BJP-ruled states have unleashed linguistic terror against Bangla speakers: Mamata Banerjee
In a strongly worded post on X, the TMC supremo wrote: 'Have been increasingly receiving reports of detentions and atrocities on our Bengali-speaking people from different districts of West Bengal in Gurgaon, Haryana. West Bengal Police is receiving these reports from Haryana police in the name of requests for identity searches…
Have been separately and increasingly receiving reports from other states like Rajasthan etc about illegal 'pushbacks' of West Bengal citizens with all proper documents to Bangladesh directly!! Our officers have received copies of their appropriate documents!.. There are tortures and tortures on hapless poor Bengali workers from West Bengal in these states.'
Hitting out at the BJP and their government in those states, the chief minister said: 'I am shocked to see these terrible atrocities of the double-engine governments on Bengalis in India. What do you want to prove?'
Calling it 'atrocious and terrible', the chief minister said that her government and party would not 'tolerate this'. 'Stop this linguistic terror,' Mamata added.
Later in the day, speaking at a film award ceremony in memory of legendary Bengali actor Uttam Kumar in Kolkata, the chief minister urged Bengali film personalities to oppose the 'targeting of Bangla-speaking people' and asked them to take part in protests against 'linguistic terrorism'.
Speaking at the Mahanayak Award ceremony, the chief minister said: 'A kind of linguistic terrorism has been declared against the Bangla language. Another Bhasha Andolan is needed to awaken everyone. People are being harassed for speaking Bangla in many places. Bangla is the fifth most spoken language in the world, and second in Asia. Around 30 crore people speak Bangla. And today, Bangla-speaking people are being sent to jail. I cannot accept this, and I believe you cannot either. People cannot be detained just for speaking Bangla. We cannot tolerate this. Programmes must be organised on this issue at all levels. This issue is not just mine; it belongs to everyone. Bengal is everything to us. We must protect this land.'
On Monday, during the Martyrs' Day rally, the TMC supremo had called for a mass movement from July 27 against the alleged harassment of Bangla-speaking people in several states.
Sources in the government said that at least 52 people from West Bengal have been detained in Haryana on suspicion of being illegal migrants from Bangladesh.
Most of those detained hail from Nadia, Murshidabad, and Malda districts of West Bengal, they added.
'We are verifying the names and checking the details before sending them to our counterparts in Haryana through email. They (Haryana police) are looking into it and also releasing the migrant workers once the documents prove them to be residents of West Bengal,' Superintendent of Police (Murshidabad) Kumar Sunny Raj said.
According to R Kaleem Ullah, national vice-president of All India Sramik Swaraj Kendra (AISSK) that works for migrant workers, those detained are mostly garbage collectors and some work as domestic helps.
'The migrants are mainly from Nadia, Murshidabad and Malda districts. On March 24, and then on April 4, shanties of the migrants were demolished in Gurgaon. Since then, hundreds of them are leaving Haryana,' Ullah told The Indian Express over the phone from Bangalore.
Meanwhile, TMC MPs plan to highlight the issue of detention of Bangla-speaking migrants in the ongoing Monsoon session of Parliament.
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