Harvesting anxiety: on Assam, its Assembly election

The BJP is seeking a third consecutive term in Assam in Assembly polls on April 9, while the Congress is fighting to make a comeback after 10 years in the wilderness. In 2021, the coalition of BJP, AGP and UPPL won 75 of 126 seats, with the BJP alone winning 60. Communal mobilisation and welfare schemes make the standard BJP toolkit here too, but Assam is a unique theatre of political experimentation for the party and its governments at the State and the Centre. Conflicts over large-scale migration of Bengali-speaking people have long shaped Assam’s politics. Nativist politics developed primarily in opposition to this migration. The BJP’s growth has come by recasting that nativism into a question of Hindu-Muslim conflict, creating a new political dynamic weakening subnational outfits and pressuring the Congress. The Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 enacted a communal eligibility clause for people who entered India from Bangladesh. Nativist opposition to citizenship for any immigrant — including Hindus — and other factors stalled the large-scale rollout of the law, but rhetoric over demographic change remains the mainstay of politics. This will be the first Assembly poll after the 2023 delimitation of constituencies, which has displayed patterns of communal gerrymandering, reducing the impact of Muslim voters and enhancing representation for indigenous communities. BJP functionaries, including Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, have been open about the intended impact.

Meanwhile, the BJP continues to recruit leaders from the Congress. The AIUDF, mainly representing Bengali-speaking Muslims in lower Assam and the Barak Valley, contributed to the collapse of the Congress in 2016, now fights for survival, contesting alone after exclusion from the Congress-led Opposition alliance. The Congress has allied with the Raijor Dal, led by activist Akhil Gogoi, and the AJP, a party born from the anti-CAA movement that channels renewed Assamese sub-nationalism among younger voters. Their common ground is the promise of democratic governance, land rights, and inclusive development. The AGP, once the torch-bearer of Assamese regionalism, is a junior NDA partner contesting 26 seats, its independent ideological space largely absorbed by its larger ally. In Bodoland, the BJP has replaced its 2021 partner, the UPPL, with the BPF, an older formation. In 2021, the BJP had managed to subsume most regional sentiment through alliances and the recasting of the migration debate. Big infrastructure projects are presented as milestones, but allegations of crony capitalism and disregard for the environment are serious. Such substantive questions get sidelined as fear rather than hope dominates.