GEOFF BENNETT: Earlier this month, political violence erupted in Eastern India after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party won key elections amid allegations of voter suppression targeting Muslims.

That campaign was marked by allegations of anti-Muslim hate speech, calls for violence, and a controversial citizenship crackdown targeting Muslims in the Indian border states of Assam and West Bengal.

Producer Zeba Warsi reports from Assam on families now fighting to prove they belong in the only country they have ever known.

ZEBA WARSI: In this remote village in Northeast India, three generations of one family could soon become stateless.

The patriarch, we will call him Ramzan to protect his identity, is a husband yearning for his wife, who was taken from him because of their ethnicity.

"RAMZAN," Resident of Assam, India (through translator): I can't explain how my days are going.

I don't know what to do, how to live.

I'm barely surviving without her.

ZEBA WARSI: Ramzan's wife is in immigration detention.

This is the first time in 50 years that they have been separated.

Theirs is a love story written across time, born and raised on this land just years after India gained independence from British colonial rule in 1947.

They grew up side by side.

"RAMZAN" (through translator): We loved each other all our lives.

We have had no fights all these years.

We were each other's peace.

ZEBA WARSI: But that peace was shattered when state authorities labeled both of them doubtful citizens.

In the key Eastern Indian states of Assam and West Bengal, both bordering predominantly Muslim Bangladesh, authorities have asked tens of thousands of residents like them to prove their citizenship.

India shares a 2,500-mile border with Bangladesh, a country that once was a part of pre-independence India.

In recent years, human rights activists say Assam's administration, ruled by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's political party, has revived a decades-old immigration law, one that critics say disproportionately targets Bengali-speaking Muslims, who historically have lived on both sides of the India-Bangladesh border.

We are in Guwahati, the capital city of the Indian northeastern state of Assam, which is now at the center of the Modi administration's citizenship policies.

But, beyond that, the millions of Bengali Muslims here have been the target of hate speech and a crackdown that has sparked concerns of a similar crackdown being launched across India against its religious minorities.

Nearly 12 years of Modi's rule in India has been marked by democratic backsliding.

Here's a young Muslim boy being beaten by state authorities.

Critics say India's 200 million Muslims, the world's third largest Muslim population, have been hardest hit with a sharp rise in discrimination and hate crimes.

Now the Modi administration has also launched a controversial revision of electoral roles that has excluded millions of people, mostly Muslims, stripping them of their right to vote.

In Assam the past year, more than 1,000 people have reportedly been deported to Bangladesh, often without due process.

ANGANA CHATTERJI, University of California, Berkeley: Prejudicial laws and policies have weaponized citizenship in India, and a pivotal objective of the Hindu nationalist party has been to alter the basis of Indian citizenship.

ZEBA WARSI: Angana Chatterji is an anthropologist and a scholar of South Asia studies at U.C.

Berkeley.

She said the citizenship crackdown in Assam is an extension of the Modi administration's anti-Muslim policies.

ANGANA CHATTERJI: They have sought to amplify the ascent of a majoritarian state in India.

The Assam experiment is a case in point where they want to demonstrate both to their own cadre and constituency that they are in fact targeting Muslims and to Muslims to send a reverberating message that they are not welcome, that they are outsiders, that they are not of the nation.

ZEBA WARSI: Ramzan's family has worked this land for generations.

In India, citizenship is by descent.

If both Ramzan and his wife lose their case, their children and grandchildren could become stateless and lose everything.

"RAMZAN" (through translator): How can we be Bangladeshi when we were born here, lived all our life here?

I am ready to die for India.

I don't know what I would do if they deported my wife.

I feel like dying is better than a life without her.

ZEBA WARSI: The state government did not respond to "News Hour"'s requests for comment, but has previously said it is only acting against illegal immigrants.

But the Washington-based research group Center for the Study of Organized Hate has documented 32 instances of hate speech and eight calls for violence in Assam last year.

Last month, the state went to polls and the campaign was also marked by dozens of hate speech events.

At his own election rallies, Modi invoked anti-Muslim rhetoric, referring to Bengali Muslims as infiltrators.

NARENDRA MODI, Indian Prime Minister (through translator): Our government has rooted out these infiltrators from millions of acres of land.

Don't you want these infiltrators out of Assam?

Shouldn't these infiltrators be expelled?

Who can get this done?

Your vote to the BJP will get this done.

ZEBA WARSI: But some of the most incendiary remarks came from the state's chief minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, Modi's man in Assam, who has just been reelected and has vowed to intensify his crackdown against Bengali Muslims.

HIMANTA BISWA SARMA, Chief Minister of Assam, India (through translator): We broke their hands and legs politically.

This time, we will break the very backbone of the Bengali Muslims.

ZEBA WARSI: Since taking office in 2021, Sarma has been accused of weaponizing existing forest protection laws and colonial era land laws to evict at least 50,000 people, most of them Muslims, from their homes.

As we traveled from village to village, we saw thousands of homes reduced to rubble.

Behind me, on the banks of one of India's largest rivers, is a makeshift relief camp put up not by humanitarian aid agencies, but by displaced families themselves.

It is one of many such camps that have come up across the state.

They rebuilt what they could.

This is flood-prone land.

When the river rises, this will disappear.

But for now, it holds life, barefoot children somersaulting in the sand, teenage friendships, women gathered in bright, worn saris, survival, not stability.

AMNA KHATOUN, Displaced Resident (through translator): We cried a lot.

All the people you see here were crying that day.

ZEBA WARSI: Amna Khatoun home was bulldozed by state authorities.

She's trying to be brave for her family.

But that moment haunts her.

AMNA KHATOUN (through translator): We labored hard for other people all our lives to build a house for ourselves.

And they demolished it in a few minutes.

They snatched everything from us.

ZEBA WARSI: She's a mother of four.

And like any mother, she fears for their future.

The day we met this community, about 100 miles away, state authorities bulldozed more than 1,000 additional homes, displacing even more families.

On our way back to the city, the "News Hour" crew was stopped by local police and questioned for nearly two hours, a tactic often used to intimidate journalists reporting on marginalized communities, like families in this village of fish net weavers.

Dozens of them have for years been asked to prove their citizenship.

SULEIMAN NISA, Resident of Assam, India (through translator): We are from this country.

We are not from Bangladesh.

Even my grandfather was born in India.

They're prosecuting us through this foreigner tribunal, even though we have never been foreigners to this land.

ZEBA WARSI: The Foreigners Tribunal is a quasi-judicial body that critics say arbitrarily decides if someone is an Indian citizen or a foreigner.

Suleiman Nisa and her husband were both accused of being illegal immigrants.

She won her case, proving that she's Indian, but lost everything, the love of her life, her husband.

SULEIMAN NISA (through translator): He was a simple good man who earned an honest living and took care of all of us.

ZEBA WARSI: Families in this village make not more than $100 a month.

When her husband first received a tribunal notice, he borrowed money for legal fees, sinking into a debt of $3,000, far beyond his means.

Just when they believed the case was over, the tribunal demanded more evidence.

Her husband then took his own life.

SULEIMAN NISA (through translator): It feels as if he would return to me like he used to return after work every day.

All I want is that no other woman be made to go through what I have.

ZEBA WARSI: That is the plea of a wife who has lost her husband and the desperation of a husband who fears losing his wife.

But, with this election, the administration they say has targeted them appears only further emboldened.

For the PBS "News Hour," I am Zeba Warsi in Guwahati, India.