties on both sides of the communal divide fertile ground to consolidate their respective vote banks.

How can the nangol plough be exclusive to Miyas? Farmers in Sivasagar also use it. Or the fishing rod? Except the lungi, there is nothing in the museum they can claim as theirs HIMANTA BISWA SARMA Assam chief minister

Though it was sealed on the technical ground that a house built under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) cannot be thus converted in use, the BJP-led Assam government has been vehemently opposed to the very idea of a Miya Museum. “How can the nangol (plough) be exclusive to Miyas?” asked Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma. “Farmers in Sivasagar also use it. Nor is the fishing gear exclusive to them. Except the lungi, there is nothing in the museum they can claim as theirs.”