A cocktail of nationalist, religious and ethnic identities is exploding in the Northeast Indian state of Assam. Will it spread elsewhere? Forty miles away from Guwahati, the most populous city in northeastern India, lies a lake formed by an earthquake more than a century ago. To get there, you need to pass through a quiet tunnel of wide leaves of tall sal trees, followed by a bed of tea shrubs. There, on the banks of Chandubi Lake, a merry crowd of the Rabha, an indigenous Indo-Mongoloid community, celebrates a three-day festival in the soft January sun. But all it takes is a simple question to lay bare the underlying tensions over identity that are boiling here in the state of Assam. The Rabha men and women wear narrow scarves — some with a white base, others with a green base, all with geometrical floral motifs. Which of the two, I ask — with the white or the green base — is the Rabha gamosa, the Assamese piece of cloth that is used both as a towel and as an item of cultural significance? Hiteswar Rabha, a district president of the All Rabha Students’ Union, responds sharply: The Assamese call the white scarf the gamosa while the Rabha honor people by additionally gifting them the green one, called pajar, he says. “We are Assamese, and are Rabha,” Hiteswar says. “It’s a wrong question to ask which I identify with first.” Battles over identity — of caste, religion, ethnicity, statehood and nationalism — are bubbling up in different parts of India, as the world’s largest democracy prepares to vote for its next government. But in Assam, those multiple tussles are all converging this election season, turning the state of 31 million people into a unique laboratory that could demonstrate just how much identity politics will determine how Indians across the country vote in 2019. | 