Why Assam’s most prominent Bodo politician touched the feet of an RSS leader

In November, a photo of Bodo politician Hagrama Mohilary touching the feet of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leader Indresh Kumar, reportedly in Nagpur, created a flutter in Assam.

To be sure, it was a stunning image: the once-peerless and swaggering face of Bodo politics, who transitioned seamlessly from armed insurgent to kingmaker in Assam’s electoral politics, reduced to that.

Mohilary’s meeting with Kumar was only the latest in a long line of attempts to make peace with the Bharatiya Janata Party that now rules Assam.

Soon after images of the meeting became public, a letter written by Mohilary to BJP National President JP Nadda back in August also surfaced.

In the letter, he had requested Nadda to include the Bodoland People’s Front, the party he heads, in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance at the Centre. The Bodoland People’s Front, wrote Mohilary, would “wholeheartedly” support the BJP in the 2024 general elections.

The Bodoland People’s Front already sits on the treasury bench in the Assam Assembly. But it is not part of the government and Mohilary’s latest overtures seem to be aimed at changing that.

A challenge is mounted

In the 2021 Assam Assembly election, the Bodoland People’s Front had allied with the Congress to dislodge the BJP from the state.

For all practical measure, it was the only tribal-centric party of any formidable influence to stand up to the BJP in the election. Almost all other parties representing the many ethnic groups of Assam put their weight behind the BJP.

This, despite the fact that the election was held in the shadows of the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, that had elicited strong protests from the state’s ethnic communities who feared the Act would lead to an influx of migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh.

This, observers said, indicated that the BJP may have been able to shore up long-term support for its Hindutva agenda beyond immediate electoral dividends.

Though the Bodoland People’s Front opposition to the BJP in 2021 did not necessarily stem from strong ideological convictions, it was still significant. For over 15 years, the party was the hegemonic face of mainstream Bodo politics – the community is Assam’s largest tribe, constituting almost 6% of the state’s population.

Most Bodos are animists who follow the Bathouist faith while the rest are Christians.

Mohilary, seeking help from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh to stay politically relevant, thus, only stands to strengthen the BJP’s bid to recast Assam’s politics in the Hindutva mould.

From then to now

For decades, the Bodos have agitated for a separate state. In the 1980s, the demand spawned an insurgency with many groups taking up arms. Starting in the mid-1990s, the Bodoland Liberation Tigers became the most influential of these groups.

It was led by Mohilary.

In 2003, the Tigers relinquished its statehood demand. In return, the Centre ceded some space too: it granted to the Tigers a territorial council spread over four districts in western Assam under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution that provides tribal communities some degree of autonomy.

Mohilary came to head this council as an interim arrangement, in line with North East’s peacemaking deals.

Soon, he cemented his position and became the undisputed “chief” of the council, winning election after election. Mohilary’s importance extended beyond the borders of the council. His tight control over the Bodo council – the Bodoland People’s Front won all 12 Assembly constituencies in the area since it joined the mainstream in 2003 till 2016 – meant his support became pivotal to securing and consolidating power in Assam.

In 2016, when the BJP mounted a challenge to dislodge the Congress, which had been in power for three uninterrupted terms, it got the Bodoland People’s Front to side with it. When the BJP formed its government, three MLAs of Bodoland People’s Front were given ministerial berths.

A new accord upends politics

In 2020, though, Mohilary’s status came under challenge, courtesy of a new accord that the BJP governments in Assam and at the Centre signed with other competing Bodo groups who had continued with their statehood agitation.

In December 2020, in the first council election after the new accord, the Bodoland People’s Front lost power to the United People’s Party Liberal, whose leadership largely comprises representatives of the groups that signed the new accord.

The United People’s Party Liberal was backed by the BJP, despite the fact that the Bodoland People’s Front was part of the government it led in the state.

After several weeks of uncertainty, the Bodoland People’s Front turned to the Congress to revive its prospects. The two parties renewed their old alliance to take on the BJP in 2021.

It amounted to little. Not only did the BJP storm back to power, the Bodoland People’s Front managed to hold on to only four of the 12 seats that make up the Bodo Territorial Region, as the council came to be known after the new accord.

The BJP strikes

The BPF’s decline wasn’t the only takeaway from the last council and Assembly elections. They also marked the blooming of the lotus in the Bodo Territorial Region.

Not only did the party win nine seats in the council, it won two of the 12 Assembly seats in the region – unprecedented for a national party .

In the two elections of 2006 and 2011, which the Congress and the Bodoland People’s Front fought together, the grand old party let the Bodo-centric party contest all 12 seats within the limits of the territorial council.

In 2016, the BJP too let the Bodoland People’s Front take charge in its turf, making way for it to contest all 12 seats again.

Each of these three times, the Bodoland People’s Front won all 12 seats.

In the last assembly election, though, the BJP ceded only eight seats in the region to its new alliance partner, the United People’s Party Liberal. It propped up its own candidates in the other four seats.

This, many said, was a sign that the BJP dumping the Bodoland People’s Front for the United People’s Party Liberal wasn’t just another case of choosing a more winnable ally.

The United People’s Party Liberal, known by various names in the past, had little political influence in the area prior to the new accord with the BJP governments.

The accord had given it a new lease of life.

‘Bodoland is now run from Dispur’

But it seemed to come at a price. If an accord engineered by the BJP – Union Home Minister Amit Shah described it as the “final and comprehensive solution” to the Bodo question – had changed the political dynamics of the region, the party, too, would have a stake.

Unlike the Congress, the BJP refused to let a regional force be entirely in charge, as the seat-sharing arrangement showed. “Unlike the past, Bodoland is now run from Dispur,” said M Okhrang Boro, a Tamulpur resident and theatre activist.

Prabeen Baro, former Bodoland People’s Front leader, a former aide of Mohilary, spoke along similar lines. “The Congress government had given the BPF an upper hand to run BTC,” he said, adding that it was no longer the case.

Lofty ambitions

Observers also point out that BJP state president Bhabesh Kalita’s statement on December 2 asserting that the party was laying ground to control the Bodo Territorial Region council election by itself in the future underlined the party’s endgame.

“We haven’t yet started work, but it will happen slowly,” Kalita told reporters on the sidelines of a party meeting at Udalguri last month when asked if the BJP was looking to capture power in the council by itself. “After 2024, we will work. We have our destination – we have to reach there.”

The sequence of events, starting from the signing of a new accord and propping up a new party to replace the Bodoland People’s Front, Okhrang said, suggested a larger design by the BJP to undercut Bodo nationalism.

The BJP’s decision to replace the Bodoland People’s Front with the United People’s Party Liberal, therefore, stemmed from the fact that “Hagrama didn’t allow BJP or any other national parties to enter Bodoland”, he added.

Dhruba Pratim Sharma, who teaches political science at Gauhati University, said the BJP seemed to be trying to “spread out the party in the BTR area as a part of a long term plan or interest”. “Their intention and vision in Bodoland to strengthen their party is for the long term not for the immediate electoral purpose which is coming up in one year or so,” he said.

An ideology-free space

The BJP’s job may have been made easier, observers say, by Mohilary’s desperation to stay in power. “Our regional politics is based on power politics, not on ideology,” rued M Okhrang Boro.

In his letter to Nadda, Mohilary said as much. He wrote that he would “not hesitate to lead the BTC as chief executive council member again if political circumstances allow me to do so”.

Despite Mohilary bending over backwards, the return of the Bodo People’s Front to the BJP seems to have been hampered by his strained relationship with Assam Chief Minister and the saffron party’s pointsperson in the North East, Himanta Biswa Sarma.

Sarma had said last month that the United People’s Party Liberal was an ally of the BJP and there would be no “immediate changes” in that understanding.

“Mohilary has been denied by the Himanta Biswa Sarma and state BJP,” said Prabeen Boro. “Later, he went to Delhi but no fruitful results have been achieved.”

Bhabesh Kalita, who heads the BJP’s Assam unit, denied “any “communication between Mohilary and state BJP”. “Anyone can meet the central leaders in Delhi,” he said. “But we are not aware of this.”

Leaders of the Bodo People’s Front, for their part, played down Mohilary’s hectic parlaying with BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leaders. “We are working out all political measures for the development of Bodo people at different levels,” said Rabiram Narzary, a party MLA.

Others said the olive branch could be seen as Mohilary’s last-ditch effort to not slip into political oblivion.

Political scientist Vikas Tripathi, who teaches at Gauhati University, said Mohilary reaching out to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh can be seen as an attempt to attract the non-Bodos, especially in the Kokrajhar Lok Sabha seat ahead of the 2024 general elections.

“It is also more like a bargaining mechanism where BPF wants to remain relevant in the Lok Sabha and state assembly,” Tripathi said.