Rights activists flag twin attacks on Constitution: Migrant crackdown, Bihar roll revision
Telegraph | 1 August 2025
The persecution of the working class for speaking their mother tongue and the ongoing revision of electoral rolls in Bihar are among the biggest assaults on the Constitution, rights activist Harsh Mander said in the city on Tuesday.
"There have been several attacks on the Constitution," Mander told a news conference organised by civil society groups. "The targeting of Bengali-speaking people and the special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Bihar are among the biggest."
Mander connected both developments to the RSS, the ideological parent organisation of the BJP, which is approaching its 100th anniversary this year.
"The RSS turns 100 this year. It has never believed that Muslims are equal citizens in India," he said. "Whether it's the mandir-masjid agenda, 'bulldozer justice', efforts to rob the poor of their livelihood or attempts to disenfranchise marginalised people, all their projects stem from one objective — to make second-class citizens of Muslims," said the former IAS officer and vocal critic of the Narendra Modi regime.
The targeting of Bengali-speaking people, particularly Muslims, has been reported in BJP-ruled states such as Delhi, Odisha, Maharashtra, and Chhattisgarh. Rights activists allege that many have been illegally detained and subjected to torture.
Recent crackdowns on Bangladeshis and Rohingya refugees in Gurgaon have heightened fears, leading many Bengali-speaking Muslim migrant workers from Bengal to return home. Most of them are families from Malda, Murshidabad, Nadia, and South Dinajpur, who reside in urban slums. The men work as labourers, janitors, ragpickers, sanitation workers, and delivery agents, while the women work as domestic help in nearby high-rise buildings.
Mander emphasised the urgent need to safeguard fundamental rights: "People of all faiths have equal rights. An Indian is free to work and earn a livelihood anywhere in the country. These basic ideas must be protected."
During the conference, several speakers also raised concerns that the SIR in Bihar is a bid to indirectly implement the contentious National Register of Citizens (NRC).
"They were taken aback by the spontaneous country-wide protests against the CAA-NRC," said Nadeem Khan, secretary of the Association for Protection of Civil Rights. "But the protests were halted by Covid. Now, they want to bring in the NRC with the help of the Election Commission."
Khan, who works with migrant labourers in Delhi-NCR and other states, highlighted the impact on Bengali speakers. "A war has been declared on the Bengali language," he said.
"Around 2 lakh Bengali-speaking working-class people live in Gurgaon. They are being detained and tortured by police almost daily. Over 1,000 Bengalis have been rounded up in Gurgaon. The same thing is happening in Ahmedabad, Jaipur, and several other places," he said.
Khan made a phone call during the news conference to a migrant labourer in Gurgaon, putting the call on speaker. The man, identified as being from North Dinajpur, described how the police treated him and others.
"Individuals in plainclothes, claiming to be police, raided our settlements. They arrived in cars without number plates. They said we were Bangladeshis. We showed them valid documents, but it made no difference," the man recounted.
The response from Bengal so far has been inadequate, said Khan. "Mamata Banerjee is saying migrant workers should come back to Bengal. But that is not the solution," he said.