> Society > Politics
In the elections in 2016 to the Assam Assembly, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s promise to implement the Assam Accord in letter and spirit helped it win the overwhelming support of a vast section of Assamese voters and enabled it to capture power at Dispur. In this election, (in three phases on March 27, April 1, April 6 April), the saffron party is looking at Assam as the springboard to further its political machinations of making subnational aspirations for distinctive linguistic and cultural identities submissive to the idea of nationalism based on its core Hindutva agenda.
The election plank of unemployment, price rise of essential commodities and wages of tea garden workers laid by the Congress-led Mahajot (Grand Alliance) have prevented the dominant electoral discourse from being centred around a single polarising narrative. This is notwithstanding opposition to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 being the cementing factor behind the formation of the grand Opposition alliance and also one of the common major election planks. The ruling alliance has also made development an election plank to counter the Opposition campaign.
The Congress-led Mahajot, of 10 parties, has the three Left parties — the CPI(M), the CPI and the CPI-ML — the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), the Anchalik Gana Morcha (AGM), the Bodoland People’s Front (BPF), the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), and now the Jimochayan (Deori) People’s Party (JDPP) and the Adivasi National Party (ANP).
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) have projected Maulana Badruddin Ajmal and the AIUDF led by him as “protectors of Bangladeshi infiltrators” in a bid to polarise the electoral narrative. The ruling alliance has also been trying to project the Opposition Grand Alliance as the mere ‘Congress-AIUDF alliance’ to suit its narrative. The BPF won 12 seats in the Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR) and was, till recently, a constituent of the BJP-led coalition government headed by Sarbananda Sonowal. The BTR — being an autonomous region under the provisions of the Sixth Schedule — is excluded from the purview of the CAA. The BJP has dropped the BPF and chosen the United People’s Party Liberal (UPPL) as its new ally in the BTR. The BJP and the UPPL share power in the Bodoland Territorial Council which governs the BTR.
In its quest to return to power in this election, the Congress hopes that its guarantee to pay daily wages of Rs. 365 to tea garden workers will help it regain some of its lost support base among garden workers and also turn the tide against the BJP which made a poll promise in 2016 (in its Vision Document) of increasing this amount to Rs.351. Tea garden workers play a crucial role in about 25 of the total 126 seats; the BJP has made inroads in this region and consolidating itself here which has eroded the Congress’s base.
The BJP does not hide its ideological intentions in the language it is using in the run-up to the election. When it says “infiltrator”, it is referring to Muslim migrants from erstwhile East Pakistan and present Bangladesh; when it says “refugee”, it is referring to Hindu and other non-Muslim migrants from the same geographical landmass without any cut-off date.
The core clause of the Assam Accord does not distinguish “illegal migrants” on basis of religion and stipulates March 24, 1971 as the cut-off date for detection, deletion of names from the voters’ list and expulsion of all migrants from Bangladesh who entered the State without valid travel documents after this date.
This secular fundamental of the Assam Accord incorporated in the citizenship laws poses a stumbling block to the Hindutva dream of the BJP and the Sangh Parivar. Assamese and other language speakers are apprehensive of Bengali-speaking “illegal migrants” from Bangladesh posing an existential threat to them. This explains the resistance to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 in the State and why the BJP is wary of seeking votes on the CAA in Assam, especially in districts with an overwhelming population of Assamese and other ethnic communities.
The AGP (which was formed at the culmination of the Assam Movement after the signing of the accord) choosing to ignore the manipulation of the cut-off date to determine Indian citizenship through the enactment of the CAA in the accord and continuing the electoral alliance with the BJP, is reflective of a core constituency of Assamese voters at the crossroads of the two binaries of the Hindu-Muslim and the Assamese-Bengali when it comes to distinguishing an infiltrator from a refugee.
The formation of two new regional parties, the Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP) and the Raijor Dal, borne out of the vigorous anti-CAA movement, has put Assamese sub-nationalism on a new trajectory which may not remain limited to electoral ambitions alone.
The AJP has been formed under the aegis of the All Assam Students Union (AASU) and the Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuba Chatra Parishad (AJYCP) which strongly defend the secular character of the Assam Accord and oppose the CAA. Both the AASU and the AJYCP backed the BJP, the AGP, and their allies in 2016 to bring an end to 15 years of Congress rule but are subsequently mobilising people against the CAA. The AJP is led by former AASU General Secretary Lurinjyoti Gogoi.
The Raijor Dal, led by jailed peasants’ leader Akhil Gogoi, has been floated by the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) and allied organisations, which have been at the forefront of a parallel stream of anti-CAA movement. Mr. Gogoi was arrested in December 2019 during the anti-CAA movement, jailed and later handed over to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in an old case of 2009 of an alleged Maoist link.
The two parties forged an electoral alliance and rejected an appeal by the Congress and other Mahajot constituents to join the grand alliance alleging that it has a “communal” AIUDF. The AJP and the Raijor Dal have also failed to reach a consensus on the proposal of Mr. Gogoi to push for all Opposition parties (it includes them) to field a common candidate to defeat the BJP and its allies. The AJP is firm on its position of opposing the national parties as well as defeating and resisting a “communal BJP and AIUDF”.
This has resulted in the possibilities of the anti-CAA votes being split to the advantage of the ruling alliance. However, its election prospects could be affected in some constituencies if there are three cornered contests and rebel candidates of the ruling alliance.
The BJP has refrained from making the CAA an issue in the first phase of polling for 47 seats in the Brahmaputra valley. The BJP-AGP combine won 35 of these seats that catapulted the saffron party to power and helped instal the first BJP-led government in the State in 2016. The Congress won nine and the AIUDF won two seats. For the ruling coalition, increasing or retaining its tally in the first phase is key to its retaining power. The split in votes among the constituents of the Mahajot has helped the ruling alliance win many seats in the 2016 Assembly elections and increase its tally in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Setting the narrative around Maulana Badruddin Ajmal and the AIUDF is easier for the BJP and the AGP as it was floated to protest the scrapping of the erstwhile Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act, 1983 by the Supreme Court in 2005. The spectacular success of the AIUDF in electoral politics and the expansion of its support base among a section of Muslim voters of erstwhile East Bengal origin did not spell an opportunity for it in getting a share of the power pie as former Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi resisted it in his three consecutive tenures. Gogoi’s “who is Badruddin?” poll rhetoric was targeted to woo Assamese and indigenous voters, but the Congress ended up getting only 53 seats in the 2006 Assembly polls against the 71 seats it had won in 2001.
The BJP harps on the narrative that it is population growth among Muslim migrants of erstwhile East Bengal and East Pakistan origin and Muslim Bangladeshi migrants within the State — and not post-Partition Hindu-refugees who came to the State till December 2014 — that poses the greater demographic threat to Assamese Hindus and other indigenous communities.
The BJP has dubbed this election as “a conflict of two civilisations” — civilisation represented by 35% population and the civilisation represented by the rest 65% population to strengthen the religion binary. (According to Census 2011, Muslims account for 34.22%, while Hindus and other religions account for the rest of the population in Assam.)
The BJP has reiterated its promise to protect jati (nationality), mati (land), bheti (foundation) of the Assamese and other ethnic communities. The electoral narrative around the AIUDF and Maulana Badruddin Ajmal has been pushed to shape the perception that instead of language, religion should be the basis of identities of the majority Assamese and other ethnic nationalities.
This article was first published in The Hindu and the original article can be read in the following link :
https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/the-ground-report-in-the-assam-duel/article34125761.ece
Navigations 
Quick Contact
Subscribe Us
Quick Mail
