Citizenship Bill: BJP chasing ghosts in Assam; Census data shows number of Hindu immigrants may have been exaggerated

The BJP's goal of cultivating the support of a large chunk of Bengali Hindus in Assam using the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016 could very well be based on misconceptions if the available Census data are taken into account. Research reveals that the actual numbers of this community could be drastically less than imagined earlier.
Census data shows that Assam had been the destination for people of East Bengal (now Bangladesh) since 1891. The movement of people from Bihar, Chotanagpur and Odisha for employment in the tea sector is discernible until 1901 but the migration was almost entirely from East Bengal and particularly from Mymensingh since 1911 Census of India. The abnormal trend was noticed by CS Mullan, census commissioner in 1931. He observed that the Assamese could be reduced to a minority in their own land.
Lending credence to Mullan was the 1951 Census of India which referred to a land revenue report on Muslim immigration and said, “…thus during (the) last 20 years 15,088 thousand acres were settled with immigrants, a figure almost unbelievable in its immensity for any other important state of India".

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