If religion is the opium of the masses, it is the cocaine of populists. It is piety that anoints political pygmies as national icons. The 55-year-old Himanta Biswa Sarma, Assam’s 15th chief minister has become Hindutva’s new high priest du jour. His roots are in the Congress, the historical vanguard of secularism. But he owes his national prominence to the BJP, which took him into its fold.
Previously, Sarma was secularism’s anti-Sangh savant for an over a decade. Ironically, his first visit after he became Assam’s BJP CM was to the RSS headquarters in Guwahati. From the day he joined the party in 2015, the saffron depth of Sarma’s ideological identity became deeper than any longstanding Sangh activist’s convictions. Sarma raves more about mandirs, Muslims, maulvis and madrasas than about his government’s record. Because of his flexibility, amiability and accessibility, he could get everyone on board to get his party a second term in 2021. Called ‘Mama’ by Assamese youth, Sarma’s saffron avatar makes him the uncrowned monarch of the northeastern political arena.
Sarma’s hoary Hindutva hyperbole indicates he has unlearned all he had absorbed from the Congress culture. Since Assam is troubled by illegal immigration from Bangladesh and has seen aggressive minority politics for three decades, Sarma is the region’s messiah determined to marginalise local Muslim influence in state politics. As a continuation of his shrewd legislative and administrative strategy, recently he got the highly debatable Assam Repealing Bill and Assam Compulsory Registration of Muslim Marriages and Divorces Bill 2024 passed in the assembly, seeking to repeal and replace the Assam Moslem Marriages and Divorces Registration Act of 1935. Though the new legislations, Sarma is in a way attempting to introduce his own blueprint of a regional uniform civil code.
A week ago, he combated the opposition in the assembly with remarks about minorities: “I will take sides. What can you do? Will not let Miya Muslims take over Assam,” adding, “You Miya Muslims will take the entire lower Assam? We will not let you all to take lower Assam—no, never.” He reeled out data about democratic imbalances in the state. He also claimed, “Changing demography is a big issue for me. In Assam, the Muslim population has reached 40 percent today. In 1951, it was 12 percent. We have lost many districts.”
Predictably, the Congress-led opposition excoriated him for inciting communal strife. In the words of Assam Congress president Bhupen Kumar Borah: “There are 18 opposition parties in Assam who have jointly filed a police complaint against the CM. Since the Lok Sabha poll results, the Assam CM is trying to create communal riots and making sensitive statements even inside the assembly. We will also write to the president.” The next day, opposition parties met the governor and demanded Sarma’s resignation. Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh fumed: “Assam CM said is unacceptable and condemnable. A sick mind and a loud mouth are a toxic combination.” Sarma retorted: “Let [the opposition] compete for minority votes. I am not in the competition.”
He never leaves a chance to assert his Hinduism and corner Islamists and political opponents. Last year too, he red-flagged Assam’s Muslim population growth, claiming it was going vertical at a stratospheric rate of 30 percent per decade as against 16 percent for the Hindus. He predicted: “By 2041, Assam will become a Muslim-majority state. It’s a reality and nobody can stop it.”
Sarma has been targeting Muslim institutions that he feels breed fundamentalism. In January, he closed down all state-run madrasas and announced: “Private madrasas are protected by the Constitution, as it is written that the government cannot touch minority-run educational institutes. They don’t even fall under the RTE Act. But having said that, the Assam police and education department are working together so that we can reduce at least 1,000 private madrasas. From 3,000, it will come down to 2,000 and we are negotiating this with the private madrasa bodies.”
Sarma welcomes bombastic battles that upgrade his Hindutva credentials. He uses any pushback by opposition parties as an opportunity to further turbocharge his agenda. As a Congressman, he had learned the art of breaking parties, hosting defectors by toppling governments and demolishing established rivals. His speed-learning skill has enabled him to learn the saffron ropes fast. He has mastered the grammar and verse of the Sangh parivar’s language of nationalism.
A favourite of Amit Shah, who inducted him in the party when Shah was BJP president, Sarma has proved his worth to his mentor. In 2021, he translated a book on Shah, Amit Shah and the March of BJP, into Assamese. Sarma also enjoys a good rapport with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the top RSS leadership. His detractors cringe at his braggadocio, while his admirers adore his propinquity to hardcore Hindutva—the Northeast’s own Modi-Yogi combo who keeps Muslim fundamentalism in check through aggressive posturing and administrative action.
This mojo is reflected in Sarma’s strategic savvy in various political missions where he weeded out anti-BJP, Congress-led governments from most northeastern states. He was responsible for BJP’s Tripura victory. He is a master of coups and an astute alliance fabricator. He expanded the BJP footprint in Manipur, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland. In Odisha, he mobilised cadres and played the Hindu card to the hilt with the “Jai Jagannath!” war cry. He has been made co-in-charge for the upcoming Jharkhand elections. His first move was to break the ruling JMM by pulling former CM Champai Soren. He had already set the agenda for polarisation in the state. He told the media in Ranchi on May 16, “Hindu ko thanda mat karo. Hindu abhi garam hua hai, garam rehne do. Abhi logo ne ‘Jai Shri Ram’ bolna shuru kiya hai bahut saalo baad. (Don’t calm Hindus down. Hindus have just woken up, let them rise. They have just started saying ‘Jai Shri Ram’.) These secular people will try to cool us down and not let us chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’. Can they stop namaaz?”
Since the BJP leadership loves ideologically toxic diatribes against the Congress, Sarma hasn’t let them down. During the Lok Sabha elections he fumed: “Voting for Congress means encouraging the ‘Babars’ in the country. When Congress gets votes, ‘Aurangzebs’ get vitamins. If Congress wins, the Babars and Aurangzebs will start their atrocities on our people all over India. Congress won in Karnataka, and I don’t know from where the Babars and Aurangzebs got oxygen, the chaos started.... We have to reject the Hindutva of ‘chunavi’ (election-minded) Congress.”
Naturally, Sarma has emerged as Modi-Shah’s most trusted and tested pongo. While breaking the Uddhav Thackeray’s government, all Shiv Sena rebels including the current CM Eknath Shinde were sequestered safely in Assam until the saffron government took charge. Sarma’s talent lies in his rare combination of rigid ideology, flexible statecraft and pragmatic politics. Seen by his promoters as the future Hindu ‘hriday samrat’ (king of hearts) because the sun rises in the east, Sarma’s star is rising in Modiverse, too. The jury is still out on whether he is a superstar or just a comet of strife.
prabhu chawla
prabhuchawla@newindianexpress.com
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