ASSAM: RISE OF A NEW OPPOSITION
Between 1979 and 1985, Assam witnessed mass agitations demanding the detection and deportation of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The six-year-long agitation ended with the signing of the Assam Accord between the Union government and student groups that had led the movement. In the subsequent election, held in 1985, a new political party—the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP)—came to power, with a massive mandate. The AGP was a union of the two most influential student groups in Assam—the All Assam Students Union (AASU) and the Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuva Chhatra Parishad (AJYCP). Thirty-threeyear-old student leader Prafulla Kumar Mahanta was elected chief minister.
More than three decades later, the AASU and AJYCP have come together again to form another political party—the Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP)—which will contest the assembly election scheduled for April on the plank of Assamese sub-nationalism. At the root of this development is, once again, the issue of illegal immigration. The formation of the party, with its tag line ‘Assam first, always and forever’, has been fuelled by public anger, primarily among Assamesespeaking people, against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019, which offers a path to Indian citizenship to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian refugees from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, who came to India on or before December 31, 2014. Although, in letter, the CAA excludes only Muslim refugees from these three Islamic nations, Assamese-speaking people in Assam fear the primary beneficiary of the new law will be illegal Bengali Hindu migrants from Bangladesh, whom the BJP wants to offer Indian citizenship. This could potentially change the state’s linguistic demography in favour of Bangla speakers.
As was the case in 1985, the protests against the CAA are being led by Assam’s youth. The AJP is headed by Lurinjyoti Gogoi, a 39-year-old PhD student of mathematics at Dibrugarh University, who quit AASU last year to begin his political career. Lurinjyoti had stood out as a fiery speaker during the anti-CAA agitation that engulfed the state in the first couple of months of 2020, before the world was hit by Covid.
Last year also saw the much-awaited political debut of RTI activist Akhil Gogoi, who launched the Raijor Dal (RD) party, which also aims to politically channel the public anger over CAA. Since the AGP, now a BJP ally, has failed to take a strong and decisive stand against the CAA, Lurinjyoti and Akhil are hoping to fill the vacuum created by the absence of a strong regional voice asserting Assamese sub-nationalism.
Akhil, who had been part of the India Against Corruption movement led by Anna Hazare, has been languishing in judicial custody for over a year—he was put away under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act or UAPA—for his alleged role in the violent protests against the 2019 amendments to the Citizenship Act. On February 11, the Supreme Court rejected his bail plea.
The AJP and RD, both realising they have the same support base, have decided to contest the assembly poll together. They declined to join the grand alliance floated by the Congress, AIUDF, Left parties and the newly-formed Anchalik Gana Morcha (AGM), despite several appeals. They are keeping their distance so as to not dilute their core campaign pitch—Assam first. While the Assamese-speaking people of the state are unhappy with the BJP over the CAA, they also blame the Congress for not doing anything to stop illegal immigration
during their long run in power. More importantly, while the BJP seeks to legitimise illegal Hindu immigrants from Bangladesh, the Congress’s alliance with the AIUDF, a party formed in 2005 to protect the interests of Muslims of immigrant origin, now projects them as lenient towards illegal Muslim immigrants from the neighbouring country.
The two new parties don’t wish to appear as hostile to Muslims of immigrant origin but want to emerge as a more reliable alternative to the Congress and BJP. “We are not looking at shortterm electoral gain. We are here to stay. Our principled stand will earn us dividends in the long run,” says Kamal
Medhi, RD general secretary. Political observers, though, feel that seeing the BJP and Congress with equal mistrust will defeat the primary objective of the two parties—to keep the BJP out of power and stall the implementation of the CAA. “They are underestimating the BJP’s organisational and electoral strength and ability to influence elections through polarisation,” says Akhil Ranjan Dutta, head of the political science department at Gauhati University.
There is a reason behind the measured optimism of the AJP and RD. They are counting on the votes of Assamese-speaking people, who dominate 36 of the state’s 126 seats. In the previous poll, the BJP-AGP alliance swept most of the seats, while the Congress won just four. The anti-BJP forces hope for an improved performance this time, particularly in the nine seats where the BJP-AGP alliance got less than 10 per cent of the votes polled, but the division of the antiBJP+AGP votes between the Congress-led alliance and the AJP-RD may give the BJP an edge. Which is why the Congress, despite their rebuff, has offered to not field candidates in constituencies where the AJP-RD contest.
The two parties will also face a tough challenge in the 29 seats dominated by tea tribes and non-Assamesespeaking Hindus from other communities, like Nepali, Punjabi, Marwari, Bihari and Bengali. Moreover, they will need a more appealing electoral narrative in six seats where religious polarisation will determine the final outcome. They might not find many takers in the 12 Bodo-dominated seats either, since the CAA does not apply in the four Bodoland Territorial Area Districts. But that hasn’t deterred the two Gogois from seeking support in all 126 seats. AJP and RD leaders have been making the rounds even in areas dominated by Muslims of immigrant origin—where the Congress-AIUDF alliance has a clear edge—in an attempt to project themselves as an inclusive force.
But such ambition also needs financial backing and a well-planned strategy. “Apart from CAA, they have not been able to rake up any big issue and CAA lost momentum because of Covid. Besides, with many faces from the AGP now in advisory positions in the AJP, the party doesn’t exactly look new to voters,” says Ankuran Dutta, head of the communication and journalism department at Gauhati University. Formed recently, the two parties also lack a strong organisational structure. Akhil’s incarceration, the Gauhati University professors say, will hugely impact the RD’s organisational mobility. The two parties are not giving up, though. “We will form the government. The rise of Assamese nationalism, lack of development in the state and disenchantment with the BJP and Congress will earn us votes from all, irrespective of community and religion,” says Lurinjyoti. Politics, after all, is a game of possibilities.