Assam Politics: Himanta Biswa Sarma’s ‘Gen Z Eruption’ and the Akhil Gogoi Challenge

Assam’s political vocabulary has always carried layered meaning, and Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma (HBS) wields it like a scalpel. Much like Richard Nixon—whose rhetoric was calculated to disarm opponents—Sarma speaks in codes. His recent quip about a possible “Gen Z-type eruption” was no off-the-cuff aside. It was a dart aimed squarely at one man: Akhil Gogoi.

Framing Protest Before It Happens

By calling any future agitation a “Gen Z eruption,” HBS reduces dissent to a generational tantrum—impulsive, social-media-driven, unserious. The timing matters. The BJP is consolidating after Narendra Modi’s Assam visit; opposition parties are still hunting for momentum. Delivered in upper Assam and before an audience of the wary middle class, the message inoculates the state against a revival of street politics. The target is obvious: Akhil Gogoi, Assam’s most visible street agitator. While Gaurav Gogoi spars with HBS in Parliament, Akhil remains his disruptive rival on the ground.

Gen Z and the Akhil Disconnect

Ironically, the very demographic invoked by HBS has cooled on Akhil. Digital-native Gen Z wants clarity, speed, and opportunity. To them, his hunger strikes and jail diaries feel like relics from a slower era.

There is a deeper rupture. Akhil’s steadfast defence of the Miya community, principled in rights terms, clashes with Assamese insecurities over identity and land. For many young Assamese, “Miya” is shorthand for demographic anxiety. HBS and the BJP amplify this, portraying Akhil not as a pan-Assamese leader but as a “Miya sympathiser,” eroding his appeal among the very youths who might have been his natural base.

The Nixonian Craft

This is where Sarma’s Nixonian craft shows. In one stroke he:

1. Pre-empts protest by trivialising it as generational noise.

2. Delegitimises Akhil by casting him as the mascot of that “immature” energy rather than a serious leader.

The timing is shrewd. With 2026 elections approaching, the BJP already commands the loyalty of Bengali Hindus, tea tribes, Marwaris, Nepalis and Biharis. The missing piece is the Assamese mainstream youth. By painting Akhil as an unreliable, Miya-leaning rabble-rouser, Sarma nudges this demographic either towards the BJP’s promise of stability or into political disengagement.

Words as Weapons

The contest in Assam is not only on the ground but on the semiotic battlefield of words and perceptions. Akhil Gogoi—once the emblem of organic Assamese resistance—now faces a generational paradox: his moral positions jar with Assamese anxieties, and his methods belong to another time. Sarma, ever the political semiotician, has seized the gap, branding protests as “Gen Z eruptions” and reducing Akhil’s rebellion to caricature.

In Assam today, every word is not merely spoken. It is weaponised.