Sobjer Ali is a person of routine. Each day, for almost 50 years, he has travelled by boat between Kuntirchar Half 2, the village the place he lives in Dhubri district of Assam, and Patharghat, the place he ran a store promoting cattle feed. The routine, disturbed prior to now generally by festivals, floods, and communal conflicts, was disrupted on June 14 when his world turned the wrong way up. The store that sustained Ali’s household of six was one of many 110 deemed unlawful and demolished by the native authorities. This occurred every week after the physique components of cattle had been allegedly discovered on successive days close to a Hanuman temple about 2 kilometres away, triggering anger within the district.
Dhubri, the headquarters of the Muslim-majority Dhubri district, is 290 km west of Guwahati. It’s bounded by the Brahmaputra river and its tributary, Gadadhar, on three sides. The city stands near the place the Brahmaputra turns into the Yamuna after flowing previous the India-Bangladesh border. Dhubri can be used as a metaphor by some communities and political events to underline the worry that drives politics in Assam — of how the inflow of individuals from Bangladesh can someday overrun ‘indigenous’ Indians.
“We’ve endured worse conditions, however aage keu pete laathi maarey nai (nobody snatched away our sources of livelihood earlier),” mentioned Ali. “We’ve been paying ₹50 per week to the municipality by way of a lessee who renews our lease yearly. We barely had an hour to salvage our wares earlier than the demolition began.” He mentioned he can’t perceive why he was punished for what miscreants did elsewhere within the city.
Over the previous few weeks, a string of comparable incidents involving cattle have saved Dhubri on edge. On June 10, citing situations of items of meat being purportedly thrown in public locations after Eid celebrations, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma alleged that beef is being “weaponised” towards Hindus within the State. Stressing that the Assamese folks should take a “non-compromising” stance to push again “unlawful foreigners,” Sarma maintained that the State was waging a wrestle towards forces which had “sympathisers” internationally.
The spark
Patharghat, a ferry level on the financial institution of the Brahmaputra in Dhubri, is about 200 metres from a park known as the Netai Dhubuni Ghat. This was constructed in honour of a washerwoman, Dhubri, from whom the district will get its identify. Flanking this park alongside an 800 m stretch of highway are a number of locations of worship that when made Dhubri a spiritual confluence. These embrace a Ram temple, a Kali temple, the Panchpeer dargah, the Gurudwara Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Sahib, and an Armenian church. The workplaces of the Dhubri District Commissioner and Senior Superintendent of Police are positioned on the stretch from Patharghat to the Armenian church, which was transformed right into a women’ membership years in the past.
In accordance with the Chief Minister, round Eid-al-Adha on June 7, “miscreants” scribbled some “provocative” phrases on the partitions of some buildings on this high-security zone. He prompt to the media that the phrases had been written by individuals who belonged to Nobin Bangla, a gaggle that reportedly espoused the merger of Dhubri with Bangladesh. He additionally mentioned that the “head of a cow” was found on the 35-year-old Hanuman temple within the city’s Baluchar Ward No. 3 on June 8, the day after the qurbani (sacrifice) Eid.
The Hanuman temple the place miscreants allegedly tried to stir communal tensions.
| Photograph Credit score:
Rituraj Konwar
The Hanuman temple is located on about half an acre of land owned by a person named Vishal Agarwal. He works as a distributor of sentimental drinks for the Dhubri area. Not like standard temples, it’s a small, rectangular, tin-roofed concrete construction about 6 toes in peak.
This plot of land is surrounded by two lanes, a college, and the workplace of the Seemanta Chetana Mancha, an international-border-areas-specific wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The Dhubri Baluchar Kabarsthan (cemetery) is positioned throughout one of many lanes, whereas an workplace of the Forest Division is throughout the opposite. The temple can be positioned about 50 m from the Dhubri Justice of the Peace Colony and diagonally throughout the Iddgah Area, behind which is a Muslim locality.
On the evening of June 8, after the alleged sight of the cow’s head sparked rigidity, the authorities dismantled 12 makeshift retailers run by Muslims alongside the wall of the Iddgah Area after right-wing protesters claimed that they offered beef and different unlawful gadgets. The Assam Cattle Preservation Act, 2021, supplies for the preservation of cattle by regulating their slaughter, consumption, and transportation within the State.
Agarwal declined to talk on the meat controversy surrounding the temple on his plot. He mentioned that a lot of the land was a jute warehouse till a decade in the past. He additionally mentioned that he had engaged Ramjan Ali Sheikh, the primary man to be arrested when items of beef had been once more discovered on June 9, almost on the identical spot, as a guard, as a result of Sheikh’s uncle was the guard earlier.
“My son carried out his obligation diligently. Like some other day, he got here dwelling on the morning of June 9 for breakfast,” mentioned Sheikh’s mom, Amina Begum. “Many policemen had been posted within the space across the temple from the evening earlier than. Within the morning, the police summoned my son as they suspected him of getting positioned the meat within the temple. He has been in lock-up since.” Hers is likely one of the seven Muslim households within the Hindu-majority Baluchar locality.
In accordance with Masud Zaman, an advocate related to the Badruddin Ajmal-led All India United Democratic Entrance (AIUDF), the invention of cattle physique components for the second time regardless of watertight safety mirrored a doable design to let the state of affairs get out of hand.
“The police picked up 18 folks randomly with out going after the true culprits behind the incident. A few of us stayed on the police station till 2.30 within the morning on June 10 to get a few of these folks launched. They included a minor boy, a kidney affected person, a authorities worker on hospital obligation, and a person with a terminally sick daughter,” he mentioned. Amongst a minimum of 50 others arrested over the following few days was Noor Islam Haque of Gaspara village, identified to beg and sleep on the streets within the administrative hub of Dhubri.
The Hanuman temple in Dhubri city of Assam.
| Photograph Credit score:
Rituraj Konwar
Zaman mentioned that the native authorities dealt with the state of affairs properly after the primary incident on June 8. A committee comprising members of the Seemanta Chetana Mancha, Muslims, and members of different organisations determined that they’d keep peace at any value.
“After the second incident came about on June 9, colleges had been closed on June 10. However all the pieces was regular from the following day,” he mentioned. “Then the Chief Minister arrived on June 13 and mentioned that he would subject an order to shoot on sight those that had been pelting stones. This appeared that there’s complete unrest in Dhubri.”
A string of incidents
From June 14, incidents much like these on the Dhubri temple had been reported elsewhere in Assam. The Chief Minister posted on X that beef was allegedly thrown close to a Kali temple at Lakhipur within the adjoining Goalpara distric; the top of a cow was allegedly discovered at Borpukhuri in central Assam’s Hojai for the second time in lower than every week; and skulls of cows had been allegedly discarded close to a namghar, a neo-Vaishnavite prayer corridor, in north-eastern Assam’s Lakhimpur district. The police arrested greater than a dozen folks in reference to these incidents.
Piklu Paul, the vice-president of the Dhubri unit of the Bharatiya Janata Social gathering (BJP), mentioned that the Hindus within the district have at all times lived underneath stress. Within the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992, as much as 14 folks had been killed and curfew was imposed for greater than a month. There was comparatively much less violence in 2012 as a fallout of the Bodo tribal-Muslim battle within the adjoining Bodoland Territorial Area. “We’re grateful to the Chief Minister for shoot-at-sight orders, which have saved the miscreants indoors after nightfall. Dhubri might have burned had this robust step not been taken,” he mentioned.
Senior Congress chief Rakibul Hussain, who ended the AIUDF’s 15-year run within the Dhubri Lok Sabha constituency in 2024, selected to remain out of the controversy. However Kazi Mahmudul, an area Congress chief, was prepared to talk. “We’ve no complaints if these liable for such a heinous act are punished in accordance with the regulation, however finishing up demolition drives ostensibly linked to the Hanuman temple incident is painful,” he mentioned. “The federal government has the proper to evict folks from the land it owns, however there’s a course of to be adopted. One has to present time to individuals who have been residing in sure areas for many years.”
Different celebration leaders mentioned no “true Muslim” would place beef close to a spot of worship of individuals belonging to a different faith.
The drive has hit Jaharuddin, a Dhubri resident, who pulled a handcart to ship items from Patharghat to sellers throughout the city. “The federal government ought to be lenient with demolitions in order that we survive,” he mentioned.
Cattle smuggling
Dhubri residents consider that an utility filed by the Dhubri Iddgah Committee to the district authorities, searching for to herald about 4,000 cattle for qurbani (sacrifice) on Eid, was the genesis of the difficulty. The committee issued ‘membership playing cards’, legitimate as much as June 7, to obtain the cattle.
“However the variety of cattle introduced in from West Bengal through Boxirhat (city bordering Assam) from June 3-5 was some 4 lakh,” a member of the Seemanta Chetana Mancha mentioned. “This precipitated a visitors jam on the freeway. Hundreds of individuals, every with a bull or cow on a leash, had been strolling alongside the highway as in the event that they had been having fun with some form of patronage. They paraded by way of Hindu areas, hurting the emotions of many.”
After native Hindus raised a hue and cry in regards to the cattle passing by way of a safety cordon alongside the inter-State border simply, and in violation of the Assam Cattle Preservation Act, the federal government took steps to examine the influx. However these measures had a minimal impact.
Throughout his go to to Dhubri, Chief Minister Sarma mentioned {that a} new community of cattle smugglers had elevated its actions over the previous few months and was bringing in cattle in massive numbers from West Bengal. He vowed to crack down on this ‘community’ whereas asserting the federal government’s dedication to implementing regulation and order and defeating all communal forces.
Each Hindus and Muslims, nonetheless, have began doubting the federal government’s intention. Zaman mentioned that the authorities “confirmed an inclination to arrest petty criminals” for the Hanuman temple incident and never those that allegedly violated the cattle transportation regulation. The district is infamous for cattle smuggling to Bangladesh, the place a cow fetches twice the typical value of ₹30,000 in Assam. Some residents allege that the smugglers function in nexus with a piece of the district officers and the police, who, in accordance with them, get a lower of as much as 10%.
Dhubri’s Senior Superintendent of Police, Leena Doley, dismissed allegations that the police had been refusing to arrest unlawful cattle merchants. “We’ve rounded up a couple of, and the method is ongoing,” she mentioned. She changed Navin Singh, who was transferred out of Dhubri every week after the incident on the Hanuman temple. As many as 164 police personnel, together with 34 sub-inspectors, had been additionally transferred out of the district.
“The message has gone out that the federal government is not going to tolerate disturbance of any sort. The state of affairs is completely underneath management now,” District Commissioner Dibakar Nath mentioned.
Uneasy neighbours
Native BJP leaders blamed the Congress for retaining the district on edge. They mentioned that the Congress had fuelled riots after the Babri Masjid demolition and had additionally let the state of affairs deteriorate in 2012. Additionally they mentioned that it was not a coincidence that the incident on the Hanuman temple had occurred a 12 months after the Congress wrested the Dhubri parliamentary seat from the AIUDF.
Congress leaders, then again, mentioned that they weren’t shocked by the BJP’s bid to mission the AIUDF as a extra secular celebration, because it was the “B-team” of the saffron brigade. Referring to the Dhubri incident, State Congress president Gaurav Gogoi mentioned that the RSS and its associates, together with the BJP, had been fanning communal sentiments forward of the 2026 Meeting elections. “Investigations ought to be carried out towards all these arrested for putting beef and components of a cow in public locations, together with spiritual establishments, however those that put such concepts within the minds of miscreants ought to be probed too. Such incidents are a part of the pre-election technique of the BJP-RSS to cover their failures,” he mentioned.
Chief Minister Sarma retaliated, asking Gogoi to submit proof earlier than accusing Hindus of fomenting hassle. “If Hindus should throw meat, they may throw pork, not beef,” he mentioned.
At Baluchar, the seeds of mistrust between Hindus and Muslims, sown years in the past, appear to have sprouted. Paresh Das, a dealer, mentioned, “This was not the primary time that go-mangsho (beef) was positioned close to the Hanuman temple. We all know it is not going to be the final time, both. Because the minority group, we’ve got to tolerate this. We simply hope that our sentiments are revered.”
“Dhubri has not been an instance of communal concord, however financial compulsions typically compelled the folks to use the brakes after briefly attacking one another,” mentioned 83-year-old Md Abdul Sattar Mollah, a former worker of a match manufacturing facility. “I used to be drawn into riots once I was younger. Fortunately, nobody bought killed this time. However the chilly stares and animosity within the eyes of individuals now’s worse than demise.”
rahul.karmakar@thehindu.co.in