Burden of History: Assam and the Partition—Unresolved Issues

209 Pages·2017·5.858 MB·English

by  Udayon Misra

Title Pages
Burden of History: Assam and the Partition--
Unresolved Issues
Udayon Misra
Print publication date: 2018
Print ISBN-13: 9780199478361
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: February 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199478361.001.0001
Title Pages
Udayon Misra
(p.i) Burden of History (p.ii)
(p.iii) Burden of History
(p.iv)
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Dedication
Burden of History: Assam and the Partition--
Unresolved Issues
Udayon Misra
Print publication date: 2018
Print ISBN-13: 9780199478361
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: February 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199478361.001.0001
Dedication
Udayon Misra
(p.v) For Titul (p.vi)
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Preface
Burden of History: Assam and the Partition--
Unresolved Issues
Udayon Misra
Print publication date: 2018
Print ISBN-13: 9780199478361
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: February 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199478361.001.0001
(p.ix) Preface
Udayon Misra
My interest in the subject of pre- and post-Partition politics and Assam has been
spurred by the fact that the issues that were central to the region’s society and
politics during the 1940s, such as land, immigration, identity, and language,
continue to occupy major public space seventy years after the Partition and
Independence. It is as if all other issues, for instance, those relating to human
development, have been pushed to the margins. The effects of the Partition
continue to hang as a spectre over the entire region, and the more one tries to
talk of present issues and search for solutions to them, the more one gets
enmeshed in the relatively recent past. While it is true that all small nationalities
struggling to assert their identities go back to the past and even try to recreate
it to suit their identity concerns, in Assam’s case its recent history seems to have
subsumed its ‘glorious past’, with geography playing a crucial role in
determining its present position vis-à-vis the Indian state. When armed
insurgency broke out in Assam sometime in the 1980s, there was apparent
confusion in the Assamese mind as to how this was possible with a people who
were part of the Indian freedom struggle and who prided themselves on their
strong socio-cultural links with the rest of the country. One could understand
why nationalities that had never participated in the struggle for Indian
independence often rejected their association with the Indian federation and
demanded separation and an independent status. But it was certainly a different
case with Assam. That is exactly why it was felt by many that the challenge
posed by Assam held more serious consequences for the Indian state than even
those put forth by the Nagas, (p.x) the Manipuris, or the Mizos. And, in order
to understand this, even if partially, one needed to go back to the developments
that took place in the years preceding the Partition and Independence—
developments that have etched their effect on the society, politics, and economy
of Assam and also the entire Northeast region in an indelible manner. Romila
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Preface
Thapar in her preface to her latest collection of essays entitled The Past as
Present: Forging Contemporary Identities through History talks of how ‘the
present draws on the past not necessarily always to better understand the past
but to use the past to legitimize the present’.1 Referring to her ideas over the
past fifty years, Romila Thapar says: ‘My ideas today are not substantially
different from what they were a few decades ago although the emphasis on
nuances may differ. I must confess that in re-reading the essays in order to
revise them, I was saddened that the issues remain contentious and our
movement towards a solution seems distant.’2 In the case of Assam too, the
contentious issues thrown up during the pre- and post-Partition years continue
to influence the society and politics of the state even today and they are far from
being resolved. Instead, these issues are taking on ever new complications and
shades. My purpose in this book is merely to try to understand the present
contentious issues of my state, which seem to defy any solution and which are
increasingly adding to the growing human tragedy of the region, in the light of
developments that occurred in the pre- and post-Partition years. However, if, in
the process, some of the happenings of present-day Assam are ‘legitimized’, it is
a different matter.
Notes
Notes:
(1.) Romila Thapar, The Past as Present: Forging Contemporary Identities
through History (New Delhi: Aleph Book Company, 2014), pp. xiii, 2.
(2.) Thapar, The Past as Present, p. 2.
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Acknowledgements
Burden of History: Assam and the Partition--
Unresolved Issues
Udayon Misra
Print publication date: 2018
Print ISBN-13: 9780199478361
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: February 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199478361.001.0001
(p.xi) Acknowledgements
Udayon Misra
I would like to sincerely thank the Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS),
Shimla, India, for offering me a national fellowship to work on a topic that has
been engaging my attention for some time. The excellent academic atmosphere
of the IIAS, combined with the warmth and friendship of the director and
fellows, as well as the unstinting cooperation of the entire staff of the institute
helped me to complete the first draft of my work within the scheduled period of
a year. Friends at the institute put a lot of critical inputs into my work and I
gained immensely from these, though it is not possible for me to name them
individually. My sincere thanks to all of them. I am grateful to several young
friends such as Madhumita Das, who helped me collect material for the work,
and Saswati Chaudhury, who helped me with data on certain portions of the
work. My sincere thanks to the team at Oxford University Press for making the
manuscript ready for publication. A special word of thanks to Sanghamitra Misra
for having meticulously gone through the manuscript and coming out with some
really insightful suggestions and to Rahul Govind for evincing keen interest in
the work. Arindam, Jaya, and Ani were a source of love and support for me while
writing. Tilottoma has been with me always, through every stage of this work.
21 July 2017
Udayon Misra
National Fellow
IIAS, Shimla (p.xii)
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Acknowledgements
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Introduction
Burden of History: Assam and the Partition--
Unresolved Issues
Udayon Misra
Print publication date: 2018
Print ISBN-13: 9780199478361
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: February 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199478361.001.0001
Introduction
Udayon Misra
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780199478361.003.0001
Abstract and Keywords
The focus of this introductory chapter is on how pre- and post-Partition politics
created ruptures in Assam’s relationship with the rest of the country; of how
Partition turned the region into a landlocked one almost overnight and triggered
long-range changes affecting its economy, its politics, and its society; of how the
Centre’s perception of the region came to be coloured by considerations of
security associated with the periphery or borderland; and of how the region’s
economy and politics came to be increasingly influenced by its post-Partition
geography. While discussing all of this, an attempt has been made to answer the
riddle as to how a region that was culturally so integrated with the rest of India,
nourished its socio-cultural and religious ties with the subcontinent, and whose
economy had been integral to the nation’s colonial as well as postcolonial history
could eventually spawn militant separatism, which, continues to be a central
force in a state’s politics.
Keywords:   Assam, Partition, landlocked region, borderland, colonial economy, isolationist mindset,
separatist insurgency, Saadulla, Jinnah, Muslim League
The focus of this introductory chapter is on how pre- and post-Partition politics
created ruptures in Assam’s relationship with the rest of the country, which are
yet to heal; of how Partition turned the region into a landlocked one almost
overnight and triggered long-range changes affecting its economy, its politics,
and its society; of how the Centre’s perception of the region came to be coloured
by considerations of security associated with the periphery or borderland; of
how the region’s economy and politics came to be increasingly influenced by its
post-Partition geography and how this, in turn, fostered the growth of an
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Introduction
isolationist mindset as has been manifested in the rise of separatist insurgency.
While discussing all of this, an attempt has been made to answer the riddle as to
how a region that was culturally so integrated with the rest of India, nourished
its socio-cultural and religious ties with the subcontinent, and whose economy
had been integral to the nation’s colonial as well as postcolonial history could
eventually spawn militant separatism, which has cost thousands of lives and
which, despite being contained in large measure, continues to be a central force
in a state’s politics.
The greater part of the area today known as the Northeast was, till about forty
years ago, known as Assam. The process of the break-up of the territorial area of
Assam started just after Independence. Although the then premier of undivided
Assam, Gopinath Bardoloi, had taken a leading role in framing and incorporating
the Sixth Schedule in the Constitution of India with a view to ensuring the
maximum possible autonomy to the hill districts, yet this did not prevent the
break-up of the state.1 Interestingly, the States Reorganization Commission of
1955 (p.2) had also recommended the inclusion of Manipur and Tripura in
Assam. But the newly emerging middle classes amongst the different hill tribes
eventually demanded their share of political power, and movements were started
for separate statehood. Thus, the history of Assam took a different turn and from
the 1960s onwards several new states were carved out of it. The Naga Hills
district of the state was made into Nagaland in 1963, to be followed by the
creation also of Meghalaya in 1972 and Mizoram, first as a union territory in
1971 and then as a state in 1987. Today, the state of Assam is primarily made up
of the Brahmaputra and Barak Valleys and the hills of Karbi Anglong. It shares
its international border chiefly with Bangladesh and Bhutan. And, there being
currently no regular land and river route through Bangladesh, the state is
virtually landlocked, being connected with the rest of the country by a small
strip of land known as the Siliguri Corridor.
This work attempts to show how the shadow of the Partition continues to fall
over the society and politics of Assam and how issues that were central to the
years immediately preceding and following Independence and Partition continue
not only to retain their relevance but are gaining an extra edge today. Moreover,
many of the issues such as immigration, identity, and demographic change have
gained a new sense of urgency in the contemporary politics of Assam. In the
archive of the postcolonial state, the reader is confronted with strong
resonances of the region’s colonial past: for instance, while one goes through
the Assam Legislative Assembly debates of the late 1940s, one discovers that
many of the sociopolitical issues that occupied centre stage in the debates still
continue to be of great importance to the Assam of today. Just as the Legislative
Assembly debated immigration and identity issues in the 1940s, if one goes
through the proceedings of the Assam Legislative Assembly of the 1980s and
1990s one would similarly find debates centred on immigration from
Bangladesh, demographic change, and the perceived threat to the Assamese
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Introduction
identity. Just as in the 1940s the fear of being included in a larger Bengal
seemed to dominate the Assamese mind, in the 1980s and 1990s too, the fear of
becoming a part of Bangladesh dominated the social discourse that found
reflection in the Assembly proceedings. Interestingly, even the question of
identifying who is actually an Assamese that figured in the pre-Independence
debates finds a reflection several decades later in the debates that took on a new
edge in the closing period of the (p.3) nineteenth century and continue to
engage civil society even today.2 Most people in the Brahmaputra Valley had
thought that with the Partition and the Referendum in Sylhet, Assam would
finally result in a homogenous homeland for the Assamese-speaking people.3 But
the historical effects of the Partition have had a long afterlife in the region. Not
only did Partition radically transform the political geography of the region and
turn it overnight into a landlocked one, its after-effects continue to be felt in the
sociopolitical and economic life of the region in diverse ways. The refugee
problem immediately after Partition and Independence, the downslide of the
economy, the influx from East Pakistan of land-hungry, poverty-stricken Muslim
peasants, the change in the demographic scenario and the accompanying rise of
identity fears of the Assamese, to be followed by similar identity concerns of the
other small ethnic nationalities of the region, the disintegration of Pakistan and
the emergence of Bangladesh, the northeastern region becoming a theatre of
Bangladesh’s liberation war and a shelter for the huge influx of refugees, the
rise of militant politics and the slide towards secessionism—all these and many
other factors are linked, in some way or other, with Partition and its fallout. Seen
from this angle, the Partition has perhaps had a more enduring impact on the
northeastern region than on the western part of the subcontinent.4 Some
scholars, while referring to the differences between the impact of the Partition
in the west and that in the east, have said that Assam is still confronting a ‘failed
Partition’.5
To understand the consequences of the ‘failed Partition’, it would perhaps be
necessary to go back a bit in history. A new dimension to the politics of the
region was added when Assam was joined with the populous Bengali-speaking
district of Sylhet of East Bengal to be made into a Chief Commissioner’s
Province in 1874. The inclusion of Sylhet, which had a population almost equal
to that of the whole of the Brahmaputra Valley districts, brought about a sudden
increase in the Bengali population of the province. The competition for jobs
between the emerging Assamese middle class and its Bengali counterpart
began, and was to be one of the major factors contributing to Assamese–Bengali
conflicts in the succeeding decades. A substantial rise in the Muslim population
through immigration also marked the beginning of a conflict that would assume
frightening proportions from the 1930s onwards. The marginalization of the
Assamese (p.4) middle class was not only due to the British preference for
Bengali officials and clerks to man the administration, but also because of the
demographic changes that were taking place. According to Amalendu Guha, by
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