The Congress’s Veerappa Moily has raised the possibility of another homecoming: that of Badruddin Ajmal. However, the AUDF’s working president Hafiz Rashid Ahmed Choudhury says that Ajmal was never a Congressman, and that the AUDF has a distinct “identity, character and ideology.” In the past chief minister Tarun Gogoi has resisted pressures from the party’s high command to make overtures towards Ajmal. His alliance with Hagrama Mahilary faction of the Bodoland People’s Progressive Front was an alternative strategy.  He walks a careful line between nurturing a credible alliance of ‘indigenous’ interests, and not losing further ground to Ajmal. It has allowed him to retain his upper Assam base. It is not accidental that the AGP’s current top leaders are almost all from lower Assam. 

Electoral calculations alone cannot end Assam’s troubles.  Nor can Assam deal with Partition’s failures all by itself. But a conversation on this subject is crucial for the future of Assam, and for a viable regional agenda. Figuring out the rules governing Indian citizenship and the cross-border movement of people is not up to Assam. It involves not only Assam and the Northeast, but the rest of the country, and perhaps others in the sub-continent as well. 

The writer is a political scientist at Bard College, New York express@expressindia.com