The ‘Bangladeshi’ slur: A toxic narrative now stalking Bengalis everywhere

When 29-year-old Mainak Dutta set up his small table of attars near Kolkata's Tollygunge Metro station, he expected the usual bargaining over prices. Instead, he was branded a 'Bangladeshi' by a customer angry over the price of a bottle of perfume. convinced that 'attar' was sold only by Muslims. Since Mainak spoke Bengali yet sold attar, he had to be Bangladeshi, because of course, Muslims don't exist in West Bengal.

Mainak’s anguished Facebook post about the incident, and his defiant response that “fragrance has no religion”, went viral. Supporters rallied around him, and a larger demonstration is in the offing.

What shook many was not just the insult, but the location. Kolkata is the cultural heart of Bengal, a city that takes pride in its language and literary heritage. Yet even here, in a space that should have been safe, the toxic 'Bangladeshi' slur has gained a foothold, thanks to the untiring efforts of the saffron brigade.

Make no mistake, the BJP has been front and centre when it comes to spreading this narrative. Way back in 2020, veteran BJP leader Kailash Vijayvargiya raised an alarm about 'Bangladeshi' construction workers at his Indore home, saying his suspicions were roused by the fact that they were eating poha instead of rotis.

That seeming absurdity has now given way to venom. The label 'Bangladeshi' has become a shorthand for harassment, reducing linguistic identity to a foreign stigma. A tribal migrant worker from Malda, Binoy Besra, was recently beaten in Odisha after villagers detained him for speaking Bengali. “He was mercilessly assaulted until he managed to escape the vigilantes,” Trinamool Congress MP Samirul Islam alleged in an X post, sharing a video of the young man’s testimony.

Just a day earlier, Islam said three workers from Murshidabad were detained by Assam Police on suspicion of being Bangladeshis, freed only after West Bengal intervened. Earlier this year in Odisha, more than 400 Bengali-speaking labourers were rounded up as “illegal migrants” before many were released when documents proved them to be Indian citizens.

Before that, migrant Bengali workers — largely Muslim — were threatened with eviction and arrest in Gurugram, causing hundreds to return to their homes in West Bengal.

Each episode may differ in geography, but the narrative is identical: to be Bengali-speaking is to be treated as foreign, as the recent outcry over a letter by Delhi Police describing Bengali spoken by some detainees as a 'Bangladeshi language' showed.

It is not only migrant workers or students who face this suspicion. In Noida recently, a Bengali man and his son were turned away from a hotel after staff claimed that Bengalis are often “Bangladeshis” and therefore unwelcome. For a family travelling within their own country, the rejection was humiliating.

The echoes of this prejudice are increasingly visible in Bengal itself. Just months ago, four university students were assaulted near Kolkata's Sealdah flyover with sticks and knives after being derided as “Bangladeshis” by a few shopkeepers. Arrests followed, but the attack exposed how a narrative once confined to other states has seeped into the very streets of Kolkata.

The West Bengal Assembly has convened a special three-day session beginning 1 September to address what chief minister Mamata Banerjee calls an alarming surge of “linguistic terror”. A resolution condemning assaults, detentions and the labelling of Bengalis as 'Bangladeshi' is expected to pass with ease.

Banerjee has pledged an all-out Bhasha Andolan — a movement to defend Bengali identity — and has dared the Centre to act against her for speaking more in Bangla. “Is West Bengal not part of India?” she asked. The government has set up a helpline for distressed migrant workers, even as the BJP dismisses it as electoral theatre ahead of 2026.

Islam, also head of the state’s Migrant Workers’ Welfare Board, has cast the issue as broader than party politics. “Anti-Bengali forces will not spare anyone, be it a Matua, Rajbanshi, or member of an indigenous community,” he warned, urging solidarity across communities.

For many, these incidents echo an older hostility. Assam’s 'Bongal Kheda' campaign of the 1960s targeted Bengalis for expulsion. In 2018, ULFA militants murdered five Bengali Hindu women in Tinsukia. What is different now is the reach of the slur: from villages in Odisha to hotel counters in Noida, from detention camps in Assam to the streets of Kolkata itself.

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has called the trend “unfortunate”, stressing that the Constitution gives every Indian the right to live and work anywhere in the country. The Bengal unit of the Congress has appealed to the governor of Haryana to protect workers in industrial hubs like Panipat. Yet these reassurances are set against a backdrop of fresh humiliation and violence.

What unites Mainak’s humiliation, Besra’s beating, the Sealdah assault, and the Noida hotel incident is the casualness with which the 'Bangladeshi' tag is thrown. It is a word that collapses identity, erases citizenship, and turns the simple act of speaking one’s mother tongue into a liability.

For Bengalis who migrate for work or study, the consequences are stark: they carry not only their luggage but also the risk of being branded outsiders. For those in Kolkata, the shock is sharper still — that in their own capital, prejudice once imported from elsewhere now finds a home.

India’s pluralism has always rested on its languages, each enriching the republic’s identity. To make Bengali — a language spoken by more than 100 million in India alone — a synonym for foreignness is to unravel that fabric.

Mainak’s refusal to retreat, and the Assembly’s push to formally denounce these assaults, show that resistance is stirring. Yet the persistence of the 'Bangladeshi' narrative, from Noida hotels to Kolkata markets, poses a chilling question: can India protect its citizens from being turned into strangers in their own land?

With PTI & media inputs