Source: In These Times
by Ankur Singh
“Momtaj Begum was scared, but there was no time. She immediately started packing everything her family owned — for herself, her husband and their three children. At 11 o’clock one night in September 2021, thousands of residents of Dhalpur (a village on a sandbar in the Brahmaputra River in India’s northeastern state of Assam) received notice from the government that they must leave by 10 a.m. the next morning, when their homes would be demolished. State officials claimed the villagers, who lived half a day’s drive from India’s border with Bangladesh, were ‘illegal’ immigrants encroaching on government-owned land, despite families having citizenship documents and living there for decades. While Begum and her neighbors packed, Nur Hussain, a leader in the local All Assam Minority Students Union (AAMSU), messaged villagers frantically on WhatsApp, trying to make a plan. They weren’t going to leave so easily.” (04/24/24)