Assam: Hazrat Ali had just finished his evening prayers around 4 pm on August 30 when he saw the madrasa compound flooded with security personnel.
By 6 pm, the local administration in Assam’s Bongaigaon district had issued orders – everyone living in the Markazul Ma-Arif Quariayana Madrasa complex had to leave by 10 pm that night. It was going to be demolished the next morning. The order cited sections of the Disaster Management Act to say the building was “structurally vulnerable and unsafe for human habitation”.
“We started crying when we heard we had to leave the madrasa as it would be demolished,” said the 17-year-old, one of the 224 students who lived and studied at the madrasa. “The police were telling us to leave the campus. My friends, Abdul Badshah and Asanul Islam, are from other districts. They didn’t know where to go at night.”
At 10 am the next day, the bulldozers arrived and started work on the two-storeyed madrasa in Bongaigaon’s Kabaitary IV village. It had been built in 1985, using donations from residents of the greater Kabaitary area.
“It took 12 hours, eight JCBs and three excavators to demolish the madrasa building. Was it a weak and vulnerable building?” demanded Musarof Hussain, president of the madrassa committee since 2005. “The demolition is an injustice to all the residents of Kabaitary.”
On August 26, five days before the demolition, the police had arrested Mufti Hafizur Rahman, a teacher at the madrasa, on terror charges.
VV Rakesh Reddy P – superintendent of police in Goalpara district, where the teacher was arrested – alleged he had links to groups such as al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent and the Ansarullah Bangla Team, an outfit based in Bangladesh that has claimed responsibility for several attacks there. The two outfits allegedly have organisational links.
It has become part of a pattern in Assam over the last month – a crackdown on terror outfits is accompanied by demolitions. As of September 3, 40 people have been arrested in seven cases, according to police figures.
Most of those arrested are Bengali-origin Muslims, a community that is often labelled as “illegal Bangladeshi immigrants”. While the government alleges it is only cracking down on terror outfits, the community as a whole feels increasingly under siege.
“They have broken our hearts, not the madrasa,” said a tearful 24-year old Hasina Akhtar, who had gone to the Bongaigaon madrasa the day after it was demolished. “Is being a Muslim and practising Islam a crime now? If any bad thing happened in the madrasa, we would raise questions. Give us proof that they have recovered arms.”
Demolition spree
A day before the Bongaigaon madrasa was demolished, another seminary was brought down in the nearby Barpeta district. Earlier, on August 4, a madrasa in Morigaon district was demolished.
The official orders issued by the district administration cited concerns about structural safety or alleged “illegal encroachment”. But each demolition followed the arrest of teachers, clerics and others with links to the madrasas – mostly on terror charges.
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has also kept up a steady stream of press conferences implicitly linking the demolitions to a crackdown on alleged terror networks.
On August 4, as the Morigaon madrasa was razed to the ground, Sarma announced that the state was becoming a “hotbed of jihadi activities” with five modules linked to al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent and the Ansarullah Bangla Team busted since March.
Sarma distinguished between “jihadi activity” and “terrorist or insurgency activity”. The former, he said, started with “indoctrination” at the madrasa, usually by imams from outside the state, which then led to “subversive activities”.
On August 22, Sarma announced that imams from outside the state had to register themselves online and go through police verification. The four organisations running most non-government madrasas in Assam have now been asked to survey them within six months.
On August 30, as the Barpeta madrasa went down, Sarma said it had been “used as a hub for terrorism”.
Then on September 1, Sarma said that the government did not intend to go on demolishing madrasas. “So, once madrasas are not used for jihadi works or for the purpose of expanding jihadi ideology then why there will be demolition?” he reasoned. “But, if we get specific inputs that an institution is being used, under guise of a madrasa, for anti-India activities and jihadi activities, we will take the strongest possible action in each and every case.”
‘A conspiracy’
According to Superintendent Reddy, Hafizur Rahman was arrested on the basis of statements made by two imams from Goalpara district, Abdus Subhan and Jalaluddin Sheikh, held on August 21.
Both had confessed to being members of al-Qaeda and Ansarullah, to recruiting and training new members in Assam as well as sheltering Bangladeshi operatives of the groups, Reddy claimed.
“Hafizur had joined the terror groups in 2019,” Reddy said. “We found he had links with Abdus Subhan.”
In addition to teaching, Rahman also ran a stall selling books and food items in the Bongaigaon madrasa campus. On August 30, the police raided this shop. Reddy claimed they found a Bengali leaflet on the Ansarullah Bangla Team and a logo “suspected to be AQIS”.
Rahman was one of 22 teachers at the madrasa and had taught there since 2014. The madrasa committee is dismayed at the demolition drive, carried out despite the fact that they were willing to cooperate with the police administration.
“We had suspended the teacher after he was summoned by the police on August 3,” said Hussain, the committee president. “We were providing all the necessary support to the police investigation and repeatedly maintained that if anyone is involved in jihadi activity, he should be punished as per the law of the land.”
According to committee vice president Sujal Hoque, the police did not have any existing cases against the madrasa.
“In the last 37 years, the district administration never doubted [us] or found any anti-national activities in our madrasa,” he said. “The madrasa was demolished in a conspiracy. The government has a blueprint to target all Muslim religious institutions.”
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