After a decade of relative peace, unrest is spreading across Northeast India. The proposed Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, in combination with the National Register of Citizens in Assam, has—as anticipated by this writer last May—led to disquiet among all major communities inhabiting the diverse region. Linguistic, ethnic and religious divides have sharpened anew. At the moment of writing, reports of incidents of vandalism are coming in from various parts of the Northeast where a bandh has been called across all seven states in protest against the Citizenship Bill.

Tuesday’s bandh was the first in 10 years called by the powerful All Assam Students’ Union, the organisation’s General Secretary Lurin Jyoti Gogoi told The Indian Express, adding that this was the first time that the entire Northeast would observe a unified bandh.

Politics in Northeast India has for decades worked an insider/outsider divide. There is a strong sense of difference from the “mainland” of India to which the Northeast is linked by a tenuous land corridor of 22 km around Siliguri in West Bengal. Most states have had several armed ethnic insurgent outfits over the years fighting for independence from India on the basis of their separate ethnic identities. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s attempt to reorient the identity politics of Assam, the central and most populous state in the region, from its traditional linguistic basis to a religious basis is now pitting it against its own allies. The Asom Gana Parishad, whose politics is based on the Assamese linguistic identity, walked out of the alliance and the government on Monday over the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill. Meghalaya’s chief minister Conrad Sangma has also said the National People’s Party will not support the NDA over the Bill.

The controversial Bill was opposed in the Joint Parliament Committee constituted to study it by Sushmita Dev, the Congress MP from Silchar, her party colleague from West Bengal Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Trinamool Congress MPs Saugata Roy and Derek O’Brien, and the Communist MP from West Bengal, Mohammad Salim, who wrote dissenting notes against the Bill. In other words, all the members of the committee who may be seen to represent the Bengali-speaking areas of Assam or the state of West Bengal were against the Bill.

This is a matter of note since the Bill is allegedly meant to provide relief to Hindu Bengalis from Bangladesh, among others. It applies to all of India and to non-Muslims coming from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. It is likely that if passed, the main beneficiaries of the Bill, at least for the present, may be Hindus from Pakistan. While there are no refugee camps of recent vintage in Northeast India of Hindu migrants from Bangladesh, around 1,000 camps of Hindu refugees from Pakistan reportedly exist in Rajasthan. Similar camps exist in Punjab and even north Delhi.

The opposition to the Bill in Northeast India is because the local communities there long had fears of being overrun by Bengalis, Hindu or Muslim. “Outsiders” from the other parts of India such as Bihari workers and Marwari businessmen have also suffered attacks in the past in bouts of ethnic riots and targeted ethnic cleansing by militant groups. There is a considerable history of ethnic cleansing of the minority communities in the region, who are from communities that are majorities elsewhere.

There are apprehensions that the local Bengali Hindu minority, which has been in the region since well before Independence, may again face difficulties in Northeast India because of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill.

It is impossible to separate the Citizenship Bill from the National Register of Citizens. The exercise to identify and disenfranchise or deport alleged illegal migrants who entered Assam has left out 4 million people from the NRC. The exercise itself has been contentious, with criticism over both its design and its implementation. Numerous cases have surfaced of individuals and families who are unquestionably Indian but have been left out of the NRC for one reason or another.

The apprehension that legitimate Indian citizens, especially those of Bengali heritage, are being left out of the NRC was addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a speech on January 5. “I am aware of the problems and difficulties faced by many during the NRC process, but I assure you that no injustice will be done to any genuine Indian citizens,” he told the Vijay Sankalp Samavesh Rally at Kalinagar near Silchar in Assam’s Bengali-speaking Barak Valley. At the same rally, Modi expressed the hope that the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill would soon be passed by Parliament, a statement that led to the AGP’s exit from the BJP-led government in Assam two days later.

The rally was the launch of Mr Modi re-election campaign for the Lok Sabha elections in 2019, due in three months from now. It suggests that the NRC and Citizenship Bill issues may be important parts of the BJP campaign.

These issues are highly charged and emotive in Northeast India. They endanger the fragile peace that had returned to the troubled region after decades of violence. They are also unlikely to yield the electoral dividends that the BJP is hoping for.

The strategy of frightening the Bengali Hindus via a flawed NRC from which millions are kept out, and then throwing them a “lifeline” through the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, may not convince everyone. The Bengali Hindus have been among the BJP’s core supporters in Assam, but the NRC has shaken that confidence.

The reaction among the Assamese is clear. There is almost universal opposition to the Citizenship Bill. This opposition is mirrored in communities across the entire Northeast. Even the BJP’s regional allies such as the National People’s Party led by Conrad Sangma have opposed it right from the start.

Bengal politics is not very responsive to the NRC and Citizenship issues. Ideological politics, rather than ethnic identity politics, is deeply embedded in Bengal. The BJP has tried to polarise the population on religious lines, but without success so far. What is happening instead, as a reaction, is a growing sense of resentment against Kolkata’s wealthy business community, dominated overwhelmingly by sethjis from elsewhere, which is seen as lording it over the locals and acting against their interests. There is a continuity from Left politics to the politics of Mamata Banerjee, and Bengali identity politics and class politics in Kolkata overlap.

Elsewhere in India, it is likely that people will fail to understand the complications. There is the likelihood that the BJP can convince its supporters in the rest of India that it is working very hard to make India a “safe space” for Hindus and throw out Bangladeshi and Rohingya Muslim migrants. This may consolidate the base, but in a national election contested state by state, with regional satraps leading the charge, local issues and local personalities may well come to dominate. In any case, preaching to the converted is unlikely to bring the BJP back to power.

This polarising politics can singe Northeast and East India, but it is not enough to help Modi back to anywhere near the numbers he won in 2014.