In the Indian state of Assam, home to more than 12 million Muslims, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been widely condemned after sharing a now-deleted AI-generated video showing Himanta Biswa Sarma, chief minister of the northeastern state, appearing to shoot at Muslims.

The 17-second video, shared on X with the title “straight shot”, was widely shared on social media on Saturday but was deleted after public outrage and criticism from opposition politicians.

The video appears to combine raw footage of Salma holding a rifle with an artificial intelligence-generated image showing him shooting two Muslim men with the caption “No mercy”. Salma accused of launching xenophobic campaign against Muslims, group formed One-third of the state’s populationahead of state elections expected in March or April.

The video also includes an image of Salma dressed as a cowboy and pointing a pistol, overlaid with the words “Free Assam for Foreigners”.

The Assam BJP unit, which has been accused of making anti-Muslim remarks, has not officially commented.

“No comment. It has been deleted. There is nothing to say,” Ranjib Kumar Sarma, a local BJP leader in Assam, told The Indian Express.

The chief minister has recently escalated rhetoric against Muslims, particularly Bengali Muslims in Assam, linking them to crime and demographic changes.

Last month, he called on residents of Assam to give “hardship” to “Miya Muslims”, a derogatory term for Bengali-speaking Muslims.

“Even a small act like reducing rickshaw fare. If they want 5 rupees (6 cents), give 4 rupees (4 cents). They will leave Assam only if they face difficulties,” he said.

Only the Union Territories of Indian-administered Kashmir in the north and the Lakshadweep Islands in the Arabian Sea have a higher proportion of Muslims than Assam.

“No basic manners”

Aman Wadud, the Assam leader of the opposition Indian National Congress, called the video “deeply disturbing”.

“The BJP has proven time and again that it has no respect for the law or even basic morals,” he told Al Jazeera.

“This also shows the desperation of the BJP. They are losing their plot in Assam. The wise people of Assam are ready to defeat this politics of hatred and division,” he added.

Congress said in a statement that the video “tantamount to a call for mass violence and genocide.”

All India Trinamool Congress leader Mahua Moitra urged India’s Supreme Court and High Court judges to take note of Sarma’s video, posting on X asking “what else does this man need to do” for the judiciary to “woke up”.

In September, Assam’s Bharatiya Janata Party released another AI-generated video titled “Assam without the BJP,” depicting a country being taken over by Muslims and portraying Muslims as “illegal immigrants.”

The rise of anti-Muslim bigotry in Assam comes against the backdrop of the BJP’s culture war against Muslims, who make up 14% of India’s 1.4 billion people.

According to the Hindu majoritarian ideology that guides the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, Muslims are after consideration outsider. Muslim asylum seekers and refugees from Bangladesh and Myanmar are particularly targeted by “infiltrators”. India also amended its citizenship law in 2019 to make faith the basis for citizenship in the officially secular country. Muslims were excluded from applications.

Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi was elected in 2014, dozens of Muslims have been lynched on suspicion of eating beef or transporting cattle, which are considered sacred by some Hindus. Muslims have faced discrimination in employment and education for decades, but their plight has worsened under the Bharatiya Janata Party government as Hindu nationalist parties have weaponized laws against Muslims.

Human rights organizations stated hate speech and violence Rhetoric against Muslims has intensified in recent years.

Last month, research by the India Hate Lab, a project of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for the Study of Organized Hate, found that the country recorded 1,318 hate speech incidents in 2025, an average of more than three a day.

The report added that at least 98% of incidents targeted Muslims, explicitly so in 1,156 incidents.

Modi himself has been accused of using inflammatory language about Muslims to sow fear among Hindu voters. Human Rights Watch in a report An article published in August 2024 stated that Modi and several party leaders “often used hate speech against Muslims and other minority groups to incite discrimination, hostility and violence” during the 2024 general election campaign.

Modi what? US visa denied He was linked to the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat, when he was the state’s chief minister. It was the worst anti-Muslim violence since India gained independence from British colonial rule in 1947, killing more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims. However, Modi has visited the United States several times since becoming prime minister.