Muslims, Christians in India were Hindus at one point: Himanta Biswa Sarma

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Saturday claimed that Muslims and Christians in India were Hindus at one point while insisting that Hinduism can not be disconnected from history.

"Hinduism is 5,000 to 6,000 years old. How can we leave Assamese from Hinduism? We all are children of Hindus. Even the Muslims in India were children of Hindus six or twelve or twenty generations ago. Even a Christian in India was a Hindu at one point of time. Hinduism is a continuous flow. How will you leave Hinduism from Indian history? Doing so will mean disconnecting me from the soil where I was born. While writing history, you have to write about Ganga, Kamakhya or Navagraga temple," Sarma said when asked about Assam MLA Akhil Gogoi's allegation that Assamese identity was being surrendered to the ideology of BJP/RSS.

Sarma was talking to reporters in Guwahati to announce about the state cabinet's decision to set up a new department for indigenous faith and culture and some administrative reforms to be made from the next financial year.

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Gogoi on Thursday made the allegations while reacting to Sarma' claim that BJP patriarch Shyamaprasad Mukherjee had helped to recognise Assamese as a seperate language in Calcutta University when he was the Vice Chancellor. He said Sarma's claim was wrong and was not based on facts. Sarma on Saturday said there should not be any controversy as the same was also written in books by Assamese writer and intellectual Nabakanta Barua and Birinchi Kumar Baruah.

Gogoi, who was arrested during the anti-CAA agitation in December 2019 and was released from jail following a court order on July 1, has been a staunch critic of Sarma and the ideology of BJP and RSS.