In Assamese heartland, those who fought BJP’s citizenship law are now voting for ‘development’
Economics, and not identity, dominates election conversations. Voters in Upper Assam say development is central to the election, not citizenship battles. | Arunabh Saikia
Fifteen months ago, within 24 hours of Parliament passing the Citizenship Amendment Act, five young men fell to police bullets in Guwahati as scorching protests swept through Assam.
The controversial amendments fast-track Indian citizenship for undocumented non-Muslim migrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Assam, which shares a long border with Bangladesh, angry protestors declared the new law would spell the death knell for the Assamese identity. For years, the Congress had sheltered “illegal” Muslim migrants, they claimed, and now the Bharatiya Janata Party, which had promised to chase away all “infiltrators”, was doing the same by paving the way for the entry of Hin