Telling Assam's untold stories

Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma's government must be congratulated for the massive event organized recently in New Delhi to celebrate the 400th birth anniversary of Lachit Barphukan, the great Ahom general whose thumping victory in the Battle of Saraighat (1671) had literally signaled the mighty Mughal dynasty's downslide. Several persons from Assam have made significant contributions towards shaping the country, be it in the medieval, colonial and post-colonial era. But very little has been done so far to project those personalities and their stories to the rest of the country, not to speak of the outside world. The list of Assam's neglected heroes is pretty long, and includes Gomdhar Konwar, Piyali Phukan, Jiuram Dulia Barua, Maniram Dewan, Anandaram Dhekial Phukan, Anandaram Borooah, Tarun Ram Phookan, Nabin Chandra Bordoloi, Chandraprabha Saikiani, Kushal Konwar, Kamala Miri, Manbar Nath, Kanaklata Barua, Jagannath Barooah, Gopinath Bardoloi, Ambikagiri Ray Choudhury, Jyotiprasad Agarwala and Pramathesh Chandra Barua, to name a few. Several of them had also made the supreme sacrifice for the country's freedom. Several others had significantly contributed towards shaping new India. Likewise, there were several incidents in Assam during the anti-colonial movement and the freedom struggle which were unique in their own respective ways. Yet, those stories have remained grossly neglected and hardly told to the nation. Phulaguri Dhewa (1861), for instance, was India's first peasants' uprising against the colonial government. The Patharughat Massacre (1894) was another incident of similar nature in which the British unleashed unthinkable atrocities on peaceful unarmed peasants protesting hike in land and agricultural taxes. The birth centenary celebration of Lokapriya Gopinath Bordoloi, but for whose untiring efforts Assam and the entire North-east would have become part of Pakistan in 1947, remained a local affair in 1990. Nobody in Assam today remembers how Jyotiprasad Agarwala's birth centenary was celebrated in 2003. The 150th anniversary of Maniram Dewan's martyrdom, Assam's greatest hero of 1857, was not organized for reasons best known to then Congress government in 2008. So was the case with the 150th anniversary of Phulaguri Dhewa. As far as Lachit Barphukan is concerned, it was only at the initiative of then Assam Governor Lt Gen (Retd) SK Sinha that a bust of the great hero was installed in the National Defence Academy (NDA) and a gold medal instituted in his name for the best cadet of NDA every year. While there is a general tendency among the people of Assam to blame Delhi or the so-called 'mainstream' for neglecting the heroes and historic incidents of the state, it is also true from the above that Assam – both the people and the state government – are also to be blamed for failing to project these and other stories. Given this scenario, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and his government must be given full marks for having taken a giant step to take the Lachit Barphukan story to the nation on the occasion of his 400th birth anniversary.