‘Stress on Hindu identity’: BJP hate campaign in poll-bound Assam

Issues of migration and citizenship replaced in the northeastern Indian state by right-wing party’s attacks on Muslims.

Assam, India – India’s northeastern state of Assam goes to polls starting Saturday. For more than four decades, issues of immigration and citizenship have gripped the polity of the ethnically-diverse state bordering Muslim-majority Bangladesh. But those core issues are missing from the election campaign this year, replaced by a two-pronged approach taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP): promises of development, employment and welfare schemes, and simultaneously creating fears of Muslim migrants taking over the state. Prominent Assamese intellectual Hiren Gohain said he believes the BJP, which is fighting to hold on to Assam in this election, was uncertain about its hold over the masses in 2016 and therefore had chosen to stress the Assamese identity in that election.