The dirt doesn’t stick: India's Gaurav Gogoi on Himanta Sarma, Rahul Gandhi and Assam’s battle ahead

Gaurav Gogoi, 43, is the deputy leader of the Congress in Parliament and the Assam state chief of the Congress, who will be taking on Himanta Biswa Sarma, the BJP Chief Minister of Assam, in a closely contested election early next year. Gogoi is poised, calm and steely, yet makes his points with a great deal of passion. In a rare interview, Gogoi gives an in-depth insight into the charges against him and what the Congress party is facing.

Gaurav Gogoi: Well, when I entered the Congress party formally in 2011, Sarma was known to be a powerful minister handling both the health and education departments, and someone who had the trust of my late father, who was the Chief Minister of Assam. He subsequently changed and joined the BJP under what has now become a pattern of whitewashing and going through the washing machine, because the cases that the BJP had brought up against him — both the Sharada chit fund case and the Louis Berger water supply case — were under CBI enquiry. He was named, he was summoned, his wife was summoned, and the day he joined the BJP, he went from being an accused to an approver, and all the cases got dropped.

So, I think that he is one of the pioneers of this BJP’s washing machine.

The BJP has changed tremendously since the era of Vajpayee. In the era of Vajpayee, Vajpayee ji himself gave a grand eulogy to Pandit Nehru on various occasions. Advani went to Pakistan and wrote a eulogy to Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and Jaswant Singh wrote a book on Jinnah. In today’s BJP, if you want to be seen and promoted by Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, besides leaving the Congress party, what you have to do in order to get the cases against you dropped is to defame the Pandit Nehru family.

What I have also pointed out is how there’s an obscene number of times that Prime Minister Modi himself has taken Pandit Nehru’s name on the floor of the House during debates which were about security, the present times and the Constitution. So, in order to be close to and liked by Modi and Amit Shah, you have to defame the Pandit Nehru family. And therefore, this is part of the BJP project to defame Rahul Gandhi.

There’s a third thing, which is the character of the man. And this is not the first time that Sarma has jumped ship when he was in trouble. If you look at his career, he was part of the All Assam Students Union, a student body which had grown in opposition to the Congress party. During that time, he was mired in several police cases, rightly or wrongly — some related to murder, some related to extortion, some related to ULFA. Then he joined the Congress party, and maybe you can say we were the originators of whitewashing his past sins.

So he has to again fabricate and create another story in order to sell his credentials. He himself has said publicly that he is a man who can say 1,000 lies. He has called me a Pakistani ISI agent.

So he is known to be someone whose words carry little weight, someone who says outrageous things for shock value, to get the TRP and the headline.

First of all, my father had a very long career in Indian politics. He served in the Union government as a Central Minister and was Chief Minister for 15 years. Himanta Biswa Sarma has to come up with some fabricated story, and I feel that it betrays his insecurity. BJP also mocks his desperation and failure, and they tell me that.

Well, I think she, being a foreigner, has shown a tremendous amount of steel. I’m grateful for her support. Not once has she told me to compromise on my politics or try to mend fences. She has shown a tremendous amount of steel, for which I’m grateful.

But going back to a point, just so that there is no misunderstanding or nothing that I’m leaving behind for your readers, I have said in a public press conference, after taking over as the party president, that both my children are foreign passport holders.

Am I the only Indian politician whose children are foreign passport holders? Is there anybody in Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s own family who are foreign passport holders? And are those questions even relevant?

That’s for the voter and the public to decide. I find that what people expect of us, sitting in Assam, is one thing — to criticise the government for its misgivings — but people of Assam are also looking forward to what is our new vision for the state: for industry, for education, for health, and for the disparate development that is taking place, which is centralised more in Guwahati. That’s what people are eager to hear.

The opposition has to be ready to endure. The opposition has to be ready to suffer. And the opposition has to be ready to continue the fight. And that’s the job we signed up for. And I think that’s what people support us for in today’s time.

See, in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP had an ambitious goal of getting more than 400 seats. Prime Minister Modi was so sure that he almost compared himself to a divine being. On a slight tangent, I felt awkward personally when, while talking about his late mother and what her passing gave him, he went on to say that he thinks he is a divine being, a biological being.

I don’t want to go on that tangent, but I wanted to point out how awkward I felt, especially when you are talking about your departed mother. But nonetheless, you see the states where they did poorly were the states that were going into elections in 2024 — Haryana and Maharashtra.

The trend suggested that the Lok Sabha pattern would continue over the next five to six months. Now just entertain me for a second. Had we won Haryana and Maharashtra, it would have created tremendous positive momentum for the opposition leading into Bihar.

With that momentum, you could have even toppled the sitting government in Bihar. And you never know then where Chief Minister Nitish Kumar would have ended up — on which side of the table.

Therefore, now with the context I have set, everything else that Rahul Gandhi has said makes sense. Just two months before, in Haryana and Maharashtra, they went through voter list fraud, which Rahul Gandhi has exposed. The scale of it — not to say it didn’t happen in the past — but the sheer scale of it.

A scale which has the ability to flip a state election. Both these press conferences, related to Haryana and Maharashtra, have not been challenged by anyone.

Let’s go back and allow me to finish.

What the BJP does is, through fraudulent voter lists, steal Haryana and steal Maharashtra. They have realised that if there is a fair vote, they are unlikely to win in Haryana and Maharashtra, and the Lok Sabha pattern would repeat. They put forward a Chief Election Commissioner who is known to be very close to Home Minister Amit Shah, someone who has worked in the Ministry of Cooperative Affairs.

They also removed — while selecting him — bypassing the law, the Chief Justice of India from the selection panel, therefore giving a blank cheque to whoever they want to put in place.

Now, with just Bihar left, because Bihar is such a politically important state that even if it flips, it has the ability to change the course of the nation, you rushed through an intensive revision of the voter list in just one to one-and-a-half months.

And you have an Election Commission that is not playing the role of a neutral umpire.

So the reason for the losses, going back to your question, is not the Congress party or its strategy. The reason for the losses is vote chori, an Election Commission that is not neutral, and a Chief Election Commissioner who refuses to entertain complaints from opposition political parties.

Instead of seriously investigating them, he gives us sermons through his own press conferences. That is the reason.

Technically, the voter doesn’t tell us to boycott. What the voter tells us is: don’t let them steal. We are ready to vote for you. Voters are not telling us to boycott.

Let us take a step back. A lot of these questions come from a certain set of attitudes and opinions against Rahul Gandhi.

What is wrong with the Leader of the Opposition travelling to different parts of the world, engaging with academia on global issues, engaging with the Indian diaspora, and responding to invitations from foreign embassies and think tanks?

Foreign think tanks and foreign embassies. Where was the Prime Minister when terrorist attacks were taking place? Once he was in Corbett. We don’t ask those questions.

It’s a bit of a hogwash from the BJP. They induct dynasts themselves. When we point that out, they say they meant one family heading a party.

Then I ask: what about the Akali Dal? What about the LJP? What about the INLD? What about Apna Dal? It’s their narrative to paint the Congress party. Earlier, we reacted with outrage. Now we let them harp on what they want to harp on.

We’ve had ministers resign over scams that are now imaginary. The BJP proudly says it will not have even one resignation. That’s what an absolute brute majority gives you.

That’s what institutional capture of the media and legislature gives you. That’s what crushing independent voices gives you — a get-out-of-crisis card.

A Vice-President resigned, nobody knows why, and he seems to have vanished. That’s why it’s important to understand what the Congress is fighting for. It’s not just elections; it’s the right of people to think differently and ask questions of the government.

The dirt doesn’t stick. So the dirt doesn’t matter.

What I see is a demographic shift. Younger Indians are increasingly disconnected from this decade of hate, divisive politics, and the industry of fear and intimidation. People are watching what’s happening around them. The opposition has grown slowly but steadily, and what remains is a core that is ready to endure and suffer.

Whether you put us in prison or take away our right to be MPs, it will not change why we are here or the larger goal we are fighting for.

After Ruben’s death, I discovered a new generation of Assamese musicians — artists younger than me whom I hadn’t listened to earlier. I’m also discovering new creative talent in Assam, especially in art and culture. I’m already well acquainted with those in sports.