GUWAHATI: Assam government on Tuesday sealed a private museum in Goalpara district set up by an organization of migrant Muslims of Bangladesh origin, known as "Miya", to display agricultural tools and other items, which it claimed were exclusive to their community.
The Goalpara district administration sealed the "Miya Museum" at Lakhipur soon after chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told media in the city here that the items put up for display are traditional tools of the natives.
The district administration said the museum was sealed since it was opened illegally in a house built under PM Awas Yojana- Grameen. Police have also picked up the owner of the house, Mohar Ali, a government teacher who was already under suspension for alleged ‘anti-government’ activities.
"How can nangol (plough), which was seen in the museum, can be a property of the Miyas only? It belongs to the Assamese community. The items used for fishing were also kept in the museum but these are used by our scheduled caste people since ages. Except the lungi, there is nothing new," Sarma said. He said the management of the Miya Museum will have to prove that the nangol is exclusively used by the Miyas and not by the Assamese people.
"If they have opened the Miya Museum with items used by the Assamese, a police case will be registered,” said Sarma, who also trained guns at a group of youths in the past for propagating 'Miya poetry'. "After Miya poetry, we saw Miya school and museum. I have been pointing towards these challenges all along," he asserted. The "Miya Museum" was set up by Asom-Miya (Asomiya) Parishad on Sunday.
The house built in Dapkarbhita is a village predominantly inhabited by Muslim families. An FIR has been lodged at Lakhipur police station by one Abdur Rahim Zibran of Goalpara stating that the ‘Miya Museum’ has disturbed communal harmony and incited religious hatred. He charged the president and secretary of Asom-Miya (Asomiya) Parishad of allegedly cheating the government. Ali is the president of the organization.
Goalpara DC, Khanindra Choudhury, told TOI, "All the items that were housed in the Museum were taken away by local residents before the concerned magistrate arrived at the village in Lakhipur circle to seal it."
Sarma said the Miya museum also misinterpreted the cultural identity of the 'Desi' Muslim community, a group of indigenous Muslims, by tweaking the design of the traditional scurf of the Desi people who constitute a considerable number of Muslim population in western Assam districts close to Bangladesh.
In 2020, outspoken Congress MLA Sherman Ali Ahmed triggered a huge controversy by demanding a ‘Miya museum’ to showcase the culture of the Miyas at Srimanta Sankardeva Kalakshetra, a premier cultural museum in Guwahati.
Several BJP leaders raised the demand of pulling down the Miya Museum already. BJP MLA Prasanta Phukan alleged that the museum was a brainchild of Sherman to divide the Assamese society.
