Introduction: This article depicts the oral history of Assam Movement (also known as Assam Andolan in Assamese). At the time of the movement, the writer, Nikhil Khasnabish, was in Assam. This article is from his first-hand experience about the agitation. It documents the unwritten events of Assam Movement. In this article, the names of the characters are changed.
I’m writing only about the people I know and happened to meet. Through these people, I’ll focus on the lives of the people, who experienced different phases of Assam Movement. It was a mass movement and the biggest one in the history of Assam. So, it’s not easy to encompass the entire movement from its beginning to the present time. If closely observed, it can be registered that the movement hasn’t ended till today. Now it has assumed a different dimension and is creating new chapters of history. The Assamese, a mild and hospitable race in India, are still passing through painful phases, constant fear chasing them, making them worried about their existence, and forcing them to struggle to cross new hurdles.
Anyway, now I attempt to look back at the life of Piru Biswas. It’s not directly connected with Assam Movement. But it’s important to grasp whether the Assamese dislike the Bengalis.
Piru came to Assam from East Pakistan in 1965, after the 1964 riot against the Hindus. In Assam they got their landed properties through exchanges. The landed property was their actual asset that was the only source of their living because they were agrarian people.
Though the family didn’t starve, it was most of the time on the verge of starvation; the elders never left them to sleep unfed. This happened when their sali paddy crops were cut down during the time of harvesting by some Assamese people, who made Samabai Samiti (cooperative society).
‘They called us refugees. They said we didn’t have rights to the landed property in Assam. They virtually looted our sali paddy crops. They refused to accept the fact that we got our landed property through exchanges with Muslims, who went to East Pakistan,’ Piru told me.
Those Assamese people took that as chance to indirectly torture the tortured people, who were in Assam, in the hope of getting refuge and live without being threatened with life and security. In East Pakistan, those Hindus were always hounded by fear of being converted, looted, and compelled to live like slaves. The bigoted Muslims created problems, and they delighted to snatch away their daughters and even beautiful wives. But it was a good luck that some Muslims stood by the Hindus and fought against those zealots to often become victims like the Hindus. When the Hindus could escape from the country, the victimized Muslims could not, for they had no country to go to in search of shelter.
‘Like all the Hindus, who had left their motherland, we also suffered the pain of leaving our ancestral country. It was never expected that we would face such crisis in Assam. The government of Assam was kind to us. If those people hadn’t plundered our crop fields to make us starve, we would’ve felt a respite and breathe in the beauty of the adopted state to forget our pain, which was aggravated by the new pain from their atrocious behaviour. I can’t still forget the morning in early December when I happened to see a group of men and women in our ripe paddy fields. With regard to this, I must mention that those samabai-samiti people were led to our crop fields by some Bengali families in our village. Those envious Bengali families had just settled a few decades before we settled in our village.’
Later, some kind-hearted Assamese people came forward to help the displaced families, whose crop fields were looted. To me, Piru gratefully remembered their kindness.
But when I give attention to Assam Movement (Assam Andolan), I realize the fact that the Assamese people thought it was their sacred movement for their existence. If neutrally judged from the perspective of the agitating people, who were mainly Assamese, the fact that they were facing threats from silent invaders couldn’t be dismissed. The silent invaders were outnumbering the Assamese. Their language, culture, politics, and economics were under the clouds of danger. To get rid of that danger, they needed the movement against the people they called foreign nationals. The Assamese people felt that to be their duty to come out to the streets, shouting slogans against the foreign nationals: jai aai axhom. Jadi hao axhomiya, hengdang loi ulai aah.’ The slogans rent the air of Assam, causing tensions to the state and central governments, who finally came ahead to interfere. The administrative intervention became necessary when the movement turned violent. Violence was committed against the Bengali Hindus, against the progressive Assamese people. ‘Marxbad Bongobad—Marxism is a synonym of Bengalism. Overwelmed by racial emotions, people doing or suppoting the movement didn’t think twice about whether that was an appropriate slogan. Many communists—most of them are Assamese—had to leave their homes and face fatal tortures. Like the homes of the Bengali Hisdus, the homes of the congress supporters or communists were set ablaze; they were also socially boycotted. Money extortion by the agitators became a common practice.
‘Why do I say I was a victim of Assam Movement? I read in Assamese medium schools, my brothers and sister and cousins also read in Assamese medium schools, though there were Bengali medium schools near our home. I read Assamese MIL in college. Despite all this, I became a victim,’ Srikant Ghose told. ‘Though I became a victim of Assam Andolan, I never blamed the Assamese because my parents migrated from East Pakistan to settle in Assam. We never thought we were foreigners in Assam. We spoke Assamese as fluently as they spoke. We simply, in course of years, became assimilated into the mainstream society. We never thought them antagonistic to us. We never did anything to arouse enmity either.’ Srikant breathed deeply. ‘But, unfortunately, whenever some skirmishes broke out during Assam Andolan, we also became targets. It was because of belonging to the society of the Bengalis. It’s a fact that some Bengalis were doggedly anti-Assamese and because of those reckless people, we also lost the trust of the Assamese and consequently became victims. There were many families like us too.’
If I offer an unbiased opinion about the Bengali-Assamse conflicts, I must admit that this conflict is an outcome of historical blunder or stupidity by some Bengali people. It has still continued since the language riot in 1962—the Bengalis wanted to establish Bengali as the state language in Assam instead of Assamese; they also wanted to use Bengali as a medium of instructions in schools in the Brahmaputra valley like in the Barak Valley.
When Manab Sarkar went to college, he experienced harshness from some Assamese boys. They tortured him in the name of ragging. Those things happened because of the sporadic conflicts between the Assamese and the Bengali people. The cause for conflicts most of the time was the language. If the Bengali people had felt that Assam belonged to the Assamese mainly, the conflicts would’ve reduced. The Assamese people didn’t fight with the Muslim immigrants because they accepted Assamese as their mother tongue though they spoke their original Bengali dialect at home and wore clothes they way they had worn for centuries hardly with some exceptions. Comparatively, the immigrant Muslims are more aware of political atmosphere and more intelligent than the Bengalis.
To speak the truth, the Bengalis conspiratorially betrayed the trust of the Assamese. The Bengalis—not all of them—strutted with superiority complex and arrogance and adamantly refused to be convinced that Assamese is no less important or powerful than Bengali, that Assamese literature is also as rich as any other literature. When Manab and his parents and brothers and sisters wrote Assamese as their first language, some arrogant Bengalis condemned them. He argued with those people. But he could never convince them of that he and his parents were right. Only the language was the hindrance to the amiability of the two races. If the Bengalis had realized the truth, there would’ve been no conflict between the two races. If the Bengalis had publicly accepted Assamese as their mother tongue or first language, they would’ve been dearer to the Assamese than the Muslim immigrants. Bengali medium schools often caused enmity between the two races. Those who were in favour of Bengali medium schools argued to validate their points.
Displaced from their roots in East Pakistan and later from Bangladesh, the Bengalis adopted Assam as their homeland, not going to West Bengal. When Manab wanted to know from those arrogant people why they hadn’t gone to West Bengal if they loved their mother tongue so much, they, unable to give satisfactory answer, pointed to the Hindi speaking people, who built Hindi medium schools in Assam. But their case was different from the case of the Bengali people. They never claimed that Hindi should be the medium of instructions in Assam as the Bengalis did.
The Assamese realized they were being economically and demographically marginalized. And that realization generated the Assam Movement, which virtually started, following the sixteen-point charter of demands, framed in Jorhat in July, 1978, by AASU (All Assam Students Union). The movement leaders naturally targeted both the Bengali Hindus and immigrant Muslims. In this context, if again judged neutrally, it must be admitted that the Assam Movement was not a superficial movement; it was a deep and well-planned movement with a genuine cause; it was caused by a legitimate fear that mentally crippled the Assamese; it was for their existence.
When the movement was at the peak, Manab was also frightened. In their loud slogans, they mentioned hengdang that was a sword, used by Lachit Barphukan in the battle of Saraighat. In course of time, violence erupted and the central government forces took actions against the people who were involved in violent activities. It was perceived that some people wanted to make the movement go astray. The so-called non-violent movement turned into a violent one because of government and non-government interventions. To intensify the movement, the Assamese intellectuals took no time to play the old anti-Bengali card. It was the good luck of the Bengalis that the movement leaders now targeted the immigrant Muslims, who had always sided with the Assamese to commit violence in its various ugly forms on the mild and fearful Bengalis. The immigrant Muslims identified themselves as Assamese. The immigrant Muslims came to Assam, being allured by greener pastures, while the Bengali Hindus came to Assam, in search of safe shelters—they were persecuted in several ways. But, unfortunately, those very Bengali Hindus openly posed a threat to the Assamese language; the immigrant Muslims posed a threat to their existence, silently gaining political power, bringing about a major change to the demography of Assam. This perception was injected into the minds of the leaders of the movement and they accepted it seriously and raised voices against the immigrant Muslims as loudly as against the Bengali Hindus.
Given the situation, Manab had to escape from an Assamese-dominated place in Upper Assam when he perceived that some people were against him and some of his colleagues were instigating some overzealous agitators to make him an object of their attention. Determined to leave that place as soon as possible, he boarded a steamer to cross the Brahmaputra River for Nagaon with only two hundred rupees in his pocket. From Nagaon, he again crossed the Brahmaputra to find himself in their village in the night when everyone was in sound sleep.
Within a couple of months after Manab got a job in a Muslim-majority district of Lower Assam, the movement, except in the Barak Valley, spread to all districts, from its epicentre, Gauhati—then it was not Guwahati—and turned into a mass movement. Assam had never seen a movement like that before. Men and women, old and young, including children joined the movement and pierced the air with their slogans. The central government was against the movement, and it tried to convince the agitators to sit at a negotiating table. The leaders defied the government.
In the new place, Manab was again targeted. Targeting him was the strategy of some local so-called Assamese people—these Assamese people were condemned as a variety of Bengali by the people of Upper and Central Assam. He would’ve been compelled to leave that place too unless he’d got support from the Muslims, who were then totally against the movement. AASU was leading the movement, and some small organizations supported AASU.
To counter AASU, AAMSU (All Assam Minority Students Union) was formed and a counter movement started in Assam—its three-day conference was held at Jaleswar, Goalpara, on 29th March, 1980. In the context of the situation, the Bengalis, who had formed Amra Bangali, supported AAMSU. The situation that took an abrupt turn vitiated the atmosphere so much that Manab didn’t find any other better option than hiding in a safe and secret place in a tribal village. Some of the local petty leaders of the movement publicised that he was from Barak Valley; some blamed supporting AAMSU on him; some called him a communist. They did so to solidify their patriotism.
Manab wondered whether that was patriotism or something else.
AAMSU and AASU clashes reached a climax when Muslims and Bengalis united in setting fire to the Assamese villages, demonstrating as much atrocities as the agitators had demonstrated.
Manab’s neutrality was never recognized. He was never trusted. Some of his Assamese friends stood by him. Those friends opposed the movement. Many Assamese people, who opposed the movement, were ostracized and equally tortured like the Bengalis.
In the long run, the most pertinent question is: what did Assam achieve after the pact with the central government in 1985? Were foreign nationals deported from Assam? Did the Assamese people become safe and secure? What’s the future of Assam?
But it’s a good sign that most Bengalis like Manab have declared Assamese as their mother tongue or first language. Assam is a beautiful green state, and allured by its green beauty, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose visited twice. The Bengalis, despite some differences, have assimilated into the mainstream Assamese society and are happy about identifying themselves as Assamese, promising to stand resolute against the past historical blunder or stupidity and live just as proud and happy Indians.
Photographs
Photographs of Assam Movement by Government of Assam
The first Indian-English Novel on Assam Movement (also known as Assam Andolan in Assamese)
For Existence by Nikhil Khasnabish