Becoming Assamese: Colonialism and New Subjectivities in Northeast India

290 Pages·2016·1.602 MB·English

by  Madhumita Sengupta

BECOMING ASSAMESE
This book explores the making of colonial Northeast India and offers a new
perspective to the study of the Assamese identity in the nineteenth century
as a distinctly nineteenth-century cultural phenomenon, not confined to
linguistic parameters alone. It studies crucial markers of the self – history,
customs, food, dress, new religious beliefs – and symbols considered desir-
able by the provincial middle class and the way these fitted in with the
latter’s nationalist subjectivities in the face of an emphatic Bengali cultural
nationalism. The author shows how colonialism was intrinsically linked to
the nationalist assertions of the middle class intelligentsia in the region and
was instrumental in eroding the essential malleability of societal processes
nurtured by the Ahom state.
Rich with fresh research data, this book will be useful to scholars and
researchers of history, political science, area studies, and to anyone inter-
ested in understanding Northeast India.
Madhumita Sengupta is Assistant Professor of History at the Indian Insti-
tute of Technology Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India. She completed her MA in
Modern History from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and PhD
in History from the University of Calcutta. She was a Post-Doctoral Fellow
at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC), and has
taught at Rani Birla Girls’ College, Kolkata. Her areas of research interests
include linguistic, cultural and regional identities in the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries in India, socio-economic and cultural aspects of
British rule in India and the colonial history of Northeast India.
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BECOMING ASSAMESE
Colonialism and new subjectivities
in Northeast India
Madhumita Sengupta
First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Madhumita Sengupta
The right of Madhumita Sengupta to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78
of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-1-138-67607-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-56027-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Galliard
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Dedicated to Baba, Maa, Indranath and Riju
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements viii
Abbreviations xi
I ntroduction 1
PART I 13
1 The political economy of a frontier 15
2 Languages of identity 74
3 The burden of progress 110
PART II 137
4 New solidarities: print, politics and protest 139
5 Intimate histories of Assamese 183
6 Representing traditions, recasting history 218
Conclusion 247
Glossary 255
Bibliography 257
Index 273
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Writing this book was an opportunity for me to relive the memories of the
place where I grew up and which I had to leave at a relatively young age.
Unlike many others, who are not destined to go back to their places of ori-
gin, I had the opportunity to come back to Guwahati time and again since
a part of my family continues to live in the city. Having grown up in a family
with roots in erstwhile East Bengal, and with elderly grandparents and rela-
tives still around to recall their b hite bari (ancestral house) in Poob Bangla,
or East Bengal, ‘migration’ happened to be a much discussed phenomenon
in the house. It is just that I did not quite realize how much it could hurt
till I had myself made the shift from Guwahati to Calcutta. It was not easy
to leave behind friends and memories, not to speak of the trauma of having
to adjust in a city so large and busy that it almost seemed to engulf you – a
city above all that I had never quite fancied notwithstanding my ‘Bengali
roots’. Interestingly enough, my very Bengali upbringing had familiarized
me with the world of ‘Bengali’ culture although I could barely connect
with my new acquaintances and felt I had always been better off with the
friends I had been compelled to leave behind, even if we did not speak the
same languages at home. Communication had been either in Bengali or
Assamese or English since most of us, whether Bengalis or Assamese, spoke
all the three languages. I am not sure whether this is how people who
migrate to other places usually feel, but I will not be surprised if the senti-
ments come pretty close. I am very thankful to have studied history as this
has equipped me with the wherewithal to make sense of my subjectivities
and my constant feelings of rootlessness.
I owe an intellectual debt to some stimulating classroom lectures and
interactions with teachers like Rajat Kanta Ray, Sabyasachi Bhattacharya,
Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Partha Chatterjee and Lakshmi Subrahmanian, as
well as to the extremely valuable suggestions from Rosinka Choudhury,
Bodhisattva Kar, Prachi Deshpande and the late Prof. Anjan Ghosh which
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
helped in moulding my research. A stimulating BA in Presidency College,
Calcutta, and an MA in modern history at Jawaharlal Nehru University
provided me with the basic training without which it would have been
impossible to undertake this project. I thank my supervisor Prof. Suranjan
Das sincerely for his constant encouragement and support. A very engaging
15 months spent as Ford Postdoctoral Fellow at CSSSC, Kolkata, during
2010–11, proved very crucial in my career. I owe a world of debt to my
mentor Tapati Guha-Thakurta and my teachers and colleagues at CSSSC
for their time and help. I would also like to thank Dr Sunetra Sinha, Prin-
cipal, Rani Birla Girls’ College, for allowing me to join CSSSC and also for
her continued support for my academic projects.
The credit for providing me with sustained institutional support that
enabled me to give shape to my ideas and research must go to my new
institution, that is IIT Gandhinagar. I sincerely thank Dr Kumbar, our
esteemed librarian at IITGN for always responding promptly to all my
abrupt, frequent and urgent requests for books and articles. I thank the
staff of IITGN library for their co-operation and help.
I thank the anonymous referee of Routledge who offered valuable com-
ments to an earlier draft of the manuscript. I sincerely thank Dr Shashank
Shekhar Sinha, Publishing Director, Routledge, for all his valuable pub-
lishing tips that made things so much easier for me. In this connection, I
would like to thank my teacher of Presidency College, Prof. Rajat Kanta
Ray, for it was he who first suggested that I should approach Routledge
for publishing my manuscript. I thank Ms Antara Ray Chaudhury of Rout-
ledge for her gentle reminders at regular intervals that helped me to com-
plete the work in time.
I thank the staff of all the archives and libraries which became my prime
destinations during all those hectic months of fieldwork. For all their help
in locating and photocopying records, I thank the staff and members of the
National Library, Calcutta, WBSA, Kolkata, ASA and SL, Dispur, DHAS,
Guwahati, District Library, NERC library, Shillong, National Archives,
Delhi, NMML, New Delhi, and the OIOC, British Library, London. I
would like to specifically mention the names of some of the people at these
institutions, like Ashim Mukhopadhyay of the National Library, Calcutta,
for the promptness with which he would procure ‘missing’ books; Vaishya
da and Baharul of the ASA, Dispur, and its director, Dr D. Sonowal; the
staff of NERC, Shillong; and Jayati di of the WBSA, Kolkata, for their
sincere efforts towards the smooth functioning of these libraries and record
rooms. To Anirban da and Nilanjana who welcomed me into their home
during a month-long stay in London, I would like to express my sincere
thanks. To my aunts and uncles-in-law in C.R. Park, New Delhi, where I
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