Assam has lived under a threat of marginalisation of its culture and ethos. Adding to the tale of continual tension, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act lit a fire that is yet to die down
For a good century and a quarter, Assam has lived under a dual threat of its culture and ethos being marginalised. On occasions, the threat came from immigrants whose language would overshadow the indigenous tongue, pushing it into the background. And there were times when there were deliberate designs to reduce the sons of the soil to a religious minority. It has been a tale of continual tension caused by neighbours to the south and frequent anxiety emanating from friends in the west. The Assamese could not always be sanguine that their own sons were playing the sly role, enabling the neighbours who were short of fertile lands to till and live off them. A threat engineered and egged on by persons within is worse than a danger posed by antagonists without.
The anxiety among the Assamese people at the passing of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act is wholly understandable. Merely assuring the people that protecting their culture is as much the Centre’s concern as securing the culture of the entire country is hardly satisfying. For several good reasons, Assam is a very special and distinct case. For one, Assam and Bangladesh share a border. It is, therefore, most convenient for immigrants to cross over. Since the turn of the 19th and the 20th centuries, there was infiltration, especially from Mymensingh district into the Brahmaputra Valley. From Sylhet into Cachar district, a cross over is even easier as they were twin districts pre-Partition. The two formed the legendary Surmah Valley.
Unless one has lived or frequently travelled in Assam, it is difficult to appreciate what nightmares the Assamese see when they think of infiltration. They are a gentle people with a soft, peace-loving nature. They have their own festivals. They were gifted by nature with plenty of land or even more rivers and water. They do not have to work too hard for survival. The climate is mostly warm and humid and does not lend itself to hard work. They are not competitive by nature and understandably shudder at the fear of this ethos being disturbed by outsiders.
Believe it not, until two decades ago it was a popular impression that the Congress strategy for winning elections in Assam was “Ali, Coolie and Bengali.” Coolie implied the tea garden workers and their families. Ali and Bengali are self-explanatory; they are mostly people who had over the years immigrated into Assam. Even the tea garden workers were Adivasis brought from Jharkhand and neighbouring areas to plant and pluck the bushes. To this day, it is difficult to find an original Assamese who is a plucker in a tea garden. In sum and substance, the Congress depended on settlers from outside to win a majority vote.
Earlier a near fatal game was played with Assam. As mentioned, they are a gentle people. When World War II broke out in Europe, the British also declared that India was a participant. Congress leaders expressed their grave disapproval for the government doing so without consulting Indian leaders. In a loud protest, all Congress provincial ministries resigned forthwith, as did the one in Assam. It was replaced by a Muslim League ministry led by Muhammed Saadullah. The idea of Pakistan was already floating in the political air by then. Saadullah concocted a new theory that the Adivasis in Assam were animists and not Hindus. The resulting arithmetic made the Muslims come within striking distance of a majority.
In 1947, MA Jinnah nearly convinced the British rulers in New Delhi that Assam was a Muslim-majority province and should, therefore, go to Pakistan. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in his book on eastern Pakistan, stated that tribals were not only non-Hindus but also unfit for civilised life. The generally vague conclusion of the sympathisers for Pakistan was that Eastern Bengal and Assam should be combined into one province. As was the case under the first Partition of Bengal by Viceroy Lord Curzon in 1905. Fortunately, it was undone by 1911. Lord Pethick-Lawrence, Secretary of State for India, and also one of the three members of the Cabinet Mission, 1946, sent by the British government to find out what structure would be acceptable to Indian leaders, also swallowed this theory about an amalgamation of the two.
It was touch and go when Gopinath Bordolai, the Assam Congress leader, rushed to New Delhi and persuaded those in power and influence that the Jinnah contention was untrue. As a result, Assam was saved for India, except for Sylhet district, which is now in Bangladesh. That is the kind of price Assam nearly paid for allowing illegal migrants to settle. Incidentally, until 1874, Assam was a part of the Bengal Presidency. It was then separated and placed under the rule of a Chief Commissioner. To make Assam a viable separate province, three Bengali-speaking districts of the Presidency, namely, Goalpara, Sylhet and Cachar were merged into the new province. That is how Assam became not only separate but also began its joint existence in company with Bengalis as well as Muslims. The allocation of Sylhet to East Pakistan in 1947 relieved this pressure to an extent.
Nevertheless, the Partition added Bengalis to the population as Sylhet had been a sister district of Cachar and its people were at least 46 per cent Hindu. Moreover, Mymensingh district was also nearby, enabling refugees to cross over. Due to the poverty of the landless peasants, Muslim infiltration also continued. West Pakistan monopolised the country’s power and the eastern wing was treated as a colony. Emigration was perhaps the only way many a easterner could survive. The poorest came to Assam as well as West Bengal. The more resourceful went to England and other richer countries. Called Bangladeshis since 1971, they have the reputation of being the world’s number one migrants in recent decades. No state in India has been spared by their visitation. The writer’s temporary gardener at Cochin (now Kochi) turned out to be from Bangladesh. Delhi has any number of domestic servants, many albeit with Hindu pen-names.
Assam, however, can ill afford to host these infiltrators; the Assamese population is very small. The recent Citizenship (Amendment) Bill is a major irritant for them especially since what was discovered in 1979. Some young men discovered in the electoral rolls of the Mangaldai Assembly constituency that many a voter was an obvious infiltrator. In order to spread the protest and try and stop such distortion of the electoral rolls of the State, the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) was formed. Some members also went on to establish the Assam Ganatantra Parishad (AGP), a major political party. A few members took to terrorism under the name of the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA).
The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill has understandably upset the people of Assam in the light of the events just narrated. The fear is that many a Hindu from Bangladesh may take advantage of this legislation and come over to Assam. Such a legal migration would reduce the percentage of the ethnic Assamese and dilute their indigenous culture. From the viewpoint of illegal infiltrators, the Bill is welcome because many of them who came 1971 onwards can be sent away. But in their place many a legal migrant may come. The dilution of the local culture and the threat to the political voice of the Assamese would be about the same. Hence the disturbed mood not only in Assam but also in the other northeastern States.
The solution to this potentially serious national problem would lie in making the Cachar district a separate Union Territory having no special political connection with Assam. Cachar has a population of some 40 lakh people of whom a little over half are Hindu. Under two per cent are Christian and the rest Muslim. More or less, all speak and write Bengali. Its economy is viable, especially with the help of over a hundred tea gardens which produce five crore kilograms of tea worth some `800 crore annually. That would separate some 16 per cent of the total Assam population, virtually all of whom are either Bengali or Muslim; a great relief to the Assamese. Remotely perhaps, the Bodos also may use the chance as an example and demand a Union Territory of much less than two million people living between Kokrajhar town and Sankosh river to the west. This is the one sure way to bring happiness to the Assamese people after at least a century. In any case, the Cacharis would be pleased at being semi-independent with Silchar becoming a mini rajdhani.
(The writer is a well-known columnist and an author)
