Atul Chandra Saikia: A Humanist to the Core

Ramlal Sinha

(ramlalsinha36@gmail.com)

Humanist Atul Chandra Saikia was a freedom fighter, a trade unionist with professional adequacy, a journalist, an MLA shying away from politics, and an Assamese to the core—all rolled into one. Considered as like a son of a like mother, his sacrifices for the poor, downtrodden, and workers in the unorganized sector, and the courage he was imbued with, bespeak his upbringing by Padmashri Chandraprabha Saikiani, who had championed the women’s emancipation.

Born on August 13, 1913, he had his primary education in the Bajali area in Assam, secondary education at Krishnanagar in West Bengal, and graduation from Cotton College, Guwahati, in 1946. In 1947, he obtained a diploma in labour welfare in Bombay (now Mumbai). During his post-graduation at Gauhati University, he became the general secretary of the Post-Graduate Students’ Union, Gauhati University.

His specialization in courses on labour welfare after his general education speaks volumes about the fact that rendering services to the deprived and downtrodden had been cut out as his area of interest right from his student days. His imprisonment for six months in the Quit India Movement in 1942 is a testament that he did plunge into the struggle for the independence of India when he was a student.

He started his career as a journalist with the Lok Sevak while in Calcutta (Kolkata now) and the Dainik Asomiya, edited by the late Debakanta Baruah. However, he put an end to his journalistic career. He joined the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), the biggest trade union block with its headquarters in Brussels, at its Asian regional college of Calcutta (Kolkata) in its plantation section. He conducted a survey there on the condition of sugar workers in India. After India’s independence in 1947, he also had a brief stint as a faculty member in that college. However, stung by the pathetic plights of labourers and workers in the unorganized sector, he had to leave the lucrative job of a teacher in an international college and join the INTUC movement in Assam. He was among the founding members of the Assam Chah Mazdoor Sangha (ACMS), an organized and well-cemented workforce of tea garden labourers. After barely two years, he started devoting his entire time and energy in industrial sectors where unorganized workers had to face ruthless exploitation. He reorganized the Assam State Transport Workers’ Association in 1956 and brought all transport workers under its umbrella. Rendering services as the general secretary of the association, he kept nurturing it from its infancy and made it one of the biggest trade unions in the public sector in Assam until his demise in 1982.

In the subsequent years, he was associated with over 25 unions in the Northeastern region as their leader and motivator. He was the president of the Guwahati Refinery Workers’ Union, the Assam Cooperative Apex Bank Employees’ Union, as well as its officers’ union, the HPC Jagiraod Paper Mill Workers’ Union, and the Assam Spun Mill Employees Union, to name a few.

These are not all. He was also the director of several boards and bodies of the Assam government, including the Assam State Transport Corporation (ASTC), Assam Cooperative Apex Bank Ltd., Employees State Insurance Corporation of India, the Minimum Wage Board, Tea Board of India, and several consultative committees on labour affairs in both the central and the state governments. He was also the general secretary of the All India Transport Federation for almost two decades and a central working committee member of the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC).

The late Saikia had the taste of politics, as if only to know that politics was not his cup of tea. He made it to the Assam Legislative Assembly from the prestigious Guwahati Legislative Constituency (LAC) in 1972. Despite his affiliation with the ruling Congress, he was not ready to compromise when it came to issues that had much to do with the interests of the workers and the deprived people. In his five-year stint in the Assembly, he used to raise a whole lot of queries pertaining to labourers and workers, mostly in the unorganized sector. Those queries did land ministers of his party in troubled water. His concerns for the working class made him the darling of the downtrodden and labourers. In the course of time, he realized that a man whose heart bleeds for the working class could never be part of the government dispensation. He then bade goodbye to politics and devoted full time to the trade union movement in Assam and other states in the Northeast. The credit for the INTUC remaining intact despite the split in the Congress goes to the late Atul Chandra Saikia.

A few incidents in Calcutta brought to light the bravery and indomitable love for everything Assamese in the late Atul Chandra Saikia. In the run-up to the independence of India, Calcutta had to witness a communal hatred leading to a great tumult in August 1946. All India Radio, Calcutta, did start a 30-minute Assamese programme in 1944. Poet Rabindranath Tagore said that mother tongue is mother’s milk. That 30-minute AIR program was mother’s milk for the Assamese students staying in hostels and messes in Calcutta. They, along with the Assamese families in Calcutta, did wait with bated breath for that 30-minute programme to quench their thirst for Assamese programmes from 6 pm.

The communal riot was at its peak in Calcutta on August 16, 1946. The AIR Studio was at Bibadibag in Dalhousie Square on College Street. The man on duty for the Assamese programme on that day was Kamal Narayan Choudhury. He was staying on rent in the house of Purushuttam Das. The situation was not at all conducive for Kamal Narayan Choudhury to go out of the house for the Assamese programme on that day. A crestfallen Kamal Narayan Choudhury thought that AIR Calcutta would cover the 30-minute Assamese slot with some other programme on that day because of the tumult in the metropolitan city. Yet, he switched on the radio when the clock was about to strike 6 pm. Like every other day, Assamese students in hostels and messes, besides the Assamese families staying in Calcutta, switched on their radio as the clock struck 6 pm. Much to the surprise of all, a clear sound hit their eardrums. The voluble voice came: ‘Etiya Axomiya Karjhjyakrom mukoli kora hoichhe.’ Stunned were Kamal Narayan Choudhury and Purushttam Das. The Assamese youth who risked his life and limbs to not allow the Assamese programme on All India Radio to go blank on that day was the late Atul Chandra Saikia. He was a student in Calcutta. The Assamese language was indeed mother’s milk for him. He was the only son of Padmashri Chandraprabha Saikia, also called Agnikonya. 

That the late Atul Chandra Saikia was an Assamese to the core came to the fore yet again when he had to risk his life for the safety of the Assamese youth lodged in a mess in the Rajabazar area in Calcutta during the riots that broke out in the run-up to the Independence of India in 1946. The riots that began on August 16, 1946, were at their peak till August 18. The Assamese students staying in the mess with the power connection disrupted had to literally starve. It was Atul Chandra Saikia who had taken the risk to go out and fetch foodstuffs in the city where schools and colleges had to remain closed. On the third day, when a police van was passing by the mess, Atul Chandra Saikia took the risk of his life yet again, went to the police van, and requested they evacuate the Assamese students staying in the mess. 

The van approached the mess and let the inmates of the mess board it. However, poet Amulya Baruah and Ananda Phukan had to alight from the van to bring something they had left behind in the mess. In the meantime, with an armed horde of people approaching the van, the police had to flee the area with the van, leaving Amulya Baruah and Ananda Phukan behind. The mob entered the mess and slew the two.

The very next day, Atul Chandra Saika was in the forefront to search for Amulya Baruah and Ananda Phukan. Another youth, who accompanied Atul Chandra Saikia in the search operation, was Sudhakantha Bhupen Hazarika. He was a student of Vanarash Hindu University at that time. He went to Calcutta for some sort of work. The duo could find out the body of Ananda Phukan, but not that of poet Amulya Baruah. Assam lost a young poet, and so also the manuscript of the first novel of renowned writer Birinchi Kumar Bhattacharjya, who had given the manuscript to the poet for reading.

As a globe-trotting trade unionist, the late Saikia had his footfall oftentimes in the ILO in Geneva, the UK, Switzerland, Canada, erstwhile USSR, Romania, Japan, Belgium, the Netherlands, etc.