Gauhati High Court issues notice to Assam CM Himanta Sarma over 'hate speech' against Muslims

'Miya' is originally a pejorative term used for Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam, and the non-Bengali-speaking people generally identify them as Bangladeshi immigrants.

Guwahati: The Gauhati High Court on Thursday served a notice to Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma over his alleged "hate speech" targeting the Muslims.

A division bench of Chief Justice Ashutosh Kumar and Justice Arun Dev Choudhury issued an order for serving notices to Sarma, Assam government and the Centre while acting on a set of petitions that sought the court's intervention for action against the CM.

The petitions were filed by the Opposition Congress, Assamese scholar Hiren Gohain and CPI (M), who had recently moved the Supreme Court with the same pleas. The apex court, however, asked the petitioners to go to the High Court.

The court fixed April 21 as the next date of hearing.

The petitions were filed after Sarma made several controversial statements targeting the Miyas, a term derogatorily used to refer to the Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam. Sarma had openly said that it was his "duty" to make sure that the "miyas" suffer in Assam as the community threatens to reduce the Assamese communities into minorities. BJP claims that "Miyas" are illegal migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh and have posed a threat to Assam's demography. Sarma, however, said that he has nothing against the Assamese Muslims.

Lawyers for the petitioners, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Chander Uday Singh and Meenakshi Arora argued that Sarma made provocative and threatening statements against Muslims in Assam. They referred to a video (now deleted) shared on X showing Sarma symbolically shooting at people wearing skull caps and also his statements about efforts to remove the "miyas" from voters’ list.

During hearing of the petitions on Thursday, the bench observed that the statements cited by the petitioners appeared to show a “fissiparous tendency” but said it would examine all submissions before drawing a conclusion.