Brain Stormer: In Assam, a New Idea of India

For the Intolerance Brigade brunching in lutyen’s Delhi, it may be fashionable to tweet about how the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is no less dangerous than a bloodthirsty terrorist organisation or have a seminar at the IHC on the Sangh Parivar is using social service to win over new vote banks much like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or write angry newspaper opeds on how students having to chant Hindu mantras in school is a direct assault on the country’s secular values (no matter that their own children say the lord’s Prayer at the city’s top Christian missionary schools everyday but hypocrisy and double standards is included in the bill at Khan Market cafes), so on an so forth.

But away from the national capital and its elite commentariat, in the heartland where the people have real concerns and issues to deal with, these debates and discussions, often spurious and vaccuous anyway, have little resonance. And so it was that on Tuesday it turned out that the student who had topped the High School leaving Certificate examination in Assam was a Muslim boy from a school run by a Sangh Parivar institution.  

Sarfaraz Hussain, who topped the Class X exams with 590 marks out of 600, is from Shankardev Shishu Niketan in Betkuchi, near Guwahati, which is run by Shishu Shikshya Samiti, Assam, which, in turn, is affiliated to Vidya Bharati which is part of the Sangh Parivar. This news possibly had the Intolerance Brigade, already despondent about the BJP’s tremendous success in Assam where it has formed the Government for the first time, choking on its margeritas but, for the rest of the country, this was the moment that broke all clichés about the so-called ‘new India’ that was emerging under the Right-wing Government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

As Hussain’s father explains to the left-liberal media, he enrolled his son at Shankardev Shishu Niketan because the school offered quality education – and that has nothing to do with religion. Besides, as Hussain senior explains, “Our first identity is Assamese”.