Congress stalwart Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury urges action as Bengali‑speaking labourers face arbitrary detention in Chhattisgarh and beyond

On Wednesday, senior Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury fired off a strongly‑worded letter to Union Home Minister Amit Shah, flagging a series of unsettling reports that Bengali‑speaking workers are being hauled into police custody across Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh, and a few other states.

According to several local media pieces, men, women and even domestic help—many of them living on the brink of poverty—are being singled out merely because they converse in Bengali. The troubling part? A good number of those detained carry valid Indian identity proofs – voter ID cards, Aadhaar numbers and other government‑issued documents.

Chowdhury didn’t mince words. He described the practice as “custodial harassment” that tears families apart and tramples on the basic guarantees enshrined in the Constitution. In his view, profiling someone on the basis of language is nothing short of a violation of fundamental rights.

He reminded the Ministry of Home Affairs that Bengali is not just a regional tongue; it is India’s second‑most‑spoken language with over 9.72 crore speakers and enjoys official status under the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. “If the State thinks the Bengali language itself is a threat, then a parliamentary resolution should be tabled to strip it of its constitutional protection,” he wrote, challenging the central government’s stance on linguistic rights.

The letter also urged an immediate halt to these arbitrary detentions and called for strict protocols to prevent law‑enforcement agencies from using linguistic background as a proxy for criminal suspicion.

This episode adds to a growing chorus of complaints from states like Odisha and Karnataka, where migrant workers—often from West Bengal and Assam—have faced similar accusations of illegal immigration, sometimes resulting in physical assaults or unlawful arrests. Such incidents are typically linked to broader citizenship verification drives, local anxieties over jobs, and simmering communal tensions.

While the reports are still being verified, Chowdhury’s appeal underscores a deeper question: how should a pluralistic democracy balance security concerns with the constitutional promise of linguistic and cultural diversity?