Himanta Biswa Sarma
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Career
A profile: till 2023 March
March 16, 2023: The Times of India
If the chequered history of India’s Northeast was sedulously documented, Himanta Biswa Sarma, Assam’s chief minister, would occupy top place in the roll call of individuals who made and unmade the region’s fortunes and disasters, as New Delhi’s surrogates and kingpins of their states.
Sarma – called Biswa in the Northeast – is both. He started as a bright spark of the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) – whose protracted agitation was one of the biggest political and administrative tests for Indira Gandhi (her record was messy) and Rajiv Gandhi, who did better than his mother in seeking closure. He then became an integral part of the Congress and eventually himself indispensable in his new home, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
More than the AASU’s political progenitor, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), and the Congress, it is the BJP that recognised and rewarded Sarma for the package that makes up his persona – fusing charisma and oratorical prowess with organisational efficiency, ability to motivate party workers, use persuasive skills with recalcitrant allies that sometimes passes off for swag, and deliver on the ‘high command’s’ mandate and his own, sometimes exaggerated, promises.
Above all, he unfailingly second guesses the minds of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (R S S) and the BJP’s ‘big two’, which enables him to plan and implement the Sangh’s divisive agendas and conquer uncharted territories for the BJP.
Sarma has had hits and misses, the latter bringing out the imperfections in a politician who is placed on a par with Yogi Adityanath, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, as a prospective national leader.
The R S S and the BJP believe that the regions are the fountainhead of the nation after PM Narendra Modi’s success at the Centre. If Sarma continues at the dizzying pace he has set for himself, who knows what might happen? The BJP has attempted to co-opt the Northeast fairly effectively in the ‘mainstream’ and constantly talks up the region’s salience, so the old certitude that the Hindi heartland owns the country’s PMs might not hold good for long.
Bidding Congress goodbye
If a Proust questionnaire was used to map Sarma’s rise, it would hark back to August 2015, when he was still in the Congress and summoned by Rahul Gandhi, then the party president, to Delhi. Sarma and another senior minister, Rockybul Hussain, were regarded as the late Congress CM, Tarun Gogoi’s left and right hands.
In the string of panegyrics emanating from the Assamese media, Sarma is referred to as the BJP’s Machiavelli, a legend, “puppeteer with deep pockets”, Virat Kohli of the match, Chanakya and kingmaker.
By then, Sarma had already fallen out with Gogoi, who typically nursed ambitions for his son and Lok Sabha MP, Gaurav Gogoi. Sarma told Rahul that he oversaw the Congress’s electioneering which won a third term for Gogoi senior in 2011. Reports said Gandhi shrugged his shoulders and told Sarma, “so what?” Obviously he was incensed with a ‘minion’ claiming credit for the victory.
The trouble was the Gandhis took Sarma’s 2013 tweet seriously. He said, “ I am and will be loyal to my leader Soniaji and Rahulji and the Congress party, whatever be the provocation.”
By 2013, Sarma had won thrice from Jalukbari, his assembly seat, in 2001, 2006 and 2011. The first time he trounced Bhrigu Phukan, AASU founder and his former mentor. After switching to the BJP, he retained Jalukbari in 2016 and 2021, when he defeated the Congress’s Romen Chandra Borthakur by over a lakh votes.
The 2015 meeting with Rahul was convened after Sarma turned rebel following a public attack on him by Gogoi senior. Sarma convened a Congress legislature party meeting in which he claimed the support of 52 of the Congress’s 78 MLAs – a claim that couldn’t be ascertained because when Rahul turned cold towards him, the purported supporters deserted him.
For Sarma, the clincher was Pidi, Rahul’s terrier, who by now is a protagonist in the Congress-Sarma saga. Sarma told a news channel that Rahul paid inordinate attention to his pet, fed him biscuits that were laid out for the guests and barely heard Gogoi senior and him. While departing, Sarma told Tarun Gogoi, “Sir, it is goodbye for me.”
What prompted Rahul to be supercilious towards a purposeful politician like Sarma? Recall that in March 2010 he got two Congress candidates, Nazneen Faruque and Silvius Condappan, elected to the Rajya Sabha in gruelling circumstances where the BJP resolutely fought but narrowly lost. But Gogoi senior was afflicted with ‘putra moh’ (blind love) while Rahul was partial to the US-returned Gaurav Gogoi who joined the ranks of the Congress’s now depleted ‘baba log’.
Marching forward
Sarma joined the BJP in August 2015 and never looked back. He worked to win every assembly election thereafter, swung a government for the BJP in Manipur when the party had fewer legislators than the Congress, installed the BJP in Arunachal Pradesh, found allies in Nagaland and Meghalaya, and routed the Left in Tripura.
The crowning moment was the formation of the North-East Democratic Alliance or NEDA on May 24, 2016, shortly after the BJP won Assam for the first time. Sarma was appointed as the convenor of this professedly neutral platform of non-Congress parties wanting to engage with the Centre and the BJP without being part of the NDA.
The NEDA was used by Sarma to buttress the BJP’s “Congress-mukht Bharat”' slogan and indeed it became a reality when the Congress was vanquished from the region, often by questionable means. Who cared?
However, Amit Shah, Sarma’s quarterback, refused to confine the latter to the Northeast. He allowed him to grow wings that took Sarma to Jharkhand, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Gujarat.
When the Shiv Sena split, Sarma flew the Sena dissidents to Guwahati and ensured them a safe passage to Mumbai just before Eknath Shinde was sworn in as the CM. He even had a shot at toppling the Hemant Soren government in Jharkhand but missed the bus when the West Bengal government nabbed three Guwahati-returned Congress MLAs loaded with cash.
The BJP and Sarma’s “development” narrative has an undertow that is faithful to the twin themes of nationalism and Hindutva, themes that ought to be anathema to large parts of Christian-dominated Northeast.
Sarma was quick to proclaim his allegiance to the R S S in a 2015 post.
Sarma did not get the CM’s post in 2016. It went to the soft-spoken, low key Sarbananda Sonowal, who like Sarma, came in from the AASU and AGP but scored a brownie point by challenging the central Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act, 1983, in the Supreme Court and getting it rescinded.
The Guwahati grapevine had it that Sarma conceptualised and implemented most of the welfare schemes in the Sonowal regime, such as a monthly payment of Rs 830 to 2.2mn households.
By the time the last elections took place in 2021, it was clear that Sonowal would not get another term if the BJP won. It did not declare a CM candidate. Sarma was Delhi’s man, and on May 10, 2021, he was sworn in as the CM.
While the Centre is wary of Adityanath, who is perceived as the R S S-VHP’s choice, Sarma is the perfect fit for Delhi’s demands from the Northeast. Once Gogoi’s key troubleshooter, he has a vast network of pointpersons, works indefatigably, listens patiently to people and keeps an open house.
Sarma has lost little time in unbundling a toxic heap of agenda – from passing the Assam Cattle Preservation (Amendment) Act, describing the cow as “our mother” and proscribing its slaughter to demanding a verification of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), demolishing ‘madrasas” and “illegal” encroachments by Muslims to cracking down on child marriages that led to the arrests of several young men torn asunder from their families.
He claimed he had joined the Congress because he wanted to shed his “Assamese chauvinism” and embrace “inclusive” politics. Even now he maintains he is not against Muslims but only a section of “fundamentalist” Muslim politicians
Sarma’s slogan is “Jati, Mati, Bheti” (identity, land, homeland) that smacks of revanchism. From that, he has moved to a harder position against the “miyas”, the Assamese label for Bengali-speaking Muslims attempting to advocate their own culture which was amplified by Sarma in the last elections to fuel fear that the Axomiya culture, drawn from the legacy of Sankardeva, the 15th-16th century polymath, saint and social reformer, was threatened by the miyas.
The transition from regionalism to nationalism of the R SS genre couldn’t have been more seamless. Like Basavaraj Bommai, Sarma is an émigré to the BJP. Unlike Bommai, who seems lost, Sarma has his fundamentals crystal clear, an attribute that makes him a contender for a bigger national role.
How the Congress lost Hinduism
March 23, 2023: The Times of India
NEW DELHI: The Congress, which once ruled the entire northeast, is today almost wiped out of the region. The beginning of this downfall started with the exit of a key Congress leader in Assam - Himanta Biswa Sarma - who is now the chief architect of BJP's success story in the region.
Himanta Biswa Sarma, who quit the Congress in 2015, not just ensured the defeat of the grand old party in Assam but also worked to gradually edge it out from other states in the region by stitching together alliances with the regional parties.
Former Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, in his autobiography “Azaad”, has blamed Rahul Gandhi for 'mismanaging' the Himanta episode that resulted in his exit from the grand old party.
Azad, who left the Congress in August 2022 to launch his own party, also targeted Sonia Gandhi and said she did not assert herself as party president “despite understanding the disastrous consequences that lay ahead.” "Let him go" was Rahul Gandhi's blunt reply when told that Himanta Biswa Sarma had the support of a majority of MLAs and would rebel and quit the party, Ghulam Nabi Azad writes in his book.
"Rahul told us bluntly that there would be no change in leadership. We pointed out to him (Rahul) that Himanta had the majority of MLAs and would rebel and quit the party. 'Let him go,' Rahul said. The meeting was over," Azad says in his autobiography that will release next month.
Sarma, who went on to join the BJP, was an important Congress strategist in Assam. Ten MLAs followed him after he quit the party in September 2015 over differences with the Congress leadership in Assam.
He played a key role in ensuring second successive victory for the BJP in the state and was made the chief minister in 2021, just five years after leaving the Congress.
Azad, who was involved in the mediation efforts with Sarma on the directives of Sonia Gandhi, writes he was not sure if Rahul said what he did "to assert himself or because he was ignorant that his decision would have far-reaching consequences, not only in the state of Assam but the entire northeast". Azad says he apprised Sonia Gandhi of the new "twist in the tale" after the interaction with Rahul Gandhi.
"... it is rather unfortunate that she did not assert herself as the party president. Instead, she asked me to request Himanta to not rock the boat," Azad writes. Himanta Sarma, who is the convenor of the North East Democratic Alliance, worked assiduously to stich alliances with regional parties and helped BJP consolidate its foothold in the region.
(With inputs from PTI)
Track Record
May 10, 2021: The Times of India
BJP has picked Himanta Biswa Sarma as the next CM of Assam. Why central leadership picked Himanta over incumbent Sarbananda Sonowal has no real answer, but the opinion of many is that Sarma's performance in the last 5 years was enough reason to give him the top job in Assam. Within BJP ranks, many were swayed by Sarma’s style of functioning that conveyed an ability to get the work done, be it articulating the party’s stand on contentious issues like CAA and NRC or tapping into local sentiments by pitching Congress’ alliance with Badruddin Ajmal’s AIUDF as a threat to Assamese identity. Many believe Sarma’s closeness to Union home minister Amit Shah tipped the scales in his favour. The leadership could not have been unaware that Sarma, who had chafed at being consigned to the No.2 slot through the five-year term, was getting impatient about securing what he, as well as many others in the party, considered to be his “rightful due”.
2021: Appointed CM
Prabin Kalita, May 10, 2021: The Times of India
Why did BJP’s central leadership pick Himanta Biswa Sarma as Assam’s next CM over incumbent Sarbananda Sonowal? While there might never be an official answer, the consensus opinion is that Sarma's performance over the last five years — in government and politics — was seen as enough reason to plump for him despite his predecessor’s popularity and clean image.
Within BJP ranks, many were swayed by Sarma’s style of functioning that conveyed an ability to get the work done, be it articulating the party’s stand on contentious issues like CAA and NRC or tapping into local sentiments by pitching Congress’ alliance with Badruddin Ajmal’s AIUDF as a threat to Assamese identity. His refrain throughout his campaign was that the electoral battle was between the miyas (migrant Muslims), allegedly comprising 35% of the state’s population, and the natives.
When it comes to troubleshooting for the NDA, in Assam as well as elsewhere in the northeast, Sarma’s talent for successful gambles is well known. In the Bodoland Territorial Council elections last December, he persuaded the BJP leadership to dump old ally Bodoland People’s Front and get the fledgling United People’s Party Liberal on board. The new combination went on to form the council.
Holding key ministries, Sarma is also credited with rolling out a series of development and welfare programmes, including the popular Arunodaya scheme that provides Rs 8,000 each annually to unemployed women. As finance minister, Sarma earned Assam the distinction of being the first state to roll out the GST regime.
Many believe Sarma’s closeness to Union home minister Amit Shah tipped the scales in his favour. The leadership could not have been unaware that Sarma, who had chafed at being consigned to the No.2 slot through the five-year-term, was getting impatient about securing what he, as well as many others in the party, considered to be his “rightful due”.
A source close to Sonowal said when the proposal for him to step down came, he didn’t hesitate for a moment. “Sonowal declined some posts that were offered to him in lieu of the chief ministership. But if Narendra Modi wants to take him somewhere, he will never say no to him,” a source said. Sonowal has publicly acknowledged Sarma as his most efficient minister, entrusting him with key portfolios.
