Bengali Muslim migrant traders driven out of India
Forced evictions and police intimidation push Muslim traders to abandon livelihoods, exposing deepening Islamophobic hostility against Bengali-speaking communities
NEW DELHI, India (MNTV) — Bengali Muslim traders in the eastern Indian state of Odisha are fleeing their homes after being given 72-hour eviction notices and branded “Rohingya” and “Bangladeshis” by local police, in what rights groups describe as a dangerous escalation of Islamophobic xenophobia targeting internal migrant workers.
According to The Telegraph India, police in the Nayagarh region allegedly ordered groups of Muslim traders to leave immediately despite producing valid identity documents, including Aadhaar cards — India’s biometric national identity document and voter cards.
Officers reportedly referred to them as illegal infiltrators solely for speaking Bengali, a language widely spoken across eastern India.
The affected traders — part of a long-established migrant economy selling quilts, mosquito nets, and woollens door-to-door — say they are now abandoning years of work and returning to West Bengal in fear, leaving behind unsold stock and rented homes under pressure from landlords and local authorities.
Many say they have nowhere to go and are struggling to recover losses after being forced to evacuate within three days.
One trader said that police reminded them repeatedly that they were “intruders,” despite decades of residence and documentation. “We have been coming here for 15 years. Yet we were called infiltrators,” he said, expressing shock at being told to “prove Indian-ness” in a region where they believed they had built relationships and livelihoods.
Rights observers warn that the targeting of Bengali-speaking Muslims in Odisha reflects a wider national pattern in which minority communities — particularly Bengalis, Assamese Muslims and Rohingya — are routinely framed as outsiders regardless of proof of citizenship.
Civil-society groups say this trend mirrors a political environment shaped by Hindu nationalist narratives that portray Muslims as demographic threats.
West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress accused the ruling BJP and its ideological affiliates of fueling an atmosphere where citizenship documents “do not matter” and where language and identity become grounds for persecution, arguing that Bengali Muslims are increasingly treated as enemies within their own country.
The expulsions add to a growing list of incidents involving harassment, arbitrary detentions and mob attacks targeting Muslim migrant workers this year, raising concerns over economic exclusion and the forced displacement of vulnerable communities under the guise of security.
For the traders now boarding packed buses and uncertain trains, the financial loss is secondary to the emotional wound. “Why do we have to prove we are Indians?” one displaced man asked, packing his remaining goods with no certainty of return.
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