THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING HIMANTA SARMA

Freligion is the opium of the masses, it is the cocaine of populists.

It is piety that anoints political pygmies as national icons. The 55-yearold Himanta Biswa Sarma, Assam's 15th chief minister has become Hindutva's new high priest du jour. His roots are in the Congress, the historical vanguard of secularism. But he owes his national prominence to the BJP, which took him into its fold.

Previously, Sarma was secularism's anti-Sangh savant for an over a decade. Ironically, his first visit after he became Assam's BJP CM was to the RSS headquarters in Guwahati. From the day he joined the party in 2015, the saffron depth of Sarma's ideological identity became deeper than any longstanding Sangh activist's convictions. Sarma raves more about mandirs, Muslims, maulvis and madrasas than about his government's record. Because of his flexibility, amiability and accessibility, he could get everyone on board to get his party a second term in 2021. Called 'Mama' by Assamese youth, Sarma's saffron avatar makes him the uncrowned monarch of the northeastern political arena.

Sarma's hoary Hindutva hyperbole indicates he has unlearned all he had absorbed from the Congress culture. Since Assam is troubled by illegal immigration from Bangladesh and has seen aggressive minority politics for three decades, Sarma is the region's messiah determined to marginalise local Muslim influence in state politics. As a continuation of his shrewd legislative and administrative strategy, recently he got the highly debatable Assam Repealing Bill and Assam Compulsory Registration of Muslim Marriages and Divorces Bill 2024 passed in the assembly, seeking to repeal and replace the Assam Moslem Marriages and Divorces Registration Act of 1935. Though the new legislations, Sarma is in a way attempting to introduce his own blueprint of a regional uniform civil code.