‘United we stand’

The “divide-and-rule” policy in India is largely attributed to British colonial rule. It was a strategy employed by various British officials and implemented through their various policies in order to rule this great country. After the great uprising of 1857, the British took such steps which would prevent future uprisings by exploiting existing social and religious divisions within India. When the collective urge to attain freedom began gathering momentum, the British in 1905 split Bengal, a stronghold of the national movement, and merged Assam with the newly created Eastern Bengal. In 1909, the Morley-Minto Reforms introduced separate electorates for Muslims. The British “divide-and-rule” policy had a lasting impact on Indian society, contributing to communal tensions and hindering national unity. This finally even led to division of the country. In the post-independence era, political parties, chiefly the Congress, have been often accused of dividing the people on religious, linguistic, ethnic and various other lines in order to capture and remain in power. In Assam, a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual state, the first major move to divide the people, particularly the indigenous communities, was made by Syed Mohammad Saadullah. His government, backed by the Muslim League, had, in the 1941 Census, sought to divide the society by enumerating the population on the basis of community, rather than on their religious affiliation. Instructions were issued to enumerate tribals separately from Hindus, with the multiple objectives of dividing the indigenous people and reducing the numerical strength of the Hindu community in official records. Another objective was to officially show Muslims – largely comprising land-hungry immigrants from Eastern Bengal, along with those living in Sylhet – as numerically stronger in comparison to the others. It was also intended towards laying the ground for the inclusion of Assam in East Pakistan. After independence, certain leaders of the Congress party had openly propounded the “Ali-Coolie-Bengali” theory in order to weaken and sideline the indigenous communities, particularly in the time of elections, with “Ali” standing for immigrant Muslims, “Coolie” for the tea garden workers and “Bengali” for the refugees and settlers from Bengal. In recent memory, one would find how the Congress government had promoted tribal sentiments with the objective of causing a divide as well as mistrust among the indigenous tribal and indigenous non-tribal communities of the state. The history of the emergence of student organizations representing different communities, castes and sub-castes would probably reveal more about how a divide-and-rule policy was pursued by different governments in Assam. It is only in the recent years that this mistrust has been done away with to quite an appreciable stage, which in turn has reduced a lot of social tension and conflict in the state. Strengthening trust among the various indigenous communities of Assam is much needed not only for achieving overall socio-economic development but also to fight the common enemy – the illegal migrants and their progeny. This is what Chief Minister Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma laid stress on in his Independence Day speech in Guwahati on Friday.