Assam: The rise and rise of the AIUDF

The Congress’s landslide victory in the recent assembly elections in Assam has taken most observers by surprise. True, the 76-year-old chief minister Tarun Gogoi had said that he would comfortably return to power for a third consecutive term but no one had expected the party to virtually decimate the opposition.

The Congress eventually won 78 of the 126 assembly seats, 25 more then its tally in the 2006 polls, while its ally the Bodoland People’s Party (BPF), won 12 seats.

However, amid the shock and euphoria generated by the Congress’s spectacular victory, the national media has barely noticed the emergence of the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) as the main opposition party in the assembly.

From 10 seats in 2006, the AIUDF, which claims to represent the interest of Muslim migrants of Assam, has won 18 seats this time, and is ahead of both the BJP and the AGP.

The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) could win just 10 seats, down from 24 in the 2006 polls, while the BJP had to rest content with just five seats. The saffron party had won 10 seats in 2006.

The AIUDF, led by perfume baron Badruddin Ajmal, came into existence in 2005 and, in just one year, it opened its account with 10 seats in the 2006 assembly polls. This year it won 8 more seats, most of them in the minority-dominated belts of the Brahmaputra valley.

The party’s rise has given birth to fears that Assam was headed back to the violent days when the indigenous Assamese, afraid of being swamped by a flood of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants, had clashed with the migrant population. Thousands were killed in the massacres that continued to bleed Assam for over 20 years.

Less than a decade ago, the AIUDF was something of a political pariah. But the party’s rise in the last 10 years is clear evidence of a continuing demographic shift that successive Congress governments in the past have deliberately ignored.

There was a time when Gogoi had said that Hindu Bangladeshi’s are ‘foreigners and not refugees’. But this time he admitted at a press conference before the elections, that Hindu Bangladeshis are in fact refugees and should not to be treated like illegal immigrants.

Reflecting this change of stand, the Congress extensively wooed the large number of Bengali-speaking Hindu voters in Assam, particularly those settled in the Barak Valley, and succeeded in weaning them away from the BJP.

But Gogoi and his party did not keep any eye on the AIUDF which made inroads in minority-dominated areas, a fact that is reflected in the election results. According to local observers, the rise of the AIUDF is the result of the Congress allegedly turning a blind eye to illegal immigration from Bangladesh for petty political gains.

On the other hand, the ‘illegal migrants’ did not sit idle during this time. They came together under their own political party — the AIUDF — that was born after the Supreme Court scrapped the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act.

The AIUDF claims to be ‘secular’ organisation but it is common knowledge that its activities are focussed solely on safeguarding the interest of Assam’s Muslim population.

This bodes ill for the state’s fragile social fabric. How can Assam forget the pledge taken by Ajmal’s son at an election rally in 2006 to make the ‘Lungi’ and ‘Topi’ the national dress of Assam?

During the recent assembly elections, the AIUDF in its manifesto reiterated its commitment to issues affecting the religious minorities. Among other things, it promised land pattas to the ‘have-nots’ of the Muslim community in the char areas. The party’s manifesto also spoke of employment to minorities in proportion to their population.

With such promises, the party snatched four seats in Nagaon district, one in Kamrup, five each in Barpeta and Goalpara, three in Dhubri, and one each in Cachar and Bongaigaon district.
Tarun Gogoi may ignore the writing on the wall but his doing so will prove very costly for his party and the state.

The real ‘winner’ of the recent assembly polls is Badruddin Ajmal-led AIUDF. And this fact is already causing worry to local observers who are girding their loins for yet another demographic disaster.