By Dr. Gyan Pathak
The chief minister of Assam Himanta Biswa Sarma’s political narrative has weakened just before the Legislative Assembly election to be held within few weeks from now in April-May, which he has tried to restore by dropping the name of Ex-President’s name from Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed Medical College and Hospital located at Barpeta. His long term political narrative of Assamese identity peddled chiefly against linguistic, ethnic, and religious minorities had recently suffered a serious jolt when he secured support of three AIUDF MLAs for NDA’s candidate for Rajya Sabha Election to be held on March 16.
When people started talking about his getting support from AIUDF MLAs, and pointing out the true colour of CM Himanta Sarma, he became concerned about weakening of his earlier narrative. He wanted to restore his old narrative and changed the name of Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed Medical College and Hospital to Barpeta Medical College and Hospital, only to show that he will still work on his old narrative, though he has taken support from three AIUDF MLAs. Nevertheless, the political damage has already been done.
For, many other reasons, Himanta Biswa Sarma is not so stronger a politician that he was in 2021, when he became chief minister of the state. 2026 Legislative Assembly Election will be the first election under his leadership, that will be put on test. In the meantime, Assam constituencies underwent delimitation in 2023. Lok Sabha election of 2024 was held under his leadership, in which BJP had won 9 seats out of 14, and had leading position in 75 seats out of 126 in the legislative assembly constituencies.
The weakening of his political narrative got setback when the candidates for Rajya Sabha election backed by his government received support from MLAs belonging to a Muslim-based Party All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), led by Badruddin Ajmal. The three MLAs of AIUDF, which is widely considered a Muslim-support-base party – Karim Uddin Barbhuiya, Zakir Hussain Laskar, and Nizamuddin Choudhury had signed nomination papers supporting the NDA candidate.
It has wider political consequences, not only within AIUDF, but also within NDA, and their corresponding support bases. Two of these MLAs were suspended by the AIUDF for supporting the NDA-backed candidate. The opposition leaders from parties such as the Indian National Congress and regional groups accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party of seeking help from a party it had earlier criticised. This became a political controversy because the BJP and AIUDF are publicly rival parties, especially over issues like immigration and identity politics in Assam. That is why any cooperation—even indirect—becomes politically sensitive.
In a damage control exercise the Assam government decided on March 10 to rename Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed Medical College and Hospital as Barpeta Medical College and Hospital. Cabinet has approved the decision, and CM Himanta gave reason for this change in a press conference saying, “All our medical colleges are named after their locations. We see that in the medical colleges in Guwahati, Dhubri, Silchar, Bongaigaon, Biswanath and Sonitpur. Somehow, the Barpeta one was named as Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed Medical College and Hospital, which does not align with the naming pattern of other medical colleges,” adding that the cabinet decided to rename the institution to avoid confusion.
After dropping the Ex-President’s name he said, “As Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed was India’s President and the first one from Assam, the cabinet decided that another educational or cultural institution of the same or higher stature will be named after him. We will take a decision in this regard to keep his name alive.”
People see this incident of dropping name of Ex-President in the backdrop of an incident in the neighbouring poll bound state West Bengal, where BJP has been criticising CM Mamata Banerjee to disrespect the current President of India. People are asking if BJP has respected the Ex-President by dropping his name from the name of medical college?
It should be noted that ever since BJP has come to power at the Centre and in states, its governments have been changing names of institutions, cities, roads, or even streets and villages as part of Hindutva politics. In Assam, after the Himanta Biswa Sarma became chief minister, the state government has changed hundreds of names. One district, one town, one administrative headquarters, 3 public buildings, 5 institutions, over 1281 schools, and several dozen localities and villages underwent name change.
The Assam government’s renaming initiatives since 2021 mainly follow three themes – restoring Assamese cultural identity, removing colonial or non-local names, and replacing religious or linguistically unclear names.
In 2023, Madarsa schools were renamed, which were 1281 in numbers. State had closed the madarsa education system and converted them into general schools. In 2024, Karimganj district was renamed Sribhumi District and the town named Sribhumi town. Hojai district headquarters was named Srimanta Shankardeva Nagar. In 2025, Sarusajai Sports Complex was named Arjuna Bhogeswar Baruah Sports Complex. Raj Bhavan was renamed Lok Bhavan. Dibrugarh Airport is proposed to be renamed Bharat Ratna Bhupen Hazarika Airport. There are many more examples of name change, as per the name policy announced in 2022.
However, the question is if the name change will benefit BJP in the forthcoming election? Many analysts believe that impacts are both short-term (electoral messaging) and long-term (identity politics and regional alignment). Renaming can function as symbolic messaging with certain risks because Assam has strong regional and linguistic diversity. If linguistic, regional, ethnic, and religious minorities take CM Himanta as opportunist, and the new policy against their identity politics, he will be in real trouble. (IPA Service)
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