Saffronizing the periphery: Explaining the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party in contemporary Assam (original) (raw)

National Narrative and Regional Subtext: Understanding the Rise of BJP in Assam

The unprecedented mandate in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2016 Assembly elections in Assam necessitates a careful understanding of the growth and consolidation of the party in the state. The BJP's rise in the state can be understood in the backdrop of a favourable social base which has perceivably shifted from the Congress in recent years. Many factors have been responsible for this shift identifiable through a withering Congress dominance and political stagnancy of the AGP. An understanding of the political shift in Assam with the concomitant rise of the BJP is incomplete without a look into the party movement dialectics marking BJP politics. A blatantly vocal Hindutva rhetoric has been cast aside opting instead for a regionalized portraiture of Hinduism in the state. In this, localized sects and symbols have been inducted into the BJP's campaign which infused a strong sense of regional identification among the mass of electorate.

BJP’s Electoral Victory in Assam, 2016: Co-opting the Khilonjiyas

Social Change, 2017

The landslide victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Assam’s assembly election in April 2016 provokes diametrically opposite interpretations. While for the rank and file of the Sangh Parivar, the victory reveals a consolidation of Hindutva forces in the state, at the other end of the spectrum, some portions of the intelligentsia, who want to project the BJP as a changed and secular entity, assert that the electoral results do not reflect the rise of Hindutva in the state but rather the advance of indigenous and identity politics. For the latter, the key to BJP’s electoral triumph was its alliance with regional-ethnic forces against the backdrop of the growing insecurity among Assam’s indigenous people caused by a steady influx from Bangladesh. While Hindu consolidation, through different agencies and institutions, gained momentum in the state, in the present elections, it was the highly emotive campaign for the protection of the rights of the Khilonjiyas (the indigenous) tha...

General Elections 2014: Will BJP's gains polarize Assam further?

The emergence of BJP as the single largest party in the Lok Sabha elections 2014 has important impli- cations for realignments of social groups in the country. It has firmly established its foothold in many states thereby emerging as a national party, in the literal sense of the term. Its performance of 7 out of 14 seats in a state like Assam, which had been a Congress stronghold since independence, is no mean feat. The Congress, as elsewhere, managed to do poorly with only three seats and many party heavy- weights have been routed out this time. The article argues that this election has sealed the process of disintegration of the ‘catch-all’ nature of the Congress party in Assam, the unravelling of which had already begun in 1985 when Asom Gana Parishad won the assembly elections with a landslide victory. A major reason for this is the realignment of social groups with political parties leading to both ethnic polarization and ethnic accommodation in the state. This breakdown has been expedited on account of growing dissidence and factionalism within the Congress party as well as increasingly shifting loyalties of its core constituencies to other emerging loci of power in the state. Furthermore, the article argues that the emerging political constellation constituting parties like the Bharatiya Janata Party and All India United Democratic Front have a potential to further polarize a much fragmented and fragile Assam.

Narendra Modi and the rise of BJP in Assam

Sonkolpa Online, 2023

[Published in Sonkolpa Online, March 2023] The rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Assam is often seen as a post 2016 event because it was in this year that the party formed the first state government. However, the fact remains, that the party has had a long history of ideological training, struggles, and organizations that led to the 2016 result. In this long journey since 1980, the role of Narendra Modi in guiding the party to develop from a political organization into an ideology based electoral organization is noteworthy. This paper, based on personal knowledge, interviews and secondary sources, briefly traces these under-researched events in the history of the BJP in Assam.

Religion, ethnicity and politics: Understanding the BJP’s rise in Assam

Routledge, 2019

Democracy creates the ideal conditions for the formulation and expression of political identity. The electoral process encourages groups to identify themselves politically and bestows real political meaning on the concepts of majority and minority, reinforcing the existing cleavages in society. The Northeast Indian state of Assam provides an example of politics being influenced largely by issues concerning ethnic identity. The unusually large rate of migration into the state since the heyday of British rule and the varied array of ethnic groups, each striving to preserve its identity and its interests through the political process, led to a situation of ethnic conflict in the post-independence period as politics became centred on issues of immigration and ethnic identity. The state underwent various political shifts ranging from a situation of Congress dominance till the mid-1970s to the rise of regionalism in the mid-1980s, and gradually moving towards a largely bipolar contest between two national parties in the 21st century. Issues relating to ethnic and religious identity came to the fore as the state held one of its most keenly contested State Assembly elections in early April 2016. Against the backdrop of three successive wins by the Congress in the Assembly polls since 2001 and of the BJP’s upsurge in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and the 2015 municipal elections, the polls promised to be a clash of titans in a largely bipolar scenario between two national parties with active intervention of ethnic-regional players. This chapter examines the relatively recent rise of the BJP, a party representing Hindu nationalism at the national level, in a state that has traditionally witnessed the dominance of ethnic politics based on linguistic and tribal identities. Specifically it will look at the salience of religion as a political factor in an ethnically divided milieu and examine trends towards religious consolidation with the issue of illegal immigration from across the international border emerging as a key point of polarization.

Asom Gana Parishad: The Trajectory of India's Endangered Ethno-regional Party

Journal of Contemporary Politics, 2024

The existential crisis of the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), the prominent ethno-regional party in Northeast India, demonstrates that ethno-regionalism may tender only short-term political dividends to the party unless it transforms into a party to carry out a vision of development that would address the material well-being of people. In other words, the ideology and mobilisation of an ethno-regional party may not be sustainable if it deviates from its strategy from the everyday life process of development. Moreover, the BJP's glowing strategy of championing ethno-regionalism along with its Hindu nationalist ideology and its alliance with the AGP cost more adverse impact on the latter's mass base and thereby dwindling its electoral space in the Assam politics.

Ethnic Outbidding and politics of 'homeland' in Assam's Bodoland

The 2014 Lok Sabha election marks a watershed for Indian politics. The elections in the state of Assam have been marked by interethnic violence, fuelled by issues of indigeneity and ‘illegal’ migration. This paper primarily discusses the electoral result from the Kokrajhar constituency in lower Assam, the heart of Bodo politics and a hotbed for ethnic conflict. Two decades of armed struggle resulted in concessions granted to the Bodos, the largest plains tribe in Assam, in the form of a territorial council, under the Sixth Schedule of the Indian constitution. In the 2014 election, for the first time in the history of the constituency, a non-Bodo candidate won, with an impressive 51% of the vote share. The electoral outcome may be seen as a further polarization of the existing ethnic cleavage between Bodos and non-Bodos in the region. Using the theory of outbidding, it will be shown that the victory of a non- Bodo in the constituency may be seen as an outcome of a history of inter-group conflict in the region as well as intra-group rivalry among various factions of the Bodo leadership. Further, this case also illustrates that the propensity of the outbidding effect to foment inter-ethnic violence is greater in contexts where political institutions (in this case autonomous/territorial councils) encourage a singular axis of identity as a basis of mobilization. In conclusion, the paper discusses the implications of this election result for the politics of ‘ethnic homeland’ in Assam.

Uneasy Homecomings: Political Entanglements in Contemporary Assam

South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2015

Tying together the different threads that explain the persistence of violent conflicts in defining the politics of Assam is a difficult proposition, more so because the analyses tend to concentrate on big episodes and rely on a causal explanation that leaves little room for understanding the layered realities that have emerged as a result of three decades of conflict. This article attempts to suture together the different levels at which expressions of violence have been manifested in contemporary political entanglements in Assam. It does so by reflecting on the repertoire of melancholic manifestations of these conflicts in everyday life. It argues that decades of engagement between rebels and the Indian state have led to emotional suffering and self-preservation, but have been sacrificed to a cynical political vocabulary that narrows the possibility of solidarity.