Early, Ominous Signs

Gaurav Gogoi, son of late Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi, takes over as chief of Assam PCC; rings old bells of insecurity and–going by history–oppression

This news platform and think tank does not make space for pieces on specific individuals, as this is a space that is reserved for writing that is strictly nationalist. However, we consider it to be incumbent upon us to flag an issue should we consider it to be one that can impact public interest at large. In this case, it concerns the arrival of Gaurav Gogoi, son of late Tarun Gogoi, the longest serving chief minister of Assam who passed away in 2020, as president of the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC). Tarun Gogoi, a very highly respected person in state politics, had held the position of chief minister for 15 long years in Assam, a state that was till then–and till it saw the departure of Himanta Biswa Sarma, Gogoi senior’s right-hand man, from its fold–a Congress bastion.

Anyone even remotely familiar with the ethnic structure of Assam would expect a certain realignment of ethnic forces as Gaurav arrived on the scene in May this year, his position as Pradesh Congress president having been fortified by the ‘high command’ in Delhi. Gaurav’s performance on the floor of Parliament too had brought him his share of laurels in Assam. Hence the age-old dynasty dynamic of political entitlement would have been a given in his case, as would the rejoicement of certain self-proclaimed jatiyo media houses where content is driven more by political self-interest than interests of the jaati (community).

That said, Gaurav’s initial public meetings and statements to the Press smacked of insecurity, loaded as they were with dangerous portents of oppression, laying bare his layered fears of what he and his party feel are the biggest existential threat to the Congress. “All RSS and Bajrang Dal members who had come in from outside the state should be monitored by the Assam police”, Gaurav said at a public meeting. Import: that deep-set fear of Gaurav and his party of the quiet, systematic work that the RSS and its sister organisations do, grassroots-level social activities being their strongest point, something that no other organization in the country seems to equipped to deliver–on a sustained basis, and in times both of peace and calamity.

The Sangh Parivar works on this tirelessly, and on several fronts simultaneously: reaching out to communities previously ignored and sidelined by the ‘mainstream’, setting up thousands of ‘single-teacher’ schools, protecting marginalized ethnic belief systems and non-mainstream religions, working on history and fighting false narratives created by bluntly biased historians, fighting for majority rights while bringing on board minority communities who have been wronged by their own… The list is endless. It is this that converted the state of Assam, once a Congress stronghold, into a BJP state. As is the case with Tripura and other areas of the Northeast, which lie targetted by ungratefuls such as Bangladesh. Those are the security dividends that the RSS has earned through decades of untiring work in the region.

This fear of organization, the tireless functioning and outreach of the RSS, is something that people such as Rahul Gandhi cannot seem to imagine Congress cadres delivering, their only claim to organized effort being the Independence movement a century ago.

Hence the easier thing for Rahul to do: label the RSS as being an organization that functions like the radical Islamic ‘Muslim Brotherhood’, which across nations advocates a return to the Qurān and the Hadith to ‘reform’ society. Trouble with trying to build that narrative is that the beneficiaries of the work done by the RSS and its affiliates, will never agree with the scion. It is something late Tarun Gogoi too acknowledged.

And yet younger Congress politicians  of the day such as Rahul and Gaurav press on with their efforts. With a visible lack of dedicated workers in their ranks, they are happy to name call and label–their best bet, they seem to believe, at tacking the RSS.

That is not the worrisome bit though… The worrisome part is that both Rahul and Gaurav’s and their party’s long-term strategy in the matter. If history is anything to go by, their push could just be towards criminalizing organisations such as the RSS and Bajrang Dal, while preventing their entry into Assam and the Northeast, where their work brings about social–and hence political—cohesiveness among communities disparate in language, culture, faith and political thought. In a land where Macaulay and his mission have determined the discourse for many decades, the RSS and its affiliates have managed to redefine ‘missionary zeal’. Rahul and Gaurav attempt to bring an end to that by criminally labelling the RSS, their actions hauntingly same as those that were put into effect in the past, which saw the banning of the RSS four times. Every single time, though, the RSS and its its ranks returned, consolidated and stronger.

Currently, Assam emerges as a leading BJP stronghold with Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma not one to hold back be it in words or action. Sarma and the BJP’s success in dealing with the most critical of issues—that of illegal migration from Bangladesh—is what unsettles the Congress, a party that aligns with ‘minorities’ of a certain community that grow increasingly radical in its actions, be it illegally occupying land or illegally acquiring citizenship and voting rights. Sarma and the BJP’s managing to rein them in, while the Congress tries to revive their lifeline in Assam through the same ‘votebank’ is what pushes the state towards a showdown between the two sides. In all of this what the Congress seems not particularly willing to acknowledge is that the Sangh Parivar in the state is protected to quite an extent by a range of judicial orders that have gone in its favour. Attempting to negate this by creating extra-judicial impediments can only make things worse for Rahul, Gaurav and their party. If the fight were to be fair, the Opposition would take decades to even come close to what the RSS has achieved in terms of establishing non-political, grassroots credibility, something they could have done in the decades they were in power. That the BJP continues to win elections in Assam and many parts of the Northeast is proof of the Congress’s failure and the RSS’s success.