Heart-rending untold stories of the Assam Movement

A Correspondent

TANGLA: The historic Assam Movement led by students of Assam in 1979 under the leadership of All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) and the All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad (AAGSP), officially ended on August 15, 1985.

During this period of six long years of the anti-foreigners’ movement, 855 peoples sacrificed their lives and thousands were victims in the hope of an infiltration-free Assam. Thirty years have passed and yet hundreds of misery stories of the victims of the movement remain untold and unheard. The friends of the victims turned into student leaders, ministers and critics but they hardly manage time to make a visit to such people. Living from hand-to-mouth with only the due recognition of being a victim of the Assam Movement, one such victim is Bipin Deka from a hamlet of then undivided Darrang district and currently Udalguri district’s Naharbari village under Kalaigaon PS.

Deka lost his vigour and youth fighting for the sake of the identity of Assamese people. With revolutionary zeal, he still reminisces about the days of his struggle, which has continued for him in the form of his struggle for livelihood. Deka claims that eight bullets had pierced his legs during the movement.

Deka, the third son of Belaram Deka, was one of the front-runner leaders of the agitation. Deka, recalling the days of 1983, narrates that one night he was attacked by the members of the rival groups by handmade firearms striking 31 bullets in his right leg. All of his fellow accomplices, taking him to be dead, left him unattended and fled the scene to save their lives. His news grabbed media headlines while the doctors operated on critically injured Deka and extracted 23 bullets from his leg while eight bullets could not be extracted. Deka has passed 35 long years with his bad health and those bullets in his leg. He is still optimistic and lives in the hope that the student leaders-turned-politicians will visit his place one day to take a first-hand report of his life and struggle.

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