ISLAMABAD: The Gauhati High Court on Thursday issued notice to Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma in petitions alleging that his public remarks amount to hate speech and risk deepening communal fault lines in the state, Indian media reported.
The notice, in a batch of PIL (public interest litigation) type matters, asks the respondents to file their responses before the court takes up the merits, an early but significant procedural step in a case that has been building for years around Sarma’s rhetoric and governance choices that critics describe as explicitly Islamophobic, Telegraph India said.
The petitions come amid a fresh round of outrage over statements attributed to Sarma about the “Miya” community, an identity marker often used for Bengali-origin Assamese Muslims. In recent weeks, his comments have been widely reported and condemned by opposition parties and Muslim organisations as encouraging harassment and social targeting.
A related legal escalation followed soon after. Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind moved the Supreme Court over the “Miya” remarks, framing them as divisive speech directed at an already vulnerable group.
That flashpoint sits atop a longer political arc. Since taking office in 2021, Sarma has repeatedly leaned into culture-war framing around Muslims, including frequent invocations of “love jihad” and “land jihad”, terms used by Hindu nationalist politicians to suggest conspiracies behind interfaith relationships or land possession.
His government has spoken of stricter legal measures in “love jihad” cases, and he has publicly signaled an appetite for expanding enforcement in ways that civil liberties groups argue stigmatise Muslim citizens by default.
Critics also point to policy actions whose impact has fallen heavily on Muslims, especially Bengali-speaking families. Large-scale eviction drives, officially justified as anti-encroachment and protection of government or forest land, have repeatedly displaced thousands, with reporters documenting that many affected families are Muslim.
Opponents allege selective enforcement and political messaging that paints these communities as “outsiders” or “infiltrators,” while the government maintains it is acting against illegal occupation and demographic pressure.
The controversy intensified further after the Assam BJP unit posted—and later deleted—an AI-generated video depicting violence against Muslims, a development that opponents argue helped normalise dehumanising imagery in mainstream politics.
Now, with the High Court notice on record, the legal questions sharpen, whether the chief minister’s language crosses constitutional limits on hate speech, and whether the state machinery’s response meets the rule-of-law standard when the accused is the most powerful officeholder in Assam.
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