Why Congress needs to tie up with AIUDF for 2019 general elections
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been strengthened in Assam after high-profile leaders from other parties defected to it ahead of the 2016 Assembly elections. The party received some tall leaders, especially, from the Congress and the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP).
From the Congress, the party has got Himanta Biswa Sarma, who walked out of Tarun Gogoi's government in 2017. From the AGP, it gained its chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal and many other leaders. Himanta Biswa Sarma has a lot of experience and is an asset to the BJP. But Congress and All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) too have influential local leaders.
It is thus important that the Opposition parties start working on a broader alliance of all secular forces since their combined strength can halt BJP's victory march in the state in the upcoming 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
It is hard to understand the politics of Assam without the knowledge of ethnic and religious make-up of the state. Assam has the second-largest Muslim population for any Indian state after Jammu and Kashmir. And it is a fact which no political party can choose to ignore.
The dominant Muslim voter base places its trust on AIUDF, a party that largely represents the political aspirations of the minority community. The same applies to the Congress, which projects itself as a secular alternative.
The AIUDF is an important player in Muslim-dominated areas, especially in lower Assam, accounting for 54 per cent of the Muslim population, where it gained more votes than the Congress in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
The AIUDF supremo, Badruddin Ajmal, had initially sought an alliance with the Congress for the 2016 Assembly elections, but former chief minister Tarun Gogoi did not want to lose his party's primacy over Muslim voters. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the vote shares of the major players such as BJP, Congress and AIUDF in Assam were 36.86 per cent, 29.9 per cent and 14.98 per cent respectively. The AGP, Bodoland People's Front (BPF) and the Left Front got a comparatively smaller share of 3.8 per cent, 2.21 per cent and 0.62 per cent, respectively. Out of 14 Lok Sabha seats in the state, BJP bagged seven, losing three seats each to the Congress and the AIUDF and one to an independent candidate.
In the 2016 Assembly elections, the BJP sowed the seeds of doubts in the minds of the voters by raking up the possibility of an alliance between the Congress and Badruddin Ajmal's AIUDF.
On the complicated multi-ethnic canvas of Assam, the party has been covering almost all the sub-national groups. The BJP polarised the election with party president, Amit Shah, making statements like: "Hindu refugees from Bangladesh will be given Indian citizenship if the BJP comes to power in Assam. Some Hindus have come from Bangladesh due to religious disturbances. The BJP will give all of them citizenship once we come to power in Assam. Not only in Assam, but the party will work towards giving Indian citizenship to all Bangladeshi Hindu immigrants across the country."
The "fragile peace" that was established in the state following the Assam Accord, is now threatened due to the attempts being made by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and BJP to divide the Bengali-speaking population along religious lines.
Assamese nationalism had always rallied around linguistic identity with no room for religion to sneak in. But the BJP introduced a religious angle to the issue. While the Congress refused any pre-election alliance with AIUDF, the BJP successfully tied up with the AGP and BPF in its first serious bid to win the state.
In 2016, BPF had won all the seats it contested in the Bodoland Territorial Area Districts. The AGP rose from five seats in 2011 to 14 in 2016. The BJP, which won the support of the "anti-immigrant" voters who were traditional voters of the AGP, jumped from 5 seats in 2011 to 60 in 2016.
The NDA alliance needed 64 seats to form the government and it bagged 86. The vote shares of BJP, Congress and AIUDF were 29.5 per cent, 31 per cent and 13 per cent while that of AGP, BPF and Left were 8.1 per cent, 3.9 per cent and 0.8 per cent respectively.
What was unexpected for the BJP alliance was that it got a significant number of votes from the local Assamese Muslims, who consider themselves different from the Bengali Muslims attached to Ajmal.
The picture, however, could have been different had Congress stitched an anti-BJP secular democratic alliance.
The Congress, AIUDF, and Left Front are the only parties in Assam that haven't compromised their political positions with regards to the BJP. The AGP and BPF have switched over to various alliances in the past. The AGP miserably failed to meet the expectations of the people of Assam.
The state witnessed a downspin in economy, unemployment was glaring, and people working for the government jobs were never paid on time during AGP government's tenure. Added to it was the horror of the United Liberation Front of Assam. The Bodos, on the other hand, have been openly attacking Muslims by calling them Bangladeshis.
The only possible way to stop the BJP's victory march, at this point, seems to be an alliance between the Congress and AIUDF in Assam.
Looking at the 2016 Assembly poll results, it is clear that the alliance had the potential of getting at least 44 per cent vote share as compared to that of 29.5 per cent of BJP.
Ajmal was ready to openly discuss the possibility of such an alliance but the Congress did not agree. As a result the Muslim votes got split helping NDA gobble up a simple majority. Though the spheres of influence of the two parties overlap in a large number of constituencies, their combined strength could have made a difference in at least 15 constituencies.
The Congress and AIUDF put together currently have 38 seats and the situation would have been drastically different had there been an alliance.
Instead of stitching a last-minute alliance in 2019, the Congress and AIUDF must start building cadre-based understanding among their workers and supporters at the earliest in case they want to give the country a secular democratic alternative.
If the Congress, instead of contesting all the seats, focuses on capturing Silchar, Autonomous District, Guwahati, Mangaldoi, Kaliabor, Jorhat, Dibrugarh, Lakhimpur and Tezpur Lok Sabha constituencies and the AIUDF concentrates on its campaigns in the four Lok Sabha constituencies of Karimganj, Dhubri, Barpeta, Nowgong and Kokrajhar, then the BJP would face an erosion of votes in previously won Lok Sabha seats.
Upper Assam, which is considered to be the economic nerve centre of Assam, comprises Jorhat, Lakhimpur, Dibrugarh and Kaliabor constituencies. The cadres of RSS and its affiliate organisations had fanned out in the Upper Assam region and had campaigned for the BJP for the 2016 polls.
The cadre strength of RSS, which has increased substantially in the past couple of years, has left the opposition parties worried. The Congress is the only party which has considerable presence in Upper Assam and can tackle BJP with an alliance. The vote shares of INC and AIUDF clubbed together was around 33 per cent as compared to 37.25 per cent of the BJP when both parties contested against each other.
The North Assam division consists of Tezpur Lok Sabha constituency. The Congress still had the potential to successfully bag the Tezpur seat provided it manages to pool in Congress and AIUDF votes and consolidates other anti-BJP votes in the constituency. The vote share of Congress combine was 30 per cent in 2016 as compared to 35.45 per cent of BJP.
The parties like AGP don't have any considerable influence in Lower Assam and Barak Valley. The AGP propagates rigid regionalism, raising the old anxieties about land and identity, preoccupied with the idea of cultural purity. The BJP had turned the anti-immigrant feeling in Assam into a Hindu versus Muslim conflict for harvesting electoral dividends from the resulting communal polarisation in the Lok Sabha as well as Assembly polls.
The more the BJP rants in favour of Hindu communal forces, the more the sectarian elements among the minority communities get active. Issues related to Islamic monuments such as Babri Masjid and Taj Mahal are raised to communalise the atmosphere.
Attempts are made to distort history and make a "new history" for the generations to come where the name of Muslim contributors to the country will either be absent or counted among the villains.
Both the communal forces — Hindu and Muslim — nurture each other. If the Hindus get carried away by BJP's propaganda, Muslims take refuge in AIUDF. The result is nothing but damage to Indian unity and a fertile ground for all kinds of divisive forces. The only difference between BJP and AIUDF is that the latter does not propagate violence, enforce religion and expand itself to the rest of the country.
Himanta Biswa Sarma was hailed because his strategy of stitching a Prashant Kishor brokered BJP + AGP + BPF worked.
Had the BJP lost the election, almost all these decisions could have been cited as causes. For some people, the idea of the Congress and AIUDF coming together might be deeply problematic, given RSS and BJP have been propagating an anti-Hindu image of the Congress. But Congress and AIUDF are not going to make any progress by simply pointing fingers at each other.
Apart from the Hindu-Muslim divide, other ethnic groups will also play an important role in certain pockets in 2019. For example, the Kokrajhar constituency is home to Bodos. This area has seen rapid growth of the Muslim population. The proportion of Scheduled Tribes (mainly Bodos), constituting about one-third of the population, has shrunk. It is this demographic transition which triggered the violent skirmishes in the region.
The BJP is expected to benefit from an alliance with BPF and anti-Muslim sentiments in this belt. Now it is up to the Congress and AIUDF on how well they convince the Muslims of Kokrajhar.
There are plenty of things that Congress did under Tarun Gogoi that AIUDF wished it hadn't. But if the two parties remain focused on their differences there isn't much for them to achieve. However it does leave scope for some right wing form of conservative rule or something potentially even worse.