Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma deserves appreciation for taking a much-needed bold stand to clear huge tracts of land belonging to the sacred Vaishnavite Xatra institutions of Assam, which have been encroached upon and occupied by various means, largely by people of doubtful citizenship status. It was only recently that a commission set up by the present government to examine the status of land historically belonging to different Xatra institutions had submitted its report, according to which over 15,288 bighas of land have been under illegal occupation. While the maximum encroachment and illegal occupation of Xatra land has occurred in Barpeta district, with the Commission putting it at 7,137 bighas, similar encroachments have also been recorded in Bajali, Bongaigaon, Dhubri, Nagaon, Morigaon, Lakhimpur, Kamrup, Darrang, Dibrugarh, and even in Majuli. It must be placed on record that it was the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) government formed after the Assam Accord in 1985 which had initiated the first-ever official concern over encroachment of Xatra land, particularly by people having roots in erstwhile East Bengal/Pakistan and present-day Bangladesh. It is a historically accepted truth that systematic occupation of land by people of the erstwhile East Bengal/Pakistan and present-day Bangladesh origin has been going on since the first flush of immigration of “land-hungry” Muslim peasants immediately after the Partition of Bengal in 1905 and the formation of the Muslim League in 1906. This in fact was a priority agenda of the Muslim League with the objective of creating a larger Muslim state comprising erstwhile East Bengal and Assam. It would not be untrue to say that conspirators who had formed the Muslim League have been carrying on its agenda of occupying Assam through a demographic invasion after the Mughals were inflicted a crushing defeat by the Assamese in the Battle of Saraighat in 1671, which had also halted the eastward march of the Muslim invaders. The silent demographic invasion, which has been very clearly described by the Supreme Court in its historic verdict striking down the notorious IMDT Act in July 2005, has intensified since the Grouping scheme of the British, one which would have clubbed and merged Assam with East Pakistan in 1947, had failed to become a reality because of Gopinath Bardoloi’s strong leadership. While discussing the clearing of Xatra land, one must also remember that large tracts of land originally reserved for the tribal communities of Assam as belts and blocks have also remained encroached upon and occupied by various means by people of the above-mentioned roots. Keeping in tune with the Chief Minister’s statement that the Xatra institutions are not just monasteries but constitute the heart of Assam’s heritage, one can also say that land belonging to and meant for the tribal communities too constitutes the heart of Assam’s nature-based civilization and heritage.