[Assam] Two articles from Sanjib Baruah

[xourov pathok]

Here are two articles on the elections. Kindly post
them. Thanks

SB

Times of India June 1st 2006
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=Q0FQLzIwMDYvMDYvMDEjQXIwMjYwMA==&Mode=HTML&Locale=english-skin-custom

Minority Report
Impact of Assam polls on Muslim politics

By SANJIB BARUAH

It is a myth that Muslims vote for the Congress
because of its secular credentials. Minority prudence
has always been a factor. Muslims have often voted
strategically for the most likely winner. The
phenomenon hides a dark side of our democracy.
Security of life and property should be a universal
public good. It has become a private good that
political parties provide selectively in exchange for
political support. Voting to ensure ones physical
security erodes the meaning of citizenship.

          Security is a major reason why Muslims of
East Bengali descent have traditionally voted for the
Congress in Assam. The emergence of the Assam United
Democratic Front (AUDF) signals the desire to reject
that dependency. Liberal democrats should welcome the
assertion of a confident political voice by a
minority. It is not surprising that such a party
should come up in Assam. Nearly 31 per cent of Assams
population of 26.6 million is Muslim, according to the
2001 census. This is second only to Jammu and Kashmirs
and is about the same as the proportion of Muslims in 
undivided India.

          The AUDF, however, is not conceived as a
Muslim party. It put up a number of non-Muslim
candidates. But central to the success of all AUDF 
candidates was Badruddin Ajmals resources and support
among Muslims. For instance, Dimasa candidate Aditya
Langthasa is a doctor at Hojais impressive Ajmal Majid
Memorial Charitable Hospital funded by Ajmal. It used
to be said that all politics is local. In these times,
all politics may also be global.

          Ajmal is a small-town boy with a global
business empire. He is extremely well connected to
Islamic circles in India and abroad. This explains why
the imam of Jama Masjid campaigned so actively in this
election. While dissatisfaction with the Congress
following the courts invalidation of the IMDT law may
have precipitated Ajmals decision to launch AUDF, his
political optic and track record have never been
local. The foundation of Ajmals global business empire
is the aromatic bark that the Assamese call agaru or
agar. For much longer than oil and tea, demand for
agar has shaped Assams economic and political
fortunes. Agarbatti is made from it and oil extracted
from agar is the base for many attars and perfumes. It
is said that Mughals invaded Assam for the lure of
agar.

          The Rs 30 crore of his reported wealth that
made Ajmal the richest candidate in Assam is only a
small part of his global worth. The oil boom in the
Middle East raised the demand for agar enormously.
Ajmals once sleepy little hometown Hojai  the agar
capital of the world  shows the impact of that boom.
His Dubai-based Ajmal Group of Companies boasts of a
network of shops and distribution outlets in Bahrain,
Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Ajmal
Perfumes produces attars and fragrances that sell not
only in India and Middle Eastern countries, it has 
different lines of perfumes for African and East
European markets as well. The House of Ajmal has
showrooms and production units in Mumbai.

          Businessman-politician Ajmal is also Maulana
Badruddin Ajmal Al-Qasmi. He is a member of the
Majlis-e-Shura of his alma mater Darul Uloom, Deoband,
and a major benefactor of the institution. He has been
on the frontline of the defence of the embattled
Deobandi madrassas in the post-9/11 environment.
Deoband has now opened a department of English
language and literature on Ajmals initiative. Ajmal is
founderchairman of the Markazul Maarif (centre for
knowledge). It has introduced a highly competitive
two-year training programme in English language and 
computers for top madrassa graduates. According to a
report by a sympathetic observer, With flowing beards
and traditional madrassa dress of kurta and  pyjama
not lower than ankles, these young people flaunt
fluent English and etiquette believed to be
prerogative of only people with a public school 
background. Countering the turbaned and bearded hordes
image of the madrassa-educated men is clearly a goal
of this ambitious programme.

          Markazul Maarif is also a publishing house.
Among its publications is a short history of Deoband.
In Ajmals introduction he talks about Islam being the
most misunderstood religion and rejects the
fashionable distinction between fundamentalist and
Sufi Islam, one being bad and the other good. To
readers of Barbara Metcalf s classic study Islamic
Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860-1900 this
would be a familiar theme. The original Deobandis,
according to Metcalf, offered a composite form of
religious leadership and were simultaneously ulama and
Sufis. Ajmal heads the Assam unit of the
Jamait-Ulema-e-Hind  hardly surprising considering his
ties with Deoband. The organisation played a key role
in protests against the Bush visit to India in March.

          Can one separate Ajmals political moves in
Assam from everything else he does? His disenchantment
with the Congress may be deeper than what divides him
and Tarun Gogoi. Organisations in which he is a key
player are unhappy with the UPA governments embrace of
the US at a time when anti-Americanism is widespread
among Muslims worldwide. Even if Gogoi eventually
gives in to pressures from New Delhi and accepts Ajmal
as an ally, it will not bridge the deepening gulf
between Congress and Indian Muslims.

          The writer is at Centre for Policy Research,
New Delhi, and Bard College, New York




http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060515/asp/opinion/story_6222702.asp
The Telegraph (Calcutta) Monday, May 15, 2006 |

NEW PLAYERS IN A NEW REGIONAL GAME
Sanjib Baruah

As indigenous voters emerged a stronger force in
Assam, Sanjib Baruah explains how the Congresss
strategic alliance with Hagrama Mohilary paid off.

The election results in Assam are not a simple victory
of a national party, the Congress, over a regional
party, the Asom Gana Parishad. The ability of the
chief minister, Tarun Gogoi, to edge out his regional 
party rival as a more reliable defender of regional
interests significantly contributed to the Congress
victory. Gogoi convinced many indigenous voters  a
euphemistic, yet necessary, term for navigating Assams

politics that he may be able to defend their interests
better than the self-proclaimed regional party. The
change of the name of the state from Assam to Asom a
few weeks before the elections was hardly a minor 
signal. A national party with a regional outlook is
how Hiteswar Saikia had once described the Assam
Congress. For Saikia, that was political rhetoric, or 
at best a political dream. Gogoi has done it through
actual political coalition-building.

As many had predicted, the Supreme Courts invalidation
of the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal)
Act was a major issue in the recent election. The
Congress responded by proclaiming the Foreigners
(Tribunals for Assam) Order of 2006. The Bharatiya
Janata Party and the AGP cried foul and said that the
Congress has brought back the IMDT Act through the
backdoor. Large segments of the minorities,
dissatisfied with the Congresss inability to defend
the IMDT Act, betted on perfume mogul Badruddin Ajmals
Assam United Democratic Front. Incidentally, the
euphemism, minority, has a particular meaning in
Assam, and its antonym is not majority, but
indigenous.

Ajmal expected to become kingmaker in the event of a
hung assembly and hoped to have major influence on any
new government. But the political appearance of the
AUDF  funded by Ajmals deep pockets  scared many
indigenous voters who had traditionally backed the
AGP. Ajmals party won 10 seats  pretty much the number
he thought would give him that political leverage. But
since the results have come out, Ajmal has been busy
more in damage control than in influence peddling.
The party that acquired the influence that Ajmal had
fantasized about, and won one more seat than the AUDF,
is the faction of the Bodoland Peoples Progressive
Forum led by Hagrama Mohilary. And on the key regional

issue in post-IMDT Assam  illegal immigration from
Bangladesh  Mohilary and Ajmal are in opposite camps.

Mohilary and other Bodo militant leaders today evoke
more confidence among many indigenous voters on the
illegal immigration question than the AGP. 
While Bodo leaders are not vocal participants in the
IMDT debate, they are trusted not for their words, but
because of their track record in Bodo-dominated areas.

Hagrama Mohilary is perhaps the single biggest winner
of this election: a remarkable achievement for a
relative newcomer to electoral politics. Until about
two years ago, he was the leader of the dreaded Bodo 
Liberation Tigers. His organization was disbanded only
in December 2003 following an accord signed with the
Central and state governments. Last years elections to
the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Council gave
Mohilary his first chance to display his style of
electoral politics. That was when the political
partnership between him and the state Congress 
began.

The formation of the BTAC was the result of both the
BLTs armed struggle and the overground political
mobilization by the All Bodo Students Union. The BPPF
includes both camps of the Bodo movement. However, in
the BTAC elections, Mohilary put up his former BLT
colleagues as independent candidates against official
BPPF candidates. There were violent clashes between
Mohilary loyalists and ABSU supporters and allegations
of vote rigging led to re-poll in two constituencies.
Mohilary himself won his seat uncontested  apparently
a prestige symbol for former militants adjusting to
democracy because it proclaims unchallenged political 
dominance.

Unlike the BJP and AGP, the Congress did not put up
any official candidates in the BTAC elections. It
allowed the Congress to remain on the best of terms
with all factions of the Bodo leadership and wait and
see before developing an electoral strategy. When the
Mohilary-led BTAC was sworn in, Tarun Gogoi and three
of his ministerial colleagues attended the ceremony,
but top leaders of the BPPF stayed away. In the
assembly elections, the alliance between the Mohilary
faction and the Congress was quite open. The Congress
did not put up candidates in five constituencies 
and asked its supporters to vote for BPPF(H)
candidates.

While Bodo-specific issues such as additional
developmental funds for the BTAC area and more powers
to the BTAC, are likely to be priorities for the 
BPPF(H), the party also attaches enormous significance
to state-wide matters. Since the election results, its
spokesman, Khampa Borgoyary, has spoken of indigenous
ethnic groups having a significant say in the running 
of the state government for the first time since
Independence. This, he says, has been facilitated by
an attitudinal change of the state Congress
leadership. Solving the problem of illegal immigration
will be a priority for his party because it concerns
all the indigenous people of the state.

The historic emergence of Bodo leaders as more trusted
defenders of indigenous interests becomes particularly
apparent when their spectacular electoral success is
contrasted with the defeat of the AGP in almost the 
entire Upper Assam  a stronghold of AGP-style
regionalism.To be sure, Gogoi himself did not spare
any efforts to address the concerns of minorities
after the court struck down the IMDT law. He supported
the amendment of the Foreigners Order and criticized 
statements by political opponents and by the state
governor about thousands of Bangladeshis entering
Assam through the porous border. But unlike his
political rival, the state Congress president,
Bhubaneswar Kalita, Gogoi persistently called Ajmals
AUDF party communal and showed no interest in an
alliance. That gave him high marks from indigenous
opinion-makers and voters.

The contrast with the AGP could not be more striking.
Just before the vote-count began, the AGP announced
that it would ally with AUDF to form a new government.
Barring the issue of illegal migration from
Bangladesh, said party president Brindabon Goswami,
there is not much of difference between the AGP and
the AUDF. Both parties have regional aspirations and
it will be easier to work with them.

In coming days, there will be many challenges to the
brand new political equation that has emerged in
Assam. There is already a feeling in Congress circles
that while the support of the BPPF(H) and a few
independents may enable the party to form the
government, the party cannot afford a further erosion
of its traditional support among minorities. Thanks to
the AUDFs success, the number of minority Congress
legislators has come down to eight from thirteen in
the previous assembly. There is pressure to get the
AUDF on board. And not surprisingly, the pressure has
come from New Delhi as much as from the grassroots. It
was the Congress observer, Digvijay Singh, who said in
Guwahati,it will be only thanks from us if AUDF comes
forward to support us. Ajmal has already expressed a
desire to meet Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

The next few days will determine whether the new
regional attire of the Assam Congress  the Bodo
dokhona rather than the Assamese gamosa  is only 
a temporary electoral fashion or the sign of a
significant regionalization of a national party.

The author is at the Centre for Policy Research, New
Delhi, and Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

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