By now, it has become common knowledge that electoral politics in Assam, and by extension, the Northeast, is greatly associated with the whims and tactics of one man and his ‘Brigade’. People generally understate the contributions and hard work put forth by one individual who is the Deputy and can be called the Commander-in-Chief of the ‘Brigade’, the second in command of Assam’s politics: Pijush Janti Hazarika.
While this may sound like a eulogy, I am not a chronicler, and the man I am writing about has not directed me to eulogise about him and is, in fact, completely unaware of it. But as a keen observer of electoral politics, especially having done surveys in different constituencies, including Hazarika’s own (Jagirod) and during the by-polls in constituencies where he was the election in-charge – Thowra and Mariani.
While we toured almost the whole of Assam before the 2021 Assembly polls, there was one thing particular and peculiar about Jagirod. We all have heard about the idea of a ‘party society’ or some of us have even perhaps read Dwaipayan Bhattacharya’s one of a kind piece on the party society in Bengal. The idea behind the party society is that there was a point in time in West Bengal when every member of a household would be directly or indirectly connected with the workings of a particular party (in Bengal’s case it was the Communist Party).
We noticed a similar ‘party society syndrome’ in the constituency of Jagirod. As in a typical focus group survey, mostly qualitative, we went asking people, particularly the Bengali Hindu community in which we were specifically interested, as the incumbent MLA (Hazarika) is an Assamese, and the Congress Candidate was a Bengali Hindu named Swapan Mandal. After about two days of extensive surveys, we were surprised to notice that almost every household or individual would admit of his/ her association with the BJP, and by the BJP, they meant Pijush Hazarika. While many of them have been habitual BJP voters, many said that they joined the party as they like to be associated with Hazarika and also that Hazarika was a leader with immense potential and that they saw a bright future in him. A lady commented that it was because of Himanta and Pijush that she and her family members would vote for the BJP even though they were Congress supporters by heart.
Our concern was to know about the Bengali ‘sentiment’ that might draw the Bengali Hindu community towards Swapan Mandal. But apart from one Gaon Panchayat, and a particular village in that, 2 No. Murkata, where Swapan Mandal’s sister resides, there was not a single Gaon Panchayat dominated by the Bengali Hindus who expressed their opinion in favour of Mandal. A woman famously said, almost in the manner of a slogan ‘Jaar lun khaisu tar gun gaam’ – something in the manner of ‘Namak halali’ in Hindi or ‘salt loyalty’.
We were surprised to find that people were defending the reason behind the quality of bad roads in certain places – many opined that the MLA was working hard to build bridges that would later on also lead to better road and water facilities – that he has built several wells and also small bridges already and people were obliged to him for that. While the Hindutva factor and the Himanta-BJP-RSS combine worked wonders everywhere in Assam, we also need to give some credit to the man who is the main manager of the electoral process and arguably the closest aide of the Chief Minister.
While we travelled to Thowra and Mariani for the by-polls, as there was a whole lot of controversy about two incumbent Congress MLAs, Sushanta Borgohain and Rupjyoti Kurmi switching over to the BJP right after winning the seats from Congress. In the course of our three-time survey, we were surprised to locate Hazarika’s entourage touring the remotest parts of the constituencies every time we visited till right before the polls. It is interesting to note that the election in charge stayed right near the constituencies and dedicatedly toured every part of the two constituencies assigned to him with as much of a dedication as any fresher in the realm of politics would do. Perhaps this dedication paid off although there was a sense of anti-defection sentiment among the people initially. But perhaps the in-charge wielded his magic wand and the now BJP candidates – Borgohain and Kurmi won convincing victories ultimately.
While politics in Assam now is seen as a conglomerate of the BJP-RSS-Sarma combine, Hazarika with his magic wand slides through all obstacles in the path of winning elections with his master tactics and is very much the Knight of medieval times who descends from somewhere, wins all elections and goes back. While the political ambience in Assam is now reverberating the air of municipal elections it would be interesting to see how the Chief Minister and his Commander in Chief play their master strategies to fill the coffers of the BJP with votes and massive wins.
Swaswati Borkataki is a freelance writer and PhD Scholar in JNU, New Delhi.
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