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14 Election, It Was for the First Time in the History of the Constituency, That a Non- Bodo Candidate Won with an Impressive 51% of the Vote Share

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14 Election, It Was for the First Time in the History of the Constituency, That a Non- Bodo Candidate Won with an Impressive 51% of the Vote Share Please do not cite. Work in progress Smitana Saikia, King’s College London Identity, ethnic outbidding and politics of ‘homelands’ - A case of Bodo politics In the Indian state of Assam This paper primarily discusses the electoral result from the Kokrajhar constituency in lower Assam, the heart of Bodo politics and hotbed for ethnic conflict. The elections in Assam have been marked by interethnic violence, fuelled by issues of ‘indigenous’ identity and ‘illegal’ migration. This paper primarily discusses the electoral result from the Kokrajhar constituency in lower Assam, the heart of Bodo politics and hotbed for ethnic conflict. Two decades of armed struggle resulted in concessions granted to the Bodos, the largest plains tribe in Assam, in the form of a territorial council, under the 6th Schedule of the Indian constitution. In 2014 election, it was for the first time in the history of the constituency, that a non- Bodo candidate won with an impressive 51% of the vote share. The electoral outcome may be seen as a further polarization of the existing ethnic cleavage between Bodos and non-Bodos in the region. Using theory of outbidding, it will be shown that the victory of a non-Bodo in the constituency may be seen as an outcome of a history of inter- group conflict in the region as well as intra-group rivalry among various factions of the Bodo leadership. Further, this case also illustrates that the propensity of the outbidding effect to foment inter-ethnic violence is greater in contexts where political institutions (here autonomous/territorial councils) encourage a singular axis of identity as a basis of mobilization. In conclusion, the paper discusses the implication of this election result on the politics of ‘ethnic homeland’ in Assam. Keywords- Assam, Bodoland, Ethnic outbidding, Identity politics, Politics of ethnic homeland 1 Please do not cite. Work in progress Smitana Saikia, King’s College London Introduction The 2014 Lok Sabha election result from Assam underscores the shifting political dynamics of the state in the last few decades. The state recorded a massive voter turnout of 80 per cent, a jump of 11 per cent since 2009. It marks a major erosion of Congress’ support base, a process that began during the Assam agitation1 in 1979. Badruddin Ajmal’s AIUDF has successfully swung the vote of the Bengali Muslim community from Congress. Most significantly, this election saw the unprecedented rise of the BJP at the cost of the Congress and the regional party AGP, causing splitting of votes on the basis of religion. During the first three decades of the ‘one party dominance system’, the Congress party drew its support from a wider social base that included caste Hindu Assamese, Bengali Hindus and Muslims, tribal groups and linguistic minorities. Post-agitation Assam reflected both ethnic polarization as well as the beginnings of ethnic accommodation in Assam (Goswami 2003: 22). Many sub-regional parties such as the Autonomous State Demand Committee, the United Minority Front and the All Bodo Students’ Union also began to dot the political landscape in the state. Disgruntled with the nature and the outcomes of the Assam agitation, the leadership among smaller communities, who had actively participated in the movement, gave a new fillip to the existing demands for autonomy (Misra 1989, 1146). The ‘catch-all’ party system was thus giving way to a system where social cleavages have gained political salience. In view with the larger electoral and political trends in the state, this paper discusses the results from the Kokrajhar constituency, the seat for contentious politics of autonomy and homelands. In this constituency, reserved for Scheduled Tribes, the ‘Modi wave’ was not palpable. Here, voters were gearing up for elections based on local issues, particularly the issues of separate state for Bodos and security of non- Bodos in the region against recurring episodes of ethnic violence. In Kokrajhar, Naba Kumar Sarania, an independent candidate backed by the non- Bodo population, won the seat by 1 Between 1979-85, Assam witnessed the rise of the popular ‘anti-foreigners’ agitation, which demanded the detection of foreigners, deletion of their names from electoral rolls and deportation back to Bangladesh. This issue has subsequently come to dominate the politics of Assam in a major way and it also marked a crystallization of other ethnic identities vis-à- vis the Assamese identity (Baruah 1999). 2 Please do not cite. Work in progress Smitana Saikia, King’s College London garnering an impressive 51 % of the total vote share. This is the first time in the electoral history of the region that a non-Bodo candidate has won from this seat. Recurring incidents of violence in the recent years in the BTAD2 areas have led to a sharper polarization between Bodos and the non-Bodo communities. The creation of the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC, henceforth or Bodoland) has been greatly resented by other communities that reside in the areas now within its jurisdiction. As one of the student leaders of a non Bodo group said, “The BTC is a ‘hegemonic’ peace. Bodos don’t form a majority in the region but political power has been concentrated in their hands under the current model of territorial council.”3 Thus this electoral contest was dominated by support for a separate Bodo state on one hand, and on the other, political representation and protection for minorities within the council areas. In Kokrajhar, Sarania won more votes (6,34,428) than the combined votes of three prominent Bodo leaders (5,33,647)- Urkhaw Gwra Brahma, former Rajya Sabha MP and senior leader of Bodo Progressive People’s Front (BPPF), Assam cabinet minister Chandan Brahma of the Bodo People’s Front (BPF), ruling party in the council and Sansuma Khunggur Bwiswmuthiary, four times MP from this constituency, also a stalwart of the Bodo movement. He defeated the runner up by a big margin of 3,55,779 votes. If we look at the break up of vote share in the assembly segments under the Kokrajhar Lok Sabha seat, it is striking to see that he polled the highest number of votes in all but one i.e. Kokrajhar West (ST). This means that the Bodo leaders have failed to garner votes even in those assembly segments that are reserved for Scheduled Tribes based on their proportion of the total population in the state (see Table 1). How does one make sense of the result in Kokrajhar? Table 1: Election results from Kokrajhar (ST) Parliamentary Constituency 2014 Total Electors: 1505472 Total Votes Polled: 1223953 Percentage of Participation: 81% NOTA: 18178 Assembly Naba Chandan Urkhaw Sansuma segments Kumar Brahma Brahma Khunggur Sarania (BPF) Biswmuthiary 76661 22824 25211 986 2 The area under the BTC jurisdiction is called the Bodoland Territorial Area District 3 Interview with All Assam Koch Rajbongshi Student Union (AAKRSU) leader, May 12, 2014. 3 Please do not cite. Work in progress Smitana Saikia, King’s College London Gossaigaon Kokrajhar 73911 28034 21746 721 West (ST) Kokrajhar 35684 41686 40314 1708 East (ST) 54943 25808 51210 1347 Sidli (ST) 68809 12484 22965 641 Bijni 96985 17826 22970 1554 Sorbhog 61742 11046 17377 1236 Bhabanipur 62621 36084 22303 1272 Tamulpur Barama 53124 27504 21434 1039 (ST) Chapaguri 49631 20423 32851 729 (ST) Total 634428 243759 278649 11239 Source: Election commission of India website (www.eci.nic.in) The paper proposes to use a historical-institutional approach and theories of ethnic outbidding as a framework to explicate the relation between ethnic mobilization and violence in the Bodoland. The election result from Kokrajhar represents a particular kind of ‘homeland’ politics in the region, which is characterized by claims and counter claims by political entrepreneurs on behalf of groups to represent ‘territorial’ demands. Outbidding refers to processes through which parties representing an ethnic group seek to portray themselves as the true defenders of the group position against another ethnic group. It is argued that the results from Kokrajhar may be seen, among other things, as a product of inter-group as well as within-group competition. Further it is argued that the violence and instability due to the outbidding effect as seen in the Bodoland is not a result of some intrinsic nature of ethnic divisions; rather it is exacerbated in institutional contexts that encourage and lend political salience to a singular fault line as opposed to crosscutting social cleavages. The analyses in the paper are a result of field investigations conducted over a period of several months as part of the author’s doctoral research. Before moving on, it would be beneficial to define two terms that is used frequently in the paper- ethnicity and ethnic conflict. I use the term ‘ethnicity’ to mean a common consciousness of shared origins and traditions (Horowitz 1985: 83). In this case, the 4 Please do not cite. Work in progress Smitana Saikia, King’s College London focus is on those ‘ascriptive markers’ of ethnic identity that are not merely means of social distinction but bases of political identity and organization as well (Ghai 2000:4). I define ethnic conflict as a form of conflict ‘in which the goals of at least one conflict party are defined in (exclusively) ethnic terms, and in which the primary fault line of confrontation is one of ethnic distinctions’ (Cordell and Wolff, 2011: 4). Violence and ethnic outbidding The victory of Naba Sarania shows a neat polarization of votes between Bodos and non- Bodo groups. To quote a non-Bodo activist in the region, “the result is a mandate against the recurring incidents of ethnic violence in the name of a homeland ”.4 For different communities, this was an opportunity to reject the normalization of violence and impunity.
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