The Ethno-Religious Contract: Sub-Personhood and Displacement of Assam’s Muslims

Abstract

the ‘Racial Contract’ to explore how Indian Muslims are displaced from national belonging, with a specific fucos on the Muslims of Assam. I trace displacement through three interweaving realms: epistemic (constructing ideological and rhetorical divisions), economic (creating marginalization and precarity), and spatial (imposing segregation and ghettoization). In the end, I document how Assam is being remapped as ‘colonizable’ (Malik Bennabi) for the north Indian Hindutva project to take root. The ethno-religious contract realigns economic relationships and reorients horizons of identity and belonging hierarchically. In Assam, this project is imposed through a multi-pronged approach. Epistemically, communal alignments are reimagined, and Muslims are depicted as a savage, animal-like other. Economically, places like Guwahati are being reconstructed, marginalizing Muslim majority areas and fostering deeper experiences of precarity. Spatially, there are violent evictions, reimagining of Assamese history erasing Muslim contributions, and a ghettoization of Muslim dominated regions of Assam. Combined, these processes create Assamese identity hierarchically, whereby some are granted privileged rights of citizenship, while others, Muslims, are deemed ‘doubtful’ and must prove their right to be Assamese, and thus Indian, placing them on a precarious rung of belonging.