Anti-Bengali sentiment comprises negative attitudes and views against the Bengali people of Bengal, mainly from Bangladesh and the Indian states of Assam and West Bengal.
India This sentiment is present in several parts of India: Assam, and various areas of Northeast India. Issues include discrimination in inhabitation, other forms of discrimination, political reasons, government actions, and anti-Bangladeshi sentiment. In India, the term Kanglu is used online as a derogatory slur for Muslim Bengali immigrants from Bangladesh, as well as for Bangladeshis more broadly. It is considered offensive and is used in a demeaning way to stereotype and insult these groups.
In Assam, the discriminative condition of Bengalis can be traced from Khoirabari massacre, Nellie massacre, Silapathar massacre, North Kamrup violence, Goreswar massacre, Bongal Kheda, etc.
This has led to emergence of Bengali language movements in India as a form of protest and formation of many pro-Bengali organisations.
The national Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; Indian People's Party) has also been accused of promoting anti-Bengali policies like Hindi imposition and promoting vegetarianism in Bengali cuisine. According to Amartya Sen, BJP defines Bengalis with a narrow mindset and pursues aggressive policies of parochialism, in contrast to what Sen considers a quintessential Bengali pluralism. During the 2021 West Bengal Assembly election, state BJP president Dilip Ghosh mocked the widespread veneration of goddess Durga among Bengali Hindus, claiming that veneration of goddesses had made Bengali Hindus effeminate as a whole and insisted that Bengali Hindus should abandon her worship and follow the Hindi belt's example of venerating figures like the gods Rama (who had become the mascot of Hindu nationalism due to the Rama Janmabhoomi movement) and Hanuman.
In 2025, several incidents involving Bengali-speaking migrant workers (mostly Bengali Muslim, but also Bengali Hindus) being detained and harassed over allegations of being Bangladeshi infiltrators were reported from Odisha, Delhi, Haryana, Karnataka, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh. This came amid a lowtide in India-Bangladesh relations following the July Uprising in Bangladesh which saw the Hasina administration being replaced by an interim government of Muhammad Yunus. The incidents triggered political and social backlash in West Bengal, with leaders and activists calling it ethnic profiling and a violation of migrant rights.
Militant anti-Bengali organisations Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council, Meghalaya (banned, designated as a terrorist organisation by the government of India) National Liberation Front of Tripura, Tripura (banned, designated as a terrorist organisation by the government of India) All Tripura Tiger Force, Tripura United Liberation Front of Asom, an insurgent group of Assam categorised as a terrorist organisation by the government of India seeking independence of the state from India, targeting Bengali and non-Assamese communities, and advocating ethnic exclusivism within Assam. Veer Lachit Sena, an extremist organisation in Assam, is notorious for targeting Bengali and non-Assamese communities, engaging in harassment, physical assault, threats, hate speech, and using derogatory remarks and racist rhetoric against Bengali Hindus in Assam as well as Bengali Muslims.
Assam
The presence of Bengalis in Assam dates back to the British conquest of the Ahom kingdom following the 1st Anglo-Burmese war, who immigrated alongside Gorkhas and tea tribes to fill in the void caused by the massive depopulation of the Brahmaputra Valley following the Moamoria rebellion and Burmese conquest. This changed the demographics of Assam.
According to Subir Deb, the author of Story of Bengal and the Bengalis, anti-Bengali sentiment in Assam was deliberately fomented by the British in the colonial times. The British and their Bengali Hindu middle class bureaucrats imposed Bengali language upon the Assamese people by banning Assamese language and designating Bengali the official language of colonially administered Assam between 1836 and 1873, which included the Bengali-majority areas of three districts (Cachar, Hailakandi and Karimganj) in the Barak Valley region, however, they also defined the map of Assam in such a way that many languages and communities (ethnic and indigenous) overlapped, creating language strife among the communities.
Colonisers also introduced the infamous "line system", which segregated Bengali settlers in Assam from its indigenous people, starting the system in Nawgaon district in 1920. From 1921 to 1931, the system was enforced in Nawgaon district, where immigrants constituted 14% of the population. It was also implemented in Barpeta sub-division of Kamrup and Darang. In 1937, a 9-member Line System Committee was formed by the government. The general consensus of the committee was that "the line system was a temporary mechanism created to check the unrestricted inflow of the immigrants into open areas and to protect the demographic composition against disruption and disturbance". However, even after successive governments, the line system was not abolished, continuing to segregate Bengalis from the indigenous and tribal people.
The hostilites were further exacerbated by the partition of Bengal in 1947, as part of the partition of India, with many East Bengali refugees migrating into Assam. The 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War also saw Bengalis escaping the Bangladesh genocide and migrating into the state.
Neglect of Northeast India, especially regarding the India-Bangladesh border by the union government has fostered illegal immigration of Bangladeshi Muslims seeking better economic opportunities and Bangladeshi Hindus fleeing religious persecution into Assam. The continued flow of Bengali immigration into the state is cited as the main reason for anti-Bengali sentiment among the Assamese and tribal communities, which finally burst out in the 1980s as the Assam movement. Bengali Hindus and Bengali Muslims have been targeted by Assamese nationalist organisations and political parties. They are discriminatively tagged as "Bongal" (outsider Bengalis) in the context of Assam's linguistic politics. Bengalis living in Assam are routinely called 'Bangladeshis' and harassed.
On 10 October 1960, Bimala Prasad Chaliha, the then-Chief Minister of Assam, presented a bill in the Legislative Assembly to declare Assamese as the sole official language of the Assam. Ranendra Mohan Das, the then-MLA from Karimganj (North) assembly constituency and an ethnic Bengali, protested against the bill, arguing that it would impose the language of one third of the population over the remaining two thirds. On 24 October, the bill was passed in the Assam legislative assembly, thereby marking Assamese as the only official language of the state. The law forcefully imposed Assamese on Bengalis in terms of employment and education. This resulted in massive protests from the Barak Valley, which was home to many East Bengali refugees. These protests succeeded in establishing Bengali as an additional official language in the Barak Valley, which led to a reactive insurgency by the Assamese against the Bengalis in Assam and to numerous massacres.
In 1972, during the Assamese language movement, Bengalis were targeted. In Gauhati University, Bengali Hindus were attacked. Around 14,000 Bengali Hindus fled to West Bengal and elsewhere in the Northeast. Agitation in 1979 led to frequent curfews and strikes called by the All Assam Students' Union (AASU) and other local organisations. Trains were attacked, and central government employees of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Indian Airlines, and the Railways were intimidated and asked to leave the state. Bengali settlements were attacked throughout the Brahmaputra Valley. In 1983, Bengali Hindus were attacked numerous times during the agitation. Abusive graffiti targeting Bengali Hindus became commonplace and Assamese rioters referred to then West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu as the "Bastard son of Bengal". Effigies of Basu were also hung from light posts and trees.
Bongal Kheda (1960s)
In June 1960, during the anti-Bengali Bongal Kheda () movement, frequent attacks on Bengali Hindus started in Cotton College in Guwahati and then spread to the rest of the state. An Assamese mob attacked innocent Bengali Hindu settlements in the Brahmaputra Valley. The District Magistrate of Guwahati, who was a Bengali Hindu, was attacked by a mob of around 100 people inside his residence and stabbed. Another Bengali Hindu, the Deputy Inspector General of Police, was also stabbed. Bengali students of Guwahati University, Dibrugarh Medical College and Assam Medical College were forcibly expelled from these institutions. In Dibrugarh, Bengali Hindu houses were looted and burnt, and their occupants were beaten up, knifed, and driven out. 500,000 Bengalis were displaced from Assam and taken to West Bengal.
Goreswar massacre (1960)
The Goreswar massacre was a planned attack on Bengali Hindus living in Goreswar in the Kamrup district (now the Baksa district). As per a secret July meeting at a school in Sibsagar, a students' strike was organised for the next day at Sibsagar. Groups of students and youths were sent to Jorhat, Dibrugarh, and other adjoining areas to communicate the decision of the meeting. In the Brahmaputra Valley, Assamese mobs started attacking Bengalis. On 14 July 1960, riots began in Sibsagar with the looting of Bengali shops and assaults on several Bengalis. In lower Assam (Kamrup, Nawgaon and Goalpara), intense violence occurred in 25 villages in Goreswar. An Assamese mob of 15,000, armed with guns and other weapons, attacked Bengali shops and houses, destroying 4,019 huts and 58 houses. According to the inquiry commission, at least nine Bengalis were killed, one woman was attacked and raped, and nearly 1,000 Bengali Hindus fled from the area during the riot. The violence continued for months. Between July and September 1960, nearly 50,000 Bengali Hindus fled to West Bengal.
North Kamrup violence (1980)
In some districts of lower Assam, Kamrupi Bengali Hindus were harassed as foreigners and became the target of violence. On 3 January 1980, a group of students of Baganpara High School were visiting Barikadanga to supervise a three-day strike in response to a call given by the AASU for supporting the anti-Bengali movement. In 1981, the Assamese killed nearly 100 Kamrupi Bengali Hindus. Along with Assamese locals, Kamrupi Muslims attacked the Bengali Hindus and spread violence.
Khoirabari massacre (1983)
After the partition of India, Bengali Hindus from India and Bengali Hindu refugees from East Bengal settled in Khoirabari in the Mangaldoi sub-division of the Darrang district. During the assembly election on 14 February 1983, the activists of the Assam movement blocked access and cut communications to the Bengali enclaves. Assamese groups, who held resentments towards the Bengalis, took advantage of the resulting isolation and surrounded and attacked the Bengali villages at night. As result, the Central Reserve Police Force and polling agents could not be sent to Khoirabari. Bengali Hindus had taken shelter at the Khoirabari School, where the Assamese mob attacked them. According to Indian Police Service officer E. M. Rammohun, more than 100 immigrant Bengali Hindus refugees were killed in the massacre. According to journalist Shekhar Gupta, more than 500 immigrant Bengali Hindus were killed. The survivors took shelter in the Khoirabari railway station.
Silapathar massacre (1983)