On Monday, several posters sprang up along a stretch of the arterial national highway passing through Sivasagar district in Upper Assam. Put up by hardline Assamese nationalist groups like Asom Yuva Mancha and Jatiya Sangrami Sena, the posters were marked with slogans such as “Chase Miyas, save Assam”, “Chase Miyas to protect Assam from becoming Bangladesh”, and “Chase Miyas, save the country”.
It is still early days of campaigning for the Assam Assembly elections due in March-April, but the polarisation in the state has already come to the fore. In a state fraught with long-running social faultlines and anxieties, fuelled by a wave of aggressive politics, this is not the first time that such calls have been made in recent years.
Last August, members of these vigilantes groups had gone to the rented homes of Bengali-origin Muslims living and working in different Upper Assam towns, particularly Sivasagar, ordering them to “leave Upper Assam”. They had undertaken a similar “drive” there in August 2024 as well.
Senior BJP leader and Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has also kept “Miyas” in his crosshairs for a long time – from calling on Assamese people to not buy vegetables grown by Miya farmers or fish sold by Miya vendors, not sell land to Miyas, and not employ them in their businesses.
The term “Miyas” has historically been used to refer to Bengali-origin Muslims in Assam pejoratively, which has also been conflated with the allegation that they are “Bangladeshis”. Some activists from the community have in recent years also sought to reclaim the term as a marker of their unique identity.
The renewed focus on Miyas has stemmed from various provocative remarks made by CM Sarma in recent days, which include his calls to “trouble Miyas” and that “In a rickshaw, if the fare is Rs 5, give them (Miyas) Rs 4”, or that “Only if they (Miyas) face troubles, they will leave Assam”.
A key poll plank
With Sarma leading the charge, the BJP has made it no secret that the anti-Miya rhetoric and polarisation would be its key plank for the upcoming polls, in which it is seeking its third consecutive term.
To some observers, it may seem a little puzzling why the BJP is leaning so heavily on this plank this time. After all, the party appears to be in a dominant position with the Opposition parties still struggling to get their act together to be able to challenge it effectively. The BJP has highlighted that there have been lakhs of beneficiaries of a slew of government schemes and development works like road construction and connectivity, which, it claims, have reached various sections of society – from women running households, tea garden workers, college students, and even college graduates looking for a job.
Political science professor at Gauhati University, Akhil Ranjan Dutta, argues that the BJP’s strategies for the Assam elections starting from the 2016 Assembly polls – when it defeated the incumbent Congress to come to power in the state for the first time – have morphed as per the situation and that “polarisation has played out at multiple levels” in the process.
In 2016, the BJP went all out to consolidate its support base among various ethnic and tribal communities with a focus on the land and rights of “indigenous communities” centred on its slogan of “jati, mati, bheti (nation, land and hearth) under the leadership of Sarbananda Sonowal, known for being measured and mild-mannered, who went on to become the party’s first CM in the state.
Dutta argues that the BJP’s language and narrative took a more aggressive turn on “civilisation threat” in its campaign for the March-April 2021 Assembly polls, which were held months after the party-led state government faced strong resistance to the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, with protesters opposing the granting of citizenship to any foreigner regardless of his / her religion who entered Assam after March 24, 1971 – the cut-off date under 1985 Assam Accord after which anyone entering Assam is considered an illegal migrant.
“In the current election, Hindutva politics is taking a more and more aggressive turn because they are at a saturation point, where they have already talked about all these issues while the government has given a lot of land and resources in the state to corporates, including in tribal areas,” Dutta said.
“And then there is Gaurav Gogoi’s entry in a big way in state politics, his recent Lok Sabha win and the possibility of an alliance between the Congress and two regional parties Raijor Dol (RD) and Asom Jatiya Parishad (AJP), in which all three key figures (Gaurav Gogoi, RD’s Akhil Gogoi and AJP’s Lurinjyoti Gogoi) are leaders from Upper Assam from the Ahom community,” he said.
A three-term MP, Gaurav Gogoi, son of former Congress stalwart and CM late Tarun Gogoi, is also the president of the Assam Congress.
In 2021, the BJP’s polarisation bid was said to be especially effective on account of the Congress’s alliance with the Badruddin Ajmal-led All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), whose primary support base comprises Bengali-origin Muslims, which opened up the grand old party to the former’s onslaught. Consequently, the BJP-AGP alliance swept all but six of 42 seats across the districts of Upper and North Assam, which are primarily inhabited by ethnic Assamese communities.
Himanta Sarma replaced Sonowal as the CM as the BJP-led NDA alliance clinched the 2021 polls.
In the upcoming elections, the Congress, in attempts to recover some of its lost ground in Upper and North Assam, has chosen to keep its responses to Sarma’s controversial remarks and his government’s strong moves understated in order not to fuel the incumbent’s polarisation play. These government actions include widespread evictions of Bengali-origin Muslims, as part of its anti-encroachment drive, and “pushing back” of declared foreigners while circumventing formal deportation procedures.
The Congress is also trying to firm up its alliance with smaller regional parties, which has gone through a long period of disagreements over seat-sharing.
Both the Congress and the Raijor Dol are optimistic about gathering support from the state’s minority belts, with the AIUDF failing to open its account in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, when the minority voters in Central and Lower Assam rallied round the Congress.
In the wake of Assam’s 2023 delimitation exercise, various parties and observers estimate, the number of constituencies where the minority voters play a decisive role has reduced from around 35 of the state’s 126 seats to about 23, thereby altering the electoral landscape and sharpening the battles for other seats.