Importance of religion and language in Assam elections.

There are many issues in Assam but the people of Assam mainly vote depending on these two factors language and religion.

After 2000 Assam has given power to congress three times consecutively. This happened only in Assam that congress managed to gain power three times in a row but in 2014 Loksabha the BJP led alliance managed to upset the status quo and in 2016 it even managed to grab the power from the clutches of Congress. In 2019 loksabha the seat share to vote share ratio in Assam for BJP was one of the highest amongst the major states. Among the bigger states where the Congress contested the election on its own it had the better seat share to vote share ratio in Assam than the states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhatisgarh where the Congress to managed to defeat BJP in Assembly elections 2018. To understand the multilayered politics in Assam the understanding of above mentioned statistics is very necessary. Assam which has cast, religion, linguistic nationality, migration and deprivation. There are many factors which drives the Assam politics but the larger issue is the dynamic between language and religion.

1) Historical Migration has shaped the Assam’s political geography.Migration is big issue in Assam. There has been two distinct waves of migration. Bengalis from East Bengal which is Bangladesh today came to Assam these Bengalis are Hindus as well as Muslims. This migration happened before and after the independence period. Then there was a big scale migration of Tea or Ex- Tea garden tribes who are recognised as OBC’s by Assam government. The government says these Tea tribes are “economically very backward and literacy rate is also very low.”There is a large share of Scheduled Tribes (ST’s) in the population. They have already lived in the region from the longest times and culturally they differ from the Tea tribes. Assam can be understood when you look at the five major sub-regions and the divide of population on the basis of religion, language and social group. The five sub-regions are: Upper Assam, Lower Assam, North Assam, Central Assam and Barak Valley. MUSLIMS HAVE ONE THIRD SHARE IN THE POPULATION BUT THEY ARE CONFINED TO ONLY SOME AREAS.After the dissolvement of state of Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories Assam tops the list of states having Muslim population in India. According to the 2011 census there are 34.2% Muslims in the state. As it is seen in India the population is not distributed evenly across the districts. 15 districts have a lower average of Muslim population than the state average. Whereas nine districts have Muslims in majority. The migrated Muslims from the Bangladesh resided mainly in these districts on Bangladesh Border. The proximity to Bangladesh and history of political conflicts dominated the Assam legislature also in pre independence era. The migration of bengali Muslim farmers happened to capture the Assam’s wastealnds, which sowed the roots of an Assamese backlash against Bangladeshi migrants. When the Bengali Hindu elite tried to dominate the linguistic aspirations of the newly rising Assamese elite the conflict was born and is still there after independence. 

2) Not all Bengalis in Assam are Muslims.According to 2011 census the Bengali is the mother tongue of 28.9% people in Assam. Once again the distribution in state of Bengali speakers is not even. Assam has a large number of Bengali Hindus. For example in the Barak valley region which has three districts and 15 Assembly seats in it. 80.8% people speak Bengali in the region but only 48.1% people are Muslims. This means that there is a large number of Bengali Hindus in the region. Similarly there are Muslims who have Assamese as their mother tongue. 

3) The mix of linguistic and religious identity holds a great importance in Assam politics.The politics of BJP is dependent on forming the rainbow coalition of Hindus across India. BJP had tasted success in Assam but it is still not as stable as it would want it to be. The conflict between the Assamese speaking Hindus and Bengali speaking migrant Hindus is an prevailing challenge before the BJP as it wants them to unite. The CSDS- Lokniti survey showed that BJP have managed to gain support from the Bengali speaking Hindus from 2011 to 2019 but the support of Assamese speaking Hindus have gone down since it reached the pick in 2014 Loksabha elections. Yet the majority of Assamese speaking Hindus supported the BJP in 2019 Loksabha polls. The congress had a widespread support in Assam when it won the state election in 2011 but Assamese speaking Muslims were the most loyal supporters of Congress but the Bengali speaking Muslims are not.The Bengali speaking Muslims traditionally support the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) led by Badruddin Ajmal: 20% of the AIUDF’S vote share and 31% of it’s seats were concentrated in Barak Valley in the state in the 2016 state elections, when it recorded it’s best ever performance in terms of vote share in the Assembly elections, although the region only accounts for 12% AC’s in the state. With the rise of the BJP the support of Muslims to the Congress has significantly increased and also decreased the linguistic divided which existed earlier. It is evident that Congress is the biggest opposition to the BJP so the Muslim vote would have been migrated from AIUDF to the congress anyhow. That is why Ajmal Badruddin is trying to find ways of adopting accomodative nature with the Congress party. The congress now needs to focus on attracting the Hindu votes either Assamese or Bengali’s towards itself in order to gain the power in the state. By making the anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act plank on important part of it’s election campaign, the Congress seems to have consciously decided to try and win back the Assamese speaking Hindus as it had the more  support from  them previously compared to the Bengali speaking Hindus. The CAA grants citizenship to the Bengali speaking Hindu migrants there are some fears in the minds of Assamese speaking Hindu community about the future demography of the state. The BJP on the other hand is trying to attack the alliance of Congress with AIUDF, a party which is seen to champion the interests of primarily Bengali Speaking Muslims.

– Ashay Yedge