Assam and the Assamese have been at the receiving end of numerous incidents that have occurred in this part of the globe in the past two hundred years or more. Looking back, one finds that the population of the Brahmaputra Valley were reduced to less than one-third of what it used to be, in a span of less than two decades during successive waves of Burmese invasions that also brought the curtains down on the 60-year long Ahom rule. The British, who were initially reluctant in retaining Assam because of the jungles, floods, malaria and earthquakes, however soon discovered tea, coal, petroleum and timber and decided to stay on in order to reap the economic benefits. While Assam was tagged to the Bengal Presidency, it was in 1837 that Assamese was replaced by Bengali as the court and educational language as part of a larger design. Thanks to Anandaram Dhekial Phukan and others, as also to the American Baptist Missionaries, Assamese was restored in 1872. But then the damage was already done – of driving a wedge between the Assamese and Bengalis.
In 1874, Assam was reconstituted as a Chief Commissioner’s Province and Sylhet district of East Bengal was clubbed to it, encouraging the second wave of Bengali migration to Assam. Come Lord Curzon – the next culprit – who in 1904 clubbed Assam with East Bengal to create the ‘Eastern Bengal and Assam’ province which facilitated the first massive immigration from East Bengal, a geographical area that later became East Pakistan and then Bangladesh. While official records say 54,000 people – mostly Muslims – moved in to Assam from Mymensingh, Rangpur and Jalpaiguri between 1904 and 1911, the number of such migrants increased four times between 1911 and 1921, jumping to about three lakhs. The 1931 Census report puts the number of Bengali migrants – irrespective of religious faith – at roughly 5.75 lakh. in 1937, it was Md Saadullah, the first Prime Minister of Assam following the general election held under the Government of India Act of 1935, who launched ‘Grow more Food’, a programme that Viceroy Lord Wavell described as ‘Grow more Muslims.’
The next phase was the Grouping Plan of the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946, when Assam and the entire present-day Northeast was clubbed in Group C with East Bengal to constitute ‘Bang-e-Islam’ East Pakistan. Nehru had almost agreed to handing over Assam and the Northeast to Jinnah’s East Pakistan, but for the bold leadership of Gopinath Bardoloi who extracted support of none other than Mahatma Gandhi. Many people in India still think it was Punjab that had suffered the worst due to Partition. The reality is that while the wounds of Punjab have healed, Assam and the Northeast continue to suffer because of the Partition. According to the government of Assam, an estimated 5,00,000 people had entered Assam from the newly-created East Pakistan immediately after Partition, which included both Hindus and Muslims. In the winter of 1962, Nehru had bid farewell to Assam and the Northeast, and had it not been for China’s unilateral ceasefire and chief minister Bimala Prasad Chaliha’s strong stand, Assam would have long disappeared from India’s map. With Chaliha as chief minister, Assam deported 1.79 lakh infiltrators between 1961 and 1966. But then, prime minister Nehru, instead of appreciating him, actually threatened the Assam chief minister if the vote back that the infiltrators had become, was disturbed.
When civil war broke out in East Pakistan following the victory of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Awami League in the general elections, it was again Assam which had to bear the burden of large number of refugees, most of whom did not return after Bangladesh was liberated. Then, when the indigenous people of Assam demanded detection and deportation of the infiltrators, the Centre only came down with a heavy hand instead of throwing out the aliens. It was the same Centre which had also enacted the notorious IMDT Act in 1983 that only helped protect the infiltrators instead of detection, while the rest of India simply remained indifferent to the sufferings of the people of Assam. Never even for once any other state came forward to share Assam’s woes, forget about sharing the burden of the pre-1971 infiltrators who were to remain under provisions of the Assam Accord.
In the recent years, when Assam has been trying to prepare a National Register of Citizens, a conspiracy was hatched to project this effort as one intended at throwing out Muslims. And when the Citizenship Amendment Bill is being brought to regularise only Hindu Bengalis in sharp contradiction and violation of the basic tenets of the Constitution, the opposition to it by the indigenous people of Assam is only sought to be projected as an anti-national activity.
Yes, it is a fact that Assam has been continuously suffering due to ineffective and bad leadership in the post-Bardoloi and post-Chaliha era. The state has failed to produce even one leader of the levels of Bardoloi, Chaliha, Hem Barua and Dinesh Goswami who could stand with head held high and raise a strong protest against the series of injustices and conspiracies done to the state and her people.