Three days before Ranee Narah turned 47, on 28 October 2012, her then party colleague Himanta Biswa Sarma had tweeted, ‘Congratulation to Shrimati Rani Narah for her induction into the Union Council of Ministers.’

At 11.56 a.m. that day, Ranee had taken oath as a junior minister in the Ministry of Tribal Affairs in the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government. Sarma’s congratulatory tweet was sent exactly 36 minutes after the ceremony.

To date, Ranee has not responded to the tweet.

Many would have viewed Sarma’s courtesy tweet as an attempt to bury an old hatchet. The series of events that followed over the next twelve years reveals that the hatchet remained exactly where it was, though the stature of these two protagonists in this saga has changed. A former Congress leader, Sarma has since joined the BJP and is now the chief minister of Assam. While his career graph in the current political scenario has been rising, Ranee has all but taken a back seat in the public memory since her exit from the Rajya Sabha in 2022.

Ranee, it seemed for a long time, was destined for bigger things. Born Jahanara Choudhury, she took the name ‘Ranee Narah’ following her marriage. Her husband, Bharat Narah, is a six-time member of the Assam Legislative Assembly and a former Congress minister in the Assam government.

Rise of a sportswoman

If her husband was drawn to politics as a young man, cricket was Ranee’s calling before she threw her hat into the political ring as well. Old newspaper reports describe her as a ‘stingy left-arm orthodox bowler’ and a ‘hard-hitting left-handed batter’. Women’s cricket in India has only recently drawn the kind of attention that it has always deserved. When Ranee started out in the 1970s, there was hardly any incentive for a girl to pick up the willow or the red cherry. Ranee picked up both. She was an all-rounder – a middle-order batter and a left-arm spinner – and showed plenty of aggression on the field, said a Guwahati-based journalist, who did not wish to be named. He is among the very few who still remember Ranee as a player. Most sports journalists today cannot even recall her playing days, though Ranee captained the Assam state cricket team, according to her Wikipedia profile. There are no records available of Ranee’s exploits on the cricket pitch. When we searched ESPNcricinfo, considered one of the most comprehensive websites for all things cricket, we found an article from 13 November 2006 that said that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the game’s national governing body, had decided to disband the Women’s Cricket Association of India (WCAI). The name ‘Jahanara Choudhury’ draws a complete blank.

Ranee, president of the WCAI for three terms, was asked to resign along with the secretary, Shubhangi Kulkarni, a former captain of the women’s cricket team, and join the BCCI’s women’s committee. The WCAI would later be absorbed by the BCCI, following the merger of the International Women’s Cricket Council with the International Cricket Council to form one unified global body to manage the game. Earlier, in 2005, when Ranee was still heading the WCAI, the Indian women’s cricket team had reached the final of the Women’s Cricket World Cup, where they lost to Australia by 98 runs.

Ranee, who also represented Assam in volleyball, weightlifting, shot put and discus, says it was politics in sports and cricket administration that drew her to state and national politics as a career option. During a personal interaction with the author, she said: ‘I was happy to be a sportswoman and [was] about to don Indian colours having played in the junior team, but the Assam cricket body kept me out without taking into account my on-field talent. In short, it was a gross injustice and discrimination of the worst kind.’

She appeared calm while reminiscing about those days decades later at the lounge of New Delhi’s India International Centre. But back then, anger and frustration had pushed her into the comforting arms of politics.

From cricket to politics

On the political turf, there were at least three veteran Congress leaders who played a pivotal role in her ascent – Hiteswar Saikia, Santosh Mohan Dev and Tarun Gogoi. Ranee’s formal entry into politics happened in the mid-1990s and she would be, in quick succession, appointed as the general secretary, then vice president and finally president of the Assam Pradesh Youth Congress.

About a decade before Ranee’s entry into politics, a young leader from the All-Assam Students’ Union was creating waves in the state. When the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) formed the government under Prafulla Mahanta, a 27-year-old Bharat Narah from the ethnic Mising group of people was made a minister.

Apparently, it was Hiteswar Saikia who had introduced Ranee – then known by her birth name, Jahanara – to Bharat. The young couple fell in love and their relationship blossomed with the blessings of Saikia. Former student leaders who had taken oath as chief minister and ministers in the new AGP government were among those who attended their wedding. Ranee said that she and Bharat had a nikah ceremony, a court registered marriage and a celebration in keeping with the Dugla Lanam (elopement marriage) system – a popular form of marriage among the Misings.

Months later, the Mahanta government would run into a storm of dissent over myriad issues. Among them was Bharat’s decision to invite Saikia to his wedding. His then party colleagues were also upset with him for marrying a Muslim woman.

Saikia, who was chief minister of Assam for two terms, died in 1996. By then, the Narah couple were firmly in the Congress fold and have remained steadfast in their loyalty towards the grand old party.

Another Saikia protégé

Like the Narahs, Himanta Biswa Sarma also considers himself a protégé of Saikia. Younger than both Bharat and Ranee, Sarma had cut his teeth in student politics while he was still in school and would rise to be number two in the Tarun Gogoi government before leaving the Congress to join the BJP in August 2015.

As an up-and-coming Congress politician in the mid- 1990s, Sarma’s proximity to Saikia and his growing clout within the organization had created a rivalry among several young leaders who had similar ambitions. Then, in 2001, Sarma entered the assembly for the first time as an elected member, taking his first step towards what has been an unbroken run till date. By then, Ranee had already become a two-time MP, winning her first election in 1998 from the Lakhimpur Lok Sabha seat in Upper Assam.

Ranee’s critics say she had ‘managed’ the ticket from the Congress high command despite several complaints against her. ‘I remember the late Santosh Mohan Dev had introduced her to us at the Circuit House,’ recalls a now retired journalist, who didn’t wish to be named.

Ranee is candid about her loyalty to the Congress high command, especially Sonia Gandhi. ‘I owe everything to Sonia Gandhi. She liked me and trusted my political acumen. Even Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi would often gently chide me and say he had to accommodate me because of Sonia Gandhi,’ Ranee said to the author during a personal interaction.

In 1999, Ranee won from Lakhimpur again – this time defeating the AGP nominee, Sarbananda Sonowal, who would, a decade and a half later, go on to become Assam’s first BJP chief minister in May 2016.

‘But, as in cricket, politics sometimes does not work to a game plan,’ Ranee says. ‘The best bowling goes unrewarded and you lose despite scoring a century. But all’s well that ends well.’

After Gogoi became the chief minister for the first time in 2001, he made two appointments, one of which would have far-reaching consequences for him, the Congress and for Ranee. While Ranee’s husband, Bharat, was appointed a cabinet minister, a post he would hold for ten years, Sarma was made the junior minister for planning and development in 2002. Ranee was by then largely preoccupied with cricket administration. But unknown to her, resentment was brewing against her within the party, which ultimately cost her the Lakhimpur Lok Sabha seat.

In 2004, the year the Congress had upset the BJP’s ‘India Shining’ campaign, and Manmohan Singh, a Rajya Sabha MP from Assam, was sworn in as the prime minister, Ranee lost the Lakhimpur seat following a full-blown rebellion from local MLAs against the party’s official nominee. Four MLAs refused to campaign for Ranee. She was also accused of not submitting formal accounts of a session of the Assam Sahitya Sabha held at Lakhimpur in 2003. Ranee was the reception committee president. The amount was reported to be around Rs 50 lakh. The local MLAs were also unhappy with her failure to do anything ‘substantial’ for the constituency.

Her ‘proximity’ to the late Hiteswar Saikia also came back to haunt Ranee, as several of her colleagues in the Assam Congress accused her of ‘spying’ for Saikia when he was the chief minister.

Two years later, in 2006, the feud between her and Sarma was out in the open. 

Excerpted with permission from Missing from the House: Muslim Women in India’s Parliament by Rasheed Kidwai and Ambar Kumar Ghosh, Juggernaut (2025).