Assam assembly election: Perfume baron Badruddin Ajmal is expected to hold on to his strongholds & expand his reach

There is a suffocating concentration of people in an elongated semicircle in front of the stage, but the periphery of the ground is barren save a few food vendors. The stage, on the other hand, is a different sight. It is so packed to capacity that a few people falling off its sides will not take anyone by surprise.
A day after prime minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Assam a week ago, which kicked off the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP’s) campaign in earnest for the assembly election in the state in April-May, Islamic cleric and businessman Badruddin Ajmal has taken centre stage to tell those gathered why his party, the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), is their only real hope.

Vying to Make it Big
The rally is at Chenga, 80 km west of state capital Dispur, part of Guwahati. Chenga is in Barpeta district, which is in the lower reaches of the Brahmaputra river and one of AIUDF’s strongholds, thanks to a majority Bengali Muslim population (70.74%, according to the 2011 Census), the core vote bank of AIUDF.

While Ajmal’s brother Sirajuddin is the member of Parliament from Barpeta, the member of legislative assembly representing Chenga is from the Congress, which has ruled the state since 2001, under chief minister Tarun Gogoi. Saddam Ahmed, a 26-year-old resident of Chenga, believes the locals will give AIUDF a chance this time. “If they win and are part of the government, they can do a lot for us.”

The chances of AIUDF winning constituencies in lower Assam districts like Barpeta, Dhubri and Goalpara are bright, but whether the party will be part of the government is moot. “If they remain in the opposition, then we will continue to be where we have been for years. Nothing will change,” says Ahmed, who works on contract with a local government hospital.

Ahmed is among the more sober of the frenzied youth at the rally, one of the reasons for which is to announce the induction of former Congress state cabinet minister and Bihar governor Devanand Konwar into AIUDF. Ajmal attacks both the Congress and BJP for failing the people, and rubbishes opponents’ charges of his party being a party for Bengali-speaking Muslims.

A native of Hojai, 175 km east of Guwahati, Ajmal spent a part of his childhood in Mumbai, where his father moved in the 1950s. He later earned the equivalent of a master’s degree in Arabic and theology from the Darul Uloom Deoband Islamic school in Uttar Pradesh, after which he joined his family business, whose interests range from real estate to textiles, but is best known for its perfumes.

The Ajmals are a household name in Hojai thanks to their charity work. The family traces its origins to the Sylhet region in Bangladesh and the Muslims of Sylhet are known to be entrepreneurial like the Bohras of Gujarat.

While the family’s philanthropic activities helped Ajmal create a base for his party when he floated it in 2005, the Muslim-majority populations in lower Assam districts were responsible for its rise. According to the 2011 census, Assam recorded the sharpest rise among all states in the share of Muslims in its population, from 30.9% in 2001 to 34.2%. Moreover, the number of Muslimmajority districts shot up from six to nine out of the total 27, which was increased to 32 last year.

No Alliance in Sight Ajmal and his MLAs would have spared the Congress and Gogoi from their tirades at the rally if a Bihar-style Mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) comprising the Congress, AIUDF and Asom Gana Parishad, had materialised.

Initially mooted by Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar after his recent victory in the assembly election, the Congress did not warm up to the idea. “Though our stand has always been anti-Congress and anti-BJP, we welcomed the idea because we want to keep BJP out of Assam. But Congress didn’t want it so if BJP wins, Congress is 100% responsible for it,” Ajmal told ET Magazine at his sprawling sea-facing South Mumbai apartment three days before the rally (Ajmal runs his business out of Mumbai).

Anjan Dutta, president of the Assam unit of the Congress, denies that the party was ever interested in an alliance with AIUDF. Ajmal believes some current and former Muslim leaders in the Congress are against an alliance with AIUDF because that will mark the end of their political future. The Congress has steadily been ceding the support of Bengali Muslims to AIUDF since the latter got into electoral politics in the 2006 assembly election.

AIUDF won 10 seats in 2006 and 18 in 2011, becoming the second largest party in the assembly. They also have three MPs now, including 65-year-old Ajmal himself from Dhubri. Two of Ajmal’s sons are MLAs.

The party increased its vote share to 15% in the 2014 general election from 12.6% in the 2011 assembly election.

Moreover, it led in 24 of 126 assembly constituencies in the 2014 polls, one more than the Congress, while BJP led in 69 assembly constituencies. In what was the best-ever showing by BJP, the party won half of the 14 Lok Sabha seats in the state.

Wasbir Hussain, a Guwahati-based political commentator, believes the Mahagathbandhan was an impossible proposition. “If the Congress aligned with AIUDF, caste Hindus might unite against them and vote for BJP.” Crucial to BJP’s victory are upper Assam districts like Lakhimpur, Dibrugarh, Tezpur and Jorhat. Akhil Ranjan Dutta, an associate professor of political science at Gauhati University, believes BJP won these constituencies for the first time in 2014 thanks, among other things, to its promise to grant scheduled tribe (ST) status to six communities — the tea community, Ahoms, Sutiyas, Motoks, Morans and Koch-Rajbongshis.

Promises & Polarisation

The unfulfilled promise could cause trouble for BJP, with an organisation representing Koch-Rajbongshis protesting Modi’s visit to Kokrajhar. The other tall claim of BJP which will come back to haunt it is that it would give citizenship to all Hindu migrants from Bangladesh who came to Assam before December 2014.

Locals say there have been sporadic attempts to polarise the electorate, but in vain. While Ajmal blames BJP for trying to flare up communal tension, he has been criticised for reportedly asking at a rally if Modi ate meat secretly when he met his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif in December.

He also got flak for saying last week that the Hindus of Assam have united after Modi’s visit and that now the minorities should also come together. “This election will be a fight between BJP and AIUDF. Congress will be a marginal player,” says Himanta Biswa Sarma, a former minister and key lieutenant of Gogoi’s who left the Congress for BJP.

Just before Modi’s Kokrajhar visit, BJP had announced an alliance with the Bodoland People’s Forum which is in power in the autonomous Bodoland Territorial Area District (BTAD). Ajmal is hopeful of AIUDF performing better in BTAD in this election than in the previous one.

Radheshyam Biswas, the only Hindu MP from AIUDF, says the party is looking to field more non-Muslim candidates this time. A third of its 78 candidates in 2011 were Hindus, but only two won. It does not have much support among the Muslims of upper Assam as they are Assamese Mulisms who tend to vote for the Congress or AGP, which is a shadow of its former self. AGP, a political outgrowth of the All Assam Students Union, which led the fight against iillegal immigrants from Bangladesh in the 1970s and 1980s, ruled the state for two terms.

The draft report of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which will identify those who came to Assam after March 24, 1971, as mandated by the Assam Accord, will be out in March. Some political observers and AIUDF’s opponents believe the party will lose its key plank if NRC puts to rest the contentious issue of illegal immigrants. Ajmal does not buy that: “There are still the issues of Muslims’ education and livelihood. The infrastructure and sanitation where they live are very poor. We will fight for those.”

Gauhati University’s Dutta believes AIUDF’s influence has only increased since 2011 and that the party will win at least 20 seats. Hussain says as BJP becomes stronger, AIUDF will also rise, thanks to the consolidation of Bengali-Muslim votes. However, he adds, BJP will face a bit of anti-incumbency sentiment given that it has been in power in Delhi for over a year-and-a-half. “But it is less than the anti-incumbency against Gogoi.”

Gogoi has said while there will be no prepoll alliance, there might be an understanding among parties to defeat BJP. Anjan Dutta rules out any understanding with AIUDF, but leaves open the possibility of an understanding with AGP which is also talking to BJP. But, according to Hussain, the Congress and AIUDF will not have a problem coming together after the election if necessary. Whether or not AIUDF is part of the government, the party’s rise is cause for concern for both the major national parties.