Tarun Gogoi (1934-2020) had the energy of a young man, remained combative till the end

Nobody who knew Tarun Gogoi, the three-time chief minister of Assam, a six-term MP and four times a Member of the Assam Assembly, would dare to call him an old man. Although he passed away on Monday at Guwahati at the age of 86, Gogoi remained active almost till the very end, sending out an audio message from the hospital as late as on November 4, expressing his wish to continue serving his people.

He had a zest for life, played golf and snooker, took keen interest in cricket and culture and at the age of 85 put on the lawyer’s gown in 2019 to appear before the Supreme Court to challenge the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). He indeed had the energy of a young man, as he had retorted to Narendra Modi in response to the latter’s snide comment that Assam needed a younger chief minister.

He appeared as a lawyer before the Supreme Court in 2019 after a long interval of 36 years. He had last appeared in court in 1983. In 2019 he appeared in court to assist another Congress leader and lawyer P Chidambaramin challenging the CAA. Gogoi had called the CAA ‘discriminatory’ and had said that NRC and CAA were contradictory to each other.

He condemned indiscriminate arrests of anti-CAA protestors, wrote to the Union Home Minister Amit Shah for the release of Assam girl Devangana Kalita in Delhi and Natasha Narwal on the charge of inciting Delhi riots in February this year. He was not one to mince his words and was quoted as saying, “The arrest of peasant leader Akhil Gogoi for participating in the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) agitation is nothing but political vendetta and an attempt to suppress their fundamental rights. The summons by the NIA to the student leaders of a premier university is also condemnable.” Jawaharlal Nehru University student Devangana is doing MPhil at the Centre for Women Studies .

He was engaged in raising people’s issues even during the lockdown. Severely critical of the Government’s response to the migrant crisis, he loosened the purse strings of his family trust to help the migrant workers in distress. In May, 2020 he released grants from Usha Kamal Gogoi Trust, a family trust set up in memory of his parents, for the distressed and stranded workers of Assam.

Gogoi took over the reins of Assam at a difficult time in 2001. The state had been ravaged by insurgency, the Assam agitation and racial violence. As many as 1,500 civilians had lost their lives in 2001 alone. "When I took over, employees were not getting salaries for months... We could start development activities from 2005 onwards as the state was running under overdraft till then.

Gogoi had tweeted in 2016, "When AGP was in power in #Assam ppl (people) used to be scared of going out, schemes for the poor were stopped, with #BJP at the centre."

Acknowledged as a builder of Assam even by his detractors, in January this year Gogoi had lashed out at the Assam Cricket Association (ACA) after the international match between India and Sri Lanka at Guwahati fell through due to wet patches on the wicket.

“We constructed stadia and fields, they have not been able to even host the match. Why, they could not even dry the pitch. Because of just 2-3 people, we have been shown to be useless in front of the world,” he mocked.

“They are dreaming of transforming Guwahati into a sports capital. But they have not been able to construct a single stadium, they are still using the ones that we built. They have Rijiju now at the Centre. But no, they have not been able to build a single stadium,” he added.

Protesting against the Union Government’s decision to permit coal mining in an elephant reserve, he wrote to the Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, pointing out that the reserve was an ecological hotspot and mining would be a disaster.

“We were also in power for 15 years. We were not shown black flags, neither were we ostracized. Himanta Biswa Sarma was with us then. But now he is being confronted with black flags everywhere. They were even being subjected to protests at the recent cricket match. And yet, they claim they will win 100 seats (in the 2021 Assembly elections).”

Tributes which poured in from people from various walks of life are a testimony to Tarun Gogoi as an old-world, gentleman politician. He was a gentleman and a politician, a species that is fast becoming extinct. R.I.P. Tarun Gogoi.