The AUDF in Assam

Assam Election

There seems to considerable speculation not only about how the Assam United Democratic Front (AUDF) is going to fare in the on-going Lok Sabha elections, but also about what the emergence of the AUDF as a major factor in the polity of Asom is going to do to the political equations in the State. The first point that needs to be made about the AUDF is that it is a communal political party and that its raison d’être is to strengthen the Bangladeshi element in the polity of the State and to work for the creation of an Islamic state in the region through another partition of the country. As such, if the Congress relies a great deal on the partially illegal Bangladeshi vote-bank to win elections in Asom, the AUDF depends exclusively on the same vote-bank. In a sense, therefore, the AUDF exists and is in a position to pose a major threat to the existence of Asom in its present form largely because of what the Congress has done to encourage illegal immigration from former East Pakistan and present Bangladesh. In a word, therefore, the AUDF has had its genesis in this single misdeed of the Congress.

Given this scenario and given the pretence that the Congress has had to sustain over the years that all Bangladeshis in Asom are Indian citizens, it would seem that non-Congress political parties should keep the AUDF at arms length while the Congress could afford to think of an alliance with this communal party. However, news reports would indicate that the very opposite of this is happening. There are hotly contested reports about the BJP-AGP combine extending the proverbial olive branch to the AUDF while the Congress has kept its distance from the party despite the Congress high command’s inclination to forge some kind of a link with it. For once, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi is right in not wanting to have anything to do with the AUDF. Quite obviously, he would like to see the AUDF merge with the Congress one of these days so that the AUDF has no separate existence in the days to come. This is something that the Congress has always been good at. Be that as it may, Tarun Gogoi was able to reap a rich harvest of non-Bangladeshi indigenous votes in the Assembly elections of 2006 when he wanted to know who Badaruddin Ajmal was at a time when the dyed-in-wool regional party, the AGP, even wanted to forge an alliance with it. True, he cannot say that any more, but he can still refuse to have an alliance with the AUDF. This political party, which has united only the East Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in the State, has nothing democratic about it and it is not a party that the indigenous population of Asom wants to have anything to do with. And regardless of the fact that the Congress depends heavily on the same vote-bank that the AUDF relies on exclusively, there are many in the State who feel that an AUDF majority is very different from a Congress majority. In fact, there are people who even feel that the heavens will indeed fall if there is an AUDF majority but that nothing of the sort will happen as long as the Congress is in power. This may not be a very accurate assessment of our political future because the dependence of the Congress on the Bangladeshis was quite evident even in the days of the late Hiteswar Saikia who had to retract his statement in the Legislative Assembly that there were about three million Bangladeshis in the State almost immediately after making it. Today, the situation is a lot worse if anything with the State government having to dissociate itself from the killing of the seven HuJI activists in Dhubri a few months before the serial blasts of October 30, 2008. Quite a lot of people in the know of things are convinced that the culprits of the serial blasts have gone undetected because the Bangladeshi lobby does not want them to be apprehended. Even so, the major difference between the Congress in power in the State and an AUDF-led government will be that even the fig leaf of ‘secularism’ that the Congress is able to flaunt today will have to be dropped once the AUDF is in power around 2011. That it has very intense and serious ambitions of being in the corridors of power should be evident from the fact that it has already told the people of the State how they must all dress in lungis and caps. At least that is something the Congress is unlikely to do. It will keep up a pretence of things being hunky-dory in Asom until the leaders who flee this State have the time to get their houses in Delhi, Ghaziabad, Bangalore, Mumbai or Pune vacated and to move in. The difference will be only marginal, but the pretence will make it seem vital. THE SENTINEL