Assam's 35-year saffronisation

Win or lose, the BJP is Assam’s front-runner, from being non-existent three decades ago except for thousands of committed RSS workers, pracharaks and strategists brought in from all over. How they sowed the first seeds of their ideology, co-opted the massively popular Assam movement, converted its ethnic-chauvinistic impulse into an anti-Muslim one, built a launch pad for the BJP and then conjured up a local leadership is the stuff of political folklore.

The BJP is not just the front-runner now, but has built an unprecedented alliance with Bodo tribals, cherry-picked talent from regional leader Asom Gana Parishad and now even the Congress — never mind the fact that none of them has any past connection with the Sangh Parivar. The All Assam Students Union (AASU)-led Assam movement, whose kurta-trails the RSS latched on to late-70s onwards, and which morphed into the AGP following the 1985 peace accord with Rajiv Gandhi, has now been fully co-opted and reduced into a bit player. Credit for most of this should go to the RSS.

The Assam movement was fuelled by ethnic chauvinism. It started as an anti-outsider (Bahiragata) movement, mainly targeted at both Muslim and Hindu Bengalis and Marwaris. The RSS saw promise in this, but had to deal with the contradiction of ethnicity and religion. In my 1984 book, Assam: A Valley Divided, I had recorded a 1982 conversation with K S Sudarshan, then “Bauddhik Pramukh”, or intellectual chief, of the RSS, and later Sarsanghchalak, where he expressed frustration at the agitators targeting both Hindu and Muslim Bengalis. “Hindu toh arakshit hai (the Hindu is unprotected),” he said repeatedly — implying where would Bangladesh’s Hindus find refuge, if not in the adjoining states of India?

Mr Sonowal now tells me one of the big contributions RSS made was to change the national image of the Assam movement, which was seen as anti-national because it blockaded crude supplies to the mainland. The movement leaders started seeing the RSS as friends. The RSS worked patiently — I believe helped along by sympathisers like Kumud Sarma and some former local civil servants — to shift the emphasis fundamentally from anti-immigrant to anti-Muslim immigrant. Popular hatred and fear of the “Bongali”, in this ideological transformation, became anti-Muslim immigrant, or “Mian Manus”, pejoratively.

confuzzled dude wrote:

Win or lose, the BJP is Assam’s front-runner, from being non-existent three decades ago except for thousands of committed RSS workers, pracharaks and strategists brought in from all over. How they sowed the first seeds of their ideology, co-opted the massively popular Assam movement, converted its ethnic-chauvinistic impulse into an anti-Muslim one, built a launch pad for the BJP and then conjured up a local leadership is the stuff of political folklore.

The BJP is not just the front-runner now, but has built an unprecedented alliance with Bodo tribals, cherry-picked talent from regional leader Asom Gana Parishad and now even the Congress — never mind the fact that none of them has any past connection with the Sangh Parivar. The All Assam Students Union (AASU)-led Assam movement, whose kurta-trails the RSS latched on to late-70s onwards, and which morphed into the AGP following the 1985 peace accord with Rajiv Gandhi, has now been fully co-opted and reduced into a bit player. Credit for most of this should go to the RSS.

The Assam movement was fuelled by ethnic chauvinism. It started as an anti-outsider (Bahiragata) movement, mainly targeted at both Muslim and Hindu Bengalis and Marwaris. The RSS saw promise in this, but had to deal with the contradiction of ethnicity and religion. In my 1984 book, Assam: A Valley Divided, I had recorded a 1982 conversation with K S Sudarshan, then “Bauddhik Pramukh”, or intellectual chief, of the RSS, and later Sarsanghchalak, where he expressed frustration at the agitators targeting both Hindu and Muslim Bengalis. “Hindu toh arakshit hai (the Hindu is unprotected),” he said repeatedly — implying where would Bangladesh’s Hindus find refuge, if not in the adjoining states of India?

Mr Sonowal now tells me one of the big contributions RSS made was to change the national image of the Assam movement, which was seen as anti-national because it blockaded crude supplies to the mainland. The movement leaders started seeing the RSS as friends. The RSS worked patiently — I believe helped along by sympathisers like Kumud Sarma and some former local civil servants — to shift the emphasis fundamentally from anti-immigrant to anti-Muslim immigrant. Popular hatred and fear of the “Bongali”, in this ideological transformation, became anti-Muslim immigrant, or “Mian Manus”, pejoratively.

http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/shekhar-gupta-assam-s-35-year-saffronisation-116040800961_1.html