Majoritarian State: How Hindu Nationalism Is Changing India by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: political science, World, Asian, geopolitics
ISBN: 9780190083403
Google: l3KfDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2019-07-01T00:31:15.916551+00:00

Building key alliances

In 2016, the BJP formed its first government in Assam, which was headed by a tribal leader from the Sonowal Kachari community, Sarbananda Sonowal. The BJP General Secretary, Ram Madhav, who played a crucial role in stitching together a ‘dream alliance’ between the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and the Bodo People’s Front (BPF), said that victory in Assam was an important ideological win.13 Some commentators have suggested that the Assam victory opened the doors to the Northeast.14 The key idea that secured the party’s win was their focus on Assamese identity. This was seen as coming under threat by the Congress-led government who were closely associated with the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) in protecting ‘illegal Bangladeshi’ immigrants. To save Assamese culture, language and land, ‘The BJP has promised a khilonjia Sarkar [indigenous government]’, according to the political scientist Sanjib Baruah. ‘Khilonjia—a non-Sanskritic word that means original inhabitant, indigenous or autochthonous’—was used as a keyword to anchor the election battle very much within the ideological landscape of Assam.15 Here the ‘foreigner’ was clearly the face of the Muslim, headed by the AIUDF leader, Badruddin Ajmal, in juxtaposition to Sonowal’s, an indigenous Kachari. The facial phenotype, or facescape,16 that defines national citizenship, said it all.

Although projected as a recent indigenous concern by the media, it is important to note that the BJP/RSS have been formulating this position for a while. Their earliest presence was in Assam when the RSS established a base in the state in 1946. Since then, the RSS have been involved in establishing schools, aiding in relief work (like the 1950 Assam earthquake), and organising important events like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) conference in Guwahati in 1967 to highlight their presence and to disseminate their message of Hindu nationalism. This message was directly to counter Christian proselytisation, especially in tribal areas, and to stop Muslim ‘illegal’ immigration—or ‘infiltration’—from Bangladesh into Assam and the Northeast.17

Grassroots organisation and mobilisation with the help of various RSS affiliated workers already present in the region was skilfully deployed to bring the BJP to power in Assam. It took careful tactical planning for nearly two years for the BJP to be able to poach a crucial competitor from the Congress, Himanta Biswa Sarma, thereby unsettling the Congress leadership in Assam.18 These tactical games were also evident in Arunachal Pradesh in 2016 that saw Pema Khandu form the government when thirty-three out of forty-three of the People’s Party of Arunachal (PPA) MLAs merged with the BJP, effectively bringing about a BJP government. Similarly in Manipur, N. Biren Singh, a former Congressman is now heading the BJP alliance; in Nagaland too, with only one BJP MLA, three joined from the National Congress Party (NCP) taking its numbers to four in 2014.

Switching political parties in this way could suggest a simple political strategy on the part of regional MLAs—to side with the party in power at the centre. It also supports the BJP who are effectively promulgating what they might call regional alliances with a national outlook.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.