'Linguistic terrorism': Mamata Banerjee accuses BJP of waging language war against Bangla speakers

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. (Image: X/@AITC)

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday accused the BJP-ruled government at the Centre of unleashing a "language war" and "linguistic terrorism" against the people of Bengal and Bangla-speaking people across the country.

With Mamata turning "Bengali identity" and "Bengali pride" turning into a major issue ahead of the West Bengal elections, as became apparent during her speech at the Martyrs' Day rally, the Chief Minister chose to raise the issue again at the 45th anniversary of Bengal's matinee idol Uttam Kumar.

Repeating her call for a 'Bhasha Andolan', she Mamata ripped into BJP-ruled states where she claimed that hundreds of Bengali migrant labourers were being detained and deported to Bangladesh on suspicion of being illegal immigrants.

"A kind of linguistic terrorism has been declared against the Bengali language, the fifth most spoken language in the world. Around 30 crore people speak Bengali but Bangla-speakers are being sent to jail. There should be zero tolerance for people being detained just for speaking Bengali. This issue is not mine alone, it is everyone's. Bengal is everything for us. We must protect this land," Mamata said addressing the gathering.

She subsequently put out a post on X, claiming that the West Bengal government has been receiving reports of Bengali-speaking migrants being “detained and tortured” in Haryana and Rajasthan.

"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," she said in her social media post.

Mamata further said that the government has been separately receiving reports from other states like Rajasthan about "illegal pushbacks" of West Bengal citizens with all proper documents to Bangladesh directly.

"I am shocked to see these terrible atrocities of the double-engine governments on Bengalis in India. What do you want to prove?" the Chief Minister said hitting out at the BJP government on the issue.

"This is atrocious and terrible. We are not going to tolerate this," Mamata declared, and asked whether "linguistic terrorism" would end.