Mind Migration

Assam’s easy transition from ethnonationalism to Hindutva

- PRAVEEN DONTHI

It took a week after the results of the Assam assembly election last month for the Bharatiya Janata Party to name the state’s chief minister. In a polity dominated by numerous tribal and ethnic groups, the party chose Himanta Biswa Sarma, a Brahmin, over the incumbent Sarbananda Sonowal, from a small ethnic Assamese community. Having returned to power at the head of a victorious alliance, the BJP called the result what it was: a resounding consolidation of pro-Hindutva forces in a state long known for its politics of jatiyotabad—ethnonationalism.

Assamese exceptionalism, based on a self-image of an inherently tolerant and secular people unaffected by the majoritarian impulses of the mainland, seems to have run its course. Once the BJP came to national power in 2014, it sensed an easy opportunity to consolidate Hindus behind it in a state where about a third of the electorate is Muslim and the politics of othering and majority anxiety have been playing out for over four decades. These same conditions allowed Sonowal, formerly with the regional Asom Gana Parishad, and Sarma, a long-time Congress leader—both with roots in the ethnonationalist All Assam Students’ Union— to casually metamorphose into BJP politicians.