Saffronizing the periphery: Explaining the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party in contemporary Assam

Abstract

The remotely located and relatively marginalized states of northeast India have historically been a Congress bastion, despite posing continued challenges to the nation-building project through many insurgency movements. The success of the grand old party depended on creating ‘umbrella coalitions’ with diverse ethnic groups to sustain power. However, since General elections 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has successfully challenged the dominance of Congress, particularly in the state of Assam. In this context, this paper seeks to discuss recent shifts in electoral dynamics in Assam and its implication for a region hitherto considered peripheral. The paper situates the BJP’s emergence as the new locus of power in the long-term processes of party politics in Assam and discusses the resultant shifts in social alignments, cleavages and political issues in the multi-ethnic landscape of the state. It also explores the role of the RSS in negotiating its larger ideological interests with local political realities of the state and its ability to appropriate local cultural symbols. The paper concludes that the unprecedented rise of the BJP, which is a result of the changing political opportunity structures in Assam, will nevertheless be tested severely due to the state’s multi-ethnic character and complex, localized social fault lines.