The Last Battle of Saraighat – An insightful, informative and a fascinating account of how the BJP started making inroads in North East states

A few months back, journalist cum author, Prashant Jha came up with his book “How the BJP Wins” where in the chapter “Beyond the heartland” in his book, Prashant highlighted how the BJP was able to move beyond its identity of “North Indian Party”, “Upper Caste Party”,etc. and was able to create inroads in areas beyond its core areas of strength. In the same chapter, Prashant also highlighted about the birth of new poll strategists for BJP who are now proving very invaluable for BJP – Rajat Sethi & Shubhrastha duo. “The Last Battle of Saraighat” is the debut book of Rajat Sethi - Shubhrastha duo who played a great role in crafting election strategies for BJP in the recent past. As the cover of the book indicates, the book is about The Rise of BJP to power in the North East states of India. Legendary Chinese war strategiest Sun Tzu famously said “If You know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of hundred battles” and “The General who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought” and the way the BJP led NDA rose to power in Assam elections 2016 and subsequently in many states in North East is an epitome of the same and The Last Battle of Saraighat is a detailed insider account of the same.

The book is divided into 7 Chapters (a fabulous Introduction by the authors duo and 6 insightful chapters to be precise). The authors begin the introduction in style by invoking the iconic 1671’s Battle of Saraighat where the Ahoms defeated the invading Mughals. As Rajat tweeted a few days back, this historical battle captures the essence of politics of Assam in an unique way which you can realise as you read through the pages of the book. In the 1^st Chapter of the book, the authors takes you through the political history of Assam through the decades and the various issues that arose because of it. Assam has a history of various political blunders done by the ruling parties there in the past which had many repurcussions which were recounted during the campaign of 2016 Assembly polls in Assam.

In the 2^nd Chapter of the book, the author duo takes you through the issue of illegal migrants which was one of the burning issues in Assam, the rise of Assam movement, the rise and fall of AGP party, the birth of the party ULFA and the Tarun Gogoi era of 15 years as Assam CM, Maulana Badruddin Ajmal and the AIUDF party, emergence of Sarbanand Sonowal (current Assam CM) as Jatiyo Nayak and a brief introduction about Himanta Biswa Sarma (cabinet minister in Assam Govt and current convenor of North East Democratic Alliance). A month back, Himanta Biswa Sarma took twitter to storm by this viral tweet in response of a tweet by Congress VP, Rahul Gandhi. You can read in detail about that incident in this chapter.

The 3^rd Chapter of the book shows in detail on how the RSS has been creating inroads in Assam for nearly 5 decades and the results of the 2016 polls is a result of the long years of selfless hardwork and sacrifices by RSS karyakarthas which is now an inspiration to many RSS Karyakarthas especially in South India where the BJP is still trying to create a massive inroads. The authors began the chapter with an excellent quote from Bhagawath Gita which literally translates to “Lord Krishna asking Arjuna to surrender his work to the Lord and with his mind focussed on the Lord, fight the battle without any selfish desires”. I also came to know that the RSS conducted its first Shakha in Assam after reading this chapter.

The 4^th Chapter covers in detail about the pre-poll strategy followed by the BJP in their campaign to the Assam Assembly polls 2016, how they understood and studied the complex demographic maze of the Assam populations, the errors committed by the then ruling Congress party and how the BJP capitulated on those opportunities, the coming of rainbow alliances, use of Social Media as a tool,etc. Interestingly, the Assam elections were the 1^st type of elections where satires and caricatures were used to take digs at the opponents which was discussed in detail by the author duo here.

The 5th Chapter is about how the BJP fought during the different phases of the two phase bound Assam Assembly polls in 2016. You can find the relevance of the books’ title “The Last Battle of Saraighat” as you read through this chapter. Also you can read about Himanta Biswa Sarma’s meteoric rise in BJP in detail here. A twitter user from Assam, Mr. Raju Das tweeted in April 2016 about the goodwill enjoyed by Himanta Biswa Sarma in his home constituency Jalukbari in his brief tweet and I was able to read about the same in detail in this chapter.

The final chapter is titled “Elections and Indian Democracy” where the authors discuss in detail about the role of people in Indian democracy, the need to create connect with the local population by the political leaders, the road ahead for BJP w.r.t. North East states, increasing role of youth taking interests in politics and finally the role of many selfless volunteers and ground level workers which have a great impact in shaping the results of polls outcomes.

I wrote in my review for the book “ How the BJP Wins” that “Winning polls is very much as success in any endeavour where lots of hardwork, planning & careful execution of the same plays a good role”. It is relevant to this book “The Last Battle of Saraighat” too as reading this book makes you realise the above. The book is a reflection of the meticulous efforts and hardwork put in by the BJP workers and the authors who were the poll strategists for BJP in understanding the dynamics of the battle ground Assam and the way to conquer it and how they succeeded in it. Thanks Rajat – Shubhrastha for this insightful book and all the very best for your future endeavours too as poll strategists and as writers.

-      Srivatsan V