ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

Articles by Dhruba Pratim SharmaSubscribe to Dhruba Pratim Sharma

Religious Polarisation Outweighs Ethnic Mobilisation

The Assam assembly elections continued the trend towards deepening of religious polarisation in the state. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s alliance strategy helped in retaining its hold over the ethnic base that had shifted to the party in 2016.

After Gogoi

With the passing away of Tarun Gogoi and assembly elections due in April 2021, the Congress party faces three formidable challenges: resolving leadership crisis and organisational revamping, forging a social coalition and ensuring a consensus over a new ideological middle ground among diverse political parties and factions in the state to challenge the dominance of the Bharatiya Janata Party. These three challenges are deeply intertwined and primarily owe to religion overpowering the ethnic and linguistic barriers of political mobilisation in the state.

Assam 2019: NDA Deepens Its Dominance

The 2019 elections, held against the backdrop of massive protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, were seen as a litmus test for the Bharatiya Janata Party in terms of retaining its base among the state’s indigenous communities that were bitterly opposed to the bill. The party’s success in neutralising opposition to the controversial bill amongst non-Muslims and diverting attention towards the increase in the percentage of Muslim population, marked a continuation of the trend witnessed in the 2016 assembly elections, when it managed to patch up a “rainbow coalition” with regionalist groups raising the issue of protection of land and identity from “illegal Bangladeshi Muslim migrants.”

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