Is Assam on its way to becoming the next Kashmir under BJP's rule?
In 1993, I was travelling across India for my research on why it leads to conflicts when Muslims, not Hindus, come to India from Bangladesh.
To interview central BJP office bearers, I often used to go to its head office at New Delhi's Ashoka Road. Responding to a senior BJP leader's query, I had inadvertently divulged my travel plan to Assam.
A day after I came to Guwahati, a person arrived at my hotel and introduced himself as a senior office bearer of Assam BJP and offered help - and his jeep - so I could travel in the region to conduct my field study.
Of course, I politely declined his offer. However, for obvious reasons, I asked for his help to be able to meet other leaders of the BJP and the RSS in Assam.
One nippy evening, I went with him to meet the top RSS leadership of the eastern zone in one of their hideouts outside Guwahati. This was the time when RSS was banned for the third time after the demolition of Babri Masjid. I sat with four elderly, senior functionaries of the RSS on the ground to get my recorded interview.
They were polite, firm and politically correct while talking about the massive Bangladeshi migration to the region. After the formal interview was over and I switched off my tape recorder, they offered me a cup of tea and launched vitriolic attacks against "invading" Muslims and emphasised that RSS is determined to counter the Bangladeshi policy of "Lebensraum" in the Northeast.
I am recounting my Assam experience after 23 years to illustrate that BJP's coming to power in Assam is not a fluke or because of any wave.
Hindutva groups have been doing the ground work for this victory for decades together. In this Assembly election, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah went only thrice to campaign in Assam. National leaders were kept out of electoral planning. This election was out and out an RSS show.
Many decades of hard work of the RSS in the region has brought BJP to power in Assam. RSS does not typically stop at gaining political power. It is only a mean for their quest toward the larger end, which is religious-cultural domination.
They have not stopped their project after Modi came to power in India. They will also not stop in Assam after Sarbananda Sonowal takes over the reins. Moreover, Sonowal has not been produced from their laboratory.
He has made his political career in opposing migration from Bangladesh. After a long stint in AGP, he joined the BJP only five years ago. RSS had designed a Khilonji (an indigenous Assamese) package to hide its "Hindutva" teeth.
Targeting Badruddin Ajmal's AIUDF as a party of Bangladeshi Muslims managed to win them some support from Assamese Muslims too.
But, after coming to power in Assam, the RSS will certainly go back to doing what they do best, pitting Hindus against Muslims. In pursuit of this strategy, the "khilonjia" agenda will be pushed back and the "Hindutva" agenda will take the centerstage.
More than Himanta Biswa Sarma, it is the RSS who will soon be the biggest worry for CM Sonowal if he gets serious about the issue of illegal immigrants - both Hindus and Muslims.
RSS will never let Sonowal go against "illegal" Hindu migrants from Bangladesh or waste their decades of hard work in the northeastern state.
It has been extremely effective in making Gujarat a very successful experiment of its "Hindutva" brand for last two decades in the western part of India. Now Assam provides RSS a similar opportunity in the eastern part of the country. But Assam is no Gujarat.
Muslims constitute more than one third of Assam's population. It is a state that has seen the highest Muslim population growth in the country in the last census.
In most of its districts bordering Bangladesh, Muslims have already become a majority. Whether this growth is due to migration or homegrown, is anyone's guess.
The Congress party and the AIUDF have managed to get most of the seats in these bordering districts, where Muslims are greater in numbers. In upper Assam, where Hindus are in dominant majority, both these "pro-Muslim" parties have been almost wiped out in the electoral arithmetic.
Sooner than later, the Hindutva onslaught will force Muslims in Assam - whether they are natives or settlers - to come together.
Badruddin Ajmal also knows that the Congress has no option, but to get into some sort of alliance with his party AIUDF to remain politically relevant in the state. That calculation even inspired him to distribute sweets to celebrate his "loss" after the election results came out.
This creates a very plausible scenario of Muslims in the lower Assam and Barak Valley, who are mobilising themselves against Hindutva experiments of the RSS under BJP rule in the state. Due to sheer strength of their number and concentration in a particular geographical location, it will not be easy for the RSS machinery or the BJP government to politically dominate them through majoritarian culture, a la Gujarat style.
The Bangladeshi link of Muslims in Assam can potentially make the conflict more like the one in Jammu and Kashmir, where religious division coincides with regional division and a neighbouring country becomes an active participant in the unrest.
Moreover, considering the growing fundamentalism in Bangladesh and the increasing presence of the ISIS and the al Qaeda in the country, the Hindutva experiment of the RSS in Assam can certainly invite outside "players" to the conflict arena.
For India, security and stability in Assam - more than any other state - is critical as it is the one which anchors the six other states in the Northeast to the mainland.
BJP's big electoral victory provides a fertile setting for the RSS to start its Hindutva experiment in a big way in Assam, but this can potentially pose a very germane threat to country's unity in the near future.