Himanta Sarma is reading RSS-Modi politics wrong. Hardliner image won’t help beyond a point

Himanta Sarma is reading RSS-Modi politics wrong. Hardliner image won’t help beyond a point

Himanta Biswa Sarma, the Chief Minister of Assam, is on fire. On Monday, he thundered in the assembly: “As long as Himanta Biswa Sarma is alive, we will not allow child marriage in Assam…before 2026, I will stop the shops and businesses of child marriage.” He was responding to opposition’s objections to Cabinet’s decision to repeal Assam Muslim Marriages and Divorces Registration Act 1935, that allows registration of marriages even if the bride and the groom are not of legal marriageable age.

Badruddin Ajmal of the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) earlier said that the government was trying to “provoke the Muslims and polarise voters”. Last week, a proposed law, the Assam Healing (Prevention of Evil) Practices Bill 2024, to criminalise ‘magical healing’ had drawn adverse reaction from Christian clergy who argued that there was nothing called ‘magical healing’ in Christianity as it has “healing prayers like every other religion”.

These reactions must make Sarma smug. Ajmals of the world might complain but the CM’s argument about child marriage can’t be dismissed. There is, however, a reason why many people tend to see all his moves through a political and ideological prism.  After all, he has been on a roll since becoming CM— reviling ‘Miya’ or Bengali-speaking Muslims, launching eviction drives allegedly targeting the Muslims, and converting government-run madrasas into general schools, among many other things.

Surely, these moves get him a thumbs-up from the Right-wing ecosystem. His transition from a moderate Congressman into a Hindutva hardliner is evidently making his new political family proud. He is much sought-after during poll campaigns even outside Assam. If we discount the fact about former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Assam connection–from where he got elected to the Rajya Sabha berth–there has been no other leader from the northeastern state who has made it this big. No Assam leader before Sarma was a crowd-puller outside the state. Everybody remembers DK Barooah, the former Congress president, but that’s because of his ‘Indira is India and India is Indira’ comment, not because he could add any vote to his party’s kitty outside Assam.

That’s what makes Sarma different. So far, so good. About three decades back, he had told his would-be wife, Riniki Bhuyan, “Tell your mother, I will be the chief minister of Assam one day.” With that achieved, he must have the next goal in mind. Sarma is now seen as Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah’s protégé, who can be a potential match for Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. However, that’s not what Himanta might like to end up as. Before we talk about it further, let’s look at his counterparts in other states.

What’s keeping other BJP CMs busy?

Bhajan Lal Sharma was a surprise pick for Rajasthan CM. He continues to spring surprises. Sharma got so carried away announcing one policy after another that he forgot to convene a Cabinet meeting for one month.

Last Wednesday, he decided to give up VIP movement privilege. Sharma now stops at traffic lights and makes headlines.

Madhya Pradesh CM Mohan Yadav is working overtime to erase his predecessor Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s imprint—dropping 45 chairpersons and vice-chairpersons of boards and corporations, bringing in a new set of bureaucrats in important positions, and shunting out district collectors and superintendents of police to drive home the point that the bureaucracy had better change its way of functioning.

Yadav celebrated his son’s marriage in Rajasthan’s Pushkar on Saturday, dancing to the beats of “hansta hua Noorani chehra/ kaali julfen rang sunahara/teri jawani, tauba re tauba”, the Dainik Bhaskar reported. He chose Pushkar to “send a message” about shunning VIP culture.

Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami must think that he has become a cynosure of all eyes in the Sangh Parivar when his state became the first to implement the Uniform Civil Code–excluding Goa where it has been in place for long. He has warned of ‘stern action’ against ‘love jihad’ and has coined terms like ‘land jihad’.

Newly appointed Chhattisgarh CM Vishnu Deo Sai has vowed to “stop” conversions in his state. A proposed law in Chhattisgarh aimed at regulating religious conversion imposes a number of conditions for those planning to convert (to Christianity) but goes easy with those wanting ghar wapsi or reconversion to Hinduism.

Many other BJP CMs are following party president JP Nadda’s footsteps–lie low, do nothing, and follow the orders to survive and possibly thrive. Bhupendra Patel of Gujarat, Manohar Lal Khattar of Haryana, Pema Khandu of Arunachal Pradesh, Pramod Sawant of Goa, and Manik Saha of Tripura may be placed in this category. Of course, Manipur CM N Biren Singh is in a category of his own. He is known to have Shah’s blessing but he is embarrassing his patron by putting a big blemish on his record as the country’s home minister.

Expiry date for hardliners

The Assam CM, an ex-Congress member, must think that ideological loyalty and becoming a Hindu hardliner would please Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the larger Sangh ecosystem. He has got it wrong. Being a hardliner hasn’t paid off for most politicians beyond a point in the BJP. If Kalyan Singh was alive, he would have told Sarma how he lost his job as Uttar Pradesh CM after the demolition of the Babri mosque in December 1992 and had to form his own party seven years later. The Hindutva icon returned to the party fold later but he was a much-diminished leader who ended up in a Raj Bhavan before he passed away, almost in political oblivion.

Then there was firebrand Uma Bharti, once an accused in the Babri demolition case, who led the BJP to a stupendous victory in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly election in 2003. She had to resign barely after nine months and was never allowed to reclaim the chair that was eventually given to Shivraj Singh Chouhan, a moderate who had to finally vacate it in 2023 just when he was trying to become a hardliner. Bharti got a slot in the Modi-led government finally, only to be edged out later.

Sarma might also want to speak to Vinay Katiyar, a firebrand in the Ram temple movement, to understand what happens to hardliners. Sarma can also check with Bhopal MP Pragya Singh Thakur, who got the BJP ticket and defeated a political giant like Digvijaya Singh in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. But she was kept away from the last MP assembly election campaign and may not get a chance to defend her seat in 2024. There are instances galore. It’s not just about the Modi era. Hardliners have always had an expiry date in the BJP. Sarma can’t read PM Modi’s mind but he couldn’t have missed the fact that many hardliners who made it to Modi’s council of ministers have gone quiet- during the second term, at least. He can check with Giriraj Singh, Anurag Thakur or Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, among others.

Lessons from Yogi 

The Assam CM must realise that the Sangh likes those who use their passion for Hindutva as tadaka or seasoning and use development as the main ingredient. Look at Modi’s politics post-2002 Gujarat riots. UP CM Yogi Adityanath understood it well and is therefore working on an image makeover from a rabble-rousing Hindu hardliner into a vikas purush or development man. Yogi 2.0 is a far cry from Yogi 1.0 who created anti-Romeo squads, unleashed police on anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protestors, and bulldozed Muslim houses. In his second term in office, Adityanath, like Modi from his second term onwards, is assiduously building his image as a CM who is focused on making UP a $1 trillion economy.

That’s the way forward for Sarma too. He was right in claiming, while speaking on the state budget 2024-2025, that Assam’s economic growth had consistently exceeded the national GDP growth rate and the per capita income doubled since 2016 when the BJP came to power. As per a report by Business Today on India’s top 10 states with the fastest growth in per capita income in the last decade, Assam is in fifth place. The state’s per capita income has jumped 204 per cent to Rs 1.19 lakh in FY23 from Rs 38,945 in FY13 by clocking a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of Rs 11.77 per cent. The CAGR is 9.3 per cent for India. Assam’s gross state domestic product (GSDP) for 2024-2025 shows an impressive growth of 13 per cent over the previous financial year. There are many other indicators on which Assam has done well with Sarma at the helm–first as finance minister (2016-2021) and then as CM (2021 onwards).

Of course, Sarma doesn’t have a Gujarat-like Assam model—or even the UP model—of development yet. He must also deliver a command performance for now. Ayodhya Ram temple is the BJP’s principal plank in the 2024 Lok Sabha election. The party can’t afford to let its intensity and momentum dip in the run-up to the polls. That should explain the attempts to build up polarising narratives from different states, which would keep reminding the Hindus of the importance and magnitude of the Modi government’s role in righting the historical wrong in Ayodhya.

There are political imperatives, too. In a state like Assam with a third of the Muslim population and a polarising figure like Badruddin Ajmal, dog-whistling politics might look useful. But Sarma must remember that Modi is all about Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual Hindutva, no matter how much his colleagues in the BJP and the Sangh celebrate Savarkar’s political Hindutva. That’s also true about Mohan Bhagwat-led Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) today. This nuanced shift is not a difficult choice to make but Himanta Biswa Sarma has to first decide whether he has already achieved his goal, as he told his wife three decades back, or if he wants to set and pursue the next one.

DK Singh is ThePrint’s Political Editor. Views are personal.

(Edited by Ratan Priya)