Detention of Bangla-speaking migrants: Bhasha stir begins, Mamata to march in Birbhum today

Indian Express

9 hours ago

As the Trinamool Congress on Sunday launched its Bhasha Andolan campaign over detention and deportation of Bangla-speaking migrants in several states of the country, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is scheduled to lead a protest march in Birbhum town on Monday.
The march will commence from the Tourist Lodge intersection and conclude at the Jambooni bus stand, followed by the chief minister's speech.
On Sunday, she reiterated her charge against the BJP of unleashing a regime of 'linguistic terror' on Bengalis in the country, claiming that members of a migrant family were beaten up by the police in Delhi.
Banerjee shared a video on X of a child and his mother purportedly belonging to a migrant family from West Bengal's Malda district, who were allegedly beaten up by the police in the national capital.
'Atrocious!! Terrible!! See how Delhi police brutally beat up a kid and his mother, members of a migrant family from Malda's Chanchal. See how even a child is not spared from the cruelty of violence in the regime of linguistic terror unleashed by BJP in the country against the Bengalis! Where are they taking our country now?' she wrote.
Banerjee had last Monday accused the BJP of unleashing 'linguistic terrorism' on Bengalis, asserting that the fight for identity and language will continue until BJP is defeated.
Speaking at the TMC's annual Martyrs' Day rally, she had announced that from Sunday, a movement would start in West Bengal to protest against 'attacks on Bengalis, the Bengali language and linguistic terrorism'.
Marches were organised in Bhawanipore and Sealdah in Kolkata and elsewhere in Chuchura, Bankura, Birbhum, Cooch Behar by TMC workers, who held placards highlighting 'harassment and persecution' of the migrant workers in Assam, Odisha, Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan and Maharashtra by the police in those states.
TMC MLA Asim Majumdar led the rally at Khadina More in Chuchura, where he asserted that the 'double-engine governments' in those BJP-ruled states were 'deliberately harassing' Bengali-speaking migrants despite producing documents like Aadhaar cards and Voter ID cards.
'As stated by our Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, we have started this 'language movement' from today, which will hit the streets every weekend till the middle of August in the run-up to Independence Day. We will not take the persecution of Bengalis lightly,' he asserted.
TMC leader and North Bengal Development Minister Udayan Guha led another march at Dinhata in Cooch Behar, vowing to resist the 'attempt by the BJP to strike off names of legitimate voters from voter lists, and send Indian citizens from Bengal to detention camps for electoral gains'.
Thousands of TMC activists took part in the rallies in Sealdah and Bhawanipore with placards displaying Bengali alphabets and slogans against 'torture on Bengali-speaking people by the BJP outside West Bengal'. The processions disrupted vehicular movement in parts of central and south Kolkata.