'Real Issue Is Land, Not Religion In Assam'

'The real fault line in Assam is not Hindu versus Muslim. It is Assamese versus Bengali -- and within that, the specific anxiety about undocumented Bangladeshi settlers claiming land and altering the demographic balance of the state.'

An independent observer from Assam speaks candidly and breaks down the real reasons behind the Bharatiya Janata Party's commanding hold -- a third straight election victory -- on the state, the collapse of the Congress, and the fault lines that will define Assam's politics for a generation.

Himanta Biswa Sarma's BJP is not just winning Assam -- it is rewriting the rules of political dominance in India's north east.

In this conversation with Prasanna D Zore/Rediff, this independent observer with deep roots in the state lays out exactly why: A combination of organisational muscle, financial firepower, a divided and directionless Congress, and a polarising but potent narrative around illegal immigration from Bangladesh that has resonated across community lines in ways that national commentators consistently underestimate.

The BJP's dominance in Assam, the observer is at pains to stress, is fundamentally different from its wins in Uttar Pradesh or Gujarat or Maharashtra: It is built on a specific, local anxiety about land, identity, and demographic change that goes back decades and has now reached a boiling point.

The Congress, meanwhile, is not merely losing -- it is becoming irrelevant, its organisation hollowed out, its leadership absent, its identity fatally entangled with a constituency that the majority of Assamese voters -- Hindu and Muslim alike -- have grown wary of.

What emerges from this conversation is a picture of a state where the political battle has already been won, and where the real contest now is about what kind of Assam emerges on the other side.

'BJP's Win in Assam Is Nothing Like Its Win in UP or Gujarat -- And Most People Don't Understand That'

This observer's first and most insistent point is that lazy national comparisons miss the point entirely. The BJP's dominance in Assam is not driven by the same Hindu nationalist wave that sweeps through the Hindi heartland. It is rooted in something older, more local, and in many ways more durable: The fear of being demographically and culturally overwhelmed by the migration -- of both Hindu and Muslims -- from Bangladesh.

"BJP winning in Assam is very different from BJP winning in Uttar Pradesh or Gujarat," the observer says firmly. The state has its own distinct ethnic and linguistic identity -- Assamese-speaking Hindus, tribal communities, Hindi-speaking migrants, and indigenous Muslims -- who speak Assamese and share cultural practices similar to Assamese Hindus -- have lived in the region for generations.

What unites most of them, the observer argues, is not Hindu nationalism in the classical RSS sense, but a shared anxiety about Bangladeshi Muslim (the term 'Miyas' used by the people of Assam, he says emphatically, specifically targets Muslims from Bangladesh but not the Assamese Muslims with whom they have lived together for generations) encroachment -- on land, in forests, in villages.

This distinction matters enormously for reading the BJP's mandate.

Himanta Sarma's government is not simply riding a Modi wave. It has constructed a local political identity that speaks directly to Assam's specific fears -- and that identity is proving far stickier than anything the Opposition has been able to offer.

'Congress Identified Itself With Bengali Muslims -- And That Was Its Political Death Sentence'

If the BJP's success has a local story, the Congress' failure has an equally local one -- and the observer is blunt about it.

"When you are the party identified with Bengali Muslims, how can anybody vote for that party?" asks the observer. The reference is to the perception -- widespread in Assam -- that the Congress over the decades cultivated Bengali Muslim vote banks, a strategy that may have delivered short-term electoral arithmetic but ultimately destroyed the party's credibility with the Assamese Hindu majority, with tribal communities, and even with indigenous Assamese Muslims who resent being grouped with Bengali-speaking migrants and whose lands too have been encroached upon by the Muslims who came from Bangladesh.

The structural damage runs deep.

The Congress went into the 2026 election as a divided house -- uncertain about alliances, unclear about its messaging, and unable to project a credible alternative to Sarma's muscular governance style.

The observer notes that the Congress' organisational infrastructure at the constituency level is nowhere close to the BJP's, which was reportedly spending between Rs 16 crore and Rs 20 crore per constituency -- a staggering figure that smaller parties simply cannot match.

"In front of the BJP, the Congress is nothing in terms of organisation and finance," the observer says plainly explaining the importance of money in winning elections.

The party's national leadership is run, the observer implies, in a style that may have worked in the 1970s but has failed to respond to the ground reality.

"You have not responded the way the party needed to be run," the observer says, adding that the Congress' failure to build a functional alliance at the last moment -- with leaders publicly feuding and sending a confused image to voters -- sealed its fate.

The most nuanced part of the conversation, according to this observer, concerns the BJP's anti-encroachment narrative -- specifically, the eviction of alleged illegal settlers from reserve forests and government land.

The observer is careful to distinguish this from simple anti-Muslim sentiment, insisting the issue is fundamentally about land, language and sovereignty, not faith.

"One lakh bighas have been cleared from reserved forests," the observer notes, referring to the Sarma government's high-profile eviction drives. Around 80 percent of those evicted, the observer acknowledges, are of Bengali Muslim origin. But the crucial point -- which the national media has largely missed -- is that indigenous Assamese Muslims have largely supported or at least not opposed these evictions.

"If you ask an Assamese Hindu: Are you against Assamese Muslims, or against Bengali Hindus? Ninety percent will say Bengali Hindu," the observer explains, capturing a community fracture that cuts across religious lines.

"The real fault line in Assam is not Hindu versus Muslim. It is Assamese versus Bengali -- and within that, the specific anxiety about undocumented Bangladeshi settlers claiming land and altering the demographic balance of the state," he explains.

The observer cites a striking recent incident: a Muslim student leader reportedly declared that the next census should count Bengali-speaking people rather than Assamese-speaking people -- a statement that triggered a fierce backlash from all Assamese organisations, including Assamese Muslims.

"The numbers are growing," the observer notes of the Bengali Muslim population, which is expected to approach 39 percent of the state's population -- a figure that has concentrated minds across communities and handed the BJP a powerful organising issue that transcends its usual support base.

'Himanta Biswa Sarma Has the Capacity to Sway the Masses'

On the question of leadership, the observer is unambiguous. Himanta Biswa Sarma is, for now, without a serious challenger -- and the absence of an Opposition figure capable of taking him on is itself a political fact of enormous consequence.

"I don't see anybody," the observer says when asked who could revive the Opposition in Assam. Gaurav Gogoi, the Congress candidate who lost from Jorhat (incidentally and interestingly, Gogoi also happens to be the Congress MP from the Jorhat Lok Sabha constituency) -- once considered a serious challenger -- went down by 23,000 votes, a margin that signals not a close contest but a rout.

"Though he is very good in the Lok Sabha, speaks effectively for the people of Assam, he is just another former chief minister's son (Gogoi's father Tarun Gogoi was Assam chief minister for three consecutive terms between 2001 and 2016 and was elected for six terms in the Lok Sabha between 1971 and 2001). He lacks his father's skills and political acumen."

Sarma's political skills are described in almost grudging terms. He is "a very crucial leader" with "the capacity to sway the masses." His pivot from the Congress to BJP -- and his transformation of the BJP's fortunes in the north east -- is presented as a masterstroke of political timing and personal ambition.

He understood, the observer implies, that the anti-encroachment narrative was the key to Assam's political future, and he has ridden it with considerably more discipline and aggression than any Congress leader has been able to counter.

The observer does allow one caveat: Now that BJP has won so decisively, the risk of unchecked corruption increases.

"Corruption will increase manifold; not that it wasn't already rampant since the BJP came to power but the Congress could not pin BJP down on this burning issue," the observer highlights the concern about what dominant power without effective opposition produces in any democracy.

'Congress Is Not Finished in Assam -- But It Is in Serious Danger of Becoming Irrelevant'

The observer stops short of writing the Congress off entirely, but the prognosis is grim. The party, they suggest, is approaching what might be called its "second last" phase in the state -- still present, still contesting, but no longer a serious force capable of forming a government or even a credible Opposition.

The AIUDF -- the All India United Democratic Front, the party associated with Badruddin Ajmal and closely identified with Bengali Muslim voters -- is described as effectively finished, its voters likely to migrate to BJP affiliates like the Asom Gana Parishad or simply disengage from electoral politics. As the AIUDF disintegrates, its space will gradually be absorbed, the observer predicts, in a dynamic that mirrors what happened to smaller parties in Maharashtra.

The deeper problem for the Congress is one of identity. To win back Assam, it would need to disentangle itself from the Bengali Muslim perception -- but doing so risks losing whatever remains of its current support base.

It is a trap of its own making, constructed over decades of transactional politics, and the observer sees no obvious way out.

What Assam now needs, the observer says with a trace of regret, is a functional Opposition -- not because the BJP has governed badly on development, but because democracy without accountability eventually corrodes even competent governments.

"The destruction of the Opposition is not good," the observer concludes. "I don't see a solution."

Photographs curated by Manisha Kotian/Rediff