Roots of Assam-galand border friction lies in colonial Waste Land Grant Rule: Changkija

By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, August 31: Jourlist Tiamerenla Molisa Changkija said that Ahoms and gas fought each other at times but also lived as neighbours at other times, respecting each other’s space.

Delivering the Late Harendra th Baruah Memorial Lecture, 2015 on ‘Relooking at Bridges between the Assamese-ga Chasms’, Changkija, Editor of the galand Page, said: “The Asom-ga relationship is chronicled in the Buranjis.”

On the Assam-galand land disputes, she said: “Clearly, the root of the border friction between Assam and galand lies in the colonial Waste Land Grant Rule of 1838, which disrupted normal human activities and interaction of both the hills and plains people. This then underscores that there are no known or recorded ‘border disputes’ between Assam and galand prior to the rule of 1838.”

“I don’t want to focus too much on the Assam-galand border disputes since unfortutely only one of its unhappy aspects is overly focussed on, especially in the media of the two neighbours. What is often forgotten or deliberately ignored and /or suppressed is that a lot of our people have settled down in various parts of Assam for education, employment and other reasons. In the meantime, intermarriages happened, children are born and these children, while born gas, have also become Assamese in so many ways. This has also happened to the Assamese settled in galand. Moreover, Assamese and gas living in the border areas have always lived together and shared agonies and ecstasies whether inflicted by ture or politics or economic compulsions or cultural and traditiol divergence,” she said.

“I would like to believe that these are shared bonds, shared history and shared existence that were the dreams, visions and aspirations Harendra th Baruah harboured in his heart, when he strove, struggled, served and sacrificed to ensure the integrity, and not just the geographical integrity but most of all the cultural, traditiol and emotiol integrity, of the entire North Eastern Region that houses all the seven, y eight, States of Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, galand, Tripura, Aruchal Pradesh and Sikkim. If over the decades chasms are created and broadened, it is not because pioneers like Harendra th Barua failed us but because we failed to draw inspirations from them...” she said.