India Against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality 081223491X, 9780812234916

Citation preview

ASSAM AND THE POLITICS OF NATIONALITY

5

teeRS ae =

de teh, A».

India Against Itself

India Against Itself Assam and the Politics of Nationality

Sanjib Baruah

OXFORD UNIVERSITY

PRESS

OXFORD UNIVERSITY

PRESS

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in India by

Oxford University Press YMCA Library Building, 1 Jai Singh Road, New Delhi 110001, India

© University of Pennsylvania Press 1999 The moral rights of the author have been asserted

First published by Oxford University Press 1999 Oxford India Paperbacks 2001

All rights reserved. Published by arrangement with the University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer This edition for sale only in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar ISBN-13: 978-0-19-565840-8 ISBN-10: 0-19-565840-X

Printed in India by Repro Knowledgecast Limited, Thane

Contents

List of Illustrations

Vil

Note on Transliteration Preface

1. Theoretical Considerations: The Limits of “Nation-Building” 2. Colonial Geography as Destiny: Assam as a Province of British India

21

3. The Making of a Land Frontier: Assam and Its Immigrants

44

4. Cultural Politics of Language, Subnationalism, and Pan-Indianism

69

5. Contested Identity, Culture Wars, and the Breakup of Colonial Assam

91

6. Protest Against Immigration, Ethnic Rifts, and Assam’s Crisis of Governability

1M)1)

7. Militant Subnationalism, Human Chasm with Pan-Indianism

144

Rights, and the

8. “We Are Bodos, Not Assamese”: Contesting a Subnational Narrative

i773

vi

Contents

Conclusion: India Against Itself

199

Notes

215

References Cited

231

Index

245

Acknowledgments

205

Illustrations

MAPS

1. Ahom kingdom on border of Mughal Empire, 1663

22

2. Assam under jurisdiction of Chief Commissioner, 1875

23

3. Assam, 1950

92

4, Assam, 1999

93

TABLES 1, Assam, 1991: Languages Spoken as First Language

19

2. Assam, 1901-1991: Percent Increase of Population

51

3. Assam, 1911-1921: Population Growth by Migration and Natural Growth

57

Note on Transliteration

Transliteration of Assamese words and names according to common Indic norms often yields an English spelling that is at variance with the actual pronunciation. It is especially inaccurate to follow Indic convention and use the letter “s” to represent the Assamese velar fricative. I will use the letter “x” to represent this fricative. The velar fricative appears frequently in the Assamese language, indeed even in the names of the place, the language, and the people. The Assamese call themselves and their language “Axomiya” and their place “Axom.” The sound is similar to the “ch” sounds in German “acht” and Scottish “loch,” and to the “ga” sound in Sotho (as in the name of the South African province Gauteng). I will, however, not use “x” in the case of common proper nouns where the English spelling with an “s” has broad usage. The sound conventionally represented by “s,” however, is not always a velar fricative in Assamese. In certain consonant clusters, the letter “s” is an accurate representation of the Assamese sound.

Preface

India is generally held up asa successful model of “nation-building” in a multi-ethnic polity. Even though the rise of Hindu nationalism in recent years may have raised doubts in certain quarters about the future of religious tolerance, “ethnic” or what I would call “subnational” dissent in India is seen as being generally well managed. Political scientists studying India have always been skeptical of any alarmist talk of adanger to a unified India. When it comes to responding to subnational challenges, however, there is ample material to fuel a debate on the Indian State’s

approach to nation-building. Militant separatist movements have occurred in Kashmir, Punjab, and India’s northeastern periphery. This book grows out of my concern with the subnational conflicts that go on in northeast India without receiving much media attention and seem to have become almost part of normal life in the region. Separatist movements have affected at least four northeastern states: Assam, Manipur, Mizoram, and Nagaland. In most cases, separatism is not a widely shared aspiration — only a small but vocal political faction is taken by the romance of independence. Separatism is just one of the voices in a complex political landscape. Yet these movements have led to serious and sustained,

albeit localized, political crisis. This has happened largely because, even though separatists may be a small or even a fringe group, they have large constituencies in their regions. These movements are located in historically constituted subnational ideological fields, and they have a dialogical relationship with pan-Indian political institu-

xii

Preface

tions, processes, and values. Regional militants often raise issues

that are intertextual in the sense that they allude to and are continuous with the mainstream social discourse of a region.' As a result there is often a pattern of complicity between insurgent groups and many supposedly mainstream political actors. Indian and international human rights organizations have criticized India’s abysmal human rights record in areas torn by separas innocent or in league with insur— whether tist conflicts. Civilian

gents —bear the brunt of the violence let loose when the State’s security forces try to control militant separatists. Civilians are also victims ofviolence by militants. Partly because of such human rights violations, winning the hearts and minds of citizens has been more an uphill battle for the Indian State than winning the military battle against separatist militants. For to many the confrontation often appears to be a grossly unequal, even unjust one: between “our boys” — seen as a few idealist if misguided young people — and the raw power of the Indian State. Coercion, of course, has not been the

only weapon in the Indian State’s response to regional separatists. A variety of political tools have been used as well. This book focuses on one of these festering subnational conflicts in northeast India: that in the state of Assam. The state is the geographical core of the region — the fertile river valley of the Brahmaputra. Northeast India is connected to the rest of India only by a narrow twenty-kilometer-wide corridor. On all other sides it is surrounded by international boundaries: Bhutan, Tibet, Burma, and

Bangladesh. The tenuousness of this physical connection underscores the region’s cultural and political distance from the Indian heartland. The insurgency in Assam began in 1979 and was at its height in the late 1980s. While the explicit articulation of the goal of Assam’s independence from India is a new phenomenon, the insurgency has roots in the history of Assamese subnationalism. Even though the insurgency has been somewhat contained, the political climate in Assam remains unstable, with significant occurrences of political violence and human rights violations and substantial weaknesses in the legitimacy of governmental institutions. I began writing about politics in Assam well before I developed an academic interest in the subject. | first wrote about it in op-ed pieces

Preface

xiii

in Indian newspapers and as a contributor to a debate in the journal Economic and Political Weekly in the early 1980s about the “Assam movement” that had brought significant national attention to this remote region, I was then a graduate student in Chicago. During a visit to Assam I had observed the civil disobedience campaigns, with tens of thousands of participants, that were the signature of the early phases of the six-year-long Assam movement. My essays were

informed by a sense of disjuncture between the political mood in the streets and homes ofAssam and the perceptions of the events in the rest of India. Despite impressive intellectual trends that seek to give voice to the “subaltern,” scholarly and public policy discourse in India does not by and large take seriously voices that challenge the Indian national formation. My early essays received some attention and were considered dangerous enough to be condemned by an older generation of Indian intellectuals as overly sympathetic to “chauvinistic” forces that were threatening to break up the Indian nation. I had left Assam a decade earlier, going first to Delhi and then to Chicago. I was born in Shillong—a colonial hill station, presently the capital of the northeast Indian state of Meghalaya. Until 1971 Shillong was the capital of Assam. A part of the political meaning of this reorganization of the boundaries of Assam and the formation of Meghalaya was that the colonial hill station was being reclaimed by the Khasi people — the hill people who ruled the area before the British takeover. Shillong served as a joint capital of both Assam and Meghalaya for a brief period; then Assam’s capital was moved to Dispur. Our family, like thousands of other Assamese families, then

moved to the Assamese plains. Responding to an earlier draft of this manuscript, an anonymous reader commented that he or she was “left with questions about just who Baruah is and where his interest in the whole thing lies.” While “the name sounds local,” the reader would have liked to know more. A reference to an episode I narrate in Chapter 8, where I end up speaking briefly at a political gathering, had to go, the reader said, if I insisted on

“remaining

distanced

from

the text.” J am

grateful to this reader for pointing out that parts of the text point to an interested and implicated observer, urging me to strengthen my authorial voice. As a political scientist, I was trained more in Max

xiv

Preface

Weber’s ideal of objectivity in the social sciences than in the postmodern notion of an author spelling out his “positionality.” However, I now wondered whether eliminating the personal references would necessarily enrich the text. Even as my interest in Assam has become more academic and I have traveled to libraries, archives, and newspaper offices, the prin-

cipal mode of my understanding of Assamese politics has remained much the same as when I wrote my early essays: a somewhat unusual brand of field research that consists of returns to Assam as much to collect material as to visit family and friends. I began to write about Assamese politics as a mode of political intervention: to influence Indian public opinion and policy towards the region. This same motivation inspired this book. In recent years Assam has become a somewhat dangerous place. There have been acts of political violence — kidnappings, murders, extortions, and ethnic violence. From time to time gun-toting soldiers with awe-inspiring powers set up checkpoints to track down suspected militants. In rural areas these soldiers go on regular expeditions in search of insurgents. But for me Assam is still the place where I have most of my family and many friends, and I have continued to visit it quite frequently. Perhaps the very fact that the wellbeing of so many people I care for is entangled with the wellbeing of Assam gives me a very particular stake in Assam’s political future. Such a stake, I have come to realize, need not be a liability for a political scientist. To be sure, it has been saddening to see at close quarters the process by which the space for civil politics in Assam has shrunk, yielding room to the politics of guns—wielded by insurgents, by the State, and often by “unknown assailants.” Yet, observing these

changes in slow motion, I have also been able to see that this was not inevitable and that it is part of both the intended and the unintended consequences of small decisions by various people, among them those vested with the authority of the Indian State. It has been astonishing to see how quickly democracies can become illiberal — ethnic violence, politically targeted violence by militant groups, State violence, and even violent crimes with a political subtext can all go on with relative impunity. The vulgar display of the State’s armed capacity can become a normal part of governance, coexisting with elections and the other rituals of democracy.

Preface

xv

As this has happened in Assam, the voice of human rights activists has become faint in the din of national security talk among the panIndian intelligentsia, and a compassion-fatigue has developed in the rest of the world. Yet pan-Indian ideas— laws, the Constitution, and public discourse — have profoundly shaped these subnational movements, and the exacerbation of these conflicts has often been

the result of political mismanagement by those acting with the authority of the State. There are elements in the political culture of violence in Assam that have affinity with dirty internal wars in some authoritarian societies of the recent past. In order to bring about societal reconciliation some of these post-authoritarian or posttotalitarian societies have trials or truth commissions to try to make — whether those responsible for crimes accounta ble for crimes in support of or in opposition to the State. But within democratic India a society like Assam seems doomed to live with similar fissures that split the society apart. One hears little of the kind of politics that could lead to reconciliation. As should be apparent by now, my response to the anonymous reader has been to say more about my engagement with Assam in this preface. Over the years my “field trips” to Assam have not just involved reading in a library, an archive, or a newspaper office, or conducting an interview or attending a political rally. I have also learned from experiences I owe to my particular connection to Assam. For instance, in January 1991, a couple of days after I reached

Assam,

the Indian

army arrested

my brother, a medi-

cal doctor who treated patients who were thought to be members of the insurgent organization United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) for his alleged ties with the insurgents. My entire four-week stay in Assam that winter was spent trying to secure his release. A judge released him on bail a couple of weeks after I left India. In avery personal way, I experienced the effects of the draconian powers with which the Indian State deals with insurgency. With the slightest hint of suspicion, a police officer can charge citizens with complicity with “terrorist and disruptive activities,” and the police or the army can take them into custody for questioning.? The law deliberately restricts the channels of redress for those so charged in order to give the State the powers deemed necessary to deal with the threat to national security posed by insurgents. In that climate, I discovered that civil liberties, due process, jus-

xvi

=Preface

tice, and fairness soon begin to sound like words from a distant land. Influential administrators or politicians, for instance, who may be very helpful in negotiating officialdom under ordinary circumstances, may not be of much help, because they would not want to be tarred by the brush of trying to help someone accused of flirting with “terrorists.” It was easy to see that for less resourceful citizens a charge of suspicion of complicity with “terrorist and disruptive activities” could result in a long period in custody. Indeed it could be worse — as the dreadful term “custodial death” that appears in the lexicon of human rights activists working on India would imply. However, the episode of my brother’s arrest by the Indian army also taught me that, despite such powers, the Indian State’s hold on the hearts and minds of people can be quite shallow. As the news of his arrest spread, our family home in Guwahati was soon full of people — relatives, neighbors, friends, and well-wishers — who came

to inquire and to express sympathy and solidarity. In that social space that day, as I wrote in an earlier article, “the rupture between

State and civil society in Assam was rather apparent.” During periods when the Indian army or paramilitary forces were patrolling the streets of Assam, I discovered

that there could be

times when “looking Assamese” in Assam was risky business. NonAssamese soldiers at checkpoints were more likely to ask someone who fitted that description for identity papers. During those phases I have had to resist the temptation of wanting to’feel very at home in Assam. Because of the enormous powers of the army under laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in force in Assam, and because enforcement of law and order everywhere is dependent on judgments based on stereotypes, I had to be concerned about dressing the right way not to arouse the suspicion of an armed soldier, and about carrying appropriate identity papers while in Assam. I shudder to think of the effects of these conditions on less fortunate citizens; after all, the vast majority of people in India do not carry any identity papers at all. It was equally interesting —and a pointer to the kind of fissures that exist in the Indian polity— that my “Assamese looks” are likely to produce a very different reaction in the eyes of an Assamese police officer: he is more likely to be respectful and apologetic for having to stop me and will avoid much questioning beyond a polite

Preface

xvii

“Where have you come from?” or “Where are you going?” —which is the common Assamese form of greeting one another. Social encounters have often been a source of significant insights during my “field trips.” For instance, I was taken aback when I first heard what was then a rather new term, “ethnic Assamese.” Now

the category has come to be used in discussions of Assam, and I myself use it in this book. At a fashionable party in New Delhi I was introduced to an officer of the Indian army who had served in the northeast. In recent years this has usually meant fighting internal insurgents rather than an external enemy. I was introduced to him as someone who lives in the United States, in Delhi en route to Assam. The gentleman asked me if I was an ethnic Assamese. Until then I was used to saying that I am an Assamese, just as in India a Bengali, a Gujarati, or a Malayalee would identify him- or herself. But why the odd qualifier “ethnic,” I wondered. As I began to spend more time in Assam I wondered about the possible connection between a term that conceptually isolates a group that had historically metononymized Assameseness— and the logic of enforcing law and order in Assam. Maybe it was not accidental that I heard the term used by an army officer who had spent time in the northeast. In Assam’s complex ethnic and political landscape the category “ethnic Assamese” can define a category of people as a somewhat more likely target of suspicion as possible sympathizers and fellowtravelers of the Assamese insurgents. The “ethnic Assamese” can be distinguished from Assam’s many “immigrant” communities and the “tribal” communities — the latter two, in recent years, less likely to be sympathizers with Assamese subnationalism. The category therefore manages to distinguish, in terms of stereotypical phenotypes, a particular group of people in a way that seems to be related to the logic of surveillance and social control in Assam. While my unusual field trips have been the source of many insights, I have also had to guard against the danger of privileging the ethnic Assamese experience. Assam, after all, is a multiethnic place,

and at the heart of many of its political and cultural conflicts is the fact that Assam is a land frontier with many “immigrant” communities. I have tried my best to listen to and, I hope, I have succeeded in empathetically incorporating in this book, other voices that sometimes stand in conflict with the “ethnic Assamese” voice,

xviil

Preface

notably that of her many “immigrant” communities and indigenous “tribal” peoples such as the Bodos, Karbis, and Misings. If my connection to Assam has given a particular shape to my “field trips” and to this book, so has living in the United States and my traveling between there and Assam. Let me give a few examples. On one of my trips, I had spent some days in a “tea garden” (plantation) in Assam, where I stayed with and mostly met tea executives. I

sensed a dramatic change in “tea garden life” — an expression that in those social circles refers to their lives and not to those of tea workers. I knew the idyllic life of “garden managers” living in grand bungalows amid thousands of acres of lush green, with an active social life revolving around “club days.” By contrast, this time I found a sense of deep insecurity among them: they were coping with a new reality of kidnappings, ransom demands by insurgents, and murders. Soon after that I left Assam, and a couple of days later I was in London on my way back to New York. With the memory of the profound changes in “tea garden life” quite fresh in my mind, in London’s upscale departmental store Harrods, I noticed a fresh new way of packaging Assam tea — boutique style. There were beautiful cans of Assam tea said to be from particular tea gardens— real or imagined, I don’t know. The can I bought was packaged as “Pure Assam Narayanpur Gold Rush Tea.” This tea, said the blurb, “comes from a small estate in the lush Brahmaputra Valley of Assam.” The blurb informs the buyer that only the bud and top two leaves are picked and the “abundance of golden tips” gives the tea its “bright coppery colour, golden liquor and truly unique flavour indicative of the finest quality tea.” In my flight from London to New York I reflected on all that may have gone into the beautifully packaged can of Harrods Assam tea— the connection between Assam’s present turmoil and the often violent history of the early days of tea in Assam — trying to reconcile the image of the “small estate in the lush Brahmaputra Valley of Assam” and today’s reality of the politics of guns that has so transformed life in the tea gardens. The political turmoil that is the subject of this book has not generally been the stuff of international news. Assam is.a rather remote place when seen from the perspective of the newsrooms of the international media. But those few occasions when I read about Assam in the U.S. press have been occasions for serious reflection,

Preface

xix

especially when I have responded to friends who, knowing my connection to Assam, on reading or hearing some news have wanted

to know more. Some of my initial theoretical formulations were

sparked by such reflections. Perhaps the most memorable occasion was in 1983, when I was a

graduate student in Chicago and well before I began working on this project. A massacre of more than two thousand people in Assam suddenly made international headlines. The victims were mostly “immigrant” Bengali Muslims, and the perpetrators were mobs that some international newspapers described as “Hindu tribesmen”

armed with bows and arrows and machetes. I had picked up a copy of the New Republic, which to my surprise, had an editorial on the Assam massacres. “Modernity,” declared the editorial, “is not only a

historical term. It is a geographical term as well. There are places— the Indian state of Assam is one — where the slaughter of children is a form of political expression.”* The editorial, though not well informed about the circumstances of the violence, made a number of

breathtaking assertions about its significance. The violence in Assam, according to the editorial, revealed some-

thing about political conditions in the “third world”: that it is not “porous to Western innovations.” The violence, we were told,

brought to dramatic focus the contradictions of the postcolonial world and the fundamental contradiction of upholding democracy “in places where it is strange.” Western ideas and institutions have complicated these places, said the editorial, but they have “not completely changed them.” Sitting in Chicago, I wondered about this view of modernity and history: modernity in Assam as a list of good things brought by the West —a cargo cult theory of modernization through imperialism, as it were.> Among the good things brought by the West that the editorial listed were national unity, democracy, and constitutionalism. However, given the stubborn ways of the premodern, the argument went, these innovations have had a hard time putting down roots. In a fit of obscene eloquence, the editorial asked: “What is a constitution to a place like Assam? Will Hindu animists honor Thomas Jefferson? Will men who hurl spears at children pay any heed to John Locke?” If one accepted this view of history, I have been asking myself ever since, how would one make sense of the rest of the package that

»xx~—s

Preface

came to Assam along with modernity, for example political conquest, tea plantations, private property, economic incorporation into larger market networks, the dispossession of peoples whose command over resources was governed by the rules of precapitalist social formations, and the violent militant expeditions of colonial modernizers against “primitives” and “savages” — that, often, were the methods of dispossession? In my mind Assam’s present turmoil in some ways can be traced back to some of these “modern” innovations. To me the violence.isabout the contradictions of the many worlds created by modernity rather than about a place or a people being left behind by modernity. The name of the Assamese town Margherita serves to me as a poignant reminder of the way “modern” forces entered and transformed Assam a long time ago. When Viceroy Lord Curzon visited Assam in 1900, he insisted on seeing “Margherita and the coal mines and the oil wells and other industries” around it: “a most interesting and enterprising corner of her Majesty’s dominions,” as he put it.° During my childhood in Assam “Margherita” — that has even made its way into Assamese folk music — sounded as Assamese a word as any. It is only later in life that I discovered that this coal town was named for Queen Margherita, wife of king Victor Emmanuel II] ofItaly. Margherita acquired its name in 1884. At that time the area was a concession given to the Assam Railways and Trading Company for developing coal and oil production. One of the largest shareholders of the company was Benjamin Piercy, an engineer with experience in building railways in England and other parts of the world. His brother Robert Piercy had collaborated with three Italian engineers in constructing a railway in Sardinia. The company recruited the same team of engineers for its railway construction project in Assam. In January 1884 it gave the name Margherita to its settlement in Makum. According to the company’s history, the name was chosen either by the directors as a tribute to the Italian engineer Cevalier Roberto Paganini or by Paganini himself out of his patriotism. In either event, Assam’s Margherita remains “a lasting memo-

rial to the Italian Engineer” who lived in the area, founded the settlement, and constructed the first bridge over the Dihing River and the railways on both banks of the river.” Living in a Western metropolis, however, I could see the New

Preface

xxi

Republic's temptation to frame the news of Assam’s massacres as events occurring in a remote corner of the world that constitutes modernity’s “other.” Such a construction can be a rather comforting feel-good story; it enables moderns to separate their achievements temporally and spatially from the unseemly side of modernity. I have had to guard against similar intellectual seductions myself. For instance, living in a cosmopolitan international city and working on a book on Assam, I could see how easy it could be to fall into the trap of what Michael Ignatieff calls a “cosmopolitan disdain and astonishment” about national passions.® Ignatieff’s journeys to the new nationalisms made him more sensitive to what shapes civic order in multiethnic international cities. In these great cities — London, Los Angeles, New York, and Paris —

Ignatieff observed, the cosmopolitan order relies critically on the “rule-enforcing capacities” of the State. When States falter in enforcing those rules, these cosmopolitan multiethnic cities are as likely to break into ethnic warfare — as Los Angeles did in 1992 — as any East European country, or I might add, as Assam.

As I have observed the shrinking space for civil politics in Assam, I too have come to appreciate more than ever the importance of nurturing the rule-enforcing capacities of the nation-state: the need to sustain law as meaning as opposed to law as power,’® to publicly debate laws and governmental decisions, to take laws and public commitments seriously, and for “public officials — lawmakers and lawgivers” — to try to create in their work “an orderly and morally directed society, fictive and a flawed guide to the daily life of its audiences though it may be.”!' How quickly things can fall apart when the rule-enforcing capacities of public institutions begin to falter. I believe that India can do much better in this regard. For instance, in dealing with leaders of insurgents arrested for serious

crimes, including murder and robbery, the government has often circumvented the legal process by giving them de facto amnesty in exchange for political support. It has done so just as the Indian army has made expeditions in search of their comrades — especially less well-connected ones in rural areas—with a trail of charges of human rights abuses. Such contradictory actions have serious longterm costs in terms of the legitimacy of India’s governmental institutions. Faith in the rule of law can be restored by holding insurgents as well as army and security personnel accountable for their

xxii

Preface

actions. Conditions for civil politics in Assam can be recreated. Among the reforms that would be necessary are measures to restrict the arbitrary powers of the State and efforts to create greater institutional space for subnational aspirations and identities — even in our age that some might like to call postnational. The political positions that I take on Assam perhaps illustrate a point Kwame Anthony Appiah once made about postcolonial theory —a tradition to which I owe some intellectual debt. Postcoloniality and postmodernism, Appiah wrote, both challenge earlier legitimating narratives. But postcoloniality challenges them in the name of suffering victims and also in the name of the ethical universal —in the name of humanism. In that sense postcolonial theory is not an ally of postmodern theory but an agonist, and in this regard there is something that the latter can learn from postcolonial theory.}? It is because of the stake I feel in Assam’s immediate political wellbeing that I am probably inclined simultaneously to challenge and to rely on the legitimating narratives behind concepts such as nation, nationality, subnation, nation-state, federalism, democracy,

human rights, legal order, and civil society. I consider the task of recreating a civil polity in Assam both urgent and possible —no matter what the structural odds may be. It is this postcolonial naivete that perhaps puts me at some distance from the cynical thread in postmodernist thought.

Organization of the Book I begin in Chapter 1] with a critique of the paradigm of nationbuilding and make the case for designing structures of policymaking —implicit in the notion of federalism— that are responsive to debates in particular subnational public spheres. I also nett introduce Assam and its people. The two subsequent chapters provide historical and geographical background crucial to the understanding of Assamese subnationalism. Assam, or rather the cultural heartland of contemporary Assam that roughly corresponds with the territory of the precolonial Ahom kingdom, came under British rule in 1826. The British province of Assam was a different entity from precolonial Assam. But what came to be called Assam as a British province, first formed in 1874, and to which newer territories were added, would prove

Preface

xxiii

fateful to the subsequent cultural and political history of the area. The British conquest of Assam and its economic transformation into a major tea-producing area were crucial to Assam’s emergence as one of southern Asia’s last land frontiers. Chapters 2 and 3 provide an analysis of Assam’s political, economic, and demographic transformation that began under British colonial rule. In Chapter 4 I discuss the nineteenth-century origins of Assamese subnationalism and its tensions with pan-Indianism. Modern politics in Assam in the late nineteenth century began in the form ofacultural movement concerned with the development of Assamese language and literature and a concern with Assam’s “development” — focused mostly on demands for starting schools, cvileges, and universities. Assamese subnationalism, which predated panIndian nationalism, did not always simply step aside to make room for the latter. I discuss some of the areas of tension between Assamese and pan-Indian politicians that were apparent even during the political mobilization of anticolonialism. Some of these tensions became more serious after independence. Chapter 5 describes Assam’s politics in the 1960s and 1970s, focusing on two developments— the controversies over Assam’s cultural policy and the breakup of colonial Assam. The two are related: the adoption of Assamese as official language is sometimes seen as a major cause of Assam’s fragmentation. I argue, however, that the prime mover in the breakup of Assam was the government in New Delhi. To bureaucrats and politicians in New Delhi, changing Assam’s boundaries — that under the Indian Constitution can be done with a simple parliamentary majority—came to be seen as a easy recipe for containing and even preempting insurgencies. Chapters 6 and 7 discuss the Assam movement (1979-85) and the

separatist insurgency that began about the same time. Chapter 8 discusses the political mobilization among the Bodos for cultural and political autonomy and the challenge it presents to the Assamese subnational narrative. The conclusion considers whether under a more decentralized federal structure Assam’s sub-

national conflicts could have been better managed.

Pee las

=

Coy a !

ie

=

rary a

>

ae

Perak

Le

oe :

7

oF,

9

dunk

;

7

it fl cain- ehetie

i ni eehrpt «ce nerarnaaat argon tos

ceigratus tena. cn

ate

re eet ices

erseine _ouibpaehasee

;

n

oe

amicimataiet

roy

tone nk able *

1, ol Rina att olan: Jaindtos tyne wabeinagiduatschonnrtimecme

rue

ieee mania ilmesiony antereiensth td: snepenlcbmalel be

arttsinsaltndscvad ried ateeltaroe TM eet its:eparennpescst | a ; Ry een yt! Se 4 = advent tea gatos sates Taitdab boe 1s h03 4h strwom tounles ate :

a 7

se piiovaleat sizindy ilemenue tis instar bagayesiguatnes

|

vaegjalbs sain de griitents tok sitieioalvase aie

aeage betelesia: donietcriwihenmtintadun inhaaveprcectie x=

wo,| genie ails’ centanghepenin peed deny:Nitesvbrplleeomsarivathal: :

Adownld ewido ceoatas piledo. cteaw een stb:iarefoiiine

PeAL

peztosttonjiney:pekceaeh grief eels iasceqyanaee rah ‘cmmictiaisesny | » ah: seule a ottainteerstien eeerichilidenste 2 Hib $ phtidY rE cnanserbrete trinket muss Swi

28

|

| dactrarstd panne ad ied a Abebanet cyt vannaettiee ettinane, oi ‘birabeahs ite Son A tes ail-ainamiqnisgals co ae grin

|

lSreins detectors teeter rear teen ohenbnaksnsaasernnea aorta waenitanice baggy batdatsle: aaecesereel, Ja rewqabeae *

)

shigesits eoaarest seg

a

) foals

aak:

My Sete} yohetey & “4

Aware adit act mR Woqyntesid 9D vovont senirg SH 1 m a Hae i hadeitamndsl idiot ats yahaii pects nae wee fs spat aa obi out eimbaecicl a earn ; aG nade ,Hit pam +epi stom sibihaty pian ating se ab.

salsnag ivan qiulortiyyny ge te betesAyuniones so} sqoFyy,

i

as ar senile ‘rang travis ache Acustt ness alfs:Stes: ars

| 4 Soules neareslt sian otted2yOdrestsaye tastyPaagnie sted reepraia, nciitagiias ieablog srla eonused B peor al Pent: at agent nity,AW fa tw: poponnst teeSkpinttuey peas hat

ecmbbenas iormali rise id cquietieer marae eer PERCAL, otro Deicahae

tous Hasileniedab saber 8 oat

wy

ative “thee Saucers linia iaesins cai | +f

i esetpre

:

{hihi

SR

5

PaS

eel

ace

at

ee

neni

i i.

ueheive See! Pe: Penta

ietect apse

Aten

Seay ae ae ah jn inctige

enn saa Pe~~ nude palatehaea ae. Re

hy yet) ne tad

;

Me

Chapter | Theoretical Considerations:

The Limits of “Nation-Building”

The discipline of political science has, at least until recently, been quite State-centered. Among the consequences of this bias is that the discourse of comparative politics has often seen non-State violence as uniquely dangerous and immoral, while implicitly investing State violence with special sanctity.’ Nation-building, once a key word in the vocabulary of those studying politics in what used to be called developing countries, reflects this bias. Economist P. T. Bauer once wrote that the concept treats people as “lifeless bricks, to be moved by some master builder.” Indeed, in reports of human rights organizations one can find numerous examples from all over the world of political prisoners and others subjected to human rights abuses, who are best described as victims of nation-building disasters. Indeed the metaphor of nation-building has been aptly described as one of a“handsome neoclassical building in which political prisoners scream in the basement.” And such metaphors are no mere “ornamental rhetoric,” they are political arguments with real consequences for the bodies and minds of people.? Despite these serious difficulties with the concept of “nation-building,” the traditional alternatives to it— whatever their moral appeal — have been no more satisfactory intellectually. For instance, once it was common to pose the issue in terms of the principle of self-determination of “nations” or “peoples.” But efforts to make self-determination a general moral principle have had a troubled intellectual and political history. The formulation that all peoples or nations have the right to self-determination may

2

Chapter 1

appear unproblematical when the terms “nation” or “people” are used more or less as synonymns for states. This, for instance, is the case with many documents of international law such as the United Nations Charter, which refers to the “principles of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.” But identifying “peoples” that do not correspond with existing states, yet can be said to be entitled to a right to self-determination, is conceptually as well as politically difficult. It is not surprising that Woodrow Wilson, after proclaiming the right of nations to self-determination, when confronted with numerous petitions for sovereignty and statehood admitted that he had no idea that there were so many nations in the world. Granting self-determination to all these nations, he feared, might have meant that a vast number of new states would have had to be created, which would have threatened the prevailing global political order.® Yet in terms of its political impact the historical significance of the principle of self-determination has been nothing less than momentous. It is perhaps the principal idea that animated the “deep tectonic movement” in global history that over a period of more than two centuries produced the disintegration of the “great polyethnic, polyglot, and often polyreligious monarchical empires built up so painfully in medieval and early modern times.” *However, we seem to have come to the end of the epoch when the principle had evoked intuitive sympathy. Sociologist Amitai Etzioni, in an essay published in 1990 ata time when the end of the Cold War was giving fresh impetus to many new nationalisms, argued that “it is time to withdraw moral approval” from most self-determination movements. While these movements have been a positive historical force for more

than two centuries, he wrote, they no longer have the

capacity to create more democratic states. Now the thrust of many movements of self-determination, he believes, is destructive.® Etzioni’s assessment may or may not be universally shared. But selfdetermination movements today do not arouse the same level of popular sympathy in the world as they did a generation ago, when anticolonial resistance was at its height. Etzioni’s call for withdrawing moral approval from movements of self-determination draws attention to the intellectual and political weaknesses of the concept and to the moral challenge facing the observer of subnational conflicts and of new nationalisms. The idea

Theoretical Considerations

3

that all nations have a right to self-determination assumes that nations are objective and self-evident facts on the ground. But today it is widely recognized, and not just by postmodernists, that the concept of nation is inherently unstable.® Indeed, it can be argued that an objectivist definition of the term “nation” is well nigh impossible. The logic of the social world, as Pierre Bourdieu puts it, is that reality is also the site where a permanent struggle to define reality takes place. Struggles for nationhood, to paraphrase Bourdieu, are “struggles over classifications” that characterize the social world generally. Social theory, as Bourdieu puts it, then must include in its notion of social reality “the struggle over representations.”’ Woodrow Wilson’s difficulty in reconciling the principle of selfdetermination with the imperatives of Realpolitik then was understandable. His Secretary of State Robert Lansing had reservations about backing the principle and he stated the sources of the difficulty rather frankly. In a confidential memorandum of December 1918, Lansing wondered about the effects of national self-determi-

nation on “the Irish, the Indians, the Egyptians, and the nationalists among the Boers.” He worried that American advocacy of the principle might “breed discontent, disorder and rebellion.” What if “the Mohammadans of Syria and Palestine and possibly of Morocco and Tripoli rely on it?” And he wondered how national selfdetermination could be “harmonized with Zionism, to which the President is practically committed.” It is not much of a leap from discovering that some assertions of national self-determination might “breed discontent, disorder and rebellion” to saying that in those instances the groups in question need not be thought of as nations at all. Arguably, when the idea of self-determination has received support from great powers, it has often been in the service of other political goals, and not the result of a commitment to a principle. After the First World War, the idea of self-determination served the restructuring that accompanied the dismantling of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires; after the Second World War it served mainly the dismantling of the European colonial empires. Support for self-determination between the end of the Second World War and the end of the Cold War rarely translated into support for anything other than the movements against saltwater — direct European colonialism

rule of countries in Asia, Europe,

and the Americas. Self-determination movements that do not easily

4

Chapter!

fit into the political and moral assumptions behind the postcolonial system of sovereign “nation-states” have not had an easy time convincing the world of their “right” to self-determination. By and large mainstream political science discourse has been complicit with the project of reproducing the postcolonial global political order of “nation-states.” This has been possible due to “our perceptual habits . . . formed in. . . the space of high modernism.”? The essentialist way of understanding nations and the Statecentric paradigm of nation-building are part of this legacy. In recent years, especially since the publication of Benedict Anderson's Imagined Community, the idea that a nation is an act of imagination has won wide acceptance.'° Anderson argued that most “nation-states” of today came into being as a result of the diffusion of the idea of nation-ness. Twentieth century nationalisms and nation-states, he wrote, have a “profoundly modular character.”'' One implication of this argument is that the more or less viable “nations” — or rather nation-states— are, of course, only a part of the story of the global diffusion of this modular form. Not all national narratives turn out to be emotionally plausible to everyone included in that nation, nor do all national projects turn out to be politically viable. Some nations have been “insufficiently imagined,”'* while narratives that define a nation inclusively by incorporating symbolic settlements!? between subnational communities at one historical moment have been later contested. Their complex pasts seem to haunt many nation-states in ways that have taken both governing elites and political scientists by surprise. The relatively successful nation-states of the world owe their success to the effectiveness of their projects of cultural standardization during periods of State-building, and/or the relative ability of their national narratives to create effective fictions of national unity. However, in our times cracks have become evident even in those nation-

states that until recently seemed to be among the most stable and self-evident ones. The apparent amnesia about identities that compete with official State nationalisms is the legacy of cultural standardization particularly associated with successful State-building endeavors. But such forgetfulness today seems less permanent than was once assumed. After all, the Europe of regions that European regionalists envision — where Catalonia, the Basque country, Cor-

Theoretical Considerations

5

sica, and South Tyrol would have their place — is a vision that would

be “perfectly familiar to the people of the Middle Ages.”4

The Case for Taking Subnationalism Seriously The high modernist notion was that there are a finite number of nations in the world that can be configured into a global order of nation-states based on the principle of national self-determination. Today we need a different kind of morality to accommodate a historical understanding of the nation-state system and the logic of new nationalisms in some areas of the world and of subnational politics in many more or less stable “nation-states.” The insights that emerge from the emphasis on nations as acts of imagination and on the “contingency and contestedness of nations”!> could (a) alert us to the tensions inherent in all national or subnational

projects and (b) make political analysis more systematically sensitive to questions about the relative weight of consent and coercion in the process that governing elites as well as political scientists have called nation-building. The empirical focus of this book is on the politics of nationality in the northeast Indian state of Assam. I use the terms nationality and subnationalism instead of ethnic group and ethnic politics advisedly. The imagined communities I am concerned with, which coexist with and are occasionally in tension with the pan-Indian national community, are best located in the intellectual universe of nations and nationalism. The “politics of identity” of these imagined communities, unlike ethnic politics in Chicago, say, all revolve

around real or imagined homelands. I use the term subnationalism,

first, in M. Crawford Young’s

sense, to refer to a pattern of politicization and mobilization that meets some of the criteria of nationalism, but is not committed firmly to the idea of separate statehood.'® Second, one of the con-

tentions of this book is that subnationalism in India stands in a dialogical relationship with pan-Indian politics. Subnational political mobilization

in Assam,

I show in later chapters, is often ani-

mated by India’s Constitution, laws, public philosophy, and political processes. Incidentally, I distinguish between the words “subnational” and “subnationalist,” though it is not always possible to maintain the distinction. It would be difficult to abandon the re-

6

Chapter 1

lated terms “nationalism” and “subnationalism” that do not allow for such a distinction. Yet not all patriots are nationalists, as histo-

rian Miroslav Hroch points out in the context of the national movements of Central and Eastern Europe. Strictly speaking, argues Hroch, nationalists are those who give “an absolute priority to the values of the nation over all other values and interests.” Nationalism therefore is only one of the various forms of national consciousness.!7 The same applies to subnational movements. Whatever may be the problems with what Terry Eagleton calls “the metaphysics of nationalism” — the idea ofapeople as a unitary subject!* — national and subnational projects are also about collective actors becoming agents of history. Since the Assamese subnational project, and the projects associated with groups

(subnations/nationalities)

such as the Sikhs or

Kashmiris, coexist with the pan-Indian national project, it makes sense to add the qualifier “sub.” But while the qualifier helps to make a distinction between regional and pan-Indian national projects, the distinction should only be seen. as provisional.'? For the term “subnation” has some of the same difficulties as a term like “ethnic group.” As Walker Connor contends, it can be an euphemism that obscures the multinational character of the vast majority of today’s nation-states. While those who use the term are at least aware that they are dealing with some “approximation of nationalism,” writes Connor, to the extent that they presume that national-

ism as an ideology is firmly in the employ of the State and that loyalty to any other ethnonational group can be thought of only asa subordinate phenomenon, “subnationalism has no peer.””° I agree with much of Connor’s argument, but I do not accept his underlying positivist conception of what a “nation” is. I use the term subnationalism not to refer to some stable essence that makes it inherently different from nationalism, but to describe a situation at a

particular historical moment. There cannot be any hard and fast conceptual distinction between national and subnational projects. The ideology of the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) that has given Assamese subnationalism a militant and radical turn is best described as Assamese nationalism. ULFA interprets the Yandabo Treaty of 1826 between Burma and the British rulers of India, which incorporated Assam

Theoretical Considerations

7

into British India, as the episode that marked the end of Assam’s independence and seeks the restoration of that “lost independence.”*! But, while ULFA may be the first organization to raise the slogan of Assam’s independence, this is not the first time ‘that As-

samese national mobilization has occupied center stage in Assam’s politics. Earlier episodes of political mobilization, for example on cultural policy issues such as demanding Assamese as the state’s official language or the language of educational institutions, are best described as subnational. These episodes of political mobilization are subnational also in the sense that pan-Indian intellectual horizons had shaped Assamese subnational discourse, in this case, the notion of linguistic states or nation-provinces that constitute a pan-Indian cultural grammar.”* That India would confront serious subnational challenges should hardly be surprising. India, after all, is one of the prime examples of what Eric Hobsbawm describes as polities that grew out of anti-

colonial movements. While in theory these movements were inspired by the nationalism of the West, they were in practice efforts to construct states that were by and large the opposite of the “ethnically and linguistically homogeneous entities” seen as the standard form of the Western nation-state.”? But the point is not that there is a direct connection between the linguistic and cultural diversity of a country and the political saliency of subnationalism. The politics of subnationalism must be explained more historically. Subnational narratives are not the product of certain given age-

old constructions of peoplehood. They are modern reconfigurations; they exist in the same area of historicity as nationalism.*4 If nationalism “is not the awakening and assertion of these mythical, supposedly natural and given units,” as Ernest Gellner puts it, neither is subnationalism. They are, on the contrary, “the crystallization of new units . . . admittedly using as their raw material the cultural, historical and other inheritances from the pre-nationalist past.”25 The “postmodern discovery,” as Michael Walzer puts it— though Benedict Anderson’s book can hardly be described this way — “that communities

are social constructions:

imagined, in-

vented, put together,” of course, does not make them “less real or less authentic than some other.””¢ Indeed Etienne Balibar even suggests that maybe “only imaginary communities” are “real,” since

8

Chapter 1

“every social community reproduced by the functioning of institutions is imaginary, that is, it is based on the projection of individual existence into the weft of a collective narrative.”*’ If nations and nationalities are “imagined communities,” subnational narratives, like national ones, are often premised on a poetics about a homeland and its people. It is a poetics that transforms the geography of an area into primal, homelike, or sacred space and transforms a people into a collectivity with imagined ties of shared

origins and

kinship.**

Historically

in India,

sub-

national narratives arose simultaneously with —and indeed sometimes predated —pan-Indian national narratives. Like nationalisms, the cultural foundation of India’s regionally based subnationalisms was the languages of the region—to be precise, the languages that were emerging as, or were aspiring to become, regional standards. In a certain totalistic way of imagining India, pan-Indian narratives can seek a monopoly of the communitarian imagination of all citizens living within India’s borders. The pan-Indian political community, in this imagination, becomes the sole repository of the poetics of a homeland and of the collective memories and dreams of a people — defined singularly. This singularity is not inconsistent with a ritual celebration of India’s diversity as expressed in a slogan like “unity in diversity.” But pan-Indian narratives can also allow for more multiplicity: they can institutionally accommodate other historically constituted collectivities, not just within some hegemonic project of nation-building but, by recognizing the notion of “dual but complementary political identities. ”° Historically the State in India—a part-legatee of a subcontinental civilization and an empire, and the product of an anticolonial polit-

ical project that brings together both pan-Indianist and subnational currents— has had to come to terms with these multiple narratives. That the boundaries of many states in India are formed by language — even though the connection between language and statehood in Indian public philosophy is recognized implicitly rather than explicitly —illustrates this legacy. India’s nation-provinces— the product of the linguistic organization of states — pay symbolic homage to the history of premodern political formations, or rather to the reconstructions of those formations in subnational narratives. But the fit between’the formally federal structure of the In-

Theoretical Considerations

9

dian polity and the emotive power ofthese subnational narratives is hardly perfect. The debate in India on centralization versus more federalism reflects a tension between two different projects of panIndianism — one totalistic and the other more pluralistic. The stubborn subnational conflicts can be located in this enduring tension and in a failure to develop a pan-Indian narrative that can accommodate the entire range of historically constituted subnational aspirations and concerns. Constructing nationalities, like nations, involves projects of cultural hegemony. Nations and nationalities are contested formations. While in their self-presentation national and subnational narratives emphasize “horizontal comradeship,” these projects are typically “engendered by and constitutive of social hierarchies.”*° Thus even though a nation-state “imagines and represents itself as a land, a territory, a place that functions as the site of homogeneity, equilibrium, integration,” this only reflects, in Khachig Tdlélyan’s words, the vision of hegemony-seeking national elites. Even when national elites succeed in achieving such domestic tranquility in a territory, it may be the result of differences being “assimilated, destroyed, or assigned to ghettoes.”*! The Assamese case, while at one level drawing attention to the cracks in the imagination of hegemony-seeking pan-Indian elites, also provides a dramatic example of an internal challenge to the self-representation of the Assamese nationality. There “tribal” groups, notably the Bodos, which were historically considered a constituent part of the Assamese nationality, are seeking a differentiation from the Assamese,

-with deadly political consequences.

Subnationalism and State and Civil Society The politics of subnationalism should be located in the theoretical space that is usually referred to as civil rather than political society, to use Antonio Gramsci’s distinction. Jean-Francois Bayart, in applying the concept of civil society to Africa, uses it in two different

senses. Following Robert Fossaert, he initially defines civil society not as a set of institutions

but as social space, as “society in its

relation with the State . . . in so far as it is in confrontation with the State” or the process by which society seeks to “breach” and counteract the “simultaneous totalisation unleashed by the State.”*? But

10

Chapter!

for him there are also situations when civil society becomes the collective will of a people —say during a revolutionary moment — when it is meaningful to speak of entire civil societies being in opposition to States. It is possible to speak of a civil society in the second sense when societies have the capacity to bridge what he calls certain epistemic gulfs across cultural, religious, and linguistic rifts and “to confront the State with appropriate conceptual weapons.” It is civil society in the second sense that Bayart finds missing in African societies.*> But since what separates social space from civil society is organizational capacity, civil society cannot be an allor-nothing phenomenon. It is perhaps best to think of civil society in India in a plural sense. Thus subnational dissent in India— located in particular regional civil societies —does not pose a unified challenge to the Indian State. Yet stand-offs between the State and blocs of civil society— e.g., the Assamese, Kashmiri, or Sikh —are examples of civil society in the organized sense. In addition, there are, of course, po-

litical moments when it may be possible to speak of a pan-Indian civil society —at least of an incipient one —as when a Mohandas Gandhi launches a civil disobedience movement

(1930-34)

or a

Jayaprakash Narayan launches a pan-Indian movement against corruption (1974-75). It is from its roots in civil society that subnational politics derives much ofits power and its potential for generating political turmoil. Organizations that have led subnational protest in Assam, we shall see, typically describe themselves as “nonpolitical.” The point they seem to make is that they see their concerns to be different from and of a higher order than those of politicians. In this view, the concerns of the nationality are obviously of a higher order than the imperatives of electoral politics. Organizations and individuals that play a key role in Assamese subnational protest typically belong to the cultural realm. Often authors of the Assamese subnational narrative, they see themselves as reluctant entrants to the political realm. The notiop of a higher-order concern for the life of the nationality has the potential capacity of incorporating all Assamese irrespective of their lower-order engagements, as it were, into subnational projects. Membership, even a leadership position in a political party or in the civil service does not disengage an Assamese from the concerns of the collectivity.

Theoretical Considerations

11

The higher order obligations that subnationalisms arouse compete with the obligations of national citizenship, whose unquestioned primacy is best construed, not asa given ofsocial life, butas a project of the modern State. That does not mean that subnational demands are necessarily engaged in a zero-sum conflict with the State. Demands generated by subnational political mobilization in

India, after all, have often been settled through negotiation. But such resolutions may obscure the continued capacity of subnational public spheres to sustain autonomous visions and agendas. The challenge facing India is to redesign her polity in a way that accommodates these actually existing forms of civil society. Federalism and the Politics of Subnationalism The teleology of nation-building has to some extent enabled politi-

cal scientists to avoid the issue of how to accommodate the logic of subnationalism into political institutions. Alfred Stepan has recently expressed amazement that the literatures on democratization and nationalism have been “virtually separate and non-communicating discourses.” Stepan makes a case for relating the nationalism literature to that of federalism— “one of the potentially attractive (but also potentially dangerous) political formulas those wishing to craft democracy in multi-national polities must consider.”** Indeed, one of the normative arguments for federalism is that it might protect historically constituted cultural-territorial identities — subnationalism in my words — against the tyranny of the majority. Federations can prevent the tyranny of the majority by a variety of means, including constitutionally guaranteed meaningful autonomous spheres of action for the territorial units. “In a robust democratic federal political system,” as Stepan puts it, “the more citizens feel a sense of allegiance to both of the democratically legitimated sovereignties, each with its constitutionally guaranteed scope of action the more democratically secure the federation.”* With the ap-

propriate mechanisms to ensure that the units of afederation have law-making prerogatives on issues that are important to the life of the unit, federations can structure the political process in a way that makes policymaking responsive to the relevant public spheres. Considering his pathbreaking theoretical work on the public sphere, Jargen Habermas's reflections on the possibilities of a European

12.

Chapter 1

Union developing into “a multilingual state of different nations” might throw light on no less multilingual India’s predicament. For Habermas, integration across “different national traditions and histories” can be achieved through the praxis of citizenship. He expects a future federal republic of European States to be able to do precisely that. The major hurdle for a European Union, for him, is not that States may be unwilling to give up sovereignty, but that “democratic processes have hitherto only functioned within national borders” and that “the political public sphere is fragmented into national units.” A deliberative democracy, writes Habermas, must depend on “anonymously interlinked discourses or flows of communication”; it does not depend on there being an “inclusive public sphere as a whole” or macro-subjects like a single “people” or “community.” Such a political public sphere may be fueled by spontaneous

sources,

but for it to work

there would

have to be

“a networking of different communication flows.” A Europe-wide public sphere should be able to “bind the public administration to more or less rational premises” and “enforce social and ecological discipline on the economic system without nonetheless impinging on its intrinsic logic.”*6

If the strength of amultinational democratic federation is that it can structure political processes in ways that can make public policy responsive to multiple public spheres, India’s formally federal structure leaves much to be desired. I would argue that there is a considerable disjuncture between the subnational public spheres and the pan-Indian public sphere. Given the relative centralization of political power, policymaking on subjects crucial to a nationprovince can be quite unresponsive to the debates in that particular public sphere. This becomes most apparent in the politics of regions torn by subnational conflicts. Thus the political demands of today’s Assamese insurgents, as I have said before, are quite intertextual with the discourse in the Assamese public sphere. Yet while Assamese newspapers, Assamese literature, or even Assamese popular music may loudly spell out this intertextuality, there is little articulation between Assamese social discourse and the policy discourse found in pan-Indian newspapers or the writings of panIndian policy intellectuals. Let me illustrate my point by referring to an important 1996

Theoretical Considerations

book on the region by B. George Verghese, a well-known

13

Indian

journalist and policy intellectual. Precisely because Verghese’s is a sympathetic account of the region, it provides unwitting evidence of a divide between the way some issues are framed in the panIndian public sphere and in the subnational public spheres of the region. Verghese describes northeast India romantically, and yet sometimes his language is that of a remote and inattentive outsider. “India’s northeast is rainbow country,” he writes, “extraordi-

narily diverse and colourful, mysterious when seen through parted clouds, a distant and troubled frontier for all too many.”3” His book is an attempt to correct misconceptions and to make the region less

remote to the “heartlanders.” Verghese counted six active insurgencies in the northeast: Naga in the Nagaland, Manipur, and adjacent areas; Meitei in the Imphal

Valley of Manipur; Assamese and Bodo in Assam; the Hynniewtrep Achik Liberation Council in the Khasi Hills of Meghalaya; and the

indigenous peoples’ revolt of Tripura. “Sundry other insurgent groups or splinter organisations,” he added, “are at large while others have surrendered or are dormant.” Verghese seems to believe that the turmoil in the region is only a minor hurdle in a process that is destined to have a happy ending. The peoples of the northeast, to him, are “by and large the youngest members of the Indian family.” Today’s turmoils do not point to the danger of India’s disintegration, but are a sign of the coming of age of peoples, a growing political and social consciousness in a region where “the clock, dormant for centuries had meanwhile started ticking away.” It is a politics of “nascent nationality formation among awakening tribes and groups” that feel “threatened by demographic and political change.”** A combination of development and nationbuilding, Verghese believes, will put an end to these turmoils. Verghese explains northeast India’s insurgencies with a general theory that they are related to the end ofisolation and the relatively late arrival of modernity to the area— an odd thing to say aboutan area that went through enormous capitalist transformation in the nineteenth century. After all, Assam has for a long time been one of the world’s leading tea producing regions. Even though Verghese’s book sets out to engage the policy issues raised by today’s insurgencies, one does not hear too much

about

the world view of these

14

Chapter 1

insurgents and the concrete issues that they debate, and there are few clues as to why the insurgents command significant, albeit inconsistent, levels of popular sympathy. The insurgency in Assam, for instance, in Assamese narratives, is

framed by a very concrete social memory of a long and what is seen as a legitimate “struggle.” It hardly needs explaining by some vague sociological or social psychological theories. For instance, Verghese refers to groups in the region feeling “threatened by demographic change.” But in the Assamese public sphere the issue is formulated in a very precise constitutional and legal language. Assam and the other northeastern states, through much of the twentieth century, have been the last major land frontier of the Indian subcontinent. The anxiety on the part of many of the numerically small peoples of the northeast of becoming minorities in territories that they had historically regarded as their own has been a recurrent theme in the politics of the region. Since the 1947 partition of India into India and Pakistan, East Bengal, which has been the primary source of twentieth-century immigration to Assam, has become part of a fory and subsequently Bangladesh. The immieign countr — Pakistan gration issue therefore has come to be framed in terms of the legal status of immigrants who now cross an international border to enter Assam and other northeastern states. Of course controversies over immigration are not rare in today’s world. Indeed they illustrate an all too familiar tension between a sedentary common sense that shapes the cultural grammar of nationhood everywhere and the reality of movements of people that characterize much of human history.** Many nation-states and India’s nation-provinces today confront the “extent to which their boundaries are porous and their ostensible homegeneity a multicultural heterogeneity.”*° Assam is no exception. Nevertheless, given the “national order of things”*! and the impact of immigration on Assam’s demographic, cultural, and political balance, it should not be surprising that Assam’s demographic transformation — a process over which the state-level political arena has not been able to exercise any control —would be resented by those who see themselves as “indigenous” to Assam. But, cansidering the circumstances, in my view it is significant that the panIndian cultural meanings derived from the Constitution and laws have by and large managed to frame the public discussion of the

Theoretical Considerations

15

issue. Thus, even though Assam’s demographic transformation has been caused by legal as well as illegal immigration — “foreigners” as well as Indian — Assamese s subnational organizations typically protest only the entry and enfranchisement of illegal aliens and the de facto policy of granting them immediate citizenship rights. Such a formulation makes the conflict, at least potentially, quite manageable. However, a difficulty arises from the fact that what in Assamese narratives is framed as a question of illegal immigration appears very differently in pan-Indian narratives. In the context of pan-Indian politics and the international politics of the subcontinent, Assam’s illegal immigration problem is embroiled in two highly sensitive questions: (a) the treatment of India’s Muslim minority population and (b) what many see as an unavoidable legacy of India’s partition in 1947: India’s de facto obligation to allow Hindu refugees from Pakistan to settle in India. India’s policy on immigration to the northeastern states is framed by a pan-Indian formulation of the problem. There is an implicit acceptance of the rights of Hindu political refugees from East Bengal to settle anywhere in India, and at the same time there is an understandable reluctance to make a distinction between Muslim economic immigrants and Hindu political refugees. Yet the construction of the problem in Assamese narratives, which, among other things, does not generally distinguish between Hindu and Muslim

immigrants, as we shall see in later chapters, has its own

long history predating the partition of India and is shaped and legitimated by the conventional cultural grammar of nationhood and subnationhood. Let me turn to another subject in Verghese’s book to illustrate the disjuncture between the Assamese and the pan-Indian public spheres. Verghese is tough-minded about the Indian State’s battle against insurgencies in the northeast. The “regional press,” he believes, exaggerates human rights abuses by the Indian army during counter-insurgency operations. He recognizes, however, that excesses have been committed at times by the security forces. Small detachments have occasionally gone berserk when their colleagues have been brutally ambushed or killed. Harsh interrogation for information has sometimes led to custodial death. There have been instances of rape and molestation. The human issues are not to be extenuated. . . . Investigations have been made and those found guilty punished. But civil procedures are

16

Chapter i

often slow and unsatisfactory. In the prevailing conditions, delays occur and transparency is sometimes lacking.”

Whether or not the reports of army abuses are exaggerated in the “regional press,” as Verghese believes, there is little doubt that reports and the “visually terrifying imagery”’** of victims of army abuses in the Assamese press have a significant impact on Assam’s politics. Thus for a time almost every issue of Assamese newspapers like Axomiya Protidin— the largest circulating Assamese daily— had pictures of victims of the Indian army’s abuses. Nor is the Assamese public sphere limited to newspapers. In later chapters I will refer to a genre of popular Assamese music as constitutive and reflective of the Assamese subnational imagination. In 1995 I saw a public statue by a major highway, at a place called Saikhowa Dangori on the road from Tinsukia to Saikhowa Ghat, honoring five young men — suspected insurgents — who died as a result of torture by the Indian army. The plaque says in Assamese that they “bear testimony to the barbarism of the Indian army.” It would seem extraordinary that such a public monument exists. But the fact that the words are in Assamese —a “regional language” or what Indian officialese sometimes calls a “vernacular” — and that the statue is located far away from the big cities probably explains the apparent nonchalance of the State and of those concerned with managing subnational dissent. At one level it illustrates that the Indian State’s response to separatist militancy in Assam does not add up to a coherent authoritarian strategy; human rights violations by the army in search of militants coexist with press and intellectual freedoms criticizing those abuses. But it also underscores a disjuncture between the panIndian public sphere that shapes India’s policy toward Assam and the Assamese public sphere that has much less influence on determining policies affecting Assam. Such a disjuncture has serious implications for the future of democratic governance in India.

Assam and Its People: An Introduction “History and geography have combined

to make

the Northeast,”

Verghese writes, “homeland to Mongoloid India.”‘4 I have never heard northeasterners refer to themselves as “Mongoloid Indians.”

It is perhaps heartland India’s way of seeing. Nevertheless, Ver-

Theoretical Considerations

17

ghese’s description attempts to capture in terms of phenotypical stereotypes one aspect of the particular history of the region: its cultural connections — and, perhaps, in terms of the history of population movements and genealogy —with southeast Asia. A major two-volume work on southeast Asia published in 1967 included a chapter on Assam, whose boundaries then were more or less synonymous with what is called northeast India today. The editor of the volume explained that Assam had a large population of “tribal” and minority people whose languages are more closely related to the languages of southeast Asia than to the languages of the Indian heartland. Their cultures too resemble the cultures of their neighbors in southeast Asia. Like the southern boundary of China that does not indicate a cultural or linguistic division, wrote P. Kunstad-

ter, India’s eastern border also does not mark off a cultural or linguistic area.* Assam, as described in that volume, resembled southeast Asia in

one crucial way—the cleavage between the hill peoples and the plains peoples. Robbins Burling in his essay on Assam noted this similarity between (undivided) Assam and southeast Asia: the presence of “a minority of tribal mountaineers” who can be distinguished from the “lowland majority.” As in much of southeast Asia, the hill peoples historically lved mostly by swidden agriculture. They spoke dozens of distinct languages.,Until colonial conquest, political systems based in the plains were not able to extend consistent control into the hills. In religious terms, like most of their eastern cousins, the hill peoples, except for those who converted to

Christianity in recent times, can be described by the vague rubric of “animism” distinguishing them from their Hindu (and Burling should have added Muslim) neigbors in the valley.*® The focus of my book is primarily the area that is the state of Assam today— the Brahmaputra Valley, the Barak Valley, and some of the hills surrounding these two valleys. While the term “Assam” once was almost synonymous with what is called northeast India today, present-day Assam is only one of seven northeastern states, the largest state in terms of population but not area, and a key state as a Communication gateway to the other states. Since these boundaries are relatively recent, the geographical area that I am concerned with in this book is not always consistent. Thus when I discuss the colonial period, “Assam” refers to a much larger area than

18

Chapter!

present-day Assam. The British province of Assam included the district of Sylhet that became part of Pakistan at partition and the hills surrounding the plains of Assam that today are separate Indian Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Nagaland s — Arunachal state (see Maps 3 and 4, pp. 92-93 below). Today’s Assam is a multiethnic place, though significantly less so than colonial Assam or the Assam of the decade after independence. I have already referred to distinctions such as that between “immigrant” and “indigenous” communities, and between “tribal” and “nontribal”

peoples. In the preface, I have narrated

the story of my getting to know the category “ethnic Assamese.” Let me provide a brief profile of this diversity, taking the data of the 1991 census on language and religion as a point of departure. The census classified Assam’s population into speakers of 68 languages and dialects. Table | lists only the twelve languages and dialects that were claimed as mother tongue by at least 100,000 people. However, the census language data should be seen as a useful, but rather imprecise, way of understanding Assam’s multiethnic profile. Of the languages/dialects that appear on this list, Assamese, Bodo, Mising, Karbi, Manipuri, Garo, and Rabha are languages of peoples that are considered “indigenous” to Assam. Speakers of Bengali, Hindi, Nepali, Oriya, or Santhali are considered “nonindigenous” by contrast. But it should be remembered that most people speaking those languages were probably born in Assam. The function of the distinction is only to orient the reader to the “indigenous”-"immigrant” divide that appears in the discussion of politics of Assam in later chapters. There are even more conceptual difficulties with these categories. Bengali may perhaps be considered an “immigrant” language in the Brahmaputra Valley, but that would be a very difficult notion to apply to Bengali in Cachar — a district where its speakers constitute the overwhelming majority. Of the indigenous languages/ dialects, the speakers of Bodo, Mising, Karbi, Garo, and Rabha are considered “tribal” peoples in terms of Indian policy categories. The census figures of speakers of a particular language, however, should not be read as the numbers of

people who belong to the related ethnic category. Assamese speakers, for instance, include ethnic Assamese as well as a very large number of people from “immigrant” and “tribal” communities. Santhali may be one of the many languages spoken by Assam’s tea

Theoretical Considerations

19

TABLE 1. Assam, 1991, Languages Spoken as First Language by More Than 100,000 People

Language

Number ofspeakers (as mother tongue)

Percentage of total population

Assamese Bengali Bodo Hindi Nepali Mising Karbi Oriya Santhali Manipuri Garo Rabha

12,958,088 4,856,532 1,184,569 1,035,474 432,519 381,562 355,032 140,782 135,905 126,987 114,779 112,424

57.8 2 Be 4.6 ia 1.7 1.6 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.5 0.5

Others

Total population

579,669

2.6

rae NE M44

100.6

Source: Census of India, Assam 1991. Based on photocopy of language table provided by Directorate of Census Operations, Assam.

labor community, but the vast majority of this community today speak Assamese. The total number of Bodos is much larger than the number of Bodo speakers. As for religious beliefs, the 1991 census records 67.1 percent of the population as Hindus, 28.4 percent as Muslims and 3.3 percent as Christians. The Muslims include ethnic Assamese Muslims as well as Muslims of Bengali descent and a smaller number of Muslims of other ethnic backgrounds. “Hindu” is a very broad category, and the inclusion of some of the “tribal” peoples in this category is conventional, but not unproblematical. Subnationalisms, like nationalisms, I have said earlier, are not just

about “horizontal comradeship”; they often involve projects of cultural hegemony. The subnational formation called the Assamese is under significant challenge in Assam today. Bodo activists, for in-

stance, seek a division of Assam in half and a separate Bodo homejJand. The classic ethnology of the Bodos, first published in 1911, describes the Bodos as “the original authochthones of Assam, and that even now, largely Hinduised, they still form a large, perhaps the main constituent element in the permanent population of the

20

Chapter!

province.”*” Large numbers of Bodos speak Assamese, and some included within that category today may not speak any Bodo at all. Historically, major sections of the Bodo people have merged into the Assamese subnational formation. Underlying today’s Bodo upsurge is a determination to reverse that process. Indeed it is not accidental that Bodo is one language category that shows an increase in the percentage of speakers since the 1971 census. In 1971 3.7 percent of Assam’s population were Bodo speakers; in 1991 the percentage went up to 5.3 percent.*® There has been enormous political violence generated by the Bodo demand for a homeland. Journalist Kalpana Sharma captured the mood in 1990 as she traveled to Kokrajhar, an urban center in Assam’s Bodo-dominated area: Around every bend, surrounding every clearing for a paddy field, are graceful stands of bamboo. But the gentleness of the bamboo is overwritten by the harsh sight of machine gun-toting military and para-military personnel patrolling important points on the road and the railway line. . . . Yet, looking at their small self-sufficient villages, every mud-and-thatch house grows betel-nut and fruit trees, some paddy, and always some flowers, and where women weave all the cloth needed for their personal use, it is difficult to imagine such militancy.

Sharma captured two contradictory aspects of subnational politics in Assam at a time when the Axom Gono Porixod, a political party that articulates some of the Assamese subnational aspirations, had been governing the state. “Assam today,” she wrote, “is troubled and divided.” Not only is Assam isolated from the rest of the country, the men who run Assam are equally isolated from the people they govern, especially the “tribals.” Political developments in Assam, she wrote, were posing a difficult question: “what really is Assam and to whom does it belong?” And Bodos are not the only indigenous “tribal” people who are challenging the Assamese subnational formation. Protest politics among other groups such as the Misings and Karbis who increasingly assert cultural difference from the Assamese “mainstream” also raise the question of “what really is Assam and to whom does it belong?” The next chapter deals with the changes of Assam’s political boundaries over time. The political geography of Assam has had important implications for the cultural politics of Assamese subnationalism.

Chapter 2 Colonial Geography as Destiny: Assam as a Province of British India

The Ahom kingdom! of precolonial times, located in the extreme northeastern corner of the subcontinent, can be described as the

cultural heartland of modern Assam (see Map 1). It came under British rule in 1826, when, according to the Yandabo Treaty that ended the Anglo-Burmese war, the king of Ava (Burma) renounced

“all claims upon,” and agreed to “abstain from all future interferences with, the principality of Assam and its dependencies, and also with the contiguous petty states of Cachar and Jyntea” (Jaintia) .? Toward the end of the eighteenth century the expanding Burmese empire had begun to intervene in the affairs of the Ahom, Manipuri, and other small kingdoms in northeast India. Internal dissension in the Ahom court had led to dissident factions cultivating ties with the Burmese court, and starting in 1817 there were a

number of Burmese military invasions of Assam. In 1822 the Ahom kingdom came to be ruled by a Burmese commander. The aristocracy escaped to British territories and sought British help against the Burmese invaders. As the East India Company’s territories came to border the Burmese empire, the latter’s military excursions began to alarm the British, making for a convergence of interests between the Assamese and the East India Company against the Burmese. When the Ahom kingdom passed into British hands, it was the first time in history that the Assamese heartland became politically incorporated into a pan-Indian imperial formation. For the Ahoms had successfully resisted the Mughals. There were serious conflicts

GNY

ee

may

om

=

2

=

TVHOIANAW

eo

=

INH

2

Tend sake

ee

NV

=

7

VEI'd ‘2661 AGH :29INOg “gggT ‘auidurg eEYsny op Jo Japsog ay} UOC WOpSuTy WoYyy a4] "| dew

VAY

e

ki

(vwunagd) NnIFd

dows

.WOGOIN

2 5s =

g

‘i « .

dep -z

YI0y Jeg

wessy Jopun sy)

ynbyedjer

VuNdidl

UONSIpsunf JO sy3 Jory

THH

Sed Si

JQUOISSIWIWIO “GL8T D

IVHSNTSTMH

SNOlyy yi\8 ,

24

# £Chapter2

between the Ahom kingdom and the Mughals in the seventeenth century, and in 1662 the Mughal General Mirjumla blitzed through Assam and plundered the capital city of Gargaon. But this period of conflict ended with the Ahom army defeating the Mughals in 1682. This major triumph by a small kingdom against the mighty Mughal empire provided significant political capital to the Ahom kingdom in the region, enabling it further to consolidate its rule in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries— making that period the zenith of the six centuries of Ahom rule. The history of the Ahom kingdom, however, is not synonymous with the history of the area that came to be referred to as Assam. Among the large precolonial political formations in the region was the Koch kingdom, with Koch Bihar in present-day West Bengal as its capital. At its height in the sixteenth century, the Koch kingdom encompassed eastern Assam and significant parts of northern Bengal that now form part of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. In 1581 the kingdom was split into Koch Bihar, which in-

cluded the district of Koch Bihar and parts of Dinajpur; Jalpaiguri and Rangpur (in present-day West Bengal and Bangladesh): and Kamrup or Koch Hajo, which included nearly all of western Assam and much of central Assam, including contemporary districts such as Barpeta, Kamrup, Nalbari, Darrang, and parts of Sonitpur. Following the split, in 1609 the western part of the old kingdom, Koch Bihar, became a vassal of the Mughals. In 1613 the eastern part, that is, Kamrup or Koch Hajo, was also annexed by the Mughals, turning the latter into a frontier province of the Mughal empire bordering the Ahom state, but the Mughals could not effectively control the eastern parts of Kamrup (see Map 1).° Nevertheless, the fate of certain parts of what is now western Assam did get tied to the Mughal empire, unlike that of the Assamese heartland —the Ahom kingdom. Thus the district of Goalpara in western Assam (now divided into four districts), which then included the Garo Hills region (now in the state of Meghalaya), was a part of the Mughal province of Bengal and came under the control of the East India Company according to the Mughal emperor’s Firman of August 12, 1765. Assam as a colonial province—a chief commissionership to be exact — was formed in 1874 (see Map 2). Prior to that the British

ruled Assam as an “appendage of the unwieldy province of Bengal.”* The new province initially included the (undivided) districts

Assam as a Province of BritishIndia

25

of Goalpara, Kamrup, Darrang, Nowgong, Sibsagar, Lakhimpur, parts of Naga Hills, and the district of Cachar and Garo Hills including the adjacent Eastern Duars — which was under Bhutanese influence in the early nineteenth century and was annexed by the British in 1866. On September 12, 1874 the East Bengali district of Sylhet — historically unconnected to Assam — was included in Assam. The primary goal of making Assam into a new administrative entity was to find an inexpensive and effective way to administer the area; considerations of historical continuity or cultural contiguity were not in the minds of colonial officials. The following official account of what was then only a proposal to constitute Assam into a separate unit gives a flavor of how the decision was arrived at. “To the province of Assam,” said an administrative report, “it is proposed to add Goalparah [Goalpara] and the Garo Hills on the west, and Sylhet and Cachar on the south, with Muneepore [Manipur] on the southeast. . . . The details connected with the transfer are still under consideration.”® One of the initial proposals considered was to include the Western

Duars and the districts of Koch Bihar,

Jalpaiguri, and Darjeeling.® Another proposal was to include Chittagong. The Western Duars, Koch Behar, Jalpaiguri, and Darjeeling today are in the Indian state of West Bengal, and Chittagong is in Bangladesh. In the precolonial period, however, significant parts of the area covered by the first proposal were strongly tied to Assam. If one looks at “racial,” linguistic, and cultural affinities, writes

a historian of the period, the way to “lighten the burden of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal” would have been to separate Koch Bihar from Bengal.’ But the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, Sir George Campbell, was obsessed with the idea of the political boundaries of the new unit of Assam coinciding with the “natural boundary line drawn up (by) the Meghna and the Surma; following the boundaries of the districts of Sylhet and Mymensingh, thence round the Garo Hills to the Brahmaputra and then across the Duars to the Himalayas.” But the resultant decision to bring Sylhet into Assam “separated the Bengali-speaking people on either side of the Meghna, but engendered rivalry and antagonism between the two Valleys of the Brahmaputra and Surma which continued with occasional breaks till our times.”® A number of other territories annexed to the British empire in subsequent years were incorporated into Assam: notably the country of the Lhota Nagas in 1875, that of

26

Chapter 2

the Angami Nagas in 1878-80 and of the Ao Nagas in 1889, and that of the Lushais (Mizo)

— conquered between 1871 and 1889,

but constituted into a district of Assam in 1898. Just as the initial decision on Assam’s boundaries was based on considerations of administrative convenience and on the whims of colonial administrators, the reasons why those borders were more or less maintained throughout the colonial period were no less accidental. Colonial administrators, on a number of occasions, considered changing Assam’s boundaries. For instance, some officials suggested in 1892 that Chittagong should be transferred to Assam. During discussions of the proposal in 1896-97, the Chief Commissioner of Assam suggested that two other districts of Bengal — Dacca and Mymensingh — should also be transferred to Assam along with Chittagong. The reasons offered in support of such proposals, however, were

always functional;

there were

never arguments

about

historical or cultural continuity. The European tea planters, for instance, were enthusiastic about Chittagong being made a part of Assam, since it would have brought the port of Chittagong into the same province. Tea planters made the case that the cost of transporting tea would be substantially reduced if Chittagong became a part of Assam and were developed as an outlet to the sea. There were also other functional arguments made by officials for the enlargement of Assam. For instance, it was said that a larger Assam would make it attractive for senior and accomplished British civil servants to come and work in Assam.° In 1905 a new expanded province was indeed created, combining Assam with all of eastern Bengal — present-day Bangladesh. This, however, proved to be only a brief interlude. When colonial administrators decided to combine Assam and Eastern Bengal into a single province, they came close to removing the word Assam from the name of the new province. The name initially proposed was North Eastern Province. One Bengali political leader, supporting the proposal, noted that it would be wise that “the reconstructed province be called by some other name than Assam; this will have the effect of removing any sentimental objection that the people of Eastern Bengal may have on the score of being called Assamese.”!° However, the idea of calling it North Eastern Province was dropped in favor of the name Eastern Bengal and Assam. The reason for the change of mind was not Assamese

Assam as a Province of Britishindia

27

sentiments — for they were rather weakly articulated at that time — but pressures from the tea industry, which by then had developed a serious stake in the name Assam. The fledgling Assamese civic organization, Assam Association, conveyed its weak opposition to the idea in a rather plaintive manner: The historic name of Assam will be obliterated for ever, her language will suffer and the removal of the seat of the capital to a place outside Assam proper and further away from the geographical centre will necessarily make her lose the amount of care and attention which it has received from the Government.!! However, the most strident opposition to the new name came from

the mostly British tea industry; they argued that the word “Assam” by which the region’s tea was known in international markets must be retained in the name of the new province.'? The province of East Bengal and Assam proved to be short-lived, and in 1912 Assam reverted to its former status as a chief commissionership and to its former boundaries that included Sylhet. Assam was upgraded into a governor’s province in January 1921, according to the Government of India Act of December 1919. Given the circumstances of the formation of the British province of Assam, the boundaries obviously do not coincide with those of precolonial Assam in a political, cultural, or economic sense. Certain areas that were not historically part of Assam became part of colonial Assam, while other areas that were a part of Assam did not. A colonial document describing the territory of Assam alludes to the first part of this reality: The term Assam, which had originally been applied to the tract of country ruled by the Ahoms, and was subsequently used with reference to the area under the control of the Commissioner of Assam, i.e., the six districts of the Brahmaputra Valley, has been given a wider signification, and is now used as a designation of the whole territory which was included in the Chief Commissionership, including the Surma valley, the hill districts and Manipur."

Colonial Assam, however, as is apparent from the discussion so far, not only was larger than precolonial Assam, it excluded some areas that were culturally part of precolonial Assam. In the rest of this chapter I shall discuss two key aspects of the

colonial political geography of Assam which profoundly affected

28

Chapter2

the subsequent cultural politics of Assam, both the Assamese subnational narrative and competing narratives. Colonial political geography was part of what has been called Orientalism — the way of “conceptualizing the landscape of the colonial world” that evolved as a tool of colonial domination.' I will focus on two aspects of Assam’s colonial geography: (a) the boundaries between the plains and the hills and (b) the notion of Assam as an extension of Bengal.

I. The Segregation of the Hills “British policy along with the whole of the Himalayas,” writes Leo Rose with reference to Bhutan, “was based upon the general principle that all independent hill principalities should be deprived of whatever plains areas they controlled at the foot of the hills.” The British considered the foothills “the natural boundary betwen India and the hill principalities, and that all plains areas belonged by right to whoever ruled northern India.” Of course the British also discovered that the plains provided revenue to the hill rulers and that depriving them of that revenue would weaken the hill rulers and make them dependent on the British.’° The logic of British attitudes towards the hills of Assam was the same; however, they

considered most of the peoples living in these hills as “primitive tribes.” Even in the narrow confines of the hills, there was therefore no pretension of recognizing their independence. They were kept in reservation-like territories called “backward” or “excluded” tracts. The experience of colonial rule in these areas, to say the least, was profoundly different from that of the regularly administered parts of British India. A number of laws governed the administration of these areas. Among them, the Scheduled Districts Act of 1874 and the Frontier Tract Regulation Act of 1880 empowered the government to exclude areas from the operation of the codes of civil and criminal procedures, the rules on property registration and transfer, and laws that were considered unsuitable to these areas. The notion was that traditional authorities would be empowered to try petty civil and criminal cases without the intervention of a modern legal system. Another law, the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation of 1873,

empowered the colonial government to prescribe an “Inner Line.” The line was drawn along the foothills, and the peoples living be-

Assam as a Province of Britisk India

yond this line were supposedly “left to manage

29

their own affairs

with only such interference on the part of the frontier officers in their political capacity as may be considered advisable with the view to establishing a personal influence for good among the chiefs and the tribes.”!'® The policy of exclusion first came about as a response to the reckless expansion of British entrepreneurs into new lands which threatened British political relations with the hill tribes. Among the British adventurers were speculators in raw rubber and tea planters who developed a propensity to enclose as many tracts of new land as they could. The colonial government therefore laid down rules to bring “under more stringent control the commercial relations of our own subjects with the frontier tribes living on the borders of our jurisdiction.” These rules governed activities by British subjects beyond the Inner Line; no British subject or foreign citizen could cross the line without a license, and trade or possession of land beyond the line was severely restricted.!’ The colonial policy of drawing a hard boundary between the hills and the plains was a sharp break from the past. As a book on the Nagas puts it, “the people of the hills and of the plains or valleys are radically different but have always been interconnected.”'* Indeed,

early colonial

officials

recognized

and

took advantage

of

these historical connections. It is only later that colonial officials came to believe that the hills and the plains were different entities and adopted policies severely restricting contact between them. This new perception led to a policy of strict boundary maintenance that was superimposed on a complex world of interrelationships. The process of incorporation of “primitive” peoples into the Indic “mainstream’ has always been a theme in Indian civilization. The process is stronger in a place like Assam, where the pockets of Hindu and Islamic civilizations in the plains were surrounded by large groups of hill peoples with “tribal” or “animist” faiths. The boundaries between the hill “tribes” and the plains peoples of Assam were, of course, not equally porous in the case of all the hills that became part of colonial Assam. With some of hills, for instance the Lushai hills (today’s Mizoram), the contact with the Ahom kingdom was minimal. Nevertheless, the colonial policy of segregation, combined with economic and cultural changes in the hills and the plains that took place during the colonial period, profoundly af-

30

Chapter 2

fected the new projects of peoplehood that emerged in the region. I will illustrate this point by focusing on the changes in the relationship between the Assamese and the Nagas.

The Nagas and the Assamese: From Soft to Hard Boundaries The fate of Naga-Assamese relations is a good example of the constitutive effects of colonial geography on the politics of the region. As I have indicated, the colonial authorities drew an internal bound-

ary dividing the Nagas and the Assamese — an Inner Line — treating the Naga areas as an excluded area within Assam and severely restricting contact between Nagas and the Assamese, as well as other Indians and Europeans. The policy had its origin in practical considerations such as the establishment of clear and defensible property rights that were needed especially by the newly established tea plantations that were encroaching on the land rights of the Nagas. The policy complemented the more ruthless military response of the British to attacks by “savages” on tea plantations. There is ample evidence that in precolonial times the Nagas and the Assamese had substantive economic, cultural, and political rela-

tions. Folk tales speak of interaction, and sometimes these stories refer to ties that have existed until fairly recently. For example, among the Konyak Nagas there is the story of a Ahom king who married a Naga woman from what today is the village of Wanching; at least up to 1936 the village continued to receive an annual tribute from the village in the plains to which the Naga woman was mar-

ried.'® Then there is the story of a young Ahom prince Godapani fleeing and taking shelter among the Nagas. According to legend, during the course

of his stay in the Naga hills, he successively

married a Lotha Naga girl, then a Konyak, and then an Ao Naga girl. Later, as a sign of gratitude, the king granted some land to these tribes.” Naga claims to portions of these lands were. recognized until recently and plains villages paid taxes to the Nagas. This is a source of conflict between the Assamese and Naga villages even today and has indeed been termed “the very root of the Assam-Nagaland boundary issue.”?! In a number of myths, the Nagas and the Assamese are imagined

Assam as a Province of Britishindia

31

as siblings. An Ao Naga tale speaks about the quarrel between two brothers, one choosing the plains as his inheritance and the elder going to the hills. The former was the ancestor of the Assamese, and the latter of the Nagas. The Angami Nagas too have a story of how the Nagas and the plains people are descendants of two brothers.22 Historians agree that there were significant commercial and political ties between the Nagas and the Ahom kingdom. There were land grants to Nagas in the plains, some Nagas fought in the Ahom armies, and Nagas sheltered Ahom princes fleeing from court conflicts. The Nagas close to the plains, whom the Assamese call dori Nagas, acted as a buffer between the Nagas of the interior (abori)

and the people of the valley.?* There is evidence of Ahom kings conferring titles such as Bor Phukan on Naga individuals; of Nagas being given lands and of being appointed officers in the Ahom army. Verrier Elwin believed that the Ahom kings considered the Nagas as “subjects and took taxes from them in the form of slaves, elephant tusks, spears, hand-woven cloth and cotton.”*4 Edward Gait, the pioneering colonial historian of Assam, however, believed

that: “the hilly tract inhabited by the various tribes known to us collectively as Nagas has never been subjected by the Ahoms.””* It is not clear that Naga-Assamese relations can be framed in terms of the extremes of independence or subjugation. There is little doubt that the Nagas and the Assamese had substantial political, economic, and cultural relations. For instance, the Nagas and the

Ahom court had a understanding on the sharing of salt produced in the brine springs located in the Naga hills. The Ahom kings exercised ownership over a few of these springs, and in other cases Nagas manufactured salt and exchanged it with plainsmen for other goods. Perhaps the most powerful reminder of the historical connection is the dialect called Nagamese that is alive and well. Nagamese is a pidginized and subsequently creolized form of Assamese, and the Nagas use it as a lingua franca among various Naga

groups that speak different languages as well as in their interaction with the people from the plains. In the period immediately after the colonial conquest, British administrators not only understood the ties between the Nagas and the Assamese but even made use of those ties for their own purposes. The British officer Alexander Mackenzie notes how British

32

Chapter2

officers cultivated some of the precolonial ties between Nagas and the Ahom kingdom. The Nagas “occupying the low hills to the south of the Seebsaugor [Sibsagar] district,” he noted, have been in close connection with our local officers ever since the first annexation of Assam. The Assamese Government had at times indeed claimed them as its subjects, and Purunder Sing (Purandar Xingha) (the

last Ahom king) is known to have asserted successfully his right to share with the Nagas the produce of the salt manufacturing of the low hills. The hills chiefs, when the Native Government was strong, came down annually bringing gifts, that may perhaps have been considered a tribute... . (I)tis

certain that several of the chiefs had received grants of khats or lands, and of bheels or fishing waters on the plains, and enjoyed assignments of patks like the ordinary Assamese nobility.*° Captain

Brodie, in the course

of the “pacification”

of certain

Naga areas in the 1840s established certain arrangements. Among these arrangements were the assignment of a Kotokie to each of the Duars (gates between hills and plains) to be “the channel of

communication between the Government and the tribe ordinarily using that Dwar [duar].” The Assamese word Kotokie means “repre-

sentative” and was the title used by the Ahom court for that position. These men, writes Mackenzie, were paid in the form of a remission of their poll tax. There were eighty-eight Kotoktes in Sibsagar, and the total amount of revenue remission on account of representation to the Nagas in the area he calculated was Rs 797.27 The selective appropriation of old institutions of interrelationship in the early colonial period gradually gave way to a perception of a radical disconnection between the Nagas and the Assamese. Over time this became the new colonial common sense on the subject. There was a long period of “pacification” of the Nagas: there were ten “punitive expeditions” between 1835 and 1851 — bloody encounters when the colonial power as the vanguard of the “modern” responded to the resistance from the “primitive.” There was a period of relative quiet between 1851 and 1878 and a uprising by Angami Nagas in 1879, when they seized the British military base in Kohima, leading to the last major military encounter. The following account of the process of “pacification” of the Nagas and the role that the Inner Line played in this is illustrative of the substantive commercial issues involved in these violent conflicts:

Assam as a Province of BritishiIndia

33

The question of laying down of the Inner Line for the Luckimpore (Lakhimpur) district generally was taken up by the Chief Commissioners of Assam in 1875. South ofJeipur it was found necessary to enclose within ita tract of country which had not up to that time been subject to the formal and plenary authority of the district officer. The object of enclosing the tract was to bring into the ordinary jurisdiction the tea gardens of Namsang, Taurack and Hukanjuri [Anglicized spelling of Assamese Xukanjuri]. For the Taurack Garden compensation was paid to Mithonia Nagas. For the Hukanjuri and Namsang Gardens similar compensation was paid to the Namsang and Borduwaria Nagas. The sums thus paid are of course recovered as revenue from the occupiers of the gardens.”

The change in British perceptions of Naga-Assamese relations becomes apparent by contrasting two accounts on the subject written over a forty-year gap. William Robinson’s 1841 account shows an appreciation of the connections. Robinson distinguished between the Nagas who lived in the lower mountain ranges, somewhat closer

to the plains, and those who lived on the higher mountain ranges, the Abor Nagas. The Nagas of the lower mountain ranges were “exceedingly zealous of the profits arising from their connexion with the province,” averred Robinson. There was nothing they more strenuously opposed, Robinson speculated, than direct connection between the Nagas of the higher mountain ranges and the markets on the plains; and the “wish to prevent any interchange or of a direct barter between the Abors with the inhabitants of Assam, has

been the cause of constant wars between them.””9 Robinson listed the major groups of Nagas in communication with Assam as the Namsangiyas, the Bordurias or the Borduwarias, and the Paniduwarias. The words are of Assamese origin. Duwaria (door-keeper or gate-keeper) is etymologically related to Duwar (door or gate) and the modifiers borand pani mean big and small respectively. (Literally pani is water, but in this usage it means small.) Robinson’s account also refers to salt wells in the hills, some of which, he said, were the sole property of the Nagas and some of which were jointly controlled by the Nagas and the Ahom kings. The Nagas had the right to draw the brine for a certain number of hours and the Ahom State for an equal period. The Ahom king Purandar Xingha allotted a certain number of his Paiks to the salt works. Robinson also noted the threat to this traditional arrangementas a result of changes brought about by colonial rule. Because

34

Chapter2

of the abolition of the Pike system —the system of corvee labor which was the Ahom system of taxation, — he wrote, the continua-

tion of the arrangement under a system of hired labor was unlikely to be profitable.” Robinson’s 1841 account contrasts sharply with an 1881 account by Lieut. Gen. R. G. Woodethorpe that describes a radical disjuncture between the Nagas and the Assamese. Woodethorpe spoke to a meeting of the Anthropological Institute in London. The paper “was read by the author, and illustrated by the exhibition of objects

of ethnological interest brought by Col. Woodthorpe from the Naga Hills.”3! In Woodthorpe’s account one finds a more bounded and limited conception of the nature of identity; he sought to correct the early colonial accounts that emphasized connections. A Naga when asked who he is, generally replies that he is of such and such village, though sometimes a specific name is given to a group of villages. In the old maps of Assam the Naga Hills immediately bordering the plains are shown as divided into districts, the names of which as given on the maps were supposed to be the tribal names of the inhabitants of these districts.*?

Woodethorpe challenged the authenticity of these names of “tribes.” Names on early colonial maps such as “Dup-duwar-ias,” “Paniduwarias,” “Hatigorias,” he argued, were only Assamese names. Only those Nagas who visited the plains and came into contact with the Assamese were familiar with these names given to them by the Assamese. If they describe themselves that way to a foreigner, he wrote, “that is only because they think he will thereby understand better all about them.”** There was, in Woodethorpe’s mind, a

world of pure Naga names that were more authentic than the names that emerged as a result of the history of interaction with the Assamese. This mindset became the foundation for a new policy that sought to segregate the hills from the plains.

The Policy of Segregation over Time The Inner Line was eventually extended to all the hills except the Khasi and Garo Hills—today’s state of Meghalaya—and the Karbi Anglong district of today’s Assam. However, the policy of segregation did not always mean the absence of direct British administration. By the end of the colonial period, direct administration was

Assam as a Province of BritishiIndia

35

extended to all the hills except the Himalayan Frontier Tracts— today’s Arunachal Pradesh — and the so-called Naga Tribal Area (a

part of today’s Nagaland). But the governance of excluded areas remained profoundly different from that of the rest of the Britishcontrolled territories. It was paternalistic, with a British administrator being given enormous discretionary powers, and little attempt was made to introduce the kind of legal order that the British themselves prided on establishing in their colonies. Limiting the movement of people into these areas was one of the important powers of the colonial administrator. Colonial officials believed that “the stage of development reached by the inhabitants of these areas prevents the possibility of applying to them methods of representation adopted elsewhere.” They believed that what people of the “excluded areas” needed most was not self-determination, but security

of land tenure, freedom

to pursue their traditional methods of

livelihood, and the ability to follow their ancestral customs. “Their contentment,” it was believed, “does not depend so much on rapid political advance as on experienced and sympathetic handling, and protection from economic subjugation by their neighbours.” The stringency with which the entry to the excluded areas was controlled becomes apparent in the Dutch ethnologist Furer-Haimendorf’s account of his arrival in the Naga Hills in 1936. In London, Furer-Haimendorf had met the colonial scholar-administrator,

J. P. Mills, who had built a reputation as the pioneering ethnologist of the Nagas. Mills was the Deputy Commissioner of the Naga Hills. Furer-Haimendorf describes his arrival in Manipur Road station as follows: My feet had hardly touched the ground when a small policeman in an immaculate brown uniform ran up to me. Saluting, he handed me a letter,

and promised in quite understandable English to look after my luggage. . . . The letter was from Mills, who apologised for not coming to meet me, but told me that a lorry would bring me and my luggage that very same morning to Kohima. Enclosed with this letter was a pass, an indispensable document when entering Naga Hills District. . . . It was not long before we came to a road barrier where all travellers had to show their passes. There ran the line dividing the plains of Assam from the Naga Hills, which no stranger, Indian or European was allowed to enter without special permission.

When Firer-Haimendorf reached Mills’s bungalow, Mills apologized for not being able to come to receive him at the foothills since

36

Chapter2

he could not get away from his heavy daily responsibilities. FurerHaimendorf was impressed by the scope of Mills’s administrative duties as head of this excluded hills district. “Small wonder,” he wrote, “that a man responsible for the entire administration of a district of about 4,293 square miles with a population of more than 178,000 Nagas should not lack work.” Fiirer-Haimendorf noted admiringly that Mills as Deputy Commissioner combined the responsibilities of “nearly all the officers of an ordinary plains district” and furthermore that he was always accessible to “everyone of these 178,000 Nagas,” who brought the most trivial of conflicts to Mills’s

court for settlement.*® The Government of India Act of 1919 introduced a new term— “backward tracts” — to describe these areas.*® These tracts were excluded from the automatic application of laws passed passed by the central and provincial legislatures. The Simon Commission of 1930 replaced the term “backward” with the term “excluded.” Two categories of such areas were distinguished: excluded and partially excluded areas. While all “tribal” peoples were thought to need some kind of protection, such protection could not be extended as easily to those “tribes” living alongside “nontribal” populations. The enclaves or compact areas that could be identified as areas inhabited by particular tribes were to be classified as Excluded Areas. Areas where the “tribal” populations lived alongside “nontribal” populations, and yet the “tribal” population were considered undeveloped. and were substantial in number, were classified as “partially excluded.” Legally the main distinction was that, while both types of areas were excluded from the competence of the provincial and federal legislatures, in administering the excluded areas the provincial governors could act in their own discretion, while in the case of

the partially excluded areas the elected governments had some jurisdiction, limited by the supervisory powers of the British governors. While the Simon Commission recommended these provisions only for a few areas, the British parliament expanded their scope considerably in the Government of India Act of 1935.

The Impact of Segregation The impact of segregation on social and political developments in Assam has been profound. When an element of participation by

Assam as a Province of British india

37

elected representatives was introduced in the rest of British India, these areas were explicitly excluded from the competence of the provincial and federal legislatures. Colonial authorities strictly controlled the access of “outsiders” to the excluded areas. For instance, even during the last years of colonial rule, Assam’s elected chief minister could not visit the hills without the British governor’s permission.*’ British officials allowed Christian missionaries to operate in these areas. The missionaries were immensely successful in colonial Assam. Thus as many as 86 percent of the population of Mizoram, 67 percent of Nagaland and 47 percent of Meghalaya are now Christians.** The spread of Christianity by missionaries in the hills during colonial rule was the functional equivalent of the precolonial process of cultural change and religious conversion of the hill peoples through the Goxains of the Vaishnava Xotros of Assam, when conversion to Hinduism also meant assimilation into the Assamese cultural formation. The reasons for the astonishing success of the Christian missionaries are complex and it is likely that irrespective of the exclusionary policies of colonial administrators, the influence of the traditional cultural and religious institutions from the Assamese plains among the hill peoples would have declined. Institutions such as the Vaishnava Xotros lost the patronage that they had enjoyed under the ancien régime. Colonial rule quickly brought about a sea-change in Assam’s cultural universe. The new world of ideas and material goods the missionaries brought to the hill people — western education, modern health care, and so on— was bound to make differentiation from the Assamese a more attractive road to collective social mobility than the traditional road of assimilation. Nevertheless, toward the end of British rule, as a result of the ex-

perience ofsegregation, even the tenuous remaining connection of the hills to the plains came to be seen as incongruous. Thus in 1930 the government of Assam could tell the Simon Commission that ending the “the present artificial union” between the “backward tracts” and the province of Assam was in the interest both of the “backward tracts” and the rest of the province. It proposed that these tracts be administered by the Governor-in-Council, as agent of the Governor General in Council, with central government tax rev-

enue.2? When the British House of Commons debated the Govern-

ment ofIndia Act of 1935, the argument for separating these tracts

38

Chapter 2

from the rest of Assam became even more vociferous. The general thrust of most speeches was that “if the tribal areas fell under the control of elected Indian legislatures they would be ruined.”*° Thus Col. Wedgewood argued that the “backward” tracts should remain under British control and should not be controlled by the elected government of the province. The people of those tracts, he argued, should be saved from the “hell ofcivilization” and the only way to do that is “British protection and British control,” which could ensure that they will be “free from the insidious advances of the rich people in the provinces to exploit them.”*' On the Nagas in particular, he said, “they must not be converted from good Nagas or whatever they are into bad Hindus.”* It was not surprising, therefore, that on the eve of the departure of the British from India the argument for protecting the tribes became an argument for the British holding on to these areas after their withdrawal from the rest of India. Some British academics and civil servants proposed that the hill areas of Assam and Burma be made into a “Crown colony.” The argument was that the conditions in these areas were profoundly different from those in the rest of India and that they were not ready for independence. Some British officials in these tracts even took the initiative to form political bodies in preparation for such a possibility.4? While Indian nationalist opinion was critical of these exclusionary policies, anticolonial politicians did not try to remove those restrictions. Indeed, in the postcolonial dispensation many of the structures of exclusion were retained with new legal names. °

ll. Assam as an Extension of Bengal A second aspect of the colonial geography of Assam that had significant long-term implications for the cultural politics of Assam was the notion that Assam is an extension of Bengal. This assumption led to a number of decisions of major consequence. (a) Until 1874 the British ruled Assam as a part of Bengal. After Assam became a separate province, colonial authorities once more experimented with a composite province of East Bengal and Assam from 1905 to 1912. Even as a separate province, Assam, until the very end of British rule, included the large Bengali-speaking district of Sylhet. (b) Throughout the entire colonial period, the British treated As-

sam as a land frontier for Bengal. Justifying a move to combine

Assam as a Province of Britishindia

39

Assam and East Bengal into a single province, an official said that, since Bengal is very densely populated and Eastern Bengal its most densely populated part, it needs “room for expansion” and it can expand only eastward. “Far from hindering national development,” he said, “we are really giving it greater scope and enabling Bengal to absorb Assam.”** (c) From 1837 to 1873, Bengali was the language of the courts and government schools of Assam. While that was changed in 1873, the policy of encouraging large-scale immigration from Bengal to Assam, as well as the way the boundaries of Assam were drawn, produced a demographic balance that kept Assam’s language question a highly controversial one throughout the entire colonial period and beyond. (d) Colonial authorities were reluctant

to spend resources on establishing educational institutions in Assam. While Assamese public intellectuals saw them as important for the “progress” of Assam as a distinct entity, colonial authorities saw such demands as a mark of Assamese “provincialism.” Early colonial administrators regarded the Assamese language as an offshoot of Bengali. The demand that Assamese be made the language of education and of the courts in Assam produced a major political controversy in the 1860s. Assamese public intellectuals argued that they were a distinctive people with a distinctive language and culture. They found an ally in an unexpected quarter— American Baptist missionaries who at that time were writing grammars and dictionaries of Assamese for their own reasons. Assamese intellectuals, in alliance with the missionaries, managed to convince British colonial officials of their case and Assamese became recognized as the language of Assam. Two American Baptist missionaries, Nathan Brown and Miles Bronson, have a prominent place in Assamese historical narratives because of their role in establishing the position of the Assamese language in Assam. The assertion of the autonomy and distinctiveness of Assamese language and culture became a central theme in the history of Assamese nationalism. I will elaborate this history in Chapter 4.

Sylhet and Assam'’s Demographic Balance Even though Assam became a separate province in 1874 and the experiment of a province of East Bengal and Assam that took place in 1905 was short-lived, the conception of Assam as an extension of

40

Chapter 2

Bengal, nevertheless remained an important part of the colonial administrative imagination. Two important consequences of this were (a) the inclusion of Sylhet in Assam and (b) a policy of sponsored immigration from Bengal that became quite significant by the second decade of the twentieth century. Sylhet was a part of Assam through the entire period from 1874 to 1947. There were many consequences of this inclusion. For example, even

the choice of Shillong as the capital of Assam — which

continued till 1971 — had to do with Sylhet being a part of Assam. “In a province of two valleys joined together by the intervening hills the location of the headquarters at Shillong was logical on grounds of geographical contiguity.”*° In the new world created by colonial rule, exposure to English education opened the road to new opportunities. Having been part of Bengal—British India’s most dynamic province —Sylhet had substantially more experience with colonial rule, and there was an English-educated class who could immediately take advantage of the opportunties opened up in the new frontier. As they came to occupy the bulk of the positions in Assam’s colonial bureaucracy, their dominance was resented, especially after an Assamese westerneducated class began to emerge. Since the Brahmaputra Valley was predominantly Assamese and the Surma Valley predominatly Bengali, “inter-valley rivalry” was the colonial euphemism for the Bengali-Assamese conflicts over cultural, immigration, and other policies that were a permanent feature of political life in Assam during the colonial period and beyond. The two valleys, it was aptly said, were forced to run a “three-legged race in which no progress whatever is possible.”*® When to the population of Sylhet one adds the large number of Bengalis who immigrated to Assam, there were more Bengalis in Assam than Assamese. Assam’s demographic transformation through immigration will be discussed in Chapter 3. Numerous “tribal” dialects as well as languages of other immigrant groups made colonial Assam a “veritable Babel” in the words of C.S. Mullan, the Superin-

tendent of the 1931 census. Bengalis constituted 45.8 percent of the population of Assam in 1911. That was more than double the number of Assamese speakers.*” As Abalakanta Gupta, Congress legislator from Sylhet, put it, Assam was a province of several distinct “tribes” and “communities,” of which “Bengalis form the single

Assam as a Province of Britishindia

41

largest community.”** The claim suggests the tenor of the conflictual cultural politics of Assam between Bengalis and the Assamese that began as early as the 1850s.*® The Assam Domiciled and Settlers Association, formed in 1935, challenged any claim to primacy that the Assamese might have made as a result of being indigenous to the place. “The state of Assam,” according to a resolution approved at a conference of the Association in 1940, “must be built upon a conception of common Assamese citizenship applicable equally to all nationalities of the state of Assam irrespective of their differences in race, language and religion.” It further suggested a ten years’ residency requirement for “citizenship rights.” The conference, writes a historian, “was permeated with a spirit of challenge to the unilingual concept” of Assam.°° The minority position of the Assamese in colonial Assam was apparent in the legislative bodies, with limited powers and electoral representation, which were established during colonial rule. The Assam Legislative Council in 1918, for instance, had twentyfive members, of whom fourteen were nominated and eleven were

elected by special functional constituencies. Of the Council members in 1918, thirteen were

British, including the Chief Commis-

sioner —the ex-officio president—and of the twelve Indians six were Bengalis, five were Assamese, and one was a Parsi. “The rulers saw to it,” writes a historian, “that the Assamese and Bengali mem-

bers had a numerical parity in the house.” In order to achieve this purpose, not only were the elective seats evenly distributed between the two valleys, but the nomination

of Indian

members

was also

“skillfully manipulated, if necessary to maintain the parity.”*! In the provincial council of East Bengal and Assam, the representation of the Assamese was even more pathetic. Of the 39 members in 1910,

21 were Europeans, 16 were Bengalis, and two were Assamese.”

The Syihet Question Changing Assam’s boundaries, not surprisingly, was a major concern for Assamese public intellectuals and politicians in the colonial period. As the president of the Assam Association said in 1933, Assam could not have “her own university, High Court, trade and

commerce, nor could she develop her language and literature” so long as Sylhet was a part of Assam.°? But even if Assamese politicians

42

Chapter2

and public intellectuals wanted to see the separation of Sylhet, given the demographic composition of colonial Assam, they could hardly expect to carry the majority in any legislative body. Furthermore, the experience of living with colonial boundaries had its consequences; many groups developed a vested interest in the continuation of those boundaries. Thus in January 1926 when the Assam Council debated the separation of Sylhet, a representative from Sylhet, Dewan Wasil Choudhury, opposed the proposal because of the benefits that amalgamation with Assam brought to “Sylhetis” vis-a-vis Bengalis. Since Sylhet’s merger with Assam in 1874, he said,

Sylhet was making rapid strides in all fields. The “bar, benches and subordinate services,” which were once dominated by Bengalis were at present manned by “Sylhetis.”°* Obviously, while by and large the population of Sylhet were by then incorporated into the powerful Calcutta-centered nationalism of Bengal and thought of themselves as Bengalis, the notion of Sylheti being distinct from Bengali had not disappeared. Perhaps more significantly, in this usage it probably overlapped with the growing Hindu-Muslim cleavage; Choudhury’s term “Sylheti” probably mostly referred to the Muslim inhabitants of that district. When Muslim nationalism appeared on the scene, at least for a short period, the appeal of the idea of a singular Muslim nationhood, despite significant tensions, produced a unity between Assamese and Bengali Muslims. The influential Assamese Muslim leader Saadulla opposed the transfer of Sylhet to Bengal in the special session of the Council in January 1926. Dividing Assam, he argued, would not be in the political interests of Muslims. Indeed, mobilizing Muslim opposition to the transfer of Sylhet to Bengal was the immediate impetus for organizing the provincial Muslim League Council of Assam. Nevertheless, the proposal for separating Sylhet from Assam had a majority support in both valleys. But since the issue divided both valleys along Hindu-Muslim lines, political

leaders decided to shelve the issue. The British administration was generally opposed to the move. The separation of Sylhet, it was feared, would open the door to other demands for changing boundaries, and it would upset the political status quo, especially the critical Hindu-Muslim balance of the population.

The controversy over Sylhet ended only with the end of colonial rule. In June 1947 a referendum was held to determine whether

Assam as a Province of BritishIindia

43

Sylhet should become a part ofIndia or Pakistan. The results of the referendum reflected the Hindu-Muslim division of the district: 56.6 percent voted for joining Pakistan and 43.3 percent voted for remaining in India. On that basis the Boundary Commission determined that, barring a small Hindu-majority pocket, the areas of Patharkandi,

Ratabari, and Badarpur, and half of Karimganj, the

rest of Sylhet would become a part of Pakistan. According to historian Amalendu Guha, the results of the referendum brought “a feeling of relief in the Brahmaputra Valley.” To the Assamese political leadership the referendum in Sylhet, writes Guha, was a “lifetime’s opportunity . . . “to get rid of Sylhet.”°® However, the separation of Sylhet in 1947 did not bring the tensions between Bengalis and Assamese to an end, as we will see in later chapters.

The two aspects of colonial geography discussed in this chapter, in many ways, remained the most important determinants of Assam’s troubled postcolonial political history. More than any other factor, colonial geography shaped the projects of peoplehood in Assam: the Assamese subnational narrative and the counter-narratives as well as the political agendas that followed from these narratives. Starting with the formation of Nagaland in 1963, the hill areas were gradually separated from Assam —a subject that I shall discuss in Chapter 5. The separation of the once excluded areas from Assam was in some ways the culmination of the colonial policy of segregation. Ironically, the creation of new states made the colonial assumption of a hard boundary between the hills and the plains somewhat of a reality. This outcome has some affinity with the policies proposed by colonial rulers during the last days of the empire. Ironically, one factor pushing the alienation of hill people from plains people was the Assamese desire to have cultural policies that defined the state as Assamese — a desire that was historically fueled by a politics of resistance to the other idiosyncrasy of colonial geography: the notion of Assam as an extension of Bengal. The cultural politics of an Assamese Assam and the resistance to being treated as a land frontier of Bengal became two central themes in the conflictual subnational politics of Assam in postcolonial times.

elgs jo)kale»

The Making of a Land Frontier: Assam and Its Immigrants

Between 1837 and 1851 Major John Butler of the 55th Regiment of the Bengal Native Infantry traveled widely through Assam. He had arrived in Assam not long after it had become part of the British Empire. Indeed, Major Butler’s assignments in Assam were all part

of the effort to consolidate British colonial rule and to establish a framework of colonial administration. His is one of the early European accounts of Assam.' One of the striking themes in his travel account is the absence of human settlements in large parts of Assam; to Butler and his generation of Europeans human settlements were almost synonymous with “civilization.” Thus in the thirty miles between Mohung Dehooa [Mohendijuwa] and Dhhemappoor [Dimapur], he wrote, “not a vestige of any habitation or a human being” could be found. He describes a “dreary and desolate wilderness” that “seemed totally devoid of man, beasts, or birds; a death-

like stillness everywhere prevailed, broken only by the occasional barking or halloo of the ooluck or ape.”® This portrait of early nineteenth-century Assam —a land with vast expanses of uninhabited land — provides a useful vantage point against which to consider Assam’s economic and demographic transformation in the subsequent decades. As a result of the British conquest, Assam became a land frontier attracting large-scale immigration. This process continued well into the twentieth century, becoming in later years a source of many of Assam’s hard-to-resolve ethnopolitical conflicts. By the end of his fourteen-year stay, Butler saw significant changes

Assam and itsimmigrants

45

in the Assamese landscape — signs of what he saw as “progress” and “civilization” that British rule was bringing to the Assamese landscape. “When I first came to Assam in 1837,” he recalled, there were but few brick bungalows with glass doors in the province, and every station was lost in jungle and swamps; but vast improvements have

been effected. Brick bungalows with glass doors, brick gaols, courts of justice, record offices, and treasuries, are everywhere to be met with. Roads, and bridges of brick, iron, and wood, are being constructed, and the Sudder stations (minor colonial administrative centers) are beginning to show

the advance ofcivilization.

Butler, however, was disappointed that “immense tracks of forest still remain untilled” and that there was no hope of “a dense population for ages to come.”* “The apathy, want of enterprise, and a few necessities of the people,” he wrote, “preclude us from anticipating that the Assamese will become a great trading people with the province of Bengal.”* Butler’s fears proved premature. It is not because the Assamese suddenly became a “great trading people”; that they decidedly did not. But about the same time as Butler’s it had become apparent that there could be production of tea in Assam. That fact alone earlier prognoses about Assam’s economic

travels through Assam, large-scale commercial completely changed all future. Indeed, the dis-

covery shook up the stock exchange of London: “a madness comparable in intensity with that of the South Sea Bubble seized men’s minds, and normally level-headed financiers and speculators began to scramble wildly for tea shares and tea lands” in Assam.° Tea was not the only commodity to attract investors to Assam. In the late 1830s and 1840s there was also “a rash of military discoveries of oil seepages” in upper Assam. Even before Assam’s takeover, when

in 1825 Lieutenant

R. Wilcox

of the 46th Regiment

Native Infantry was rowing the Burhi Dihing river with a small survey party he saw oil “rising to the surface at Supkhong with great bubbling of gas and green petroleum.” One of the more dramatic of these reports came from Captain P. S. Hannay, who reported seeing “muddy pools in a constant state of activity, throwing out with more or less force white mud mixed with petroleum.” I was, he said, “a strange-looking place. At times there is an internal noise as that of distant thunder, when it bursts forth suddenly and then

46

Chapter 3

subsides.”© In the following decades there were also the development of coal fields and the felling of Assam’s forests, for timber as well as to make room for tea plantations. What Assam saw in the late nineteenth century was nothing short of an economic revolution accompanied by massive ecological destruction. It is only after a few decades of enormous economic dynamism that Assam arrived at its late twentieth-century state of relative obscurity and “economic backwardness.” Economic historian Amalendu Guha calls Assam’s late nineteenth-century economic revolution “a big push without takeoff.”” The economic transformation of Assam caused an enormous demographic shift. Colonial officials actively encouraged immigration into Assam. The demand for labor in the tea plantations was the first major reason to turn to immigrants. The Assamese peasantry showed very little interest in wage labor. Those who came to work had to reconcile the demands of their new commitments as wage laborers with the labor demands in their paddy fields. The planters complained that they were unable “to instil into their heads” the value of permitting “their women to come into the tea gardens.” The Assam tea planters therefore, as in much of the plantation agriculture introduced to different parts of the world in the nineteenth century, turned to immigrants for the bulk of their

labor needs. The expectation was that after a few years of active recruitment others would come on their own and “the redundant population of Bengal, will pour into Assam.”® It was not only the tea plantations that had to depend on immigrant labor. Other enterprises that developed during Assam’s economic transformation in the nineteenth century such as coal and oil fields and the construction of roads, buildings and railways, also attracted immigrant labor. There were, in addition, immigrants who came to Assam to occupy the new middle-class positions that required new skills, such as the knowledge of English, and to take advantage of the expanding opportunities for trading. Indeed large-scale immigration was so much a part of Assam’s nineteenth century economic revolution that “non-indigenous elements” constituted as much as a quarter to a third of the population in 1901.9 Furthermore, the economic transformation generated a demand for labor not only in the new “modern” sector. In the early parts of the twentieth century, a new commercial agriculture through colo-

Assam and Itsimmigrants

47

nization of land by immigrant agriculturalists became the principal way of supplying foodgrains and other agricultural products to the growing “modern” sectors. The colonization of land by settlers from East Bengal began in a big way in the second decade of the twentieth century, and on a reduced scale continued well beyond the partition of the subcontinent in 1947. Despite the importance of these economic factors, however, it is

important not to lose sight of the fact that the primary factor that transformed Assam into a land frontier was political conquest. For as long as Assam was not part of British India — aided further by the inaccessible forests and lack of roads— Assam was nobody's land frontier. It is only the British conquest of Assam that turned it into what came to be seen as a “natural” land frontier—a sparsely populated region located next to a densely populated region of the Indian subcontinent.

For instance, the fact that the colonial State

could designate large areas of Assam as “wastelands,” available either for tea plantations or for peasant settlers, was the reward of conquest and, in effect, it involved the dispossession of the local

gentry, the peasantry, and the many hunting-gathering and shifting cultivating peoples of the region. Underlying the colonial State’s right to give away wastelands was the legal fiction that the previous kings had owned all land and that the British were the successors to these rights. But the colonial concept of “wastelands” ran roughshod over the “social meanings” of land to the peoples of pre-

colonial Assam. !° Thus, while British land settlement policy theoretically may have tried to recognize precolonial property rights, given the disjuncture between the local social meanings of land and the categories of English utilitarian thought, colonial land policy radically restricted traditional land rights.'! In the precolonial Ahom economy and polity of the Brahmaputra Valley, for instance, the rent-free two puras (about 2.66 acres) of wet land and the piece of land of homestead and garden land allocated to each paik household were not the only land to which peasant families had access. They were free to reclaim uncultivated lands and had access to the surrounding land for fish, fruits, and vegetables, house-building material, raw

material for basket-weaving, etc. In addition, in the flood plains of the rivers “at selected spots . . . often several miles away from their settled villages, peasants would erect their temporary clusters of

48

Chapter 3

huts known as pam basti, to carry on shifting cultivation of mustard, pulses and ahu rice.”'? These forms of access to land and its products suggest a social meaning ofland not unlike what PaulJ.Bohannan called in another context “continuous topography over which a clan roams.”!* Colonial officials were quite aware of the limitation on rights to land that their new property regitne of recorded land rights involved. Moffatt Mills in 1853 had this to say on whether the Assamese cultivator had the right to dispose of his land by sale, gift, or mortgage. He noted that it “was generally understood” that the cultivator had that right and he argued for its legal recognition. But he observed that this right could apply only to his “paternal acres,” by which he meant “lands he occupies in his own village.” He cannot have, observed

Mills, “and has not, any hereditary rights of

occupancy in lands in other villages, which he cultivates one year and throws up the next.”'* The notion that an Assamese peasant had rights to land only in “his village” was part of the new Orientalist view that, among other things, emphasized the discreteness of each village, and served as the building block of the new colonial property regime that was premised on the dispossession of old rights and entitlements. By 1901 tea plantations had enclosed “some one fourth of the total settled area (or five percent of the total area) of Assam proper, under their exclusive property rights.”'°The widespread enclosure of land by tea plantations constituted the foundation of what historian Amalendu Guha calls Assam’s “Planter Raj.”!© The enclosures adversely affected the traditional agriculturalists as well as the shifting cultivators and the hunting and gathering peoples, many of whom came to be referred to as “tribals.”!”Many weekly hats (markets) where the villagers brought their farm products for sale now came within the limits of tea plantations. Planters exercised control over these marketplaces. Even communication between villages was disrupted as parts of public roads were fenced off and villagers were denied access. This included even ancient public roads like Rajgarh Ali, Lahdoi Garh, Kharikatia Road, and Raja Ali. The right of way through the tea plantations became a major issue in Assam’s anticolonial politics in the twentieth century. In many parts of Assam a villager had to walk many miles around tea plantations. The use of roads that went through plantations was restricted. For instance,

Assam and Itsimmigrants

49

“natives” could not go through a tea plantation on bicycle or on horseback, or with umbrellas open, in the presence of a white man. When the automobile arrived on the scene, there were cases when bullock carts were not allowed on these roads because they might damage the roads and make them unfit for the automobile.!® Resistance to the colonial land grab did not happen only in the twentieth century. The attacks by Nagas on tea plantations in the early days of tea, alluded to in the last chapter, were also acts of resistance to the same process of dispossession.

Immigration in the Twentieth Century Assam remained a land frontier attracting large-scale immigration through much of the twentieth century. “Assam has been the fastest growing area in the subcontinent for the past seventy years,” wrote Myron Weiner in 1978.19 Indeed, Weiner, who was looking at Assam as a possible case study of migrant-local conflicts in India, soon

discovered that it was a rather extreme and atypical case. He concluded that one cannot make many generalizations from such an extreme case; for Assam “has had and, even now, continues to have

the highest in-migration rate of any state in India.”*° Figures cn immigrants in Assam, however, have become a matter of intense political contestation, especially since the Assam movement of 1979-85. While the Assam movement itself focused on illegal immigration, both supporters and opponents of the campaign relied on census data on population growth rates to make their case. Weiner warned, “the controversies between migrants and the native population have been so intense” that census figures on language and migration should only be taken as “crude approximations that really underestimate the numbers of migrants and of non-Assamese speakers.”*! His warning is even more pertinent today. Census data are potentially explosive in today’s Assam. The 1981 census could not be held in Assam because of the social and political unrest surrounding the Assam movement, and just prior to the 1991 census there were many speculations on how Bengali speakers would identify themselves. There was some talk that Muslims of Bengali descent may not all choose to identify themselves as Assamese speakers as they had done in earlier censuses. That did not happen. The percentage of Assamese speakers in the 1991 pop-

50

Chapter 3

ulation of 22.4 million decreased only slightly, from 60.9 percent of the population in 1971 to 57.8 percent. Even that decrease did not happen to any significant extent at the expense of Bengalispeakers — their numbers went up only slightly from 19.7 percent in 1971 to 21.7 percent in 1991.2 Despite the politicization of the census, for purposes of at least crude approximation of the scale of immigration to Assam there is no alternative to census data. Fortunately, there is little room for disagreement on the general question of large-scale immigration into Assam during this century. The disagreements are mainly on who came when and from where and the citizenship status of relatively recent immigrants and their descendants. Weiner offers two estimates of Assam’s twentieth-century immigrants. Projecting from Assam’s 1901 population and making the assumption that its natural rate of population growth was the same as in the rest of India, he estimates that of Assam’s 1971 population of 15 million, 51 percent may have been descendants of those counted in 1901 and 49 percent post-1901 immigrants and their descendants. A similar exercise based on the 1891 census puts the crude estimate of the percentage of post-1891 migrants and their descendants at 57 percent and that of the locals and their descendants at 43 percent.*8 Atul Goswami and Jayanta Gogoi, with a similar exercise, arrive at a figure of 7 million people or 47.82 percent of Assam’s 1971 population. The share would be higher if the 1881 or 1891 population “were projected at the national rate of increase.” But since the national rate itself is high because of Assam’s abnormally high rate, they project Assam’s population at the rate of increase for the rest of India and arrive at the same figure as Weiner: 48.89 percent of the 1971 population.** Susanta K. Das argues that, even though Assam’s population growth rate has been exceptionally high all through this century, since 1951 immigration rates have not been as high as in earlier decades. He believes the rate of population increase in Assam from 1901 to 1951 “has been the second highest in the world, exceeded only by Brazil,”®> but that influx alone cannot explain the growth rate since 1951. Since Assam’s relative rate of increase since 1901 has constantly been far above that of India as a whole, he argues, the

pan-Indian growth rate cannot be taken as the norm to estimate the scale of immigration to Assam. Assam’s natural rate of population

Assam and Itsimmigrants

51

TABLE 2. Assam 1901-1991: Percent Increase of Population Year

Growth rate, Assam

Growth rate, All-India

iE e SS a ee ee 1901-11 16.99 5.73 1911-21 20.48 —Oi3i 1921-31 19.91 11.0 1931-41 20.40 14.22 1941-51 19.93 13331 1951-61 34.98 21.51 24.80 1961-71 34.95 52.44 48.24 1971-91*

ae

Variation

as 11.26 20.78 8.91 6.17 6.62 13.34 10.15 4.2

*No census was held in Assam in 1981. Hence the growth rate is for the twenty-year period 1971-91. Source: 1901-71, Census of India, 1971, p. 59; 1971-91, calculated based on Census

of India, 1991a.

growth, Das believes, is higher than that of the rest of India. The

growth rate among Assam’s “Muslims and tribals,” he suggests, is higher,”© though the evidence is unclear. Immigration, he argues, nevertheless remains one of the factors that contribute to Assam’s above average growth rates. Assam’s growth rate since 1951, he believes, is explained by three factors: an increase in the natural rate of increase, the influx of Hindu refugees, and immigration from the rest of India.*’ Two other economists take issue with Das. They argue that there is no evidence to support the view that Assam has either a higher birth rate or a lower death rate than the rest of India. In their view immigration remains the major explanation. The rate of immigration, they argue, was highest during 1911-21, falling significantly in 1921-31 and even more in 1931-41. Immigration increased during the next three decades; the rate was very high in 1951-—61.”8 If the variation between Assam’s population growth rate and that of India as a whole gives a reasonable approximation of immigration to Assam, immigration must have decreased significantly since 1971. As Table 2 indicates, the variation between the all-India rate and

Assam’s rate was only 4.2 percent between 197] and 1991 —the lowest variation in this century.

The Indian census collects data on birthplace and language that under normal circumstances should throw some light on Assam’s

52

Chapter3

immigration picture. These data, however, are unreliable for determining the scale of immigration to Assam. The official in charge of the 1961 census observed that during enumeration, in areas with abnormal increase, all persons gave as their birthplace the place that they were living or a place that was within the same district, or in some cases, in another district of Assam. “As the birthplace information of Assam in the 1961 census is completely unreliable,” he

warns, “the district-wise as well as the state immigration rate or the number of immigrants cannot be calculated even with the least degree of accuracy.””

The census data on language are not much help either. Indeed the census time series data on language in Assam make very interesting reading in terms of the “sociology of official statistics.”*° The census in Assam has been far from a passive register of social facts; it has also been a tool in the political management of tensions over immigration. Since the Indian census relies on a person’s selfdescription of what his or her mother tongue is, political leaders of immigrant communities appear to have succeeded in engineering responses that would draw attention away from Assam’s changing ethnic map. Large numbers of immigrants—notably Muslims of Bengali descent, but other communities

as well—identify them-

selves as Assamese speakers, irrespective of whether they speak the language. As a result Assam’s census has some notable surprises. From 1911 to 1971, when Assam’s population increased by 280 percent — from 3.8 million to 14.6 million— the proportion of Assamese speakers increased by 966 percent, from 21.69 percent to 60.89 percent of the population.*! The change of the percentage of Assamese was a function of both changes in the scope of the territory called Assam and how certain groups of immigrants chose to identify themselves in the census. It would be simplistic to assume that the change in the census self-definition always reflected adoption of the Assamese language.

Assam’ “Immigrant” Communities I will now to try to describe briefly the major “immigrant” communities of Assam using certain ethnic categories. The categories, how-

ever, have to be qualified. Indeed the term “immigrant community” itself is problematical — even unfortunate — since only the first gen-

Assam and itsImmigrants

53

eration can be accurately described as immigrants. For instance, the vast majority of those who constitute the “immigrant” community I shall refer to as Muslims of Bengali descent have adopted Assamese ways. Many of them speak and write Assamese, and the Assamese

refer to them with words like neo-Assamese (No-Axomiya) and/or Muslims of the chars (flood plains) (Charua Musalman). The same

applies to the other “immigrant” communities. There are other ironies about the term “immigrant communities.” The Nepalis living in Assam and in other parts of northeast India, for instance, are part of a migration from the hill areas of Nepal to a wider region that includes, besides northeast India, Sikkim, the Darjeeling region of north Bengal, and Bhutan. Yet in the assertions of the rights of “indigenous peoples” vis-a-vis immigrants that have affected the entire region since the Assam movement, the Nepalis are not always seen as migrants. In Darjeeling they claim rights as indigenous people vis-a-vis Bengalis, who are seen as outsiders; and in Sikkim they

are now the majority ethnic group and the major players in Sikkimese politics, their non-indigenousness being almost a non-issue most of the time. It is only in northeast India and Bhutan that Nepalis have been seen as outsiders, at least occasionally.*? Unfortunate though the term may be, a distinction between “immigrant” and “native” communities has become part of the ethnopolitical landscape of the region. Among the major “immigrant” communities of Assam are Muslims of Bengali descent, Hindu Bengalis, Marwaris or Nepalis, and the “tea labor community.” Each of

these categories needs to be understood as reflecting significant processes of ethnic change.

The “Tea Labor Community” The workers in the tea plantations constitute the oldest of Assam’s large modern-day “immigrant” groups. Recruitment of workers for the tea plantations from outside Assam began in the nineteenth century and continued until 1960. They were recruited from among “tribal groups” such as Sanhals, Mundas, Oraons, Kharias, Gonds, Khonds, Kisang, and Nagesias—many of them from regions in present-day Bihar and Orissa.** Labor recruitment to the tea plantations, however, went through many distinct phases, and the sources of labor recruitment were many.

54

Chapter 3

In the early period of the tea industry labor recruitment was mainly the effort ofindividual plantations or companies. From 1841 to 1859 individual tea plantations recruited labor from outside the state. After that a Tea Planters Association coordinated labor recruitment, and a systematic indentured labor system was adopted. The indentured labor system continued until 1926. Even after its abolition the recruitment of labor from outside Assam continued. The practice stopped only in 1960 when “the position of labour supply in the tea gardens in Assam had reversed from shortage to surplus and unemployment in tea gardens appeared in the scene.”™ Most of those recruited to work in tea plantations over the years settled in Assam at the end of the contract period. Some left the tea plantations and tried making a living by settling in the surrounding agricultural lands before the expiration of their labor contracts. There are many tea labor villages in the tea growing districts of Assam, mostly situated close to tea plantations and relatively iso-

lated from Assamese villages.*° Given a significant level of additional seasonal demand for labor in tea plantations, this practice suited the tea industry as well. The tea labor community in Assam includes both the population working in tea plantations and those living in these villages. Only estimates are available for the total population of the tea labor community of Assam. The 1921 census estimated that migrants to tea plantations and their descendants numbered over 1.3 million, that is one-sixth of the total population of the province.** Recent censuses give the population living in tea plantations — which is not synonymous with the tea labor community— but not the population of tea labor villages. A careful scholar estimates that the population of one-time tea plantation workers, their families, and their descendants living in villages (not in tea plantations) at 1.5 million and the population of tea plantation workers and their dependents living in tea plantations at 1.4 million. This puts the 1971 population of this community at 2.9 million and the 1981 population at 3.4 million.*’ The figures are consistent with the figure of 3 million cited by politicians who represent the tea labor community.*8 The fact that scholars have been able to distinguish numerous (indeed, in one case as many as 131) “ethnic groups” within the tea

Assam and Itsimmigrants

55

labor community of Assam illustrates the diverse origins of this community. Another scholar observes that there are three different linguistic elements in Assam’s tea garden labor community: (a) Kolarian-speaking

groups,

e.g., Munda,

Santhal, and Kharia;

(b) Dravidian-speaking groups, Oraon, Kondh, Gond, and Malpahariya; and (c) groups speaking Oriya, Bengali, and Hindi.°? Yet very few people of the tea labor community today speak any of these languages and dialects. Most people of the tea garden labor community speak a patois that is called Sadanior “Garden baat” — often recorded in the census as Assamese. Their children attend Assamese schools and there is some intermarriage. There are a few Assamese literary and cultural figures from this community. Historically, their inclination to speak Assamese and adopt Assamese ways has made them model immigrants in the eyes of the ethnic Assamese. However, the ethnic Assamese upper classes have accorded them low status, and that has not always made it easy for them to become part of Assamese society. There are organizations formed by younger elements of the tea labor community that emphasize their differences from the ethnic Assamese, for example, the Assam Pradesh Kurukh Sangh formed by the Oraons.*? Another theme in the politics of the tea labor community that emphasizes differentiation from the Assamese is the demand for recognition as a “scheduled tribe” according to their “tribal” status in their places of origin.

Muslims of Bengali Descent Given Assam’s geographical location, the immigrants that colonial officials expected to come to Assam in large numbers were landless or land-poor peasants from East Bengal. Colonial officials saw landabundant Assam as a solution to East Bengal’s problem of land scarcity. The motivation of colonial officials was also partly political— balancing the Hindu and Muslim population of Assam was undoubtedly an attractive tool of colonial political control. Nineteenth-century colonial officials expected that migration of landless or land-poor peasants from East Bengal to Assam would be spontaneous. In the Census Report of 1891, Edward Gait expressed regret that economic forces alone were insufficient incentives for settlers from Bengal to come to Assam.

56

Chapter 3

It might have been thought that the amount of cultivable land, the fertility of the soil, and the low rents prevailing would have induced some portion at least of the overcrowded cultivators of Bengal to find their way to Assam and take up land there. But this does not appear to be the case. The coolies (sic) for tea gardens come to Assam because they are more than unusually

indigent, and are specially recruited and brought to the province at the expense of the persons for whom they are to labour. No such inducements exist to bring ryots [cultivators] to Assam to take up land for cultivation and

they therefore do not come.”

The 1901 census superintendent also expressed similar regret that Assam had not yet attracted “spontaneous” immigration. The growth of population in Assam, he noted, largely depended on the efforts of European capitalists. Of the 596,856 persons who had been brought to Assam since 1891 under the provision of the labor laws, “not a single one of these individuals would have entered Assam, had it not been for the tea industry.”*? Even the small stream

of peasant immigrants moving from Bengal to Assam’s westernmost district of Goalpara that was noticed in the 1891 census had a “slight falling off” by 1901.* The disappointment of nineteenth-century colonial officials, how-

ever, gave way to optimism by 1911, as dramatic trends of migration began to appear just prior to that census. G. T. Lloyd reported in the 1911 census, “the men from Mymensingh [a district in East Bengal] began to advance to Assam, driven apparently by pressure on land at home. They were joined by people of other East Bengal districts, in less numbers.”**The report commented on “the extraordinary incourse of settlers” to the “char lands,” (lowlands of the river) of

Goalpara, from the East Bengali districts of Mymensingh, Pabna, Bogra, and Rangpur. Few of them were said to have gone beyond Goalpara. A few thousand East Bengali immigrants were counted in the other districts of the Brahmaputra Valley but they were mostly clerks, traders, and professional men, said the report. The following decade saw dramatically increased rates of migration. The report of the 1921 census observed that in the 1911-21 decade the movement had extended far into the valley and the colonists were by then “an appreciable element of the population in all the four lower and central districts. In places they have spread inland away from the river.” Citing an officer responsible for the Kamrup district, the report noted that, while these immigrants

Assam and Itsimmigrants

57

TABLE 3. Assam 1911-1921: Population Growth by Migration and Natural Growth Total

Assam Brahmaputra Valley Surma Valley Hills

Increase by

increase, 1911-21

Gain /loss by migration

+929,725 +748,650

+411,941 +416,350

+97,771 £35,504

natural growth

% increase

% total migration

+517,784 +332,300

+443 +55.6

14,216) gt 11987. +13,613 . .+69,691

2-145 . +163

by natural growth

sevens +44.4 +114.5 rite|

Source: Census ofIndia 1921, p. 8.

were mostly seen along the Brahmaputra, they had “in many instances penetrated far inland: parties in search of land have been found near the Bhutan border.”** Table 3, derived from the 1921

census, separates the growth as a result of migration from the natural growth rate. By the 1931 census the population movement had become even more dramatic. “Probably the most important event in the province during the last 25 years,” wrote the superintendent of the 1931 census, C. S. Mullan, “likely to alter permanently the whole structure of the Assamese culture and civilization, has been the invasion of a vast horde of land-hungry Bengali immigrants, mostly Muslims from the districts of eastern Bengal and in particular from Mymensingh.” Mullan used the unfortunate metaphor of an armed invasion. The “invasion,” wrote Mullan, began just before 191] and that census report was the first to take note of “that advancing ghost.” By 1921, in Mullan’s words, “the first army corps passed into Assam and conquered the district of Goalpara.” In another thirty years, Mullan predicted, it was not improbable that “Sibsagar district will be the only part of Assam in which an Assamese will find himself at home.”*” This became a favorite quotation in the writings of antiimmigration politicians of the 1980s. Critics of the Assam movement, however, argue that, if anything, Mullan’s fears have been

proven to be misplaced. “Contrary to Mullan’s mischievous prediction,” writes Monirul Hussain, “the entire East Bengal Muslim peasant community adopted the Asomiya [Axomiya or Assamese] language as their mother tongue.”*

58

Chapter 3

What began as a government policy of actively encouraging immigration became a long period of privately driven large-scale immigration into one of the last land frontiers of the Indian subcontinent. With the partition of India in 1947, the continued migration from the area that became East Pakistan (and after 1971 Bangladesh) became a matter of crossing an international border. In the postcolonial period, economic immigrants were joined by an even larger group of political immigrants — Hindu refugees leaving Pakistan. During the war of liberation that created Bangladesh, political refugees crossing into Assam included many Muslims, but those refugees mostly returned to Bangladesh. Chapter 6 will discuss the Assam movement and the politically contested nature of the figures on the scope and scale of the post-1947 immigration.

Hindu Bengalis Historically the immigration of Hindu Bengalis— mostly to urban areas and to jobs in the modern sector— has been a more persistent source of conflict in Assam than the Muslim peasant migration from East Bengal. Unlike the Muslims of Bengali descent, Hindu Bengalis, especially those living in the Cachar district, are seen as active opponents of cultural policies that seek to give Assam a symbolically Assamese public face. However, Hindu Bengalis, especially those living in the ethnic Assamese areas of the Brahmaputra Valley, are no less inclined to speak Assamese and to participate actively in Assamese cultural life than the Muslims of Bengali descent. The migration of Hindu Bengalis to Assam began in the earliest days of colonial rule. Colonialism as a new order based on fundamentally new cultural norms, even new forms of knowledge, required people with new skills— most obviously, command of the English language — to staff those positions. As was the pattern in much of the colonized world, people from those areas that were colonized first and were educated in colonial schools tended to benefit from the opportunities brought about by the colonial dispensation. In Assam the people who came to staff the new positions in the colonial administration that were open to “natives” were mostly Bengali Hindus. Indeed, Bengali was the court language and the language of the new government schools of Assam for more than three decades from 1837 to 1873. Besides their positions in the

Assam and Iitsimmigrants

59

colonial bureaucracy, Bengali Hindus soon came to have a virtual monopoly in the modern professions. By the early part of the twentieth century, Bengali Hindus in Assam were preponderant in the medical, legal, and teaching professions as well as many other middle-class positions in the railways and in the post office.*? Of course not all Bengali Hindus in these positions can be seen as immigrants into the Assam the colonial rulers had created. Given the way the British defined the territory of Assam, Bengalis from Sylhet were local residents and were simply moving from one part of the province to another. Furthermore, there was a brief period from 1905 to 1912 when Assam and Eastern Bengal were made into a single province with its capital in Dacca, making technically intraprovincial migration even broader in scope. A historian of the Assam Secretariat, discussing the under-representation of Assamese in the Secretariat in 1915, explains that the colonial government was not responsible for this. The Secretariat, after all, as it stood in

1915, was “transferred wholesale from Dacca to Shillong after the reformation of the province of Assam in 1912.”°° Protesting the dominance of Bengali migrants in government offices and in middle-class occupations more generally was probably one of the earliest issues Assamese subnationalism took. Indeed,

this issue came up even before the beginnings of Assamese subnationalism in the late nineteenth century. Among the earliest petitions ever submitted by any Assamese to the colonial authorities were those submitted to A. J. Moffat Mills when he traveled through Assam to submit the magisterial Report on the Province of Assam in 1853. Maniram Dewan, in a petition submitted on behalf of a number of members of the Ahom royalty and aristocracy, complained that under the arrangement for revenue collection, even when a number of “respectable Assamese” are not suitably employed, “inhabitants of Marwat and Bengalees from Sylhet” were being appointed as Mouzadars (revenue officials); and “for us respectable Assamese to become ryots [tenants] of such foreigners is a source of deep mortification.”®! Anandaram Dhekiyal Phukan complained that, even though a number of vernacular schools had been established, instruction in these schools was “imparted in a foreign language, viz., the Bengalee, which is but imperfectly understood by the teachers themselves, not to speak of the pupils.”°? The Bengali presence in Assam in the nineteenth and early twen-

60

Chapter 3

tieth centuries was not always a source of resentment. Given Cal-

cutta’s status as the capital of British India—the dynamic center Bengali language, culture, and fashassociated with modern—ity ions were imitated by the Assamese. Assamese students studied in Calcutta, and major Assamese cultural figures were exposed to Bengali culture and literature. The doyen of Assamese culture and literature, Lakkhinath Bezbarua, was married to a Bengali woman

and was well versed in Bengali literature. Nevertheless, resentment of Bengali predominance was a power-

ful theme. Colonial authorities had to attend to the demand employment of the “natives of Assam” as early as the turn of century. In 1903 “appointment to public services in Assam was stricted to residents and natives of Assam.” The government

for the rede-

fined a native as a person who, irrespective of ethnic origins, had his

or her permanent residence in Assam or would stay in Assam after retirement. Advertisements or notices for government job openings had to state that there would be preference for “bonafide natives of Assam and domiciles.”®? After 1919 competitive examinations as a method of recruitment were considered. However, the colonial gov-

ernment had learned by then the political use of ethnically targeted appointments. “The multiethnic character of Assam,” writes a historian of the Assam Secretariat, “restricted the scope of full competitive tests as a method of recruitment.” Instead of open competition, candidates were selected based on “communal claims.”*4 In the postcolonial period, the claims for preference for “locals”

has been an even more controversial much more diverse Assam has become, candidate” would correspond to some nicity has become more problematical

issue. And considering how any assumption that a “local notion of “indigenous” eththan ever.

The Marwaris

Another visible immigrant community in Assam is the “Marwaris” — a term that strictly refers to a commercial caste from Rajasthan. The Assamese, however, use the term somewhat loosely to include mem-

bers of some other ethnic groups, such as Sindhis, who along with Marwaris have been associated with trade and commerce in the region. Like the earlier two communities — perhaps even more than

Assamanditsimmigrants

61

they — Marwaris in Assam are likely to speak Assamese, especially

since the trading ethos of these communities emphasizes getting along with the locals. The Marwaris played a major role in Assam’s transition in the nineteenth century from a largely non-monetized economy to a market economy. The capitalist transformation of Assam that brought in immigrant workers to work in the tea plantations and coal and oil fields as well as clerks and peasants oriented to commercial agriculture from Bengal also brought this trading class. The earliest Marwaris came to Assam along with the British, and, in the absence of competition from a local trading class, they soon came to dominate the region’s trade and commerce. In the early period of tea, they acted as bankers and commercial agents to tea plantations. Even today Marwari shops around tea plantations sell essential arti-

cles that laborers buy with their cash wages.°° There was almost no indigenous trading class to give the Marwaris any competition. According to a 1906 government report, Marwari merchants “monopolized practically the whole of the trade of the Assam Valley.”®° The situation has remained more or less the same. Today one sees Marwari shops (gola) in the smallest of Assam’s urban concentrations, and indeed in many villages. Besides, Marwari shops do business in the weekly markets (hats) in many parts of the state. Historically, Marwari traders gave credit to villagers in the hills as well as the plains, in return for anticipated crops or handicrafts. The traders would sell the food grains back to peasants when prices were higher. They transacted business not only in hats but also at

their own or the peasants’ homes. Agents would go to the villages to collect rice, paddy, pulses, jute, or mustard. During the time when

opium was a major source of profit, Marwaris were involved in this trade. They even settled “in the midst of the jungle” and on the “paths leading to the jungies” in order to trade with the hill peoples. In the nineteenth century Marwaris exchanged rubber, wax, hand-woven clothes, elephant tusks, rhino horns, and medicinal plants for rice, salt, opium, cloth, cotton garments, and so forth

with the “tribes” of present-day Arunachal Pradesh. It is not an exaggeration to say that the “Assamese peasant economy was completely in the grip” of the Marwari traders.°’ The Marwaris of Assam are not a numerically large group, but

62

Chapter 3

their central role in the region’s commerce visible. As Myron Weiner noticed:

makes them highly

The Fancy Bazar in Gauhati, probably the largest bazar in north-eastern India, is run predominantly by Marwari

merchants.

The Marwaris

have

their own charitable organizations, hospitals, Hindilanguage newspapers, and Hindi-medium schools; they are thus not only economically better off then most Assamese, but their institutions and bazars make them notably conspicuous and therefore vulnerable.**

While by and large there was no anti-Marwari violence unutl the 1960s, there have been mild expressions of resentment ever since the nineteenth century. The 1852 petition from Maniram Dewan to Judge Moffat Mills cited earlier in this chapter complained of the “inhabitants of Marwar” as well as “Bengalees from Sylhet” being appointed as Mouzadars.*® Some Marwari businesses have occasionally been targets of violence since the 1970s. During the Assam movement and since the rise of ULFA and the Bodo insurgency, Marwari businesses have been highly vulnerable to extortion demands by insurgents as well as other political organizations.

The Nepalis Even though during the Assam movement there was much talk about immigrants from Nepal, like those from Bangladesh, being “foreigners,” Nepali-origin peoples have lived in Assam for a long time, and even those Nepalis who have come recently have almost all legal rights in India. Treaties between Nepal and India allow unrestricted travel of citizens between the two countries along with rights to engage in economic occupations, to settle, and to own property. Another paradox about considering the Nepalese an “immigrant community” in-Assam is that until 1980 Nepali cattle grazers were among the protected groups, along with the “scheduled tribes” in the areas known as “tribal blocks.” The category “Nepali” also needs some qualification. While Nepalis or Gorkhas living in northeast India, north Bengal, and Sikkim define themselves as an ethnic community, a very large proportion of the so-called “Nepali” migrants to India and Bhutan actually are from “tribal” ethnic communities (non-Bahuns) in Nepal and from

Assam and itsimmigrants

63

the Newari ethnic community in thé Kathmandu Valley. But while in Nepal these communities assert their separate ethnic identities,

Nepali migrants to northeast India tend to identify themselves as a single Nepali or Gorkha community. Leo Rose's account of the Nepali migration to the entire region provides a context for Assam’s Nepali community. The first major Nepali migration was into the virtually unpopulated areas in Darjeeling district in Bengal, and from there, into the southwest section of

Sikkim in the late 19th century. This input of Nepalis was sponsored and, indirectly at least, organized by the British who were then in the process of establishing tea plantations in Darjeeling that required a labour force capable of working in a steep hill area, as well as a non-Buddhist community in Sikkim that could serve as a counter to what the British perceived to be a pro-Tibetan Buddhist polity in that state that would not cooperate with British policies designed to “open up” Tibet. The Nepalis fitted both criteria admirably and became the critical factor in the tremendous expansion ofboth the Darjeeling and Sikkimese economies from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries. By 1900, Nepalis had become the majority community in both Darjeeling and Sikkim, although not the dominant force politically.*!

Nepali migration to the northeast and to the foothills of southern Bhutan was mostly part of the next wave of migration in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Except for the North East Frontier Agency (today’s Arunachal Pradesh), Nepalis were allowed to settle in some

of the excluded

areas, areas from which even

the

plains Assamese were excluded. But in the lower hill areas they were especially visible. Thus Rose reports that, when in the 1960s he traveled through what is now Meghalaya, he found “virtually every village below 4000 ft. to be Nepali-inhabited and Nepali-speaking, with little evidence of tribal authority being exerted in these supposedly tribal areas.” At the time of independence, Rose writes, “the Nepalis were the quietly dominant element in the lower hill areas around Assam except for NEFA and Tripura” and this continued to be the case after independence.” One source of Nepali migration was the famed “Gorkha” soldiers of the Indian army, some of whom chose to settle in Assam after retiring. Rose was amused in his travels in the 1960s to find that the Assam Rifles training base was composed almost entirely of

Gorkhas, raising “some questions about how Assamese the Assam Rifles actually were.”® Another factor that attracted Nepali immi-

64

Chapter 3

gration was the availability of grazing land and the growing business of milk supply in the growing urban economies. Thus historian Amalendu Guha notes that the vast majority of “professional” cat-

tle grazers—the law allows tax exemption to “nonprofessional” grazers, that is agriculturalists with fewer cattle —in the early nineteenth century were of Nepali origin. The grazing fee grew from being an insignificant source of government revenue, to “an expanding source because of a steady rise in the imigration of Nepali and other graziers along with their cattle.”** The 1991 census recorded 433,000 Nepali speakers in Assam, or 1.9 percent of the population. But that is not an estimate of the Nepali community in Assam. Many people of Nepali origin now speak Assamese. Even between 1971 and 1991 there was a decrease in the percentage of Nepali speakers; the 1971 census had 2.4 percent of the population as Nepali speakers.® By and large, except perhaps during the Assam movement, anti-Nepali feelings in Assam have been rare.

I have listed only some of the major “immigrant communities”; there are other visible sizable “immigrant” groups as well. People from Bihar are engaged in some of the most arduous occupations in Assam —as rickshaw drivers and in the construction of roads, houses, and buildings. In recent years, however, they seem increasingly to be displaced by Muslims of Bengali descent in many of these occupations. There are migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Punjab engaged in trade and commerce along with the Marwaris. Indeed, many ethnic Assamese resent the fact that major commercial centers of Assam, notably Tinsukia, are by and large Hindi-speaking places. Conclusion

Immigration to Assam thus began as a consequence of the colonial conquest. Once Assam became a part of British India, it came to be perceived as a part of the (pre-partition) pan-Indian economic space. Colonial policymakers saw Assam as a land frontier that needed more settlers and actively pursued policies to encourage immigration. The economic transformation that began with the introduction of tea plantations set off economic forces that gave further impetus to immigration and turned the colonial vision of Assam as a land frontier into a reality. In retrospect, the way colonial officials addressed the “problem”

Assam and Itsimmigrants

65

of Assam’s low population and made the case for Assam as a land frontier makes interesting reading. For it was notas if Assam’s population density was unusually low compared to many other parts of the world. But colonial officials associated a low population with a degree of demographic stability that goes with being at an “advanced stage of civilization” — allegedly very unlike the conditions that prevailed in Assam. Yet they had difficulty explaining Assam’s low rate of population increase in terms of Assam’s “primitiveness.” Colonial officials found it hard to explain why the indigenous population of Assam was not increasing, as would be apparent from the following passage: There is no reason to suppose that the Assamese have reached the advanced stage of civilization in which prudence deters from marriage and checks population; and it seems to be the case that though much opium is consumed, the practice is not carried to such an excess as to have a ruinous effect on the general population. Moreover, it does not appear that the open and cultivated parts of Assam are specially unhealthy, or that the unhealthiness of the country would account for a complete stagnation or retrogression in population.

The “concurrent testimony of all” appeared to dispute the notion that backwardness or primitivism might explain Assam’s low rates of population growth. As a rule, noted the report, judged by Indian standards the indigenous population of Assam were quite well off, wages were high, food was inexpensive, and with an abundance of productive land and a sparse population, the Assamese

lived in relative comfort.® The proposition that Assam had a population shortage and that there should be an active policy to increase it by immigration was put forward in terms of the population density thought to be “appropriate” for India. The 1901 census superintendent made some revealing comparisons of Assam’s population density with that of other parts of India and the world. The density of the Assam plains — the hills had a much lower denwas 109 people per square mile sity. This density on the Assamese plains, he noted, was less than one-fourth the density of England and Wales, which was 498 per square mile, but, he said, if Scotland or France were taken as the

standard, where the density per square mile was 135 and 189 respectively, Assam does not appear to be particularly “destitute of

66

Chapter 3

inhabitants,” And Assam’s population density, he observed, was six times that of Norway.® In India, however, said the report, it is the fashion to have a dense population even in agricultural districts, and in 1891 the only British provinces where the density was less than that of Assam was Sindh, Burma and Coorg, and there is no denying the fact that, for India, Assam is a very sparsely-populated country, which could easily support a much larger number of persons than at present.

The census superintendent estimated that “there is room in the Brahmaputra Valley for another four million persons.” This estimate was based on the fact that in the relatively highly populated district of Kamrup there were “100 acres of cropped land for every 125 of the inhabitants.” He drew on the estimate of the Commissioner of the Assam Valley, that is, the Brahmaputra Valley (which excludes the more densely populated Surma valley), that “after making allowances for hills, rivers, and swamps, there are five mil-

lion acres of cultivable land in his division awaiting settlement.”® In the final analysis, British colonial officials’ success in pursuing a policy of increasing Assam’s population through immigration cannot be separated from the question of political power. For colonial conquest meant that British officials with newfangled views about the appropriate population density, and about progress and civilization, were in power and they could now make and implement policies of populating Assam. Political conquest was the crucial factor in making Assam into a land frontier. In the 1930s, when the tensions generated by immigration forced the colonial government to restrict settlement by immigrants, a dissenting note by a group of Assamese members of an official committee showed a remarkable awareness of the significance of political power in this matter. The Line System Committee had nine members: two Englishmen, three identified as Muslims, and four identified as “Brahmaputra Valley Assamese” including one Bodo. Three of the four Brahmaputra Valley members — two Assamese and one Bodo in today’s terms — wrote a dissenting note summarizing “certain fundamental points of difference between us and the majority.” We look upon the Assam Valley as the home of the Assamese people — who have got a vested interest in the soil of these districts—which

they suc-

Assam and Itsimmigrants

67

cesfully defended against hordes of invaders in pre-British days. If they had the sovereign power today they would have still resisted occupation of the lands here by outsiders against armed forces if necessary.”°

The Assamese people once welcomed the British government as their rulers, said the note, but in doing so “they did not anticipate

that the new rulers would invite foreigners to come in such large numbers so as to swamp the indigenous population.” The government, said the note, had a.“sacred duty” to the Assamese to protect

them from this wave of East Bengali immigration. It is this sense of obligation to the Assamese that should be the basis of government policy and not the narrow consideration of the “development of the province” or the consideration of the amount of land revenue that the government could raise. It may be analytically rewarding to compare Assam briefly with Malaysia and Fiji, two other places where large-scale immigration that took place as a result of the political and economic transformation of colonial rule has led to a stubborn pattern of “immigrantindigenous” conflicts. In all three places there is a long history of demands on the part of those claiming to be “indigenous” for primacy in terms of official cultural symbols, economic opportunities, and even political power. Cultural policy and immigration policy are especially sensitive issues in all three situations and they have seriously threatened democratic stability. Malaysia’s 1969 riots led to the suspension of democracy, and some of the emergency legislation limiting certain freedoms including speech challenging the compact, remains effective to this day. In Fiji the military coup of 1986 was a reaction to the native Fijian perception that “immigrants” had acquired disproportionate power. Assam’s political tur-

moil since 1979 has some structural similarity to the political crises in Malaysia and Fiji. But while Malaysia and Fiji have developed institutions — albeit rather fragile ones—that have tried to respond to “indigenous” demands,

in Assam, at least in postcolonial times, there has been

very little direct acknowledgment of this central problem as requiring a robust policy response. Indeed, it is because of this inability to respond to it that Assam, unlike Malaysia and Fiji, has continued to have high levels of immigration, even though it upsets an already precarious balance. The fact that Malaysia and Fiji are independent

68

Chapter 3

sovereign countries and the arena for national policymaking on immigration, while Assam is not, has made all the difference in the capacities of these three places to respond to the immigration crisis. While a comparison with Malaysia and Fiji might be helpful in placing Assam’s conflict in sharper focus, I do not wish to suggest that the solutions adopted in these countries are attractive. Differential incorporation of citizens into the polity as being members of either “indigenous” or “immigrant” communities, as it is done in Malaysia or Fiji, obviously has problems. However, considering Assam’s record of ethnic riots, political violence, insurgencies, human rights violations, and the recent slide towards an illiberal democ-

racy —much of it rooted in the unresolved immigration tangle— one can hardly recommend hiding one’s head in the sand as a policy recipe that could ensure social peace and political stability.

Chapter 4

Cultural Politics of Language, Subnationalism, and Pan-Indianism

If nationalism in the colonial world grew out of efforts to search for and restore the “concrete geographical identity of a place,” the process was “inherently polemical, shot through with tension.”! What nationalist thought seeks to do, Partha Chatterjee argues, is to

“think out new possibilities” in an intellectual-political context that is, at least initially, not conducive to an oppositional discourse. New possibilities such as the one nationalists managed to imagine —a postcolonial political future — do not simply emerge because of favorable social structural conditions or because of the “supposedly objective workings of a world-historical process.” These possibilities have to be “thought out, formulated, propagated and defended in the battlefield of politics.”* Historically the

regional

nationalisms,

or what

I have

called

subnationalisms, in India arose simultaneously with — and indeed sometimes predating — pan-Indian nationalism. Typically the cultural foundation of subnationalism was the language of a region, or, to be precise, the language that was emerging as a regional standard. Ranajit Guha’s description of the beginnings of nationalism in Bengal can be extended to other areas of India as well, even though the timing varied from region to region. In Bengal in the middle of the nineteenth century, writes Guha, the Bengali language was “beginning to be recognized by its educated middle-class speakers as an index of their identity.” Bengali had become “an ideological marker by which the literate part of the population identified all native speakers as constituting a ‘nation’ and distin-

70

Chapter 4

guished them from their English-speaking rulers.” After that the colonized would “consciously and systematically use their own language as a defining element of their relationship with the colonizers.” This was, of course, a time when the Bengali middle-class attitude to British rule was one of acquiescence, and these assertions of difference, as Guha points out, could not quite be considered acts of political resistance. “It was no more than a reflex action of the will,” believes Guha, given the primordial relationship that man as species-being has to natural language. “The passions it inspired and the metaphors of motherhood used to describe it,” writes Guha, “were all evidence of its rootedness in such a primordial connection.”® In conventional accounts of India’s anti-colonial struggle, the significance of subnationalisms, despite this powerful connection to language, is seen as no more than providing the foundation for, and eventually making way for, pan-Indian nationalism. Thus historian H. K. Barpujari writes about changes in Assamese politics during the second decade of the century as follows: [T]he entry of a new group of Assamese elite with nationalist outlook into [the] Assam Association,

the mouthpiece of the Assamese,

produced a

radical change in Assam politics. The younger section of the members. . . felt that [the] time had arrived that Assam should actively join the national movement; that the Association should identify itself with the aims and methods of the Indian National Congress. . . . Regionalism gave way to national patriotism. . . . Then came the clarion call of Gandhiji to embark upon non-violent non-cooperation movement and to which the Assamese nationalists readily responded. They plunged headlong into the struggle and continued until the attainment of [the] ultimate goal — the transfer of

power on 15 August 1947.4

But the relationship between subnationalism and pan-Indianism in Assam has been significantly more tense —sometimes hidden and sometimes open— than is suggested in this standard formulation. And Assam is not an exception. However, not all subnationalisms in India have proved to be equally enduring and strong. Indeed, in some instances the appeal of a language-based subnational identity itself has been limited. Punjab provides a good example. Punjabi Hindus identified more with pan-Indian nationalism and the Hindi language, and Punjabi Muslims identified more with Mus-

Language, Subnationalism, and Pan-Indianism

71

lim nationalism and the Urdu language. Punjabi, written in the Gurmukhi script, was left to became a cultural marker of Sikh identity. In this chapter I will first describe the way the practice of, or per-

haps even devotion to, Assamese language and literature became historically intertwined with Assamese subnationalism, and outline some of the implications of this fateful connection that would affect the future cultural politics of Assam. I then illustrate some of the tensions between Assamese subnationalism and pan-Indianism that came to the fore during the anti-colonial struggle itself. These tensions became more pronounced in the postcolonial period.

Language, Literature, and the Beginnings of Assamese Subnationalism The theme of asserting the autonomy and distinctiveness of Assamese language and culture is almost as old as the British conquest of Assam. British colonial officials in 1836, a decade after the takeover

of Assam, had decided that the language of rule in Assam would be Bengali. The earliest assertions of Assamese cultural pride — well before it could be termed nationalism — grew as a reaction to that decision, Anandaram Dhekiyal Phukan petitioned to Moffat Mills in 1852 against instruction in the “Vernacular schools” being “imparted in a foreign language,” that is Bengali. » Thus the very first generation of modern Assamese public intellectuals had to make the case that they were a distinct people with a distinct language and culture: Dhekiyal Phukan found an ally in American Baputst missionaries, who in the meantime were writing grammars and dictionaries of Assamese.® As a result of their efforts, in 1873 Assamese

once again became the language of schools and of judicial proceedings. Assamese historical narratives of the nineteenth century typically refer to the period when Bengali was Assam’s official language as a “dark” period for Assamese language, literature, and culture. In 1888 an organization called Axomiya Bhaxa Unnati Xadhini Xobha

(Association

for the Development

of the Assamese

Lan-

guage) was founded in Calcutta by Assamese students studying in what was then the capital city of colonial India. The establishment of this organization is said to be “a landmark in the history of As-

72

Chapter4

samese language and literature.”’ Among its most important projects was the standardization of the Assamese language. The concern with the question of “developing” the Assamese language — as underscored in the name of the organization — deserves some comment. The notion seemed to be that a “developed” language is a sign of a “developed” people; so the “development” of the language could be the road to the “development” of the people speaking that language. Obviously this formulation was shaped by the new ideas about modernity and progress. One of the key figures of this phase in the history of Assamese cultural nationalism was Lakkhinath Bezbarua, who is generally regarded as the founder of modern Assamese literature. Bezbarua’s recollection in his memoirs of the founding of the Xobha elaborates the curious connection that his generation made between the development of the Assamese language and the material progress of Assam. The goal of the Xobha, he wrote, was to help the “tender mother-tongue grow

up to maturity,” to enable the mother tongue to “reach the heights of other rich and prosperous languages of the world and illuminate with its glorious rays the face of . . . poor and backward Assam.”® The Axom Xahitya Xobha—in some ways a successor to this late nineteenth-century literary ferment— had its first session in 1917. Its motto is “My mother language — my eternal love.” In subsequent chapters I will refer to Xobha’s central role in the cultural politics of postcolonial Assam.

The Politics of Language Standarization: Whom Could the New Nationalism Include? Among the major projects of the Axomiya Bhaxa Unnati Xadhini Xobha were to remove all grammatical and orthographic anomalies, to introduce appropriate new words, to remove defective ones, and to create a standard language all through Assam.’ Language standardization clearly was not yet in place; the printing press and new ideas about language, literature, and history were only beginning to push the process.!? By the late nineteenth century the Assamese spoken in Upper Assam — the center of the old Ahom kingdom — was becoming accepted as standard modern Assamese. As it was becoming the “ideological marker by which the literate part of the population identified all native speakers as constituting the

Language, Subnationalism, and Pan-Indianism

73

Assamese nation,” who would and would not become part of this nation became a central theme in the cultural politics of Assam."! The form language standardization takes in an area depends on many factors. In the case of Assam, there was never a chance that

Assamese could have emerged as the standard language of the whole of colonial Assam. For a number of reasons that was not on the agenda of even the most ardent Assamese cultural nationalists. First, Bengali identity around the Bengali language had predated

language standardization in Assam, and many of the literate sections of the Bengali population of Assam, especially Hindus, had begun identifying with the Bengali language and culture. It is not surprising, therefore, that one of the major items on the political agenda of Assamese subnationalism was the separation of the Bengali-speaking district of Sylhet. Second, the extent to which Assamese might be accepted in the hill areas that were historically unconnected

to the plains was uncertain, to say the least. Indeed,

how limited the appeal of Assamese would eventually prove to be in the hills would come as a rude surprise to the ethnic Assamese. Even the hill peoples who were historically close to the Assamese and some of the “plains tribals” who had historically adopted the Assamese language and culture eventually rejected Assamese. This theme will be pursued further in Chapter 8 in the context of the cultural politics of Bodo identity. In the classic historical study of the Assamese language, Banikanta Kakati pointed out that “the earliest Assamese books were written under the patronage of kings outside the western limit of modern Assam — under the patronage of the kings of Kamatapur, 14 miles southwest of Cooch

[Koch] Bihar.”!? Kakati’s statement is

a good clue to an important aspect of the course of language standardization in Assam. Kakati was referring to the hospitality the Koch king Naranarayan had extended to Assam’s Vaishnava saint and cultural and literary pioneer, Xankardeb, in the sixteenth century. In Xankardeb’s time there was no hard linguistic boundary between the adjacent Ahom and Koch kingdoms, and it was the Koch court that gave patronage to Xankardeb. As I said in Chapter 2, historically the old Koch Bihar region had strong ties with Assam. There is significant overlap between the cultures and dialects of western Assam and those of this region that forms part of West Bengal and Bangladesh. The spoken language of

74

Chapter4

North Bengal and Western Assam — that is the undivided Kamrup and Goalpara districts—was “substantially the same as seems to form one dialect group.”!’ The Rajbongsi dialect—spoken in parts of Siliguri, Jalpaiguri, and Koch Bihar in West Bengal, Goalpara in

Assam, and Rangpur in Bangladesh — has a close affinity with Kamrupi.!4 Indeed, these dialects are not easily categorized as dialects of Assamese or Bengali. As linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji puts it, “dialects are independent of literary speech: as such, East Bengali dialects, North Bengali dialects (with which Assamese is to be associated) and West Bengali dialects are not only independent of one another, but also they are not, as it is popularly believed in Bengal, derived from literary Bengali, the sadhu bhasa.”!° The historical Koch kingdom that straddled western Assam and northern Bengal was partitioned in 1581 into Koch Bihar and Kamrup or Koch Hajo. Because of this partition, the subsequent histories of the eastern and western parts of the kingdom became somewhat divergent. The eastern kingdom became close to the Ahom kingdom, the western to the Mughal province of Bengal. The province of Assam as constituted in 1874 included most of the erstwhile eastern but not the western Koch kingdom. This partition also created conditions for divergent linguistic and cultural developments of the two regions later on. It can be surmised that in the early nineteenth century, when Bengali national identity was being formed, the speakers of various dialects of the old western Koch kingdom became Bengali speakers. The political history of the Koch kingdom after its partition was a major determinant of this phenomenon of ethnic change; it does not suggest any “natural” relationship between those dialects and Bengali. The cultural developments in the region comprising the eastern Koch kingdom — Koch Hajo or Kamrup—were more ambiguous. Those speaking Kamrupi and Goalporia adopted Assamese as their literary language, not without some hesitation in the latter case. Speakers of some “tribal” languages, however, have in recent years resisted the adoption of Assamese. The Bodo movement, whose base is western Assam, as we shall see in Chapter 8, seeks differen-

tiation and autonomy vis-a-vis Assamese. On the other hand, the Bodos of north Bengal, by and large, have not expressed a similar will vis-a-vis Bengali. In some ways this is the legacy of the partition of the Koch kingdom and the differential capacity of Calcutta-based

Language, Subnationalism, and Pan-Indianism

literary Bengali and Sibsagar-based

literary Assamese

75

to absorb

forms of speech within their spheres of influence. Apart from the Bodo political movement,

the aspirations of a number of other

contemporary “tribal” groups in Assam to have their languages receive more public recognition suggest that the emergence of standard modern Assamese has not quite closed the door to a significant rethinking on the part of these groups about the desirability of cultural assimilation into the Assamese subnational formation. A controversy over the language of undivided Goalpara, Assam’s westernmost region, provides an interesting example of the essential indeterminacy of the process of language standardization.!® Goalpara’s linguistic and cultural identity was hotly contested; in 1919 it was even proposed that Goalpara be merged with Bengal, with which it was said to have closer linguistic and cultural ties. Goalpara, we recall, was part of the old Koch kingdom, and it had become a part of British India before the Ahom kingdom. In 1919 the Raja of Gauripur, Prabhat Chandra Barua, one of the founders of the Assam Association, joined other Zamindars (landlords) of

Goalpara to plead for Goalpara’s merger with Bengal. More than his convictions about the culture of Goalpara, it appears that Barua’s interests as a landlord—a desire to benefit from the stronger lobby that Zamindars constituted in colonial Bengal—were the main factor in this decision. After Goalpara was incorporated into

the British empire along with Bengal, its land revenue system was governed by the Permanent Settlement of Bengal of 1793, unlike the rest of Assam, which had the ryotwari system.

A memorandum

submitted by the Goalpara landlords asked that “the Goalpara Zamindars may be reunited with the great body of Zamindars of Bengal to which they belonged for a considerable period of time.” It cited the “community of feelings” arising out of past history as well as ties of language, religion, and land tenure. The memorandum argued that in cultural terms Goalpara was similar to “the adjoining districts of Jalpaiguri, Rangpur, Cooch Behar [Koch Bihar] and portions of Dinajpur and Bogra” —all parts of the old Koch kingdom. They had “very little in common with the people of the other Districts of Assam” — that is mostly the area of the old Ahom kingdom. Furthermore, in Assam, said the memorandum, the Goalpara Zamindars are “isolated in a corner.” !” The representatives of the “people of Goalpara” — the tenants

76

Chapter 4

and the urban middle classes— took a radically different view of Goalpara’s cultural identity. Hariprasad Nath and 505 others from Goalpara protested the Zamindars’ proposal. The “people’s memorandum” cited the history of the Koch kingdom and its partition and argued that the Zamindars of Goalpara were “but the offshoots” of the Eastern Koch kings. The memorandum described the Raja of Gauripur — the major sponsor of the merger proposal — as an Assamese and his wife as “a scion of the great Vaishnavite reformer of Assam,” Shri Madhabdeb. The Zamindars of Goalpara “perform their religious rites in Assamese” like other Assamese Vaishnavites. The memorandum charged that the Zamindars spent most of their time outside Assam in order to meet the demands of

their Zamindari lifestyle and they took “little interest in their estates and their tenants, entrusting the management of their affairs

to their Bengali officers.” So far as “the indigenous people of the district” were concerned, said the memorandum, they were all Assamese and have nothing in common with the Bengalis, either in religion, language, caste system or in the social manners and customs; that any expert philologist will admit that the language spoken by the people of Goalpara district is just like that spoken by the people of lower Kamrup which is admittedly a part of Assam proper.'*

Since the colonial government decided not to take on the task of changing boundaries, the status of Goalpara remained unchanged in 1919. But this was not the last time that the demand for a merger of Goalpara with Bengal was heard. Assamese Subnationalism and Pan-Indianism

Prior to World War I, the Indian National Congress had almost no presence in Assam. The Assam Association was the most influential public organization in Assam during that period. One or two Assamese

attended

meetings of the Indian National Congress, but

they went as individuals rather than as delegates of a Congress organization in Assam.!° Indeed, the Assam Association was the nucleus

of most political activities in Assam even after the introduction of the Indian National Congress. One of the Assam Association’s presidents, Nabin Chandra Bordoloi, once described the Association as

a “national assembly representing the real public opinion of As-

Language, Subnationalism, and Pan-indianism

77

sam.”*° Another Congress activist, in his memoir of the period, describes the importance of the Association as follows: “for Assam the prestige ofthe president of the Assam Association was the same as that of the president ofthe Indian National Congress for India as a whole.”*! It should be added that Assam, in this common usage, is unlikely to have included Sylhet. The Assam Association was formed in 1903 in order to “give its loyal support to the British Government, to ameliorate the conditions generally of the people of Assam by taking up social, commercial and economic questions and to ventilate grievances or to take such measures as may lead to their removal.” The Association submitted a “memorial to the authorities to remove grievances or to introduce rules and laws in the general interests of the people.””? The Association operated with branches at the district level.

Some of the issues taken up by the Assam Association illustrate its priorities and why some of these issues would not always interest pan-Indian politicians. Prior to forming the Assam Association, its founder and prime mover Manik Chandra Barua’s major public accomplishment was to persuade the colonial government to establish the first college in the Brahmaputra Valley (in 1901). One of the major issues the Assam Association took up soon after its formation was to oppose Assam’s incorporation into a single province called East Bengal and Assam in 1905. After a single province became a fait accompli, the Association in 1907 submitted a memo-

randum to the Secretary of State for India asking for Assam’s separation from East Bengal. In 1920 the Assam Association demanded the establishment of a university in Assam. It was only in 1916 that the Assam Association voted to send delegates to the Indian National Congress and to establish a formal relationship with the Congress. The 1920 annual meeting of the Assam Association voted to amend its constitution to replace loyalty to the British Crown with the “attainment of swaraj [independence] by non-cooperation” as its goal, and the Association after that became a de facto organ of the Indian National Congress. All members of the Association, except for a few elders, joined the newly established Assam Provincial Congress Commiitee, and the Assam Association ceased to function as a separate organization. There was, however, an effort to revive it in 1933,? In the period following the establishment of the Congress in

78

Chapter 4

Assam, the different priorities on a number of issues of Assamese and pan-Indian politicians became apparent. Among them were the issue of control of immigration and the separation of Sylhet from Assam. In addition, the grouping of Assam and Bengal into a single unit in the Cabinet Mission’s proposal for India’s independence in 1946 met with stiff opposition in Assam, and it divided Assamese Congressmen from their pan-Indian counterparts. After independence, the settlement of refugees from East Pakistan was another

issue that seriously divided Assamese and pan-Indian politicians.

Ambikagiri Raychaudhuri: The Career of a “Provincial” Patriot The tensions between Assamese subnationalism and pan-Indianism during this period are best seen through the career of the controversial Assamese literary and cultural figure, Ambikagiri Raychaudhuri (1885-1967). A militant anti-colonial activist, Raychaudhuri

was a major player in the Indian National Congress organization in Assam. An inspirational poet and lyricist, in 1926 he composed the inaugural song of the first annual session of the Congress to be held in Assam. But in the same year he formed the Axom Xonrokhwini Xobha (Assam Preservation Society) to promote Assamese subnational interests. In 1936, he started the Axom Jatiyo Mohaxobha (Assam National Assembly). Raychaudhuri brought out two influential magazines, Deka Axom (Young Assam) and Cetana (Consciousness).

Raychaudhuri articulated a notion of the Assamese as a Jati (subnation or nationality within the great Indian Mohajati (Nation). The self-assertion (Atma Pratistha) by India’s nationalities (Jat) for him was not a negative and oppositional impulse vis-a-vis other Jatis, but a positive impulse about the pursuit of individual and collective self-fulfillment. Raychaudhuri emphasized the need for such collective self-assertion by the Assamese in order to resist their economic and cultural marginalization in their own land.** A goal of the Xonrokhwini Xobha was “to form the Assamese nation by bringing together the high and the low, the rich and the poor and people across the religious and caste divide.” The Xonrokhwini Xobha was committed to supporting government policies that “protect the national interests of the Assamese” and to opposing policies that were inimical to “Assamese national interests.” The Xonronkhwini

Language, Subnationalism, and Pan-indianism

79

Xobha’s goal was to “ensure the full control of the Assamese over Assam’s land and natural resources, agriculture, commerce and industry, trade, employment, language and literature, culture and

éthos;"*5 Two major issues taken up by Xonrokhwini Xobha and a number of other Assamese public organizations in the 1930s were the separation of Sylhet from Assam and the control of immigration from East Bengal. A delegation representing these oganizations met Jawaharlal Nehru during his tour of Assam in 1937. Nehru’s response underscores the disjuncture between the two perspectives. “The question of Sylhet’s separation and immigration,” he said, “may be very important to you but in comparison with other big problems that are facing us today, they are very small.”*° Yet these two issues, of which

Raychaudhuri

was the most articulate spokesman,

were

probably the most important issues discussed in the Assamese public sphere. Thus, even while leading the Xonrokhwini Xobha, Ray-

chaudhuri could remain a leader of the Assam Congress, and in 1930 he was the person responsible for organizing Gandhi's salt satyagraha in Guwahati.”? Raychaudhuri remained a major figure in Assamese public life well beyond India’s independence — though in the years immediately following independence his popularity declined temporarily. By the time of his death in 1967, he was somewhat of an isolated figure. However, since his death there has beena significant revival of interest in his ideas and activities coinciding with the resurgence of Assamese subnationalism. An influential set of essays entitled Axomot Bidexi (Foreigners in Assam) by Gyananath Borah was published in Raychaudhuri’s Cetana.*® These essays were also printed as a booklet with the title Axomot Bidexi in 1935. It is a sign of the persistence of the immigration issue in Assamese public life that the booklet was reprinted in 1996. One of the essays addressed the tension between Assamese subnationalism and pan-Indianism and made the case that it was important to attend to the special concerns of the Assamese: These days people often say that unless Indians unite, they will not be able to gain independence. But how should different provinces, different languages, different literatures end different religions become one? Should we completely eliminate our differences and try to create one language, one literature and one nation? Is that what we need in order to achieve independence?

80

Chapter 4

Borah argued the case for protecting the autonomy of India’s provinces. “In European countries such as Austria and Switzerland,” he argued, “a number of nations have come together to form one nation. Why can’t that happen in India?” After all, “For hundreds of years the provinces have had their distinct languages and literatures, have nourished them, have maintained distinct religions,

social customs and norms and have grown as distinct nations.””? Raychaudhuri himself outlined a constitution for an independent India that would be a federation of linguistic nationalities, one that

would recognize dual citizenship.*° Yet Raychaudhuri's ideas can firmly be described as subnationalist, for he never “dreamt of Assam as an independent country. . . . [He] thought of Assam as an

integral part of India. He only wanted that the Assamese should enjoy equal status in the community of Indian nationalities.”*! Major Assamese literary, cultural, and political figures— many of them Congress Party activists — were involved in the Raychaudhuriled Xonrokhwini Xobha. The organization has been aptly described as Assam’s “national forum.”*? Whether one agrees with this characterization or not, there is little doubt that the issues taken up by Raychaudhuri and his organizations were continuous with the discourse of mainstream Assamese society. Thus an economist presiding over the “Society and Economics” section of the annual conference of the Axom Xahitya Xobha said in 1937: People elsewhere think that Assam has a lot of unused land. To some extent that impression is accurate. But this landed patrimony is all that the Assamese people have for future generations. Ninety percent of Assam’s tea gardens are in the hands of foreigners. The ten percent of tea gardens that are in the hands of people who belong to this land are in massive debt. . . . The coal mines and oil wells are all in the hands of foreigners. Thus all we have is this as insurance for the future is our unused land.**

As I have already indicated, the Xonrokhwini Xobha, by and large, was not in competition with the Indian National Congress. Indeed the inaugural meeting of the Xonrokhwini Xobha in May 1926 took place in the same tent that was constructed for the annual session of the Indian National Congress. Furthermore, Raychaudhuri composed the fervently patriotic song that was sung to inaugurate that session of the Congress. It is not surprising, therefore, that leaders of the Assam Congress continued to cooperate

Language, Subnationalism, and Pan-Indianism

81

with Raychaudhuri during the years when he was actively promoting an Assamese subnational agenda. Major leaders of the Assam Congress were associated with the Xonrokhwini Xobha during its early period and they were in full support of the positions of the Xobha.** There were times, however, when differences between the

Xobha and the Congress did become pronounced. From about 1931 to 1936 Assamese newspapers published a debate between the Xobha and the Congress.®* Nevertheless, Raychaudhuri’s platform was almost always incorporated into the platform of the Assam Congress. Thus in the elections of 1946 the Congress party in Assam fought the Muslim League by fully siding with the Assamese subnationalist position on crucial issues such as opposition to immigration and the separation of Sylhet. A Congress Party election leaflet declared that “unless the province of Assam is organised” based on “Assamese language and Assamese culture, the survival of the Assamese nationality will become impossible.” It went on to say that the inclusion of the Bengali-speaking Sylhet district and the plains portion of the Cachar district and the settling of hundreds and thousands of Bengali settlers “threatens to destroy the distinctiveness of Assam.” It called on voters to install the Congress Party as the majority party in the Assembly in order to solve and redress these problems.** Historian Amalendu Guha infers that by taking up Assam’s “national question . . . as its main election platform,” the Congress Party succeeded in beating the challenge of Raychaudhuri’s Axom Jatiyo Mohaxobha.*’

Assamese Versus Pan-iIndian Discourse

Immigration Policy Since I have already discussed in Chapter 2 the issue of separating Sylhet from Assam, let me turn to three other key issues that divided

Assamese and pan-Indian politicians. Gyananath Borah’s booklet Foreigners in Assam elaborates the Assamese concern with immigration, a concern he did not see as being in conflict with an active engagement with pan-Indian oppositional politics. Borah argued that in Assam’s very particular circumstance as an area with exceptionally high immigration and where “foreigners” controlled the

82

Chapter 4

economy, the issue of “foreigners” becomes very urgent. “Every province,” wrote Borah, “does not need the same tools in order to

achieve progress and to maintain autonomy. Depending on the conditions of a province, the particular means necessary are different. What is needed for Punjab’s autonomy and progress may not apply to Madras. What is needed for Bombay, may not apply to Bengal. What is needed in Bengal may not be applicable to Assam.” In Assam’s particular condition “freeing Assam from the grip of foreigners” is “the only road to Assam’s autonomy and progress.” Unlike the postcolonial controversies on immigration that have focused on cultural policy and on the legal status of immigrants, Borah’s primary concern was the control of trade and industry by “foreigners.” Assam is a province where “foreigners” then numbered about 2.1 million and Assamese only 1.7 million. It is a proyince where “foreigners” owned thousands of shops, businesses, and big and small factories. The Assamese even relied on “foreigners” for their food and clothing and were indebted and subordinated to them. Millions of rupees went out of Assam in exchange for imported commodities. The only concern, the only responsibility that the Assamese have, he believed, was “to save themselves from the

grip of foreigners.”** Foreigners would have been less of a threat, he argued, if the Assamese had control over Assam’s trade and commerce.

Indeed,

he saw control of trade and commerce as so central that he believed that it could even have averted Assam’s demographic shift. If at the beginning of British rule the 800,000 Assamese had been in control of Assam’s trade and commerce, he wrote, Assam’s population by then would have increased five times to 4 million. A fivefold population increase in a hundred years is not implausible, but “unfortu-

nately, that was not to be the destiny of the Assamese.”39 The Xanrakhwini Xobha had a policy of welcoming as members immigrants who chose to identify with Assamese culture. According to the organization’s rules, those who came to Assam before 1926 and were permanently settled in Assam could be members of the organization if they signed a statement saying that they accepted Assamese as their language and declared themselves “members of the Assamese nationality.”*° The immigration issue shook up Assam’s politics in the 1930s and 1940s. The focus of the controversy was the Line System —an ad-

Language, Subnationalism, and Pan-Indianism

83

ministrative measure adopted in 1920 that sought, largely unsuccessfully, to restrict immigrant settlement to certain parts of a dis-

trict. While many ethnic Assamese politicians wanted a tightening

of the system, immigrant politicians, notably Maulana Bhasani, who

later became a major figure in the politics of Bangladesh, advocated unrestricted immigration. The demand for the abolition of the Line System was related to the movement for a separate Muslim homeland, because proposals that listed provinces as potential parts of Pakistan, where Muslims were a significant part of the population, sometimes included Assam. Thus in the election of January 1946 the Muslim League’s electoral platform advocated unrestricted immigration to Assam, and the Muslim electorate of Assam over-

whelmingly supported the League.*! On the other hand, Assamese subnationalist opinio — though n by then many influential ethnic Assamese Muslims had defected from that position — strongly advocated a halt to immigration. Ambikagiri Raychaudhuri called for organizing a volunteer corps called Axom Atmarokhwini Bahini (Assam

self-defense

force)

to resist further

immigration.

Even

though such a force did not come into being, Raychaudhuri’s idea had significant support and his political party, the Axom Jatiyo Mohaxobha, “flourished as . . . a pressure group within the Assam Congress.” The immigration question became a central and divisive issue in Assamese politics during the decade immediately preceding independence.

Between

1937 and 1947, the issue was the

major cause of political instability; Assam had six ministries and a period of Governor’s Rule during this decade.* In 1937 the Government of Assam appointed a committee to inquire into the operation of the Line System. The committee, chaired by F. W. Hockenhall, leader of the European party, recommended both the continuation of immigration and the tightening of the Line System in order to protect “tribal” lands. Given the composition of colonial Assam, the politics of representation in colonial institutions, and the framing of the immigration issue by the Congress-Muslim League rivalry, those representing the ethnic Assamese view in the committee were in a minority. The dissenting note by three of the nine members of the — two committe e Assamese and a Bodo —spells out the Assamese

point of view. I have cited in Chapter 3 the dissenting note of these three members.** Ironically Muslim League Prime Minister Saadullah's “line and

84

Chapter4

colonisation scheme,” which was much criticized at that time, was

more successful in regulating the flow and settlement of immigrants than policies adopted since independence. “If the policies adopted during the colonial period were effectively implemented,” writes K. C. Barua, an Assamese civil servant who was an articulate

spokesman of the Assam movement of 1979-85, “Assam’s problem of foreigners would not have been that bad.”” Cabinet Mission Plan and Assam

Assamese public opinion was deeply agitated in 1946 by the Cabinet Mission’s proposal for an independent India that would be a confederation of two groups of provinces, one Hindu and the other Muslim. The president of the Assam Congress —an ethnic Assamese Muslim —called the proposal a “death sentence” for Assam. The Cabinet Mission’s proposal had Assam as part of Bengal —a major province in the Muslim group. To the Assamese it implied being incorporated into Bengal—the perennial Assamese fear.*® There was a time when it appeared that the Congress and the Muslim League might accept the Cabinet Mission’s proposal. The Assam Congress, however, was strongly oppposed to the plan. A delegation that included Ambikagiri Raychaudhuri went to Delhi to express their opposition to the plan.*” With Mohandas K. Gandhi's backing, the Assam Congress decided that if the Constituent Assembly accepted the Cabinet Mission’s plan for grouping provinces, the Assam delegation would walk out of the Constituent Assembly. As the Congress president explained, “the Assamese people fear that... the Congress might eventually accept the Cabinet Mission’s proposal as a half-way house to independence. Once a Constitution is adopted by the Constituent Assembly, Assam might just fall into the trap of being part of the grouping plan.”* The Assamese opposition forced the Congress to change its posi-

tion. So fateful was Assam’s opposition that it has been argued that, with the rejection by the Congress of the plan of grouping provinces, India’s last chance for a united India — organized as a strong federation —was lost. Thus it has been argued that Pakistan was

created because of Assam’s Congress leader Bordoloi.* This view, however, exaggerates the role of Assam’s opposition to the grouping plan as a factor that led to partition. It is more likely that the

Language, Subnationalism, and Pan-Indianism

85

Congress and the Muslim League's initial acceptance of the plan had actually obscured profound differences. The Congress and the League had each accepted the Cabinet Mission’s plan based on their own interpretation ofit.°°

Settlement of Partition Refugees After the partition of India in 1947, the tension between Assamese subnationalism and pan-Indianism nearly reached a crisis point on the question of settlement of Hindu refugees from East Bengal. Assam Premier Bordoloi argued that Assam could not accommodate very many refugees. However, as a careful historian of this controversy puts it, the pan-Indian Congress leaders tended to “think of themselves as more all-India minded than their provincial counterparts” and “claimed superior understanding of the local situation and were determined to impose their will on the Bordoloi government.” Relying on an exchange of letters between Jawaharlal Nehru and Gopinath Bordoloi, historian Nirode Barooah writes

that “Nehru treated many of Bordoloi’s judgements on the events of his own state with little respect” and a number of times he displayed “impatience and condescension.”*! Given the history of the Assamese desire to maintain an Assamese public identity for Assam, it was rumored that a number of Assam’s cabinet ministers preferred Muslim economic immigrants to Hindu refugees, since Muslim immigrants had in the past appeared more likely to adopt Assamese as their language. Nehru wrote to Bordoloi that Assam was “getting a bad name for its narrow-minded policy” and that the Assam government’s position that Assam did not have enough land to accommodate refugees was not acceptable. “It is patent,” wrote Nehru, “that if land is not available in Assam, it is still less available in the rest of India.” Nehru not very subtly threatened that “if Assam adopts an attitude of incapacity to help solve the refugee problem, then the claims of Assam, for financial help will obviously suffer.”°? Bordoloi in his response provided figures on the amount of waste lands available in Assam. Leaving aside grazing reserves, he said, there were about 200,000 acres of waste lands available, of which not more than 25,000 acres are fit for reclamation. Besides, he said,

Assam had its own problem of landlessness: Assam had to settle

86

Chapter 4

many thousands of of its own landless families. Since Assam was an

agricultural economy that remained industrially backward, he said, a popular government could not ignore Assam’s own need for land. Responding to Nehru’s threat of withholding financial assistance to Assam, Bordoloi wrote:

It will be quite easy for you to throttle the province of its existence by withholding the necessary help for its life and growth; but, I hope, it will not be done, — not surely on the plea of our failure to solve this particular problem.*?

Assamese Subnationalism and Postcolonial Assam

A Marxist historian of Assam’s anticolonial struggle describes Ambikagiri Raychaudhuri’s influence as “chauvinistic.” Raychaudhuri’s concept of dual citizenship, Amalendu

Guha argues, was not ac-

cepted by the Assamese people. “Their commitment obviously was to the Congress ideal of a single Indian citizenship alongside regional autonomy within a federal structure.” Similarly, Guha points out that Raychaudhuri’s call for a 200,000-strong volunteer corps “went unheeded,” even though he may have been “acclaimed as a true son of the people.”°* Marxist literary critic and Assamese public intellectual Hiren Gohain points at the irony of Raychaudhuri, a powerful pan-Indianist and humanist poet and lyricist, being sometimes seen as a provincial anti-Bengali figure. Gohain offers a materialist explanation: that Raychaudhuri became out of touch with “changing historical reality,” that he failed to recognize that “the possibility of Assam’s political destiny being separate from India’s had disappeared not today, but in the nineteenth century.”°> Guha and Gohain’s characterizations underestimate how enduring the tension between Assamese subnationalism and pan-Indian nationalism has been, A major Assamese politician, Mahendra Mohan Choudhury,

who

was a chief minister

of the state and had also

served as Governor of Punjab, was perhaps more accurate when he predicted at the time of Raychaudhuri’s death in 1967 that there would be a revival of interest in Raychaudhuri’s ideas in the years to come. Despite the criticism that Raychaudhuri was “provincial and narrow-minded,” said Choudhury, “a time will come when Raychaudhury’s ideas will be inseparable from the goals of the Assamese nationality. The Assamese people will realise one day that in

Language, Subnationalism, and Pan-Indianism

87

order to survive as a nationality they will have to once again give meaning to Raychaudhuri’s ideals.”®° Indeed, there has been a significant reassessment of Ambikagiri Raychaudhuri in Assam in recent years, coinciding with the revival of Assamese subnationalism, especially since the Assam movement of 1979-85. In 1950 Raychaudhuri was elected president of Axom Xahitya Xobha. That year the Xahitya Xobha adopted a resolution demanding that Assamese be accorded the status of Assam’s official language and sponsored the celebration of a day as “all-Assam state language day.” Hiren Gohain may be right that Raychaudhuri’s tragedy was that he did not recognize the fact that the possibility of a distinct political future for Assam had disappeared a long time ago. However, that does not mean that the Assamese insistence on a distinct political voice that sometimes is discordant with the panIndian discourse on national development and nation-building has shown any sign of abatement. The widespread, and possibly increasing, respect for the memory

of this cultural

icon illustrates

the

persistence of this voice. In Chapter 1 I argued that the power of Assamese subnationalism is best understood by locating it theoretically in the space of civil society. One consequence of this is the central role of avowedly “nonpolitical” organizations in subnational political mobilization in Assam. I have also stressed that the political demands of Assamese subnational organizations, including the insurgent organization of recent years, are intertextual with mainstream Assamese social discourse. To illustrate this intertextuality, from time to ume I shall cite a genre of Assamese popular music — the songs of Bhupen Hazarika— which can be read as texts that both reflect and constitute the Assamese national imagination. To say that Bhupen Hazarika’s music has been very popular among the Assamese during almost the entire history of postcolonial Assam is an understatement. He is probably the most influential figure in. postcolonial Assamese cultural life. Born in 1926, Hazarika earned a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1950. He isa significant player on the ultimate pan-Indian stage — the Hindi film industry —and his Bengali songs are popular in West Bengal and Bangladesh as well. He has received numerous awards and other forms of recognition from the government of India. Considering his pan-Indian stature, it is particularly significant that his Assamese

88

Chapter 4

lyrics are so intertextual with mainstream Assamese social discourse and its subnational themes. One finds in his music the constant reflection of the political moods of the Assamese. Using his lyrics, one can construct an unofficial history of the Assamese nationality— its hopes, aspirations, and disappointments. Even the most recent radical and militant turn that Assamese subnationalism took in the 1980s, as I will illustrate in Chapter

7, found

more

than a pale

reflection in Hazarika’s music. Before I move to the politics of subnationalism in postcolonial Assam, let me illustrate, with the help of Hazarika’s lyrics, the poetics on which Assamese subnationalism is premised. The idea of the nation as mother is a familiar motifin national narratives. The motif appears constantly in Hazarika’s music. The mother motf achieves a number of things —it makes the connection of a people to its homeland primal, and the implied idea of a common womb gives members of the nation a sense of shared origins that minimizes difference. In Hazarika’s song “Mother, what offering can I make at your feet?” the relationship is imbued with the sacred symbolism of the mother goddess and the sacred obligation to repay through sacrifice.®” Benedict Anderson has pointed out the affinity between nationalist and religious imaginings. If religious thought “transforms fatality into continuity,” nationalist thought offers “a secular transformation of fatality into continuity, contingency into meaning.”°* In Hazarika’s lyric the rhetorical question “what offering can I make?” is answered with the offer of the sacrifice of life. The territory of Assam is imbued with the significance of the body of the mother. The river Luit (the Brahmaputra) becomes the flow of motherly affection, and the river’s eventual merging into “the sea of peace and into the great unity” evokes the Hindu cultural notion oflife’s unity with the Great Soul.5? The lyric “Bohag is not just a season” constructs the Assamese nationality as a collectivity, with a memory and a will. Bohag is the first month of the Assamese calendar. It is the time of the Assamese spring and new year festival Bihu. The lyric extends the Bihu traditions to the life of the people as a whole and imbues Bohag Bihu with the significance of a national day when the nation takes stock ofits past and future. This notion is similar to the idea of a national birthday, such as the Indian Independence Day and Republic Day or the American Fourth of July. But what is interesting about the

Language, Subnationalism, and Pan-Indianism

89

notion of Bihu as a national day is that its origins are in “time immemorial” and that unlike national birthdays Bihu is celebrated in the social space that is independent from, and potentially in conflict with, the State. Bohag is not just a season

moment

or a month;

for the Assamese

it is a crucial

in the nation’s life-line —it is when the collective life gathers its

strength and courage. Bohag is not just about the celebration of the Bihu festival, nor is Bohag about the flowers that bloom at night. It is Bohag that

brings processions that transcend caste and creed and it is Bohag that destroys difference.

Drawing on the rituals of Bihu, the lyric makes Bihu a time for national renewal: “In Bohag the nation takes its ritual bath, and gets rid of its old clothing. And with Bohag comes the pre-monsoon storm that inspires us in our battles to get rid of the shackles of sorrow.”®! The idea of a nation reviewing its past and its plans for the future is a powerfully constitutive one. The images in Hazarika’s lyrics— the obligations to “mother Assam,” the stock-taking about the Assamese collective past and the determination to act on its historically constituted collective will,

the obligations to honor the memory of martyrs— provide important clues to the “imaginative geography and history” that have

animated Assamese subnationalism in the postcolonial period. In Chapter 6 I discuss an inspirational song by Hazarika composed in 1968 that anticipates the Assam movement —the campaign protesting “foreigners.” Among a number of Assamese cultural heroes the lyric celebrates is Ambikagiri Raychaudhuri. We no longer have “an Ambikagiri” says the lyric, “to remind us day and night that our land is gone.” Another version of the lyric recorded in 1980—at the height of the Assam movement—celebrates the “thousands” who were “responding to Ambikagiri’s call.”°° Hazarika’s

music, and indeed

his entire career,

are

texts that

underscore the compatibility and dialogical relationship between Assamese subnationalism and pan-Indianism. One can think of numerous songs where Hazarika celebrates pan-Indianism. Among them are a song written at the time of India’s China war and another during the Indo-Pakistani war. Indeed, his music illustrates the imaginative possibilities of making India’s regional subnationalisms compatible with pan-Indian nationalism. Thus, in a song com-

90

Chapter 4

posed in 1984, he pays tribute to martyrs to the cause of Assamese subnationalism in this way: “We salute you, O martyr. In order to save Bharati’s youngest daughter, you have embraced death.” Bharati—a feminized name for India—becomes the mother of whom Axomi—a feminized name for Assam that appears in some of Hazarika’s other songs — is the daughter.

Chapter 5 Contested Identity, Culture Wars,

and the Breakup of Colonial Assam

In the three decades following India’s independence in 1947, colo-

nial Assam was divided into five states, and there is now talk of even further division (see Maps 3 and 4). The Assamese have come to see

the breakup of Assam as a mark of Assam’s lack of control over its own destiny. In recent years, militant Assamese subnationalism has successfully tapped this sense of injury and powerlessness. The breakup of Assam was the result of a complex set of factors. On the one hand, the politics of resistance to immigration reinforced the Assamese desire for cultural policies that would give an Assamese public face to Assam — following the pan-Indian cultural grammar of the nation-province.

On

the other hand, Assam’s multiethnic

landscape — the product of colonial geography and of immigration as well as a much older diversity —was not conducive to Assam becoming a language-based nation-province following the pan-Indian model. Yet the Bengali challenge to cultural policies that would define Assam as Assamese produced serious culture wars that even degenerated into “language riots.” The contradiction between the

Assamese subnationalist vision of an Assamese Assam and the reality of multiethnic Assam may have greatly facilitated the breakup of colonial Assam. However, the prime mover in the breakup was a powerful central government which decided that by creating new states it would be able to contain, and even preempt, insurgencies in the northeast. It is rather apparent now that this policy was a failure. What more than four decades ago was an “obscure speck of discontent” among some of the Nagas of Assam, wrote M. S. Prabhakara in

Thimpu

BHUTAN

TRIPURA

Map 3. Assam, 1950.

Thimpu

BHUTAN

MEGHALAYA —gnitong

MANIPUR

Map 4. Assam, 1999.

94

Chapter5

1994, “has grown to an insurgency which has spawned and inspired other insurgencies in every part of the region.”! Before describing the breakup of colonial Assam, let me first explain how the pan-Indian cultural grammar of nation-province evolved. In 1930, well before independence, the colonial Statutory Commission when considering making India into a federation, noted the need for reorganizing India’s provinces. Federation schemes usually start with a number of clearly defined states each already possessed of individuality and consciousness, whereas in India there are only a number of administrative areas which have grown up almost haphazard as a result of conquest, supersession of former rulers or administrative convenience. No one of them has been deliberately formed with a view to its suitability as a self-governing unit within a federated whole.”

Despite the many difficulties involved boundaries,

said

the

Commission,

in redrawing provincial

these

boundaries

must

be

changed. But the Statutory Commission did not take on the task itself. After independence, the task could not be postponed any longer. And, if provincial boundaries had to be altered, it seemed reasonable that the new provinces should reflect the historically evolved territorial identities articulated by the language-based subnationalisms that had emerged during the resistance to colonial rule. When India’s Constituent Assembly began its work in 1946, it was generally accepted that a strong federation was the only workable model for a future polity. It seemed that postcolonial India might remain unpartitioned, and the incorporation of the princely states into the future polity was still being negotiated. A strong federal arrangement would have reassured the Muslim population against the fear of Hindu domination, and would have encouraged the princely states to join the new polity. However, once the partition of | India and the integration of the princely states became a fait accompli, the enthusiasm for a federal polity in the Constituent Assembly quickly disappeared.* A month before independence the intellectual climate in the Constituent Assembly changed dramatically to one that reflected “a social psychology of unitarianism.”4 In light of the radically changed political conditions of the country, it now

Contested Identity, Culture Wars, and Breakup

95

appeared axiomatic that the Constitution must try to build “a federation with a strong centre.”® India’s new governing elite now had second thoughts about reorganizing provinces. But eventually it gave in to pressure of the growing power of subnational movements. In 1920, the Indian National Congress, under Mohandas Gandhi's leadership, had reorga-

nized the party into units based on language boundaries. It seemed self-evident then that Indian languages, and not English, should be India’s languages of governance and that its provinces should be organized, not according to colonial administrative convenience, but according to the languages spoken in the regions. But immediately after independence the Congress Party had lost much of its enthusiasm for the idea. The Linguistic Provinces Commission constituted in 1948 heard numerous petitions to reorganize India’s provinces. But it recommended against linguistic states. “Linguistic homogeneity in the formation of new provinces,” it concluded, “is certainly attainable within certain limits but only at the cost of creating a fresh minority problem.” In no province organized on a linguistic basis would there be more than 70 to 80 percent of the people speaking one language, thus leaving a minority of at least 20 percent of people speaking other languages.® But “layers upon layers of minority ethnicities” are not unique to India.’ Given India’s precolonial past, the reality of subnational formations, and their tensions with pan-

Indianism, the problem of minorities within minorities may have made the task of reorganizing India’s states more difficult, but certainly not any less compelling. But at a time when enthusiasm for “nation-building” was at its height, the Linguistic Provinces Commission was unwilling to make any institutional accommodation to subnationalism. The comments of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal

Nehru,

the cosmopolitan

pan-Indianist par excellence,

about his experience as a member of that Commission underscore this attitude. The inquiry of the Commission, Nehru said, had

been in some ways an eye-opener for us. The work of 60 years of the Indian National Congress was standing before us, face to face with centuries-old India of narrow loyalties, petty jealousies and ignorant prejudices engaged in mortal conflict and we were simply horrified to see how thin was the ice upon which we were skating. Some of the ablest men in the country came

96

Chapter5

in this before us and confidently and emphatically stated that language country stood for and represented culture, race, history, individuality, and finally the sub-nation.*

Clifford Geertz wrote that “horrified or not,” Nehru and his peers “were forced to endorse the claims of Andhra as a Telegu-speaking state, and the thin ice was broken. Within

the decade

India had

been almost entirely reorganised along linguistic lines.”” After a Telegu-speaking state of Andhra Pradesh was conceded in 1953, there were many more demands for reorganizing existing states and forming new states. The government established a States Reorganization Commission to reconsider the issue. Following the recommendations of this commission, the Seventh Amendment

to the In-

dian Constitution in 1956 restructured many of India’s provinces. However, the commission in recommending those changes recognized the notion of linguistic states implicitly rather than explicitly. Assam was no exception to the general mood at the moment of independence — an expectation, nurtured by years of anti-colonial political mobilization, that the end of colonial rule would inaugurate an India that was more in tune with its cultural self in some public symbolic sense. Given the role of Assamese subnationalism in the anti-colonial struggle in Assam, it is not surprising that this expectation would translate into an aspiration that Assam now have an Assamese public identity. Given the historic blending of language and subnationalism and the example of other states, it seemed axiomatic to most ethnic Assamese that Assam should have Assamese as its official language. But the situation in Assam was different from that in the vast majority of regions. Even after the separation of Sylhet Assam was a very multilingual place. According to the first post-independence census in 1951, 56.7 percent of the population of Assam were Assamese-speakers. The hill districts had indigenous languages and dialects like Khasi, Garo, and languages of the Kuki-Chin and the Naga groups. Even in the plains districts, apart from Assamese, people spoke other “indigenous” languages and dialects, mostly of the Bodo and Mising family. But the most important challenge to the idea of Assamese as Assam’s official language came from Bengali speakers, which made up 16.5 percent of Assam’s population, and the overwhelming majority of the Cachar district. Indeed in the linguistically organized

Contested Identity, Culture Wars, and Breakup

97

pre-independence Congress Party, Cachar was part of the Bengal Provincial Congress. Furthermore, the number of Bengali speakers

as indicated by the census hid a well-known reality: that most Mus-

lims of Bengali descent in the Brahmaputra Valley were counted as Assamese speakers. Whether they identified themselves that way to census officials as an act of convenience or to indicate a real desire to adopt Assamese, to many skeptics the rise of Assamese speakers from 31.4 percent of the population in 1931 to 56.7 percentin 1951 was not credible. The increase of Assamese speakers was almost entirely at the cost of the number of Bengali speakers. The percentage of Bengali speakers declined from 45.7 percent in 1911, to 26.8

percent in 1931, to 16.5 percent in 1951.!° The lack of fit between the model of a linguistically based nationprovince and the ethnopolitical reality of Assam was obvious to the States Reorganization Commission in 1955. It recommended not only that multiethnic Assam’s old boundaries be maintained, but

also that Manipur and Tripura, two northeastern states that had not been part of colonial Assam, eventually be merged with Assam. This, of course, was not to be Assam’s destiny (see Maps 3 and 4).

The formation of Nagaland in 1963 began a process of the successive reorganization of Assam’s boundaries and the formation of new states. In 1970 Meghalaya was separated from Assam and made first into a substate and then into a full-fledged state. In 1972 Mizoram was separated from Assam and was made first into a Union Territory and then into a full-fledged state. The North East Frontier Agency (NEFA), which acquired strategic significance as a disputed area between India and China, was initially brought under the direct control of the External Affairs Ministry, and then transferred

to the Home Ministry. In 1972 NEFA too was made into a Union Territory and was given a new name, Arunachal Pradesh. It was made into a separate state in 1987 (see Map 4). There was thus a structural tension between the informal cultural grammar of the nation-province — which created the axiom of an Assamese Assam — and Assam’s demographic and ethnopolitical reality. In most regions of India, the nation-province has been a success story. Thus Joseph Schwartzberg writes, the changes that India has made to date in its political map have preserved the essential unity of the nation, rather than contributing, as many pre-

98

Chapter5

dicted, to a process of balkanization. In creating a system of essenually linguistic states, India has provided a local milieu that is conducive to the flowering of many linguistically-rooted cultures and thereby evolved a system which greatly enriches the cultural life of the nation as a whole."

But Assam is a significant exception to this generalization. Why has the idea of linguistically organized nation-provinces been able to produce an impressive level of legitimacy in so many parts of India, but not in Assam? Schwartzberg offers a statistical

analysis to explain the effectiveness of linguistic reorganization of states. For the first time in the history of modern

India, he writes,

there was no state in the country where the total number oflinguistic minorities was more than half of the state’s total population. However, in a number of states the total population of linguistic minorities came rather close to Schwartzberg’s 50 percent mark. Significantly, among the states that were left with combined minorities of over 40 percent were three areas that would become major trouble spots in later years: Jammu and Kashmir (45.6 percent, mainly Punjabi), Punjab (43.1 percent, overwhelmingly Hindi) and Assam (42.9 percent, Bengali and “tribal” languages). A fourth state, Rajasthan, had a large combined minority language population.of 43.1 percent. But, as Schwartzberg put it, most of these languages are related to Hindi—the state’s dominant language— and hence “nota problem.”!” The data on language speakers that Schwartzberg provides are only suggestive in explaining why nation-provinces have become legitimate units of governance in many parts of India. The most significant result of linguistic reorganization was that it created states where particular nationalities —speakers of particular languages with established literatures and histories — constituted majorities capable of defining the public identity of the states. Linguistic states thus became a way of paying symbolic homage to the history of India’s precolonial political formations, or rather to

the reconstructions of those formations in subnational narratives. Hence my term “nation-province.” But reorganizing India this way has also meant that the idea of India as a single territorial state came to coexist with the idea of India as a land of many “distinct societies.”!*There are tensions between these two ideas. Most states in India, for instance, have preferential policies in employment and

Contested Identity, Culture Wars, and Breakup

99

educational institutions for their “sons-of-the-soil.” In many northeastern states there are rules that severely restrict the movement and settlement of Indian citizens—rules that probably have few parallels anywhere else in the world. These rules are in obvious conflict with the right of citizens to free movement.'* But these rules and conventions cannot be wished away. For they embody the complex legacy of the political management of tensions by the colo—the legacy of nial State and subsequently, the postcolonial State India’s particular history of State-building. When the idea of nation-provinces became a centerpiece of the postcolonial Indian polity, it not only created many legitimate units of governance, but produced a crisis of legitimacy in places like Assam. The informal cultural grammar of nation-province shaped the political imagination of many peoples, including the Assamese.!© Following the “thesaurus of general ideas” about nationprovinces, Indian states all expect to have distinct public identities, often expressed through the symbol of an official state language. Thus to the Assamese it seems axiomatic that Assam should have an Assamese public identity, just as, say, Tamilnadu has a Tamil and West Bengal a Bengali public identity. Indeed it appeared no less axiomatic to many non-Assamese as well. Thus when Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru visited Assam following the language riots of 1960, at a public meeting he asked a rhetorical question: “Where

else but in Assam can Assamese be the official language?” After a pause, to the thunderous applause of his mostly ethnic Assamese audience, he answered: “In Bombay?”!®However, the answer to this rhetorical question would be much more contested than Nehru could have ever imagined. Assam’ Culture Wars

The “parapolitics” of clashing public identities, as Clifford Geertz once said of such conflicts, have their “characteristic battlegrounds.” Among the areas that become a focus of such conflicts he listed the school system

(particularly the instruction

media),

social statistics, dress, historiography, and official insignia of public

authority.!7 What these battlegrounds draw attention to is an impor-

tant aspect of subnational conflicts: that they are not necessarily about ethnic exclusiveness as much as about defining the public

100

Chapter5

identity of aplace. A Québec nationalist document on immigration policy illustrates the point rather clearly: What Québec needs is not to be sheltered from immigration nor to be protected against ethnic diversification of immigration. What it needs is full control over the tools it requires to build and assert its cohesiveness as a society over and above its ethnic, religious, and ideological diversity.

To avoid the “cultural dislocation of Québec,” the document sug-

gests, “the immigrants must see, hear and feel this French character everywhere — in everyday life, at work, in shops, in public services, in signs, in product labels, in corporate names, etc.”'* The public cultural identity of a nation-province or a nation-state is generally taken for granted. However, in situations when that public identity is contested, as in Québec before its Frenchness became generally accepted, or in Assam where it is perpetually contested, cultural nationalists run the risk of becoming ethnic exclusivists, sometimes despite their intentions. Immediately

after independence,

with

the separation

of the

Bengali-speaking Sylhet district from Assam, the demand for formalizing an Assamese public identity for Assam became louder, and the campaign to have Assamese declared the state language gained momentum. To the ethnic Assamese, after years of protesting heavy immigration, the influx of a large number of Hindu Bengali refu-

gees made the issue of Assam’s public identity more urgent than ever. “Has Assam no right to exist as the land of the Assamese people?” asked the conservative Assam Tribune in an editorial. “Is it the intention of the government to turn the Assamese people into a minority community in their own province and jeopardise their language, culture, and their very existence?”'® The Axom Jatiyo Mohaxobha, led by Ambikagiri Raychaudhuri, submitted a memorandum to Assam’s new government in September 1947 appealing to the state government to defend Assamese interests. The demands included (a) stopping the influx of “outsiders”; (b) full representation of Assamese interests; (c) extending recognition to the Assamese language “in every sphere of governmental activities” including those of the central government offices in Assam; and (d) making Assamese the medium of all educational

institutions of Assam.*° In 1950 the Axom Xahitya Xobha began a campaign for recognition of Assamese as the state language and the

Contested Identity, Culture Wars, and Breakup

101

language of education. To focus attention on these demands the Xahitya Xobha celebrated July 16 as “state language day.” Opposition to the demand came most emphatically from Bengali organizations, notably those based in Cachar. While protesting the imposition of Assamese on Cachar, many of these organizations argued for Bengali being accorded the status of an official language of Assam along with Assamese. The initial focus of the controversy was a memorandum, issued by the state government’s education

department, that asked officials to take steps toward making Assamese the language of education in all schools, initially only in the Brahmaputra Valley, but eventually in other areas as well. Some Bengali leaders met with Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel, seeking his intervention to dissuade the state government from following this course of action.*! Later the use of Assamese in some state government papers distributed to government offices in Cachar became a source of controversy. The Silchar Bar Association protested the “infiltration” of these Assamese documents.”* The issue of Assam’s state language came to a head in April 1959, when the Axom Xahitya Xobha asked the state legislature to act on the official language question. The Xobha gave the state government an ultimatum to declare Assamese the state’s language. Amid intense controversy, the Assam Assembly passed the Official Language bill in 1960. Widespread violence preceded and followed this action. “Language riots” on a smaller scale took place in 1972 when the Gauhati University decided to introduce Assamese as the language of education in its colleges. In both these instances, the most vociferous opposition to Assamese as the state language came from Cachar. The View from Cachar

In colonial times Cachar was considered, along with Sylhet, as part of the mostly Bengali-speaking Surma Valley as opposed to the mostly Assamese-speaking Brahmaputra Valley. It is a district where Bengalis are ina predominant majority. When Sylhet became a part of Pakistan, a number of Hindu-majority areas were amalgamated to Cachar. Given the language divide, it is sometimes suggested that Cachar should be separated from Assam. However, Cachar’s position is not as cut and dried as the status of Sylhet in the colonial

102

Chapter5

period. There are competing constructions of Cachar’s past and of its cultural ties to Assam and Bengal. One position, best articulated by the chief secretary of the Government of Assam in 1925, perhaps coincides with the Assamese

subnationalist position: The Bengalis now inhabiting the district of Cachar, while forming the majority of the population are mere settlers there and can hardly claim that they have annexed the district and have a right to demand its transfer to Bengal. The argument based solely on principles of numerical strength and linguistic affinity, if admitted, would at present rate at which immigration from Mymensingh into several districts of the Assam Valley is going on, entitle the Bengali settlers in these districts, after a few years, to assert that they were in the majority and that, therefore, the districts in which they had settled should go to Bengal.

The name Cachar evokes a connection to one of Assam’s indigenous groups, the Kacharis— the name by which until recently the Bodo people as a whole were known in some parts of Assam. In the classic history of Assam, Edward Gait wrote that Cachar got its name from the Kacharis. A particular subgroup of the Bodo people— Bodo being the name of an entire family of dialects and languages of the Tibeto-Burman family—had a historical connection to Cachar: the Dimasa Kacharis. Today the Dimasa Kacharis live mostly

in the North Cachar Hills district.24 In 1750 the Dimasa Kachari king, Kartic Chandra, shifted his capital to Khaspur in the plains of

Cachar. Khaspur is close to Kumbhir Gram, some twenty kilometers from Silchar, the present district headquarters of Cachar.”® The association between Cachar and the Kacharis, however, is

not universally accepted. According to another theory, the name Cachar was given to the district by the Bengalis of neighboring Sylhet. Cachar’s name is said to derive from the Sanskrit “Kaccha,” which means a “place near water.” The name of the Kutch region in Gujarat, according to this theory, has the same derivation. The term “Kachari” then refers not only to the Dimasa Kachari people,

but also to the Bengalis of Cachar. “Kachari” or “Cachari” is how the people of neighboring Sylhet used to refer to the people of Cachar.”° HistorianJ.B. Bhattacharjee describes Cachar as consisting of two distirct divisions, North Cachar Hills which were a con-

Contested Identity, Culture Wars, andBreakup

103

tinuation of the Assam range or Meghalaya plateau, and Cachar Plains that “was geographically, historically and ethnically an extension of Gangetic Bengal.” As a natural extension of the Bengal plains, Bhattacharjee believes, the Cachar Valley has been inhabited by Bengalis, and the Dimasa Kacharis have mostly been in the hills. Thus migration from Bengal to Cachar began well before the colonial period. However, the Bengali population did increase substantially after the British annexation. The Dimasa Kacharis, Bhattacharjee argues, were influenced by Bengali culture; the language of the Dimasa kings was Bengali and their inscriptions and coins were in Sanskrit, written in the Bengali script.?’

To many Bengalis of Cachar, therefore, it is an accident of history that Bengali-speaking Cachar is a part of Assam. A Bengali writer from Cachar describes this as one of the legacies of the partition of Bengal of 1905, or rather of the unfinished agenda of the annulment of the partition in 1912. “Even though . . . Lord Curzon’s plan of dividing up Bengal was frustrated,” writes Paritosh Pal Choudhury, the Bengali districts of Cachar, Sylhet, and Goalpara remained in Assam.?® Pal Choudhury’s assertion of Goalpara’s linguistic and cultural ties to Bengal, of course, is hotly contested — as I have pointed out in Chapter 4. Whatever the historical arguments, the fact remains that in modern times, in terms of cultural, intellectual, and political currents,

Cachar has been more tied to Bengal than to the rest of Assam. Thus it is entirely consistent with its recent history that during the “language riots” of 1960-61, a non-official commission, constituted by Bengali organizations in Cachar to inquire into a police firing on Bengalis in Silchar, consisted entirely of legal figures from West Bengal. It included Sidhartha Sankar Ray, who later became West

Bengal’s Chief Minister and the Indian Ambassador to the United States, and his wife Maya Ray was the secretary of the commission.” The inquiry commission in its report dwelt on the history of Assam during the colonial period and the numerical primacy of Bengalis in colonial Assam. “Prior to the partition of India in 1947 the entire district of Sylhet along with the district of Cachar formed part of the Province of Assam and the Bengalis constituted the largest single linguistic group in that Province.” In the census of 1931, it pointed out, 3.9 million people spoke Bengali as mother

104

Chapters

tongue, as against 2 million Assamese speakers. While 2.8 million of these people were in the Surma Valley Division comprising Sylhet and Cachar, the Assam Valley (the word used for the Brahmaputra Valley) too had 1.1 million Bengali speakers. Bengali-speaking people, the report pointed out, question the accuracy of the 1951 cen-

sus figures on the number of Assamese speakers. They numbered 2 million in 1931 and increased to 4.9 million in 1951 —an increase of 150 percent in 20 years. As I have noted before, the identification of Muslims of Bengali descent in the Brahmaputra Valley as Assamese speakers is the major explanation for this rise. However, the Bengalis, said the report, believe that these figures were inflated in order tojustify the introduction of Assamese as the official language.*” Bengali intellectuals and organizations in Cachar typically speak not for Cachar alone but for Bengalis in the Brahmaputra Valley as well. A document submitted as a memorandum to the States Reorganisation Commission from a Bengali organization of Cachar challenges the notion that Assam should necesarily have an Assamese public identity. While by “Assamese” the educated class of the people of that name meant only those and none but those who inhabited the five districts of the Assam Valley and, not exceeding three millions in all, formed just a third of the total population, by the word “Assam” they understood the entire geographical area called by that name on the map and five times as large as Assam proper. And they wanted to rule over the whole, impose their language and culture upon the whole, and draw the substance out of the whole only for their own prosperity. . .. No Indian worth his salt had fought a life-and-death battle against British colonialism for half acentury in order to accept it in the native garb from his own countrymen.”!

The memorandum attributed ethnic Assamese aspirations to their parochialism. Because of the physical barriers of hills and mountains and bad communications, said the memorandum,

“the India

consciousness did not soak into the Assamese mind” as it has done in more “cosmopolitan” Bengal. The “steam-roller of Assam for the Assamese,” the memorandum

warned, has “started moving slowly but surely.”*? Another Bengali writer from Cachar expressed the Bengali fears about the Official Language Bill of 1960 as follows: soon even in Cachar, our children will be forced to learn Assamese.

Perhaps in another three years,

like Goalpara, Cachar too will have no Bengali schools left.°8

Contested Identity, Culture Wars, and Breakup

105

Assam’ “Language Riots” The most notorious “language riots” in Assam were in 1960 and 1961, before and after the passing of the Official Language Bill by the state Assembly. “Riots” on a smaller scale occurred in 1972 over the decision of Gauhati University to switch to Assamese as the language of undergraduate education. In both instances, there were violent conflicts between ethnic Assamese and Hindu Bengalis, and deaths as a result of inter-ethnic conflicts as well as of police attempts to control protest demonstrations and riots. Those killed became martyrs, and the deaths added to emotions both sides could mobilize on the language question. For instance, an ethnic Assamese student, Ranjit Barpujari, who was killed by police fire during the language riots of 1960, is honored as “the first martyr of the mother language.” The dormitory of the government college in Guwahati, where he was a resident, is now named after him.

An Assamese student leader who was murdered during the violence of 1972, Anil Bora, is also honored as a martyr. On the Bengali side, for instance, Paritosh Pal Choudhury’s book Cacharer Kanna (The

Cry of Cachar) has a frontispiece with pictures of eleven garlanded dead bodies of people killed in 1961 as a result of police firing on a demonstration in support of Bengali in Silchar.* The turmcil of 1960-61 ended with a compromise initiated by the pan-Indian Congress leader Lal Bahadur Shastri. He proposed that the Assam Official Languages Act be amended (a) to give local bodies the authority to alter the official language of their area by a two-thirds majority; (b) to allow communication between the state capital and Cachar and the hill districts to continue to be in English; (c) at the state level to continue the use of English along with Assamese; and (d) to incorporate stronger provisions for the protection of linguistic minorities.*° Despite some opposition, the law was amended along those lines. Another outbreak of “language riots” was in 1972, when Gauhati

University decided to introduce Assamese as the language of education in the colleges under its jurisdiction. To be sure there were exceptions, especially some that took into account the conditions in areas outside the reorganized borders of Assam, that had col-

leges within the university’s jurisdiction. When it comes to Assam’s language controversies, M. S. Prabhakara wrote sardonically

106

Chapter5

in reporting on this episode, “the politically interesting issue is the exceptions.” Initially among the exceptions were colleges in Manipur, Naganued Bengali would have conti— r —where Cacha land, Meghalaya, and NEFA.*° There was predictable opposition to this decision, especially from Bengali organizations. They wanted Bengali to be the language of college education not only in Cachar, but in the rest of Assam as well. After a tense period that included some outbreaks of ethnic violence, the controversy came to an end

with the intervention of D. K. Barooah, then a member of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s cabinet. Barooah was an old hand in Assam politics. He suggested a compromise formula that allowed for the continuation of English and removed any compulsion on the matter of colleges switching to Assamese.*’

New Delhi and the Northeast: The Politics of Creating New States It is sometimes suggested that the reason for the progressive fragmentation of colonial Assam (compare Maps 3 and 4) was the aggressive cultural policies pursued by Assam’s ethnic Assamese leadership. The “rigid stand on the question of Assamese being rec-

ognised as the sole official language of the state,” one observer argues, has contributed significantly to the desire of Assam’s “tribal” populations to opt for separation. “A more imaginative language policy” on the part of the Axom Xahitya Xobha, it has been suggested, “could perhaps have slowed down the alienation of the hill tribes from the Assamese people.”** While Assam’s language policies did play a role, their significance in the breakup of colonial

Assam is often exaggerated. Close analysis of the process of creating new states in the northeast by Shibanikinkar Chaube*® suggests that the prime mover was almost always the central government. Unlike the reorganization of states in many other parts of India that responded to sustained political mobilization, redrawing boundaries in the northeast was more a top-down process. This applies even when new states were formed in response to actual —and what policymakers thought of as potential — separatist insurgencies, for it was New Delhi that originated the idea that creating separate states would somehow make insurgencies go away. Indeed, the fact that a number of crucial

Contested Identity, Culture Wars, and Breakup

107

steps in carving new states out of Assam were made during a period

of Indian politics well known for centralization of power— the time of Indira Gandhi’s prime ministership — is hardly accidental. My point is not that the breakup of Assam and the creation of new states were entirely avoidable. Some of the aspirations for cultural and political autonomy that have become apparent among the “tribal” peoples of colonial Assam since independence are, of course, part of the democratic spirit of our times. As I pointed out in Chapter 2, colonial Assam included both territories and peoples with whom the Ahom polity—the cultural heartland of modern Assam — had close ties and those with whom such ties were minimal or even nonexistent. There are additional factors that would have, in any case, militated against the continuation

of old Assam, for

example, the profound social, economic, and cultural changes of the colonial period that made old assimilative modes of cultural change among “tribals” out-of-date, and the necessarily exclusionary logic of language-based subnationalisms in India that Assamese subnationalism could hardly avoid. Nevertheless, it was by no means obvious that these aspirations had to lead to separate statehood in each case. Once New Delhi’s fondness for carving separate states out of Assam became evident, it profoundly affected the state’s politics. It energized movements for separation and discouraged a politics of accommodation. Some of the worst consequences of this policy have become evident in the case of the movement for a Bodo homeland. In this case the gap between the aspiration for a Bodo homeland and the ethnic realities on the ground has made for a particularly violent political configuration. The central government’s power to create new states and to change state boundaries has been of enormous consequence to the politics of Assam. The Indian Constitution gives the central Parliament the power to form a new state, change state boundaries,

change the name of a state—and it can do all that with simple majorities. These actions are not even considered constitutional amendments. The voice of even the state or states concerned is limited to the “views of the legislatures being ascertained by the President of India.” Granville Austin estimates that two dozen or so

amendments made by simple majorities have changed state boundaries or created new states in India.*! The laws forming new states out of Assam were all passed with simple majorities in Parliament.

108

Chapter5

The first step in the reorganization of boundaries of Assam was the separation of the Naga areas and the eventual creation of Naga—a land (see Map 4). It was a response to the Naga insurgency political strategy that accompanied the anti-insurgency operations of the security forces. A special area called the Naga Hills Tuensang Area was formed in 1957, combining the Naga areas of the Naga Hills district and the Tuensang district of NEFA. In December 1963 the state of Nagaland was inaugurated. The Assam Assembly did not have much voice in the matter. The Assembly’s resolution illustrates its profound ambivalence; but, given India’s weak federalism, the

state legislature had to acquiesce in the decision made by New Delhi. The resolution read as follows: This Assembly is of the opinion that in the interest of national solidarity and also with a view to bringing about a coordinated development and greater political stability of the Eastern region of India, there should be an integrated political and administrative set up of various units within this area and nothing shouldbe done which may have an effect of weakening this unity. . . . This Assembly is of the view that the provisions of the State of Nagaland Bill, 1962, are not conducive to the aforementioned objectives. . . This Assembly, however, notes, that the Government of India is

committed to the setting up of Nagaland as a separate state within the Indian Union.”

In 1966 the Mizo National Front launched an insurgency in the Mizo Hills district of Assam. In 1972 the district was made into a Union Territory, and later into a state (see Map 4). As in the case of

Nagaland, on this decision too the state Assembly did not have much voice, The formation of Mizoram, nonetheless, did respond to a dream instilled by the Mizo National Front to bring together the Zo people — historically called Chin or Khyan by the Burmese and Lushai and Kuki in northeastern India. The formation of Mizoram represents the partial fulfillment of developing a pan-Zo identity, and a state of the Zo people, who have developed a sense of peoplehood even though they speak 38 different dialects.** Chaube gives an account of Mizo politics in the early 1970s when the proposal to constitute the Mizo Hills district into a Union Territory had come up. While the Assam Provincial Congress was critical of the move, the Mizo Hills District Council supported it and “with the blessings of the Mizo ministers,” Mizo students rallied to have the new

Contested Identity, Culture Wars, and Breakup

109

entity incorporate not only the Mizo Hills district, but other Mizo areas as well.** If in creating Nagaland and Mizoram the Assam Assembly was at least consulted, in deciding to separate the North East Frontier Agency

(NEFA) — today’s Arunachal

Pradesh

—from

Assam

even

this courtesy was not extended to the Assam Legislative Assembly. There was no movement for a separate state of Arunachal Pradesh. Separating the area from Assam, and: then making it into a separate state, was entirely a product of New Delhi’s strategic consid-

erations —its response to India’s border conflict with China. In colonial Assam the area— then known as the North East Frontier Tracts — was one of the “excluded areas” described in Chapter 2. At independence, the Constituent Assembly’s committee that looked into the “excluded and partially excluded areas of Assam” recommended a temporary continuation of the colonial arrrangement until the area could be fully merged with Assam. But when India’s border dispute with China unfolded and the area acquired strategic significance the central government made the External Affairs Ministry the administrative agency in charge of the area. The North East Frontier Agency (NEFA) was created in 1954 and was later transferred to the Home Ministry. In 1969 an Agency Council was formed with legislative functions. In 1972 NEFA was made into a Union Territory, and it was given a new Sanskritic name, Arunachal Pradesh. It became a separate state in 1987 (see Map 4). Well before Arunachal Pradesh was separated from Assam, cultural policies adopted by the NEFA administration — a central gov-

ernment body— sought to separate the area from Assam as much as possible. The policy is most apparent in the case of educational policies— the introduction of the Devanageri script for writing the dialects of the area, and the affiliation of the schools started in

the area to the central schools system rather than to Assam’s provincial educational structure. Yet the “burden” for students, writes Chaube, could have been reduced if the NEFA dialects had been given the Assamese script, since except for Monpa, all major NEFA dialects have affinity with Assamese. According to Chaube, the justification for this education policy-was its political goals: in order for NEFA to be politically separate a “cultural barrier” had to be created. Indian policymakers, Chaube pointed out, approached the

110

Chapter 5

question of reorganizing state boundaries in the northeast in a way fundamentally differently from that in the rest of the country. “One wonders why,” wrote Chaube,

“when balkanization of the rest of

India is so much disfavored by responsible national leadership, NEFA should be granted an unsolicited separation. Statehood of NEFA is a euphemism for separation from Assam.”* In the case of the creation of Meghalaya (see Map 4), there was a

campaign demanding a “hill state,” and Assam’s language policies did play a part. But it was more that; at a time when the hills parties were in “real disarray,” the Assamese language issue “helped them to unite on a common

platform.” The campaign for a hill state,

sponsored by the All Party Hill Leaders Conference (APHLC), was nothing like the campaigns for statehood in other parts of India. This campaign was quite low-key and achieved its goal relatively easily. Chaube attributes the APHLC’s success partly to New Delhi’s new approach to such demands; the Naga situation had taught the government of India the importance of “keeping minorities in the border region satisfied.”*®Of course if this goal was successful, one would have had less quarrel with this strategy.

The Failures of Reorganization It is far from clear that dividing Assam was the best possible way of constructing a stable order in the northeast. If the new states were attempts to contain or preempt separatist insurgencies, considering the situation today, the strategy cannot exactly be called a success. Insurgents in today’s northeast are not just marginal political actors; they and supposedly mainstream political players blur into each other. About quarter of a century ago, a Naga intellectual wrote that “the underground Nagas continue to be ‘patriots’ in the eyes of all Naga nationalists and ‘rebels’ in the eyes of India.”*” The changes since then are significant, but not exactly what the “nation-builders”

may have had in mind. As recently as 1994, the Governor of Nagaland complained that important political leaders in the state— including those of the ruling Congress Party —were in league with insurgents. Political leaders in New Delhi too have known and complained about complicity between insurgents and mainstream political leaders in a number of northeastern states, But, as Prabhakara wrote in 1994, the Congress Party’s leadership in New Delhi seemed

Contested Identity, Culture Wars, and Breakup

111

to regard the same leaders whom they accuse, behind their backs, of nursing insurgencies, as “loyal Congressmen.”*8 Obviously no party in New Delhi can win elections in these states without friends like these. Like Horam in 1974, Prabhakara in 1994 observed that the local politicians who give “lip service” to the cause of fighting insurgency often benefit enormously from the central government's “largesse.” In a piece on an election campaign for the Nagaland Assembly in 1989, Prabhakara had outlined what he calls a “strategy” that Congress leadership in New Delhi had decided on: a strategy to buy peace, quite literally, “by pouring in money and hoping that this will over time break the back of the insurgency by creating a class of persons having a vested interest in peace and ‘development’.” But things had not quite worked out that way, he wrote. New Delhi’s cynicism was now matched by that of the voter in Nagaland: “Insurgency itself has now come to be seen as a necessary condition for the continued flow of Central subventions to Nagaland.”* Perhaps one of the oddest effects of the reorganization of Assam is the border disputes between some of these states that mirror border disputes between countries. These disputes have occasionally been quite serious. To take one example, there was friction over the location of a government office and the jurisdiction of two state governments over disputed territories. A meeting of officials managed to resolve this particular dispute. But the arguments were not uninteresting. “While the Assam delegation,” said a newspaper report, argued for “the acceptance of the Assam government's notification of 1933 as the basis for proposed demarcation, the Mizoram team stridently argued that the 1875 inner-line notification be accepted as the norm.” The reporter notes that “whether this consensus of opinion will last long is debatable as the controversy over the line of demarcation has simmered for over a century now.”°° At the same time there is surely some irony in the fact that, in the northeast of today, insurgents and even mainstream “regional” political parties emphasize the commonality of the problems of the “seven sisters” — the five states that were once part of Assam — and Manipur and Tripura. In a song by Bhupen Hazarika the seven states of northeastern India are portrayed as seven sisters born of the same mother. The lyric suggests the impact of these divisions on the Assamese subnational imagination. In Chapter 7, I show how separatist militants in the 1980s tap into this theme. In Haza-

112

Chapter5

rika’s lyrics, the undivided territory of Assam is the mother and the breakup of Assam is a story of seven sisters being married away. “Mother, we are seven sisters who once played together in the sunny sands of the river Luit” (another name for the river Brahmaputra). Here is how the lyrics depict three of the new states: “Meghalaya went her own way as soon as she was old enough, Arunachal too separated and Mizoram appeared in Assam’s gateway as a groom to marry another daughter.” The portrait of Tripura is interesting: “I have built my home in the frontier of Bengal to keep an eye on the enemy’s movements. .. . Mother, please don’t leave me out.” Of all the northeastern states, Tripura, which borders on Bangladesh, has

changed its demographic picture the most as a result of immigration from East Bengal. The indigenous Tripuris are now a small minority; hence the motif of recognition and identity. The lyrics end with a determination to keep the unity of the Assamese with other smaller nationalities that are left in present-day Assam — “the Karbis and the Mising brothers and sisters are our dear ones.” Echoing a theme in the ideology of ULFA, Hazarika’s lyrics celebrate the reunion of the seven sisters in a new “emotional unity” that is more powerful than the State-drawn boundaries. The lyrics end with a warning against those — the Indian State seems to be the obvious referent —who attempt to break this great unity.°! If in much of India reorganization of colonial provinces can be called a success, the same cannot be said about the reorganization of Assam. Apart from the failures indicated above, the evident impasse over Bodoland —and the enormous violence that the vision of a Bodo homeland has generated — is evidence of the monumen-

tal cost of a short-sighted policy that India’s weak federalism has made possible. Conclusion In 1960, as the demand for Assamese to be recognized as Assam’s

official language was gaining momentum, Assam’s far-sighted Chief Minister B. P. Chaliha said that while there may be many good reasons why Assam should have a state language, “the government would prefer to wait until they get the same demand from the nonAssamese speaking population for declaring Assamese as the state language.”°? These comments were, of course, quite out of tune

Contested Identity, Culture Wars, and Breakup

113

with the subnationalist emotions of the time. The Assam Tribune ridiculed the statement as “extremely odd and thoughtless.”°5 But such a course, if pursued, might have shaped a very different political future for Assam. At that time, however, Chaliha’s proposal had litle chance of being accepted by the ethnic Assamese. For the language demand, after all, was in an important sense a proxy issue — an embattled nationality trying symbolically to shape the public identity of “their” land that had been turned into a land frontier. Given the cultural grammar of the nation-province, there was a self-evident quality to this demand in ethnic Assamese eyes. It was unlikely that a distinctly Assamese solution as Chaliha had proposed — independent from the pan-Indian cultural grammar of the nation-province — would have been acceptable under the conditions that prevailed in Assam in 1960. If the Assamese were ever given a choice between the breakup of Assam and more inclusionary cultural policies, the choice would have been clear. But the Assamese never faced such a choice. The logic of political bargaining between ethnic communities could have produced such choices, and, faced with such choices, cultural policy outcomes that

were more in tune with the ethnopolitical realities of Assam had a chance of emerging. Unfortunately, India’s weak federalism did not have political space for this kind of inclusionary politics. Once the decision was made in New Delhi to create new states to contain and preempt insurgencies, Assam simply had to go along with that decision. The long-term risks received no consideration. Be that as it may, when one looks at the potential volatility of the immigration issue, one can still say that Assamese as the official language— the symbol of an Assamese Assam — superimposed on Assam’s multiethnic landscape did manage to keep a semblance of political peace in Assam for a time, but at great cost. It assuaged the fears of the ethnic Assamese and, despite the alienation of segments of Assam’s “tribal” population, it managed to achieve some limited form of ethnic accommodation in the residual state of Assam. The Muslims of Bengali descent allied with the ethnic Assamese on cultural policy issues —in a very literal sense because they identified themselves as Assamese speakers in the census, making the case for an Assamese Assam plausible. The Bengali Hindus, on the other hand, became the most vociferous opponents of this policy. But even during those relatively peaceful years—relatively, because

114

Chapter5

these years also produced the “language riots” — Assam’s quiet crisis of immigration did threaten to blow up from time to ume. For instance, in 1965, when relations between India and Pakistan were

deteriorating, the Assam government, under instructions from New Delhi, began expelling Pakistani “infiltrators.” But eleven members of the state legislative assembly protested and threatened to resign, saying that Indian Muslims were harassed. The process was then stopped. At other times, major Assamese Muslim politicians—both ethnic Assamese Muslims and Muslims of Bengali descent — had to be persuaded, by clever central politicians, to relinquish their claims to Assam’s chief ministership. They were encouraged to seek greener pastures in the pan-Indian arena, because it was feared that their chief ministership could be read as a sign of growing “immigrant power,” and that could be politically destabilizing. Among these politicians were Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, who became the President of India, and Moinul Haque Chaudhuri, who was a member of Indira Gandhi’s central cabinet in the early 1970s.°4 In 1978 Myron Weiner observed that the “unexpected beneficiary” of Assam’s language conflicts were the Muslims of Bengali descent. While Bengali Hindus and the ethnic Assamese fought out those culture wars, there was what Weiner called “an unspoken coalition between the Assamese and the Bengali Muslims against the Bengali Hindus.” But it was “not a wholly stable coalition,” since “a new major influx of Bengali Muslims into Assam” or the “coalascence of Bengali Hindus and Bengali Muslims” could shatter that coalition.*° This, of course, is what happened in the late 1970s, when reports of a fresh spate of immigration from Bangladesh produced the six-year-long anti-immigration stir, followed by two insurgencies and the violence of present-day Assam. These developments will be the subject of the next three chapters.

Chapter 6 Protest Against Immigration, Ethnic Rifts, and Assam’

Crisis of Governability

The six years between 1979 and 1985 were the years of the “Assam movement” —a campaign protesting what was alleged to be a de facto Indian government policy of admitting and enfranchising “foreigners.” The leaders of the campaign argued that immigrants from foreign countries— mostly from what was East Pakistan from 1947 to 1971 and then became the sovereign state of Bangladesh, and some from Nepal — unless they were explicitly given citizenship status in India, were “foreigners” or illegal aliens. The allegation that many noncitizens were inappropriately enfranchised made official lists of voters suspect, and the holding of elections in Assam became a highly controversial affair. Because of organized opposition to the holding of elections in December 1979, twelve of the fourteen Assam seats in the Indian parliament went unfilled. The 1983 elections to the state assembly took place in the face of a boycott, and there were large-scale violence and extremely low turnout

in many areas. During the six years of the campaign, governmental institutions in Assam were quite embattled. Direct rule by the central government had to be imposed intermittently, as party aligments changed reflecting the political mood in the streets and elected governments lost their majorities in the state assembly. At the same time the government of India engaged the leaders of

the protest movement in negotiations, and eventually in August 1985 the government and the campaigners agreed on a compro-

116

Chapter 6

mise. Apart from a compromise on the “foreigners” question, the Assam Accord was a broad settlement that included other significant promises on key cultural and economic developmental concerns that had animated Assamese subnational politics. Among them were a clause ‘in the accord

that promised “constitutional,

legislative and administrative safeguards . . . to protect, preserve and promote the cultural, social, linguistic identity and heritage of

the Assamese people.” Another clause renewed the Indian government’s commitment to the “all round economic development of Assam” and a special commitment to establishing advanced institutions of learning in the fields of science and technology.’ On the immediate question of “foreigners” in Assam, it was agreed that they would be classified into a number of categories based on when they had entered India. Some of them were to be given citizenship rights, some were to be disenfranchised temporarily, and more recent ones were to be deported. These measures,

however, were extremely difficult to implement because of the difficulties of legally determining who was a foreigner. Indeed, in retrospect these sweeping public commitments by the government of India seem rather astonishing. The imperative for seeking a compromise lay in the legal ambiguity on the status of immigrants from East Pakistan— today’s Bangladesh — the ambiguity the leaders of the Assam movement used in order to mobilize the campaign. The accord’s commitment to protect the “identity and heritage of the Assamese people” was also not easy to implement. As would be apparent from the the cultural policy controversies of the past, the accord’s implicit assumption of an equivalence between the people who live in Assam and “the Assamese people” was naive. The Bodo upsurge dramatically spelled out the political hazards of this confusion. With the Assam movement,

the explosive issue of immigration,

which was somewhat dormant for nearly four decades — obscured by the focus on cultural policy issues—returned to Assam’s public agenda with a vengeance. Because of the partition of India in 1947, the issue now acquired a constitutional and legal dimension. The entry and the enfranchisement of the newer immigrants from the region, the campaigners argued, was illegal. The citizenship status of many of the newer immigrants was ambiguous for three reasons. (a) While the laws on Indian citizenship did not take account of the

Protest, Ethnic Rifts, and Governability

117

possibility of a continuous flow of Hindu refugees from what was East Pakistan and subsequently became Bangladesh, informally an obligation toward refugees of partition was widely accepted in the rest of India. (b) The difficulties of monitoring the IndoBangladesh border against both Hindu political immigrants and Muslim

economic

immigrants.

(c) Since in India having docu-

ments of identification was the exception, it was difficult to deter-

mine who was a legitimate resident and who had entered the country illegally. The cultural policy issues on which Assamese subnational organizations had been so focused since independence had obscured the immigration issue. But the concern for Assam having an Assamese public identity, as I have said in the last chapter, was in some ways a surrogate for the concern with immigration. The Assam movement had an impact on other northeastern states as well, where similar, but much less sustained, protest took place. One of the legacies of the Assam movement is a sustained crisis of governmental legitimacy that continues to this day. The perceived failure of the Assam movement to resolve Assam’s immigration crisis led to a radicalization of Assamese

subnationalism,

giving it a separatist turn. An-

other effect of the sustained campaign was the rupturing of ties between a number of ethnic groups. There were episodes of violence between “indigenous” and “immigrant” communities. The campaign also led to friction between the ethnic Assamese and some of Assam’s “plains tribal” groups—the Bodo movement of today is in some ways an outgrowth of the Assam movement. In this chapter I make three analytical points. First; I explain the enormous popular support for the campaign by the successful mobilization of Assamese subnationalism. Second, I emphasize the significance of the constitutional and legal framing of the issue. I argue against the position that the illegal immigration controversy is really another way of engaging in ethnic conflict — between Assamese and Bengalis—as certain analysis based on ethnicity-obsessed paradigms might suggest.? That view underestimates the capacity of the Constitution and laws to construct a normative universe, and the destabilizing effects of the erosion of law-as-meaning on social and political order.’ There is no reason to attribute to ethnic difference such a privileged position that the coherence of the normative universe of the Constitution and law would have to take the back

118

Chapter 6

seat as an explanatory variable. Third, I will relate the ethnic rifts to

the political process of organizing the campaign and the State’s efforts to defeat the campaign politically.

The Constitution, Laws, and Assam’s “Foreigners” The organizations behind the Assam movement estimated the number of “foreigners” in Assam to be as high as 4.5 to 5 million, or 31 to 34 percent of the total population of the state in 1971.4 As I said in Chapter 4, the task of estimating numbers is extremely difficult. The conditions in Assam are far from those of a “modern” legal regime of documentation where citizens can be expected to have some form of written identification. For all practical purposes, people are assumed to be citizens — and the presumption includes the right to vote — unless someone stands out because of prevailing notions of phenotypical or racial stereotypes. Framing the question in terms of the laws and the Constitution was a major reason the Assam movement was successful in mobilizing popular support. If social movements both consume and produce existing cultural meanings,” the Assam movement drew on cultural meanings derived from the Constitution. Because of it, the

movement presented a serious challenge to the government. The focus on illegal immigration by the Assam movement illustrates a contradiction: the Constitution and the laws shaped the acceptance of many immigrants as much as it shaped the non-acceptance of many others. The other side of the opposition to illegal immigration and the enfranchisement of “illegals,” in fact, was the ac-

ceptance of immigrants whose stay in Assam was seen as legal— immigrants and descendants of immigrants who came a long time ago and those who came from other parts of India. Yet, as I have noted in Chapter 1, what the Assamese see as illegal immigration is not necessarily viewed that way at the pan-Indian level. At the same

time, as described in Chapter 4, the Assamese

construction of the problem has its own long history dating back to the 1930s. After the large-scale population movements that followed the partition of 1947, the Constitution of India had fixed July 19, 1948

as the deadline for migrants from what became Pakistan to claim citizenship in India. However, the procedure for gaining Indian

Protest, Ethnic Rifts, and Governability

119

citizenship for those who moved after that was quite easy. When post-partition riots led to more migration of minorities from East Pakistan to India and from India to East Pakistan, a treaty between the two countries, popularly called the Nehru-Liaqat pact, prescribed that refugees returning home by December 31, 1950 would be entitled to get back their property, effectively “pushing back the date beyond the Constitution’s July 19, 1948 to the end of 1950.” The Nehru-Liaqat pact created a fiction that “once calm was restored the refugees would return to their homes across the border unlike the western region where the exchange of population was treated as final.”® Legally speaking, there is thus some ambiguity about the status of Hindu immigrants who have crossed over to India since the 1950s. In the case of Muslim immigrants, while there may not be any informal obligation growing out of the partition, many Indian laws were not prone to distinguishing between Hindu and Muslim immigrants from East Pakistan / Bangladesh. However, there are exceptions. The Immigrants

(Expulsion from Assam)

Act of 1950 implicitly

distinguished between Hindu refugees and Muslim illegal aliens. But the law was repealed in 1957.’ Then a secret administrative order from the government of India in 1965 said that East Pakistani minorities, that is Hindus, settled in India for more than six months

could be granted citizenship by a District Magistrate following some very easy procedures. The administrative order was withdrawn in 1971, but the order became a source of dispute in the negotiations between the Assam movement leaders and the government. The campaigners argued that the order “could not stand the scrutiny of law,” while the government “fought shy of the suggestion that this be given over to a high judicial authority for consideration.”* It is not surprising, therefore, that during the negotiations there were formulations such as detecting “foreigners” based on the Constitution, National Register of Citizens of 1951, and “other relevant documents.” The last phrase, asjournalist Shekhar Gupta puts it,

was “the agitator’s nightmare as they felt it can include anything from ration cards to hand-cart licenses.”® In the negotiations, the campaigners could easily hold their own, since many laws were indeed on their side. They could even embarrass the government of India by quoting from the government's own past statements that acknowledged the seriousness of Assam’s

120

Chapter 6

illegal immigration problem. Indeed, just prior to the Assam movement a statement that gave voiceto the Assamese concern came from no other than India’s Chief Election Officer —the principal officer in charge of conducting free and fair elections. In a speech to state-level election officers on October 24, 1978 that came to be frequently quoted by supporters of the Assam movement, S. L. Shakdher had said: I would like to refer to the alarming situation in some states, especially in the North eastern region, wherefrom reports are coming regarding largescale inclusions of foreign nationals in the electoral rolls. In one case, the population in 1971] census recorded an increase as high as 34.98 percent over 1961 census figures and this figure was attributed to the influx of large number of persons from foreign countries. The influx has become a regular feature. I think it may not be a wrong assessment to make that on the basis of increase of 34.98 percent between two census, the increase would likely to be recorded in the 1991 census would be more than 100 percent over 1961 census. In other words, a stage would be reached when that state may have to reckon with the foreign nationals who may be in all probability constitute a sizeable percentage if not the majority of population in the state.!°

A reprint of adocument called “Influx” produced in 1963 by the public relations section of India’s Ministry of External Affairs made its rounds in Assam during the campaign, and the agitators embarrassed the government by citing it.'! Produced at a time when Bangladesh was East Pakistan, a part of an “enemy country,”

the

pamphlet sought to establish that large-scale immigration from East Pakistan had occurred into Assam, West Bengal, and Tripura.

Using methods very close to those of the leaders of the Assam movement, the document related the rise of the Muslim population in

those Indian states with a corresponding decline in the population in East Pakistani districts. While the “population of Pakistan as a whole increased by 23.7 percent during 1951-61,” the pamphlet said, “the population of East Pakistan rose only by 20.9 percent.” Since there is no scientific evidence to suggest that the fertility in East Pakistan is lower than in West Pakistan, what accounts for the difference, the pamphlet said, was the “constant and successful pressure on the Hindu minority in East Pakistan to migrate to India” and “infiltration by the Muslim population of East Pakistan into the border Indian states of Assam, West Bengal and Tripura.”!?

Protest, Ethnic Rifts, and Governability

121

Journalist Shekhar Gupta cites a secret memorandum of the Indian Intelligence Bureau in 1965, which proposed ways for “preventing infiltration from Pakistan to Assam.” The memorandum “conservatively estimated” the number of illegal immigrants from East Pakistan into Assam over the preceding twelve years at about 250,000, apparently including only Muslim immigrants. Since “it is always difficult to remove an immigrant after he has entered the territory and he has settled down for some time,” the memorandum explores ways to “stop this infiltration at the border, and make it unattractive for the Pakistanis to come to Assam by denying them benefits which lure them into this State.”'’ The proposals were not unlike the ones proposed by the leaders of the Assam campaign fifteen years later.

State, Civil Society, and the Organization of the Assam Movement A by-election to a parliamentary constituency in Assam in 1978 focused fresh public attention on Assam’s problem ofillegal immigration. In retrospect, the controversy over the by-election became the proximate episode that led to the six-year-long Assam movement. The Mangaldoi parliamentary constituency has a heavy concentration of Muslim voters of Bengali descent. At that time there were a number of reports of fresh immigration from Bangladesh to Assam. The statement from India’s Chief Election Officer, Shakhder, cited above, came at that time. To many ethnic Assamese, re-

ports that the number of voters in Mangaldoi had gone up phenomenally even in the two years since the previous election sent alarm

bells. Following

available

procedures,

thousands

of com-

plaints were lodged during the revision of electoral rolls challenging the citizenship of voters on the list. In the face of complaints that large numbers of Indian citizens— Muslims of Bengali descent, Bengali Hindus, and some ethnic Assamese Muslims—were harassed, the exercise had to be stopped, but only after accentuating ethnic Assamese fears. On June 8, 1979 the All Assam Students Union (AASU) sponsored a twelve-hour general strike (in the state bandh) to demand the “detection, disenfranchisement and deportation” of foreign-

ers. On August 26, 1979 a few political and cultural organizations,

122

Chapter 6

including the Axom Xahitya Xobha, came together to form a coalition called Axom Gono Xongram Porixod (Committee for the Assam People’s Struggle) to coordinate a statewide campaign to draw attention to Assam’s problem of illegal immigration. That was the beginning of the six-year Assam movement. The leadership of the movement declared established political parties to be “irrelevant” to the problems of the state, and successfully mobilized campaigns of nonrecognition of elected state governments, arguing that they were elected on the basis of invalid electoral rolls that had included large numbers of illegal aliens who should not have voted. The campaign was committed to the goal of sorting out the issue of the accuracy of the electoral rolls before any future election would take place in Assam. In Chapter 4, I draw attention to the music of Bhupen Hazarika as a genre of popular Assamese music that has remarkable resonance with the national narrative of the Assamese. The lyric of a song by Hazarika composed in 1968 anticipate the Assam movement. The lyric establishes a continuity with a poem by late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literary figure Lakkhinath Bezbarua: “We Assamese are not poor, In what sense are we poor? We had everything and we have everything, but we don’t know it and we don’t take stock of it.” The lyric begins by referring to the words in Bezbarua’s poem, known to many educated Assamese: “It won’t do to take solace in the words that we Assamese are not poor; today’s Assamese must know themselves — become self-aware as a people — or else Assam will be doomed. Today’s Assamese must save themselves or else they will become refugees in their own land” —a phrase used frequently by the ideologues of the Assam movement. The lyric revives the sayings of Assamese historical and cultural heroes and stresses Assam’s multiculturalism: “those who have come from afar and have called the land of the Luit mother are the neo-Assamese.” While the 1968 version of the song was a reminder that the calls to action by successive Assamese heroes were unanswered, a 1980 version of the same song celebrates what was then happening in the streets of Assam. Instead of rebuke for indifference of a decade ago, there is now a newfound pride in the new

generation of Assamese: “today we have martyrs who can say that if Assam dies, we too will die.”'* Thus, while the 1968 version sang of the absence of “an Ambikagiri [Raychaudhuri]

to remind us day

Protest, Ethnic Rifts, and Governability

123

and night that the country is gone,” the 1980 version says: “Today thousands are responding to Ambikagiri’s call.” !® Two organizations that played a central role in the Assam movement were the Axom Xahitya Xobha and the All Assam Students

Union. Both organizations call themselves “nonpolitical”; they both portray themselves as reluctant entrants to the political realm. I referred to the Axom Xahitya Xobha in Chapter 4. The Xobha with its motto “My mother language — my eternal love” had its first session in 1917. It meets every year, with culture, music, science,

and history sessions. The president of the Xobha in 1967 referred to the meetings of the Xobha as Assam’s Jatiyo Jogyo (the great national sacrifice) and thanked members for honoring him with the “most respected chair of the nation.”'® The Xobha has consistently sought to promote the Assamese language in Assam. Writing about

the role it played in 1959-60 in the campaign to recognize Assamese as the official language of the state, Maheswar Neog—a major figure in that organization — wrote, “these events have raised the institution in the general esteem and mark the start of another phase, when the Xobha began attracting crowds like the National Congress sessions and other political festivals.”'’ In 1971 the General Secretary of the Xobha responded to the criticism that the Xobha meeetings, instead of being gatherings of writers and critics had become like carnivals— “national festivals” where thousands participate.'® While it had played a central role in the cultural politics of language earlier, its role in the Assam Movement was more active than ever. It was formally a part of the Axom Gono Xongram Porixod — the committee that coordinated the Assam movement. The most important body behind the Assam movement, however, was the All Assam Students Union (AASU). The AASU started as a

voluntary federation of the students unions of schools and colleges in 1967.!9 Organizationally it consists of elected secretaries of student unions. The post-independence expansion of schools and colleges has led to the emergence of a space where young people from different parts of Assam can meet. This is probably the most important segment of the new social space that has proven favorable to the growth of subnationalist politics. That gives it an extraordinary organizational base. Now there are schools in the most remote small towns and villages; colleges, too, are numerous. Only predominantly Assamese-speaking schools and colleges seem to have

124

Chapter 6

become part of this federation—Assam’s numerous Bengali or Hindi schools are not part of the All Assam Students Union. It is not surprising that the explosion of subnationalist politics in Assam coincides with the founding and consolidation of this organization in the 1970s. Like the Xobha, the All Assam Students Union claims to be non—a curious claim for a body that brought normal politics political in the state to a standstill for five years and whose leaders then proceeded to win elections and form the government ofthe state in 1985. Here, too, the notion seems

to be that it is the trustee of

interests that are of a higher order than the wheeling and dealing of normal politics. One might add that there is also a notion of the obligation to civil society being of a higher order than a careerist notion of education as a means to achieve individual mobility. A slogan I noticed on a wall in Guwahati in January 1992 — “AASU isa relentless procession” — captures AASU'’s self-perception: it is the custodian of Assamese civil society and, with the procession as its preferred mode of political action, it promises never to subordinate the interests of civil society to the powers that be. The Axom Xahitya Xobha and AASU therefore are institutions that give the Assamese civil society its organizational capacity, and in the Assam movement one saw the most dramatic expression of this capacity.

The Assam Movement, State Response, and Ethnic Rifts During the six years of the Assam movement, ties among Assam’s many ethnic groups were significantly ruptured. This was the result both of the campaign itself aad of the government's efforts to defeat the campaign. First, despite the legal couching of the argument, labels such as “Bangladeshis” and “foreigners” were commonly used during the movement. The resultant sense ofinsecurity was, of course, not limited to “illegals.” There were frictions between “immigrant” and the “indigenous” communities. But a somewhat surprising effect of the period was the worsening of relations among the “indigenous” peoples— the ethnic Assamese and the “tribal” groups, principally the Bodos. A good starting point to look at the effect of the turmoil on ethnic relations in Assam is to focus attention on the term “ethnic

Protest, Ethnic Rifts, and Governability

125

Assamese” which has become common in discussions of Assam politics since the Assam movement. The term was either nonexistent or in extremely rare use before the Assam movement. One simply referred to an Assamese —just as one would refer to a Bengali, a Gujarati, or a Punjabi. The emergence of the term “ethnic Assamese” suggests a process that Abner Cohen and other anthropologists have described as a shift from an “elite group” being culturally invisible to becoming culturally visible—a result of a loss of hegemony.” In a world where the Assameseness of Assam was not contested, the ethnic Assamese as a separate group were culturally invisible. The Assam movement ethnicized the Assamese, as the state’s “immigrant” organizations and “plains tribal” organizations began challenging their authority to speak for Assam and its people. Seen in terms of changes in the State’s strategy and their impact on ethnic alignments, the six years of the Assam movement can be divided into five phases: (1) June 1979 to

November 1980, (2) De-

cember 1980 to January 1983, (3) the Election of February 1983, (4) March 1983 to May 1984, and (5) June 1984 to December 1985.

Phase |: Festival of Protest

The first phase of the Assam movement started with demonstrations and rallies with widespread participation by ethnic Assamese in support of the demands. This phase began with a mood of optimism about a negotiated settlement and ended with considerable pessimism about the prospects of a solution and signs of increasing fissures in the Assamese subnational formation. The movement be-

gan in the last days of the Janata Party government. In Assam the Janata ministry, headed by Golap Borbora, collapsed in September 1979, and the ramshackle coalition ministry that came to power,

headed by Jogen Hazarika and consisting of factions of the erstwhile Janata Party, fell within three months.

Central rule was im-

posed in December 1979 and was in force for a year. The first phase of the Assam movement began with festive and mostly peaceful protest actions, but with some reports of ethnic violence. Ethnic conflicts and signs of confrontation between the Indian State and the movement began to show by the middle of 1980. The next phase marked a significant accentuation of these trends. A report of an investigation committee of the Delhi-based Peo-

126

Chapter 6

ple’s Union for Civil Liberties gives a flavor of the early phase of the Assam movement. In a satyagraha, or act of symbolic disobedience to the law, in November 1979 nearly 700,000 people in the city of Guwahati and an estimated 2 million people in the state as a whole courted arrest. “The satyagraha,” says the report, “is fairly simple. People walk to the High Court in Gauhati [Guwahati] or some such office in other towns, court arrest and are released a few hours

later.” The entire government machinery, said the report, was party to the satyagraha. “The Government of Assam,” a witness told the committee, “is running the movement and the AASU is running the Government.”?! In December 1979 the civil disobedience campaign was extended to an economic blockade, and movement supporters stopped the flow of crude oil and plywood from Assam to the rest of the country. Support for the movement by officials of the state government, and the fact that such officials, most of whom were ethnic Assamese, were often in charge of dealing with protest actions, kept confrontation between the State and the movement to the minimum. Even when the government adopted a tough posture, usually on proddings by the central government, confrontations between the protesters and the police were avoided. With the enthusiastic support for the demands of the movement by major sectors of Assamese intellectual and cultural life, apart from the leadership role of the All Assam Students Union and the Axom Xahitya Xobha, the Assam movement managed to mobilize

extremely broad support among the ethnic Assamese. The campaign, where hundreds of thousands participated with a display of distinctive Assamese cultural and historical symbols, acquired the appearance of a statewide cultural festival. At this stage, individuals and organizations with influence among segments of “plains tribals,” a group that had lost significant amounts of cultivable land to East Bengali immigrants over time, and tea plantation workers too supported the movement. There were however, some distinguished ethnic Assamese intellectuals and political figures, mostly of the political left, who were opposed. They complained of a suffocating intellectual atmosphere where there was little room for dissent. There were reports of physical attacks on opponents of the movement. Among the ethnic groups directly threatened by the demands of the movement were “immigrant” communities — particularly

Protest, Ethnic Rifts, and Governability

127

Hindu Bengalis and Muslims of Bengali descent. The increasing tendency to lump all Bengalis as “Bangladeshis” did little to assuage their fears. Initially the attitude of most “immigrant” communities was to lie low, and there were few efforts to present an organized Opposition to the Assam movement by groups directly threatened by its demands. Other “immigrant” communities too felt insecure. The leaders of the movement had to do some careful conflict management to assuage the fears of some of these groups. Despite the support for the movement by important organizations of tea workers, there were reports of clashes between tea workers and student picketers attempting to close down tea plantations. AASU responded by excluding tea plantations from picketing, and the assistance of tea workers’ unions was sought to explain to the workers that the agitation was not aimed against them.*? The leaders of the movement called for a boycott of the parliamentary elections of December 1979 unless the government agreed to remove names of foreigners from the rolls. Potential candidates were called on not to contest elections until the electoral rolls were revised. Picketeting of candidates by movement supporters led to confrontations with the police. Owners of printing presses in Assam refused to print the electoral rolls for the election. As a result of the boycott, the election that returned Indira Gandhi to power nationally could be held in only two constituencies in Assam, located in Cachar. Elections had to be canceled in twelve of Assam’s fourteen parliamentary constituencies. By May 1980 ethnic groups directly threatened by the demands of the movement began to form organizations to oppose the demands of the Assam movement. In May 1980 a new organization, the All Assam Minority Students Union (AAMSU), which attempted to

include both Hindu Bengalis and Muslims of Bengali descent, appeared on the scene to rival AASU. While not disputing the seriousness of the problem of illegal immigration, AAMSU demanded that all immigrants who came before 1971 be formally given citizenship and that harassment of minorities be stopped. AASU opposed the new organization, and, in certain strongholds of “immigrant” communities, strike calls on days AAMSU had called for protest demostrations led to violent conflicts between AASU and AAMSU sup-

128

Chapter6

porters. Apart from ethnic violence, a growing number of terrorist attacks on State officials and State property began to be reported from Assam. By September 1980, the organizations representing “immigrant” communities became a third force in the negotiations on the demands of the Assam movement. The government invited AAMSU leaders to Delhi for consultation during the negotiations between the government and the movement leaders. The leader of the Assam Congress (1) (the faction of the Congress Party led by Indira Gandhi) Anwara Taimur, an ethnic Assamese Muslim, who was elec-

ted to the state assembly from a constituency with a heavy concentration of Muslims of Bengali descent and was seen as a representative of “immigrant” interests, was also in Delhi during the negotiations. As the negotiations appeared less and likely to produce an agreement, the movement leaders intensified their protest actions and the government used more and more coercion in dealing with protesters. The Assamese press that was sympathetic to the demands of the movement came under censorship. In November 1980 the Indian army was recruited to break the eleven-month-old oil blockade. Phase 2: Confrontation

The inauguration of a Congress (I) government led by Anwara Taimur in December 1980 marked a new phase of the Assam movement. The Taimur government, forme as a result of defection to the Congress (I) from other parties, survived only for six months President’s Rule was imposed once again in June 1981. In January 1982 a new Congress (I) government led by Keshab Gogoi came to power, which survived for two months. In March 1982 President’s Rule was imposed once again and the State Assembly, elected under very different political conditions in 1978, was dissolved. The dissolution of the state assembly meant that the day of reckoning in Assam was approaching. Constitutionally President’s Rule could not be extended beyond a year. Yet the prospects of holding elections without an agreement between the movement leaders and the government seemed slim. The decision to end central rule and form a state government in

Protest, Ethnic Rifts, and Governability

129

December 1980 indicated the center’s decision to challenge the power capability of the movement and to back electoral institutions that reflected the demographic realities of the state. The movement’s power capability lay on the streets, since it had enormous support among the ethnic Assamese, but the same power capability could not be translated into electoral strength, given Assam’s ethnopolitical reality. Not unexpectedly, the movement leaders greeted the government with a call for a general strike. The government, whom the leaders of the movement refused to recognize as a legitimate government, had to rule with strict police protection and minimal public visibility. The Taimur government tried to discipline ethnic Assamese government employees, especially senior officials who were known sympathizers of the movement. One of the top police officials of the state was arrested. In order to use more force against the movement, Taimur effectively had to transform the state bureaucracy. For instance, her personal secretariat, it was reported, had only “Muslim” professionals.?? These measures accentuated the legitimacy crisis in the state. The process appeared to be one of deAssamesization of the state bureaucracy, and it reinforced the fear

of Assamese minoritization and of “immigrant” power. Indeed, the election of Taimur— though

an ethnic Assamese Muslim, she was

elected from a constituency where there is a heavy concentration of Muslims of Bengali descent— to the chief ministership of the state itself had ruptured an informal rule of Congress politics noted in the last chapter: the rule not to make a crude display of “immigrant” power.”4 In the months following the inauguration of the Taimur ministry, there was an increase in thé incidence of violence. In April 1981, E. S. Parthasarathy, one of the highest-ranking civil servants in the state, who was identified with the tough measures against the movement, was killed in a terrorist bomb attack. By now, while there were signs of cracks in the Assamese subnational formation, there was

little evidence of any significant erosion of the movement’s support base in the ethnic Assamese areas of the Brahmaputra Valley. State coercion was a double-edged device. While it was expected to increase the costs of participation in the movement, it also reinforced

a sense of thejustice of the cause, while the erosion ofinfluence of

130

Chapter 6

ethnic Assamese officials reinforced the fears of Assamese minoritization. The choice of Gogoi as chief minister in January 1982 was an attempt to limit the damage. Gogoi, an ethnic Assamese, was Ahom

by caste, another potential weak link in the Assamese

for-

mation. While his government survived for only two months, the period was characterized by less use of force and the release of the senior ethnic Assamese police official arrested by the Taimur government. But after the collapse of the Gogoi government in March 1982, the administration, under President’s Rule, once again went about

the task of cleansing the administration of officials seen as sympathetic to the movement. There was increasing use of coercion. By January 1983 it was reported that the city of Guwahati and the towns of the Brahmaputra Valley were “virtually armed camps.” In view of the “presumed unreliability” of the state police forces, paramilitary forces were brought in from the center and from other states. On the streets of the capital city, said the Economic and Political Weekly in an editorial, “there is a premium in not being an Assamese,” because ethnic Assamese young men were likely to be arrested and beaten up. The Republic Day celebration of January 26, 1983, which was boycotted by movement supporters, turned into a “blatant display of military muscle against its citizens.”?5 The twenty-third round of negotiations between the government and movement leaders took place in December 1982 amid reports that the government was determined to hold elections in Assam by

March 1983. Phase 3: The Breakdown of Order

A conversation in December 1982 between a respected Indian journalist, Shekhar Gupta, and a senior Congress party official, Rajesh Pilot, spelled out the government's intentions. Pilot was at that time

managing the electoral campaign for the Congress Party in the neighboring northeastern state of Tripura and had reasons to be happy with the large crowds at meetings held by Indira Gandhi, who was trying to stage a comeback after her 1977 defeat. The “next stop,” he declared, was Guwahati, suggesting that an election

campaign would be launched in Assam’s major city. “Are you serious?” asked Gupta incredulously.

Protest, Ethnic Rifts, and Governability

131

RP: Why not? People are fed up. They want elections. They want a political government. SG: But who told you that? There will be bloodshed.

Gupta asked why it was so important to hold elections in Assam immediately, RP: Because the agitators must be finished politically. This is the way to do it. SG: It will be impossible. ... RP: How can you say that? If you put 5,000 of them injail for the election period the problem is solved. It is only the mischief-mongers you have to tackle. The rest of the people wil heave a sigh of relief. You don’t know how powerful the government can be.?6

The heightened passion of the upheaval was hardly the most opportune moment to hold an election, since Assamese society was being split apart on the very question of who was eligible to vote. The organizers of the campaign called for a boycott of the election, calling it Assam’s “last struggle for survival.” On the other hand, the threatened “immigrant” communities saw in the election an opportunity to elect an “immigrant”-friendly government. The polarization created a moment of unprecedented tensions. The election was to be held on the basis of the electoral rolls prepared in 1979, which had precipitated the Assam movement. In that sense the election was meant as a direct challenge to the organizers of the Assam movement. There was no attempt even to revise the rolls to incorporate the points of agreement between the movement leaders and the government: to remove the names of post1971 immigrants from the rolls. Indeed, apart from sidestepping all the thorny questions of illegal aliens that had rocked the state for three years, the use of four-year-old electoral rolls was problematical since it did not include voters who had come of age in the preceding four years, Thus the question was not who would win, but whether there would be an election at all. It was the holding of the election that became the focus of a contest between the Assam movement and the Indian State. An election with a moderate to high turnout would have weakened the claims of the movement about its represeritativeness and its power capability. Voter participation mostly fol-

132

Chapter6

lowed a pattern predictable from the ethnic settlement patterns. In constituencies where Bengalis were predominant the turnout was high, and in ethnic Assamese strongholds it was low. The attitude to the election, however, did not vary only across the “indigenousimmigrant” divide. The developments of the preceding two years had led to fissures in other weak links of the Assamese subnational formation, notably between the ethnic Assamese and the “plains tribals.” Moreover apart from the Congress (I), some opposition parties also contested the election. In areas where there were significant numbers of both pro- and anti-election ethnic groups, violent confrontations took place. More than three thousand people — mostly Muslims of Bengali descent —were killed during the violence surrounding the election. The massacres — especially some particularly gruesome killings in Nellie — attracted worldwide media attention. Most of the violence took place as supporters ofthe election clashed with opponents. The attitude toward the election — whether one voted in the election or boycotted it— seemed to define who the “allies” and the “enemy” were in this so-called “last struggle for survival.” According to the investigative

reports of journalist Arun

Shourie,

they

“were the Hobbesian war of all against all.” The picture portrayed by Shourie is one of “total breakdown of governance.” The ethnic divisions along which the violence took place varied from place to place: Tiwa “tribals” versus Muslims of Bengali descent; Bodo “tribals” versus Bengali Hindus and Muslims; Bodo “tribals” versus Bengali Hindus; Bodo “tribals” versus Assamese Hindus; Mising “tribals” versus Bengali Hindus and Muslims; Muslims versus Hindus; ethnic Assamese Hindus and Muslims versus Muslims of Bengali descent. “Each community that was a victim in one place,” wrote Shourie, “was the predator in another.”2” Clearly local varia-

tions in the perceived attitude of ayoting bloc toward the election — whether a community voted in it or boycotted it— significantly determined the pattern ofviolence. If the elections provided the spark for the violence, what made some of it possible was the inaction of the police; the security personnel mobilized by the government, while impressive, were simply inadequate for the task of intervening in all the areas where the outbreak of violence was anticipated. While there was no doubt in

Protest, Ethnic Rifts, and Governability

133

anyone's mind that the election would be a violent one, holding an election amid the prevailing ethnic and political polarization was no ordinary law-and-order problem. Indeed, the estimated need for security personnel was so high that the election was staggered into three days to allow for the movement of security personnel. Arun Shourie’s investigative report revealed that the government had estimated the number of constituencies where the election could be held despite ethnic Assamese opposition. It was calculated that in 30 of 126 constituencies elections could be held safely. In 78 constituencies turnout was expected to be between 30 and 65 percent and in the rest it was expected to be between land 30 percent.** These estimates were based on calculations on settlement patterns of ethnic groups. A prior secret intelligence report had calculated that the ethnic Assamese were a minority in as many as 85 of the state’s 126 constituencies.”° As expected, the poll boycott was quite effective, mostly in the ethnic Assamese and some “plainstribal” dominated areas of the Brahmaputra Valley. Of Assam’s 126 Assembly constituencies, there were only Congress (I) candidates in four constituencies, who were elected unopposed. In 14 constituencies elections had to be canceled because of the “total breakdown of law and administration.” In some strong ethnic Assamese constituencies the polling was as low as 0.38 percent (269 voters), 0.40 percent (360 voters), and 0.68 percent (440 voters) .*? In con-

stituencies reserved for “scheduled tribes” and with substantial “tribal” populations the election boycott was also successful. Thus in the Mising-dominated Dhakuakhana constituency, the percentage of voters who voted was 0.85 percent, in Dhemaji 0.40 percent, and in Jonai 9.28 percent. In the Tiwa-dominated Jagiroad constituency, the figure was 4.87 percent. However, the hill districts of Karbi Anglong and North Cachar hills were mostly unaffected by the Assam movement and the turnout there was normal —55.91 percent in North Cachar Hills and 39.54 percent in Karbi Anglong.”! All intelligence warnings about potentially violent ethnic conflicts in areas other than the polling stations themselves had to be ignored in order to concentrate security personnel at the polling stations. Among these was one where a local police official warned of “one thousand Assamese villagers getting ready to attack” East Bengali “immigrant” villages “with deadly weapons.” That report

134

Chapter 6

anticipated the massacre in Nellie and was filed three days before the massacre. According to official figures, 1383 men, women, and

children were killed in that massacre.” Indian newspapers reported the involvement of “tribal” peoples in the Nellie massacre. The reference is to the involvement in the killings, along with ethnic Assamese, of an indigenous minority people called the Tiwas. An unofficial inquiry commission describes the massacre of 990 “immigrant Muslims” in the Nellie area and of 584 “immigrant Muslims” in the Borbari area on February 18 as a revenge for killings in “Lalung [Tiwa] and other Assamese villages” on February 13, 14, and 15. Anumber of witnesses who narrated to the Commission the cycle of violence and counter-violence have Tiwa surnames.*? Some of the worst violence occurred in villages around Nellie, an area where the Tiwa people once had their kingdom; much of the area is now settled by Bengali immigrants and their descendants. Tiwas (also called Lalungs) are a “plains tribe” who had lost much of their traditional land to immigrants from East Bengal. Colonial administrators viewed them as “Hinduized” tribes that were not isolated and “backward” enough to need the sort of protection offered to the more “backward” and isolated “hill tribes.” The line system that sought to protect these traditional land rights, which in the postcolonial period took the form of policies restricting land transfer in “tribal blocks,” have generally been far too weak to enable the tribes to defend their lands. If in the Nellie massacre the “plains tribal” Tiwas and the ethnic Assamese were on the same side, in another area of significant violence, Gohpur, Bodos and ethnic Assamese fought each other. In that area, the Plains Tribal Council of Assam (PTCA) was contest-

ing the election, and a longstanding local dispute between Bodo and ethnic Assamese peasants over the occupation of land got enmeshed in the election controversy. The land was legally government land, part of the Gohpur reserve forest, and Bodo peasants

had settled the land and cut the forests. Government officials had evicted them, and when the destruction of the forest became a fait accompli some land was allocated to ethnic Assamese peasants, causing the rift. The PTCA promised the return of the land to the Bodos. The PTCA had also advocated a separate “plains tribal” state called Udayachal and parts of the Gohpur area — especially the reserve forests — fell within the borders of that proposed sepa-

Protest, Ethnic Rifts, and Governability

135

rate state. Supporting the PTCA was seen as support for a dispensation that would win Bodos back some of the land. The Gohpur violence, as Shekhar Gupta puts it, “brought out in sharp relief the basic weaknesses and contradictions of Assamese society, and had a far-reaching impact on the course of the agitation later.”™4 Contrary to the government’s expectations, the election of 1983 did not bring the anti-immigration turmoil to an end. There could be no forced resolution of Assam’s citizenship crisis. The violent elections brought to power a Congress (I) government. But the new government was hamstrung by the limited nature of the mandate — limited both by the highly successful call for an election boycott in ethnic Assamese strongholds and by the internationally publicized bloodshed. A song by Bhupen Hazarika, “1983— the year of the devastating fire — the year of the election,” is a ballad of a little brother who was killed in the violence of the election. It seeks to build a collective Assamese connection to a “martyr” of 1983 by evoking the ties of family and of a village community. The martyr becomes every parent’s son, every sibling’s little brother, and every person’s friend. “My little brother disappeared that year,” the lyric asks, “do you have any news of him?” The lyric praises his accomplishments: “He wanted to build his country and to secure a happy future for those who live in Assam. He did not want to become a stranger in his own land” — the latter an obvious reference to the Assamese fear of becoming a minority. There is a evocation of a family grieving the death of a young son: “Mother does not eat her food, the village

youth all wait for you each day, your sister lights an earthen lamp in your room every day and poor old dad goes to the railway station every day hoping to find you in one of the trains.” The lyric concludes with a determination never to let such violence occur again and, reflecting the Assamese interpretation of the causes of that violence — the State’s attempt to hold elections against the wishes of — warn that those who seek to divide the the Assamese civil society Assamese will draw the wrath of the Gods.*° Phase 4: Contest Between the State and the Movement

The election brought a new Congress (1) government headed by Hiteswar Saikia, an ethnic Assamese, Ahom by caste. The choice of

136

Chapter 6

an Ahom as chief minister for the second consecutive time is significant, since there was a widespread perception that the Assam movement had its strongest support among ethnic Assamese “upper” — not the Assamese Muslim, “tribal,” and “immigrant” comcastes munities. The Ahoms, the descendants of the Ahom ruling class of

precolonial Assam, are now considered a separate ethnic Assamese caste. Among some Ahoms, there had been a trend to assert a distinct identity in the years prior to the Assam movement. The new government’s strategy of dealing with the movement combined political maneuvering with the use of coercion. It sought to wean support away from the Assam movement by allocating governmental patronage to groups that constituted weak links in the Assamese subnational formation. The election violence had already strained the formation. Ever since the election of Anwara Taimur as Chief Minister there had been some signs that sections of ethnic Assamese Muslims might have had second thoughts about their participation in the movement. The large number of Muslim victims in the election violence, and the national and international press coverage of it as a case of Muslims being killed, strained the ethnic Assamese Muslim attitude towards the movement.*® By May 1983 there was indication of a split in the AASU. At a secret conclave several Muslim members of the AASU leadership issued an ultimatum to the AASU leadership demanding a correction of a “pro-Hindu communal tilt.” Their memorandum demanded a “firm definition” of a “foreigner.” The press gave some credit for the growing rift between ethnic Assamese Hindus and Muslims to the machinations of the Saikia government.*” Rifts began to show in other weak links of the Assamese subnational formation as well. The election violence, as I have pointed out, included some instances of conflict between ethnic Assamese

opponents of the election and plains tribal supporters, mainly Bodos. In the following months important conferences of “plains tribals” made demands that emphasized their distinctiveness from the ethnic Assamese — indeed, demands that smacked of a rebellion from the Assamese subnational formation. The Saikia government did seem to play a significant role in promoting these rifts. For instance, the government actively patronized the Bodo Xahitya Xobha and promoted it as a rival of the Axom Xahitya Xobha in “plains tribal” areas. The annual session of the organization was

Protest, Ethnic Rifts, and Governability

137

attended by most members of the Saikia cabinet. By contrast, the declining share of government resources and patronage forced the Axom Xahitya Xobha to reconsider its active involvement in the Assam movement.** The leadership of the movement had to guard against the growing internal divisions. The election violence forced the leadership to suspend the movement and to concentrate attention on healing the ethnic rifts. In January 1984 AASU held a National Convention, which was attended by a number of prominent Assamese intellectuals as well as activists of the movement, in order to search for ways and means for “regeneration of the Assamese nationality and to provide a united socio-cultural as well as political platform.” The emphasis on unity was a recognition of the impact of the rifts. In the second

convention

in December

1984, the need

to adapt to the

ethnic diversity of the state dominated discussions. The convention formed a committee to complete the “process of political unification of the various ethnic groups of the Assamese people.” There was discussion that stressed the need to include tea garden workers, Indian Nepalis, the tribal communities, and “already assimilated religious minorities” and “like-minded Indians” in future protest

actions.*? The Saikia government tried to compete for legitimacy with the Assam movernent. It sought to emphasize that the government, led by an ethnic Assamese, was serious about stopping future immigration and about removing the names of post-1971 illegal aliens from the electoral rolls, on which there was agreement between the movement leaders and the central government. Other measures aimed at redefining the policy agenda to wean away support from the movement included carving out new administrative districts and sub-divisions, and symbolic concessions to Assamese ethnic pride such as the change of the English spelling of the Assamese city from the Anglicized “Gauhati” to the more Assamese “Guwahati.”4” The government secured popular support for some of these measures. For instance, the response to the calls by movement leaders for strikes to greet the inauguration of the headquarters of the new districts was weak even in the strongholds of the movement. “We should have ignored the move,” said a AASU leader after the failure of their strike calls. “How do you expect people to protest against a step that upgraded their small towns to district

138

Chapter 6

headquarters?”*! Even though political maneuvering was a major part of the new government's strategy in dealing with the Assam movement, coercion continued to play a major role. Journalists working for Assamese newspapers and magazines were the special targets of the new coercive measures. Many were arrested and beaten up in police stations.” The measures, however, failed to cut into the popular base of the

movement. During its 33 months of rule, members of the Saikia cabinet were greeted by strikes and boycotts in their visits to ethnic Assamese areas. The sponsors of the movement refused to extend “recognition” to the Saikia government. The nonrecognition was effective enough that when the central government decided to return to the negotiation table in the spring of 1984 it carefully left out the Saikia government. The agreement to dissolve the state assembly when the Assam Accord was signed was a concession to the movement’s continued power capability. Phase 5: Accommodation

The phase of accommodation began in the middle of 1984. Several factors brought back an atmosphere of optimism about the prospects for a negotiated settlement. The government recognized the movement's power capability by keeping the state government away from the negotiations. Second, administrative measures of revision

of electoral rolls, based on earlier points of agreement such as the disenfranchisement of post-1971 aliens, could win the trust of the movement leadership. Third, even though the ice was broken before the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the change of leadership in

New Delhi later was a factor in the renewed goodwill between the center and the leaders of the movement. Election officials were increasingly taking AASU into their confidence in the process of revision of electoral rolls. By the end of 1984 there was a break between the AASU, that supported the administrative process of revision of rolls, and one of the regional political ‘parties behind the movement that believed that the measures were unlikely to be effective. AASU began to consider the formation of a new regional political party. Its second National Convention, in December 1984, emphasized the need to bring together different

Protest, Ethnic Rifts, and Governability

139

ethnic groups in the Assamese subnational formation in a common political platform. After 18 months, negotiations between the government of India

and the movement leaders were initiated once again in April 1984, An accord was signed between Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and leaders of the Assam movement on August 15 1985, India’s Independence Day. According to the accord, illegal aliens who had entered the state between January 1966 and March 1971 would be disenfranchised for ten years and those who came after March 1971 would be deported. It was agreed that the state government formed after the election of 1983 would resign, the state assembly would be dissolved, and fresh elections based on revised electoral rolls would

take place in December 1985. In effect, the government of India belatedly acknowledged that the decision to hold that election had been a costly mistake. An amendment to India’s citizenship law was enacted by the parliament in November 1985 providing that noncitizens who were found to have entered Assam between 1961 and 1971 would enjoy all rights of citizens except the right to vote for ten years.

Once the accord was signed the revision of electoral rolls was taken up even more earnestly. The procedures followed were controversial. Critics claimed that a large number of names of legal citizens were removed from the rolls. The final roll, on the basis of which

the December

election was held, had 9,806,285 voters,

689,715 fewer than the numbers in the updated electoral roll of October 1984, which had 10,496,000 voters.”

After the signing of the accord two new parties emerged: the Axom Gono Porixod (AGP), formed by the student leaders of the Assam movement, and the United Minorities Front, formed by dissident Congress (I) politicians who were either Bengali Hindu or

Muslim of Bengali descent. While the implementation of the Assam accord was the main issue for the AGP, the UMF demanded that the accord be scrapped. In the election the AGP won 64 seats and 35.17 percent of the popular vote, followed by the Congress (I) with 25 seats and 23.43 percent of the popular vote, and the UMF with 17 seats and 11.09 percent of the vote. While the UMF project was to bring all “minorities,” for example, Muslims of Bengali descent, Hindu Bengalis, ethnic Assamese Mus-

140

Chapter6

lims, Nepalis, and “tribals” within its framework, it did not do well beyond some major concentrations of Muslims of Bengali descent.*® The UMF faired poorly in Hindu Bengali areas, where most voters seem

to have supported

the Congress

(1). The AGP

itself

came much closer to grasping the imperatives of Assam’s transformed demographic reality. One of its major campaign slogans was “Minorities are not Foreigners, AGP for all, all for AGP.”

The AGP came to power riding on a wave of popular support that was remarkably inclusionary: its appeal was not only to the ethnic Assamese, but to many other ethnic groups. The AGP won in major “plains tribal” constituences in Kokrajhar district, the autonomous district of Karbi Anglong, and the “plains-tribal”-inhabited constituencies in the districts of Lakhimpur, Sonitpur, and Darrang districts. The AGP also won in constituencies that had major concentrations of tea plantation workers — mostly “immigrants” from Bihar, Orissa, and Andhra Pradesh — and were traditional strongholds of the Congress (I). The significant number of Muslims in the

AGP’s list of candidates suggests that the support for the Assam movement and the AGP among ethnic Assamese Muslims, despite

reversals during certain phases of the movement, remained quite high. Certain sections of Bengali Hindus and Muslims of Bengali descent, too, appear to have voted for the AGP. The AGP victory in the Barpeta Assembly and Parliamentary constituencies and the Nowgong Parliamentary constituency—all with very significant concentrations of Muslim voters of Bengali descent— supports this hypothesis.*® This is not surprising when one considers the likely effect of the accord on reconstituting the basis for political alignments of the East Bengali “immigrant” communities. Apart from the disenfranchisement ofsignificant numbers ofaliens, the accord also legitimized the citizenship status of a large number of immigrants: those who came before 1966 and those who came between 1966 and 1971, who were to be legitimized in phases. The past tendency of Muslims of Bengali descent to vote as a bloc for the ruling party, which in that context was consistent with support for the Assamese subnational project, was partly due to the insecurity that went with the ambiguity of their legal status, despite the inclusion of their names in electoral rolls. To some extent the basis for that insecurity and bloc voting for the ruling party was gone. An Indian reporter surmised that some immigrants, “especially those

Protest, Ethnic Rifts, and Governability

141

surrounded by Assamese-speaking inhabitants voted for the AGP as a safe course.”*? The support for the AGP among some Muslims of Bengali descent is also consistent with their support for Assamese subnational causes in earlier controversies over cultural policy issues. The election results reflect ethnic polarization as well as new beginnings of ethnic accommodation. At one level the emergence of two new regional political parties, one based primarily on the ethnic Assamese and the other on those threatened by the demands of the Assam movement, indicates significant ethnic polarization. However, the inclusive nature of the AGP’s support, especially its ability to secure some support among Muslims of Bengali descent, and the somewhat limited nature of UMF’s support, indicate that the forces of polarization were mediated by the forces of accommodation. The AGP government was installed amid public expression of enormous goodwill and optimism. An article I wrote in 1986 reflects the optimism of that moment: One of most significant effects of the Assam movement is that the immigration issue, which is of enormous concern to the ethnic Assamese, have been

put firmly on the public agenda. . . . It is likely that electoral realities will bring about an approach to the problem that focusses more on stopping the future influx rather than on deporting those who are already there. New modes ofincorporating illegal aliens e.g. the statusof “guest workers” or of “permanent residents” may be considered as options by a government that enjoys the trust of the ethnic Assamese on this question. . .. Some mix of re-settlement of illegal aliens in the rest of the country and phased enfranchisement in return for measures that will stop any future influx may

be an acceptable compromise.*

However, in retrospect, that proved to be little more than a brief

moment of optimism. In subsequent years, there was very little movement on the immigration controversy. Constitutionally, Indian citizenship laws are under the federal government’s jurisdiction. For the reasons suggested earlier, in the pan-Indian political arena, if anything, Assam’s anti-immigration stir had the paradoxical effect of strengthening the argument for giving more legal protection to those suspected of being “illegal aliens.” The Indian parliament in 1983—at a time when Assam was largely unrepresented as a result of the election — passed the Illegal Migrants (Determination of Tribunal) boycott

142

Chapter6

Act, making it difficult, if not impossible, to prove that someone was an illegal alien in Assam. At the level of pan-Indian politics, the ambivalence ofall pan-Indian political parties on the issue made for a political climate unconducive to any resolution. Given the Indian parliament's jurisdiction over the immigration issue and the IMDT Act of 1983, the new state government, elected primarily due to its

position against illegal immigration and the enfranchisement of aliens, could do almost nothing about identifying or deporting illegal aliens. Indeed, after the signing of the Assam Accord not more d than the than a thousand illegal aliens had been detecte —fewer numbers routinely detected in earlier years— even though the campaigners had claimed that their numbers were in the hundreds of thousands. Combined with a number of other failures, the enormous expectations aroused by the coming to power of the AGP soon gave way to disillusionment. In retrospect, it would appear that the clauses of the accord were

never intended to be implemented. To cynics the accord may even appear as a maneuver to break the power of the protest movement at the height of its popularity. Let me briefly return to the significance of the fact that the meanings derived from the Constitution and laws have managed to frame Assam’s debate on immigration. The other side of the opposition to illegal immigration, as I said before, is the acceptance of immigrants whose stay in Assam is seen as legal. That is no mean achievement, considering the scope of the demographic transformation of this land frontier. By leaving so many gray areas about the status of refugees from Bangladesh, and taking an opportunistically contradictory position on whether economic immigration from East Pakistan / Bangladesh has continued unabated, the government undermined the ability of laws to constitute and sustain a normative universe about the rules of closure that define the political community. Had the Indian State been more effective in making and implementing immigration policy, much of the immigration-related tension in Assam and the northeast could have been better managed. The AGP’s inefficacy on the immigration question could not but adversely affect the appeal and legitimacy of its government. Added to this were the generally poor performance of the government in many other areas and allegations of corruption against many of the young ministers. As the appeal of the AGP declined, a new

Protest, Ethnic Rifts, and Governability

143

force came to occupy center stage in Assam’s politics: the separatist militant organization, United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA). ULFA began as a radical fringe of the Assam movement. Jt had made its most significant inroads during the violent election of 1983 and the period immediately following it —a period when after unsuccessfully resisting the election Assamese society saw itself as being embattled by the power ofthe “immigrant” communities and of the State. Even though ULFA, with its left-wing inclusionary ideology, distanced itself somewhat from the immigration issue, it too viewed the nonimplementation of the Assam Accord as one more piece of evidence of the central government’s lack of interest in protecting the interests of the Assamese. In one of its documents ULFA claimed that “the mass movements of the past and especially the illegal elections of 1983 proves beyond dispute that there is no so-called moderate road available to the people of Assam.”* The sense of ethnic Assamese powerlessness that the nonimplementation of the Assam Accord generated was the context in which ULFA’s militant separatist stance found a sympathetic constituency.

Chapter 7 Militant Subnationalism,

Human Rights, and the Chasm with Pan-Indianism

In the 1980s Assamese subnationalism took a radical and militan turn with the emergence of the United Liberation Front of Assan (ULFA). Since then, counter-insurgency operations by securit forces, as well as offers of economic

rewards

and de facto lega

immunity to militants who “surrender,” have reduced the ranks o militants and have significantly reduced ULFA’s activities and influ ence. But there has been little in the Indian State’s response t ULFA that can be called an engagement with the ideological cha! lenge posed by the radical turn in Assamese subnationalism. Th: political settlement that was attempted in the Assam Accord of 198. turned out to be unenforceable. Since then there has been no fres] attempt to engage those issues. By and large, it is fair to say that th: State’s response to ULFA has been more militarist than politica The Indian army and paramilitary forces have been employed t deal with the challenge, and in the process extreme authoritaria) methods have been introduced into the fabric of everyday life, es pecially in those parts of Assam that are seen as ULFA strongholds However, these developments have occurred as elections hav taken place, and the militarist approach has received the consent o elected state governments. But electoral outcomes in Assam, viewet in the aggregate, may give the illusion that the militants are alread isolated from their core constituency. To a limited extent, this ma have happened —a consequence as much of the State’s strategy a

Militant Subnationalism, Human Rights, and Pan-Indianism

145

of ULFA’s record of violence —but the overall picture is one of a substantial rise in the number ofincidents of political violence, the exacerbation of Assam’s ethnic and political conflicts, and a widen-

ing chasm between Assamese subnationalism and pan-Indianism. In 1991, the Delhi-based People’s Union for Democratic Rights, in a report on human rights violations during the first anti-insurgency operation in Assam, commented on the way the dominant pan-Indian discourse has framed the subject of insurgencies in Assam and in other parts of India. Delhi's ruling elite, said the report, talks about the “Assam Problem,” “Punjab problem” and “Kashmir problem.” In this way of framing the issue, “images of violence” by insurgents are “devoid of their social origins,” setting the stage for sending the army as a solution to the “problem.”! One of the goals of this chapter is to show the failures of a policy resulting from this way of framing the “Assam problem.” If that framing had accurately explained the ULFA phenomenon, the mighty Indian army should have been able to tackle this ragtag band of insurgents and “solve” the “Assam problem” long ago. Instead, seven years later, as antiinsurgency operations continue, ULFA, despite many setbacks, remains a significant force in Assamese politics and society. In November 1997 a correspondent introduced only as a retired Indian army officer “with extensive experience in counter-insurgency in the North-East” wrote in a newspaper article that there is neither a political nor a military solution to Assam’s problem. At that time Assam was under the present AGP government, but the

AGP was then a member of the coalition government in New Delhi. The AGP’s dilemma, wrote this retired army officer, was that com-

ing down heavily on ULFA might shake up its “grassroots level mass support.” And if it did not do that, it risked being seen as ineffective. The AGP had to “manage this delicate balancing act.” Neither “a pure political solution” nor “the blind use of security forces” would solve the problem. It had to be a “combination of both, for which subverted bureaucracy is not well-suited.”? Apparently, among the hurdles the Indian State has had to deal with in pursuing a militarist “solution” to the “Assam problem,” are elected local officials worried about losing their grassroots support if they “come down heavily on ULFA” and a “subverted bureaucracy” — a term by which the retired army officer presumably refers to the sympathy for ULFA among some Assamese government officials. The Indian

146

Chapter7

State has figured out clever ways by which it can get local officials to overcome their inhibitions. However, what it has not done is to ask itself if these “local” inhibitions should lead to a significant rethinking of the very framing of the “Assam problem.” The confrontation between the State and ULFA in Assam has had elements of a regime crisis. This is not surprising, considering

the centrality of the cultural grammar ofthe nation-province to the structure of legitimacy of the pan-Indian polity, the intertextuality of the issues raised by ULFA with mainstream Assamese social discourse, and the consequent sympathy for ULFA on the part of many Assamese, even though their numbers are far fewer today than during ULFA‘a early days. In situations when democracies face a crisis, writes Juan Linz, loyal system parties tend to be pushed toward forms of semi-loyalty vis-a-vis the rules of the democratic game when they encounter hostility among extremists of the left or the right. With the blurring of lines between system and antisystem parties, Linz claims, the loyal opposition can no longer be counted on as having an unambiguous public commitment to the rules of the democratic game; they may build secret bridges to the disloyal opposition and in exchange for its support may tolerate its antidemocratic activities. Thus parties or political forces loyal to the democratic system may no longer feel committed to making “the boundary between the system party, broadly defined, and antisystem parties as clear as possible both publicly and privately.” In such situations, Linz writes, one

would

“discover

taints of semi-

loyalty even in parties most committed to democratic stability.” If informal and secretly reached terms of accommodation with insurgents point to “taints of semiloyalty,” the activities of government officials, leaders of regional as well as pan-Indian political parties, and businesses —large and small—in Assam all point to connections between ULFA and the Assamese mainstream and the symptoms of a regime crisis. In 1997 a scandal widely reported in the Indian press centered around evidence of secret dealings between ULFA and the Tatas—one of India’s largest business houses— which has significant interest in Assam’s tea industry. The relations between “mainstream” political parties and ULFA has become apparent in recent elections in Assam; interpretations of election results in Assam now routinely take into account the role of ULFA. Yet the Indian State’s framing of the “Assam problem,” while it

Militant Subnationalism, Human Rights, and Pan-Indianism

147

may have room for a “political solution” to supplement its “military solution,” has no room for a political settlement. A settlement can in principle appeal to the larger constituency of ULFA’s fellowtravelers and sympathizers and to the even larger constituency of Assamese civil society thus impacting on the intellectual and political climate that sustains Assamese subnationalism. To be comprehensive and acceptable, unlike the Assam Accord of 1985, negotiations for such a settlement should bring to the table organizations representing the conflicting perceptions of multiethnic Assam’s key problems. Yet precious little political resources and intellectual energy has been spent on such efforts. Instead there is a tunnelvisioned, apolitical, ahistorical, and militaristic mindset that seems

to believe that, once military measures succeed in physically eliminating most of the hard-core ULFA activists, the rest will surrender and give up their political demands, and conditions in Assam will return to normal. Lt. Gen. R. K. Sawhney, the Indian army officer commanding Indian army operations in Assam, said in September 1996 that “the aim of the ongoing Army operations against insurgent outfits in the state is to create an environment, where the extremists feel that having a political dialogue to solve the problem is the better option.”* One wonders what in this militaristic mindset would qualify as such an environment short ofa military defeat and surrender by ULFA. But it is far from clear that if this were to happen it would solve the “Assam problem.” But this is not to say that the Indian State’s response to ULFA has been only the stick; there have been a few carrots as well. For example, there have been attractive government offers of economic re-

wards and legal immunity for militants who surrender. However, except for a few highly publicized foundation-stone laying ceremonies for large development projects, there is little indication that the policymakers believe that addressing the major issues which have historically animated Assamese subnationalism has to be part of “solving” the “Assam problem.” Considering that the political settlement attempted by the Assam Accord of 1985 has fallen by the wayside, it would seem extraordinary that policymakers would think that these issues that led to such enormous political mobilization so recently could be simply pushed under the rug, and that everyone in Assam will buy into the discourse of defending national security against insurgents. Policymakers clearly see ULFA as dis-

148

Chapter7

connected from the historically developed concerns of the Assamese nationality and from the long history of tension between Assamese subnationalism and pan-Indianism. Thus “solving” the “Assam problem” does not appear to them to require a return to the unfinished agenda of seeking a comprehensive political settlement that could bring about a reconciliation between Assamese subnationalism, the realities of amultiethnic Assam, and pan-Indianism.

The balance of this chapter deals with the intertextuality between the issues taken up by ULFA and the mainstream Assamese subnational discourse, and then discusses the State’s response to ULFA, first summarizing the relevant political developments and

then moving on to the lack of interest in a political settlement and to the human rights question.

“Our Boys”: ULFA and the Assamese Mainstream ULFA was founded in 1979 about the same time as the beginning of the Assam movement. The foundation ceremony was held on April 7, 1979 at a symbolically significant venue: the historic Rong Ghar in Sibsagar —a palace of the Ahom kings. ULFA’s goal is to restore Assam’s “lost independence.” The political tendency that eventually took the form of ULFA began as a radical fringe of the immensely popular Assam movement, described in the last chapter. However, ULFA distanced itself from the immigration issue. ULFA often made its appeal to all Axombaxi— people living in Assam rather than to the Assamese people, a term that can be construed more narrowly —a striking contrast from what was then the mainstream of Assamese subnational discourse. In a document meant for its cadres ULFA says it recognizes as Axombaxi anyone who, irrespective of his or her “prior identity, regards Assam as motherland, treats Assam’s problems as his or her own, embraces Assam’s culture and is prepared to fight for Assam’s future.” Even more significantly, the same document says that ULFA would even consider changing the name Axom (Assam) or the term Axomiya (Assamese) “should it be necessary to do so in order to build revolutionary unity of the people who live in Assam.” The initial growth of ULFA followed the changing fortunes of the Assam movement. As indicated in the last chapter, the election of

Militant Subnationalism, Human Rights, and Pan-Indianism

149

February 1983 was a particularly tense period in Assam. The holding of the election became a test of will between the Indian State and the Assam movement. The movement leaders had called for a boycott, and the elections took place amid enormous violence. Despite the extremely low turnout, especially in ethnic Assamese strongholds, a Congress (I) government, led by Hiteswar Saikia, was sworn in—one that ethnic Assamese public opinion regarded as illegitimate. The 1983 election and the period when the Assam movement was pitted against the Hiteswar Saikia government was the time when ULFA made the most significant inroads. For a short while in February 1992, negotiations between ULFA and the government of India seemed imminent, after a couple of anti-ULFA operations by the Indian army. In an issue devoted to the subject, the editor of the Assamese magazine Aami (We) wrote as

follows: “ULFA did not drop from the sky, nor is ULFA a wild animal. ULFA is our child. [The members of] ULFA are our brothers,

they are our kin. [We must understand] why they have chosen the path of the jungle.”’ The magazine Aami may have been quite sympathetic to ULFA. But the notion that members of ULFA are “our boys” — even though they may have gone astray — can be found in numerous commentaries and conversations in Assam. Indeed the late Chief Minister Saikia, once seen as ULFA’s arch-enemy, in his

speeches to Assamese audiences spoke of ULFA’s surrender as “the return home of the boys.” ULFA’s place in the mainstream of Assamese public life comes across in Bhupen Hazarika’s music as well. Hazarika’s lyric to a song with a martial melody applauds bravery, sacrifice, and heroism: “I

salute mother Assam and I dress up to go to war. I salute the river Luit and give puja to Goddess Kamakhya; with your blessings and an oath I am off to war.” The Kamakhya temple in Guwahati is Assam’s most important Hindu temple and an important place in Hinduism’s sacred geography. Hazarika’s song echoes the Assamese sense of how things came to this; persuasion had failed and there are few alternatives but battle to avenge past wrongs, “It is not the time to teach history lessons, it is not the time to take it easy: the enemy taunts us at our gates, leave aside your daily tasks, get ready for war and be prepared to lay down your lives.”* Of course, much has happened in Assam since then —there has been what to most people living in Assam seems like a long night of unending vio-

150

Chapter7

lence. I will cite below other songs by Hazarika of this period where the mood is more melancholy. ULFA’s popular appeal during its early days intrigued many visiting Indian journalists. For instance, the Times of India’s Praful Bidwai sought to explain ULFA’s influence by the fear that it inspired. “Nearly everyone is afraid of ULFA, and in awe of it,” he wrote when reporting on the Indian army raids on ULFA's training camps in 1990. People living close to the camps did not answer Bidwai’s questions on whether they knew of the existence of the camps or whether they had faced harassment from ULFA. The evidence of ULFA’s human rights abuses—the graves in ULFA’s camps of people killed for petty crimes— that came to light as a result of the army raids, Bidwai believed, partly explained people’s fears. Yet fear alone, he realized, could hardly explain ULFA’s influence. The goodwill that ULFA enjoyed among wide segments of Assamese society did not appear to him to be the product of fear. “The

truth, however

chilling,” he wrote,

“is that ULFA

is not a

collection of rejects, lumpens and youth from the fringe of society.” Its presence “looms larger than life in Assam. Many people attribute almost magical qualities to the group. They really believe that ULFA is in some fundamental sense invincible” and “many Assamese find it hard to think ill of ULFA.” To Bidwai, so inpenetrable was

the magic of ULFA among the Assamese that he could only express his frustration and anger with ULFA’s numerous silent and notvery-silent supporters. “Touching as this faith is,” said Bidwai, “it is at times revolting. The vast majority of Assamese papers have refused to condemn ULFA’s self-professed barbarity.” In the local press, the news of the discovery of the graves was overshadowed “by highly colorful and improbable-sounding (sic) stories of Army atrocities.” He found “a strange kind of inversion of logic and perception” in Assam that had “to do with the siege mentality that the Assamese, especially of the middle classes have developed.”? ULFA terms the relationship between New Delhi and Assam as colonial. The notion that Assam does not get a fair share of developmental resources has been an old refrain in Assamese public life. Assam, it is said, is deprived of its fair share of benefits from the state’s natural resources — oil and natural gas. The royalty paid to the state government, it is argued, is little more than rent on land

on which Assam’s oil and gas resources are located. Among the

Militant Subnationalism, Human Rights, and Pan-Indianism

151

complaints one hears are the center's “neglect” of Assam in locating industrial projects that use Assam’s natural resources, perceived tightfistedness in matters of allocating resources to build the infrastructure necessary for the state’s economic development, and the

relative absence of “local” people in the state’s major enterprises. While the oil and natural gas industries are in the hands of enterprises owned by the government ofIndia, the state’s huge tea industry is private. There the criticisms are aimed less at the State. The state’s tea industry, writes an Assamese economist, has a turnover of about Rs 800 crores a year, but its surpluses are not invested in the state. Since the corporate headquarters are mostly in Calcutta, even the major purchases of the tea industry are made elsewhere.!° In one of ULFA’s pamphlets, it is said that Assam, which was a “hinterland” under British rule, became even more so in the hands of the postcolonial Indian State. “The economic subordination has brought misery to the native population.” It claimed that a large part of the profits of government-of-India enterprises in oil and natural gas— the ONGC and Oil India—comes from Assam’s resources; yet they bring little benefit to Assam. Calculated in terms of

world oil prices, what Assam gets as oil royalties, said the pamphlet, is puny. The benefits to Assam from India’s other major foreign exchange earner, tea, are also minimal.’! In the writings of the late Assamese author Parag Kumar Das, well known for his sympathy for the cause of an independent Assam, one finds the traditional economic grievances coming together with the theme of Assamese nationalism. In 1992, when some ULFA

militants began negotiating with the central government and the Indian army’s anti-insurgency operations were in full swing, Das wrote in his prison diary as follows: “The conflict between the people of Assam and the Indian State is not only economic. The promises of afew economic crumbs therefore cannot silence the people of Assam.” Since the right to life of those who live in Assam seems to depend on the whims of ordinary Indian soldiers, the national self-

respect of the Assamese, he wrote, cannot be bought with economic assistance ofa few million rupees.'” The perception that pan-Indian capitalists make money out of Assam but do little for Assam’s development has, among other things, legitimized ULFA’s fund-rasing practices. ULFA collected staggering amounts of “taxes” from the tea industry—the most

152

Chapter7

important sector of Assam’s economy —and to a lesser extent from “Marwari” traders, as well as from other businessmen and from government officials with a reputation for corruption. Apart from money, ULFA has made other demands to the tea industry, including employment of local youth, the establishment of high schools and colleges in tea plantations, commitment to the basic needs of neighboring villages, the moving of the corporate headquarters of tea companies to Assam, support for higher education for deserving children of tea plantation workers, and improvement

in the

quality of food and housing provided to tea workers. ULFA makes these demands on behalf of the “people of Assam.”'’ We now know that as recently as 1996 Tata Tea engaged in negotiations with the ULFA leadership. While it rejected ULFA’s request for an estate tax, a supply of walkie-talkies for its insurgency operations, and moving Tata Tea’s corporate office to Assam, Tata Tea made a commitment to providing job-oriented training for rural youth, to employ “local candidates”'* in tea plantations, to make financial provision at three major state-of-the-art Indian hospitals for medical treatment for patients from Assam—to be recommended by ULFA—and pointed to a hospital that Tata Tea was building in Assam as part of its contribution to “community development.” !® In terms of the intellectual history of Assamese subnationalism, it could be said that ULFA intervened in a long debate on Assam’s underdevelopment. I described in Chapter 5 the political mobilization in the 1950s and 1960s in support of cultural policy issues. But in the same period there were also a number of protest movements in support of demands for oil refineries — to refine crude oil produced in Assam in Assam — and for infrastructural projects such as building railway tracks. In some ways, if Assamese subnationalism

before ULFA was influenced by orthodox ideas on what it takes to achieve development and progress, for example, development of infrastructure and an educated work force, the rise of ULFA can be

seen as marking the advent of critical ideas about development. The relationship is not unlike the relationship between dependency theory and other critical paradigms of development and the old modernization paradigm. ULFA is also engaged in what can be called a social agenda. In its early years ULFA conducted trials of people involved in drug and prostitution rings. It punished corrupt government officials —

Militant Subnationalism, Human Rights, and Pan-Indianism

153

though it is alleged that it had as often blackmailed them into giving them money—and those neglecting public responsibilities. Those who masqueraded as ULFA members and engaged in extortion were punished severely. In April 1990 on the eve of the Assamese new year festival, Bohag Bihu, ULFA issued a writ asking people not to engage in corruption of the spirit of the traditional festival by playing Hindi film songs and disco music. Such actions are reflective of ULFA’s self-perception as a custodian of Assamese interests on the pattern of more mainstream organizations such as All Assam Students Union or Axom Xahitya Xobha. Another important theme in ULFA’s ideology that resonates with the concerns of Assamese subnationalism is the emphasis on the unity of “indigenous” northeasterners. The term “united” in ULFA’s name reflects the primacy ofthis theme in ULFA’s ideology. Many Assamese see the breakup of Assam in the 1960s and 1970s, described in Chapter 5, as a symptom of Assam’s powerlessness. In that chapter I cited a song by Bhupen Hazarika where he portrays the seven northeastern states as seven sisters born of the same mother. That song gives some clues as to why the theme of unity would be so central to ULFA and why it would resonate with mainstream Assamese social discourse. Indeed, in ULFA’s political practice the theme of unity of the peoples of the northeast became quite formalized. On May 20, 1990 the ULFA, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), the United National Liberation Front of Manipur (UNLFM), and some Burmese insurgent organizations signed a memorandum of understanding. According to Indian military intelligence, the objective of these organizations was to establish an independent State consisting of the northeastern states of India and the northwestern states of Burma. They formed a common organization called the Indo-Burma Revolutionary Front (IBRF) in order to “unite and fight their war of independence.”!®

Responding to ULFA: Politics of Assam, 1986-1998 ULFA’s activities were at their height during the first AGP government that governed Assam from 1986 to 1990. ULFA and the AGP both grew out of the Assam movement, and, despite the efforts of both these political formations to widen their appeal, the primary support base of both AGP and ULFA remains the ethnic Assamese

154

Chapter7

population. As AGP’s popularity began to decline because of its failure to deliver on the promise to resolve the immigration crisis and because of charges of corruption against many of its young ministers, ULFA’s star began to rise. The student leaders of the Assam movement had effectively made the case that political parties could not be trusted to protect Assam’s long-term interests. Now it was the turn of these one-time student leaders, now leaders of a political party, to lose their credibility with ULFA as uncompromising defenders of Assam’s interests. “When they rode triumphantly into power just over four years ago,” wrote India Today’s Guwahati correspondent in May 1990, Chief Minister Mahanta and his colleagues in the AGP government “were hailed as the true heroes of Assam.” Now they are seen as “the arch villains” and “in an ironic twist of fate,” he wrote, in the eyes of many people in the state the saviors of Assam were now “the gun-toting, dreaded underground

militants,” that is, ULFA.'” In November 1990, when the AGP goverment was dismissed and President’s Rule was imposed on Assam, ULFA ran virtually a parallel government in the state. It had built a sizable armed organization with sophisticated weapons with huge funds extorted from local businesses. While it is difficult to locate reliable figures, the

picture that emerges from various newspaper reports is that the amount of “taxes” collected by ULFA was staggering. The Assam Governor’s report of November 1990 recommending dismissal of the state government underscores the “taints of semiloyalty” that generated a localized regime crisis: The loss of faith in the efficacy and the credibility of the government apparatus is so great that the distinction between ULFA, AASU [All Assam Students Union that ran the Assam movement] and AGP which existed at

some stage, stands totally obliterated. . .. The holders of public offices have been rendered totally ineffective, The statutory authorities are in a state of panic incapable of discharging their functions. The holders of constitutional offices stand totally emasculated so much so that the state Cabinet cannot even discuss the situation. Members of the Council of Ministers cannot express themselves openly since they doubt the bonafides of each other in so far as their attitudes towards ULFA is concerned.?8

In November 1990 the coalition government in New Delhi led by V. P. Singh fell, and a new government led by Chandrasekhar, supported by the Congress (I), came to power. The opposition Con-

Militant Subnationalism, Human Rights, and Pan-indianism

155

gress (I) had been critical of the V. P. Singh government’s handling of ULFA in Assam. The fact that the AGP was a constituent of the coalition that ruled in New Delhi was thought to have constrained its hands in responding effectively to ULFA. Not suprisingly, soon after it came to power, the Chandrasekhar government dismissed the Assam government, imposed central rule, and launched a mili-

tary anti-insurgency campaign against ULFA code-named “Operation Bajrang” on November 27, 1990. Operation Bajrang had its successes: it dismantled ULFA’s major training camps and arrested many ULFA cadres, including some middle-level leaders. But it “did not touch the core leadership; nor did it in any way affect the crucial support base of ULFA. If anything, the state of mind ULFA represents now occupies a larger space than it did when the Operation was launched.”!9 Charges of human rights abuses by the army, an issue I will discuss in the next section, contributed a great deal to ULFA’s ability to retain much of its support base. Operation Bajrang’s failures were partly due to what has been called a “subverted bureaucracy.” For instance, when the army went into the largest of ULFA’s camps the militants appeared to have had enough advance notice to flee. ULFA thus managed to sustain its mystique and give the impression that it had outmaneuvered the Indian army. Many ULFA militants “escaped” from prisons and from hospitals where they were in custody ostensibly for health reasons. These escapes would not have been possible without the acquiescence of police and prison officials. Operation Bajrang continued till April 20, 1991. By then, coinciding with developments in the pan-Indian political scene, the Congress Party had its eye on winning back power in Assam. The Congress (I) in Assam under the leadership of Hiteswar Saikia was

thought to be capable both of bringing the Congress back to power and dealing with the problem of a “subverted bureaucracy,” while taking on ULFA. As we will recall from the last chapter, Saikia had by now a proven record of steering the Congress (I) in Assam through difficult times and of negotiating Assam’s complex ethnic landscape. The prospects for Congress did not seem bad. After all,

in 1985 with only 32.5 percent of the votes, the AGP had come to power, winning 67 seats in the 126-member state Assembly. The AGP then was at the height of its popularity following its signing of

156

Chapter7

the Assam Accord. But much had changed since then and Assam seemed ready for significant political realigments. In many seats, the AGP’s success in 1985 was partly a function of the “immigrant” Muslim and Hindu Bengali voters deserting the Congress and going on their own to vote for a new political party opposed to the Assam Accord, the United Minorities Front. While the AGP since then had made major inroads into the “immigrant Muslim” areas by significantly modifying its stand on “foreigners,” there were signs that many voters from these communities might now return to the Congress. Furthermore, even in 1985 the Congress had not lost its support among groups like the tea labor community. The Bodos and other “tribal” groups that had supported the AGP were evidently alienated from the AGP govermment. Then the AGP’s failure vis-a-vis ULFA meant that there were enough people, especially among groups other than the ethnic Assamese, desperate to see a change in government, While the AGP may have retained much ofits base among the ethnic Assamese, its failures on the immigration crisis had significantly disillusioned its supporters. Thus in the elections of June 1991 the Congress, with 28 percent of the popular vote, won a majority of seats in the state Assembly. However, five years later, in 1996 the Congress lost and the AGP was once again able to form the government. Given the multiethnic nature of Assam’s electorate and the political alignments along ethnic lines and the first-past-the-post rule that determines electoral victories, it would be wrong to assume that recent elections in Assam have given a mandate to any elected state government to take on ULFA militarily without engaging the ideological challenge that Assamese subnationalism poses. For even as the Assamese have become somewhat ethnicized —as I described in the last chapter— given the centrality of nation-provinces to the legitimacy structure of the pan-Indian polity and the history of Assamese subnationalism, it does not seem likely that issues that have been constitutive of Assamese subnationalism for so long can suddenly be pushed into a corner as “ethnic Assamese” issues, that

is, relevant only to a minority of the state’s population. While it may be possible today to mobilize sizable sections of multiethnic Assam’s population against ULFA, the fact remains that underlying the sympathy for ULFA among the ethnic Assamese are the unresolved key issues that have been central to the legitimacy of government in-

Militant Subnationalism, Human Rights, and Pan-Indianism

157

stitutions in Assam. Indeed, it is significant that in the 1996 election, even after significant decline in ULFA’s prestige, AGP’s call for withdrawing the army was a major factor in its election victory. Its volte-face on the issue after the election cost the AGP dearly in the 1998 parliamentary elections. It seems that no government in Assam that might appear to represent a victory of “immigrant power” —a point that was painfully evident also is likely to be legitimate during certain critical phases of the Assam movement. It can hardly be expected that Assam’s longstanding immigration crisis would end just as the ethnic Assamese draws the electoral lesson of their fear of the “indigenous” peoples of Assam becoming a minority having become a reality. Only a political settlement that picks up from where the failed Assam Accord left off can bring political stability to Assam. A militarist approach to ULFA coinciding with the perception of “immigrant power” or “outsiders power” can be explosive. A recent illustration of this came in 1996 during the transition from Hiteswar Saikia’s Congress government to the AGP government under Prafulla Mahanta. Saikia, who was seen as the lynchpin of the militarist solution, had died days before the election, introducing an added element of uncertainty to the political transition, When the election results began trickling in, four senior civil servants, who in

the public perception played a key role in implementing the tough line on ULFA, simply fled Assam, and were later charged by the new government with abdication of responsibilities. Among them were the Chief Secretary, who is the top civil official of the state government, the Director General of Police, who is the state’s top police

official, the Deputy Inspector General of Police (law and order), and the Finance Secretary. Significantly none of them are ethnic Assamese or “indigenous” northeasterners. In the period of political uncertainty that followed the elections, there were ethnic riots

of Bodos against Santhals in Kokrajhar, where more than a thousand people died and pro-ULFA intellectual Parag Kumar Das was murdered, most likely by pro-government gunmen. Yet Hiteswar Saikia’s government had its successes against ULFA. He got many ULFA cadres to surrender, causing a split in ULFA between those favoring dialogue and arms surrender and those opposing it. But Saikia did not show any inclination to seek a political settlement, or perhaps could not muster the political resources

158

Chapter7

necessary for a comprehensive settlement. Eventually Saikia had to yield to bureaucrats and politicians in New Delhi, falling back on the militarist option. On September 14, 1991 a second army operation was launched against ULFA — Operation Rhino — this time on Saikia’s recommendation. The operation continued from September 1991 to January 1992, when the prospects of talks between the government and ULFA led to a temporary suspension of army operations. In April 1992 army operations were resumed in six districts, specifically targeted because the local ULFA leaders were against the surrender of arms and negotiations. Operation Rhino itself was suspended in April 1993. But on May 7, 1996, just before the change of government, when-two electoral candidates were killed allegedly

by ULFA, Operation Rhino was relaunched. Whether an army operation was formally in effect, Assam since 1991 has always had a strong presence of military and paramilitary personnel engaged in fighting both ULFA and the Bodo militants. For a while the Saikia government was widely acclaimed, at least

outside Assam, for having brought peace to Assam. But the facts spoke otherwise. In November 1995, toward the end of Saikia’s term in office, the Telegraph’s Assam correspondent wrote: “Going by the number of insurgents supposedly arrested or who have surrendered [and he should have added, killed by security personnel] in the last four years, ULFA and BSF [Bodo Security Force] should

have been finished more than four times over. But the killings continue. The figures tell a stark story. More than 180 security personnel have been killed since Saikia assumed office on June 30, 1991.

This year alone insurgents have killed over 60 military and police personnel.””° Prabhakara described the situation facing Saikia in 1991 as a no-win situation. Considering ULFA’s open challenge to the State, no government could remain indifferent. But ULFA can “get away with even its most outrageous actions because it does enjoy substantial legitimacy. This is a harsh reality which no amount of preaching and sermonizing will change.”?! His perceptions remain valid, even though ULFA’s image and support have suffered significant erosion since then. ULFA continues to be able to call successful general strikes (bandhs) in large parts of Assam to protest army actions, and to strike at both security personnel and economic installations with relative impunity. In other words, after all these years the ULFA “problem” has remained intractable, and

Militant Subnationalism, Human Rights, and Pan-Indianism

159

some of the government's policies, especially the incentives to surrender given by the Saikia government, have only made the problem worse. Allowing one-time militants to keep weapons supposedly for self-defense has led to a new wave of violence widely attributed to SULFA (surrendered ULFA) —some of it possibly with State support or at least with the State’s acquiescence. Recent official data on political violence in Assam are sobering. In 1997 there were 213 civilians killed by militants. Encounters between militants and security forces led to the killing of 134 militants. Human rights groups believe many of these encounters to be fake: cold-blooded killings of suspected ULFA cadres. Security forces described 100 of them as ULFA members, 30 as members of

Bodo militant organizations, and 4 as members of the National Security Council of Nagaland (NSCN). ULFA militants had killed 12] people, of whom 54 were civilians and the rest security personnel. Bodo militants had killed 71 people and the NSCN 19. During the same period, there were 400 incidents of political murders, extortions, and abductions— 231 involving ULFA.” It is worth recall-

ing that incidents of political violence when the army first moved into Assam in 1990 were fewer. In November 1990 the Governor’s report recommending President’s Rule in Assam said that ULFA had up to then shot and killed 113 people — fewer than the number

of victims of ULFA in 1997 alone.”° The difficulty that an elected government in Assam faces if it supports a militarist “solution” of the ULFA “problem” became apparent in the recent experience of the AGP, alluded to earlier.

While AGP’s electoral platform in 1996 included a call for withdrawing the army from Assam, after the elections, under pressures from the central government— after all, the first AGP government

was dismissed for its ineffectiveness in dealing with ULFA— Chief Minister Prafulla Mahanta reversed his position. The AGP paid for its volte-face almost immediately. In the parliamentary elections of 1998, the AGP secured only 17.2 percent of the popular vote and won none of Assam’s fourteen parliamentary seats.?* The Congress won ten seats. ULFA had called for a boycott of the elections. Even though the call was by and large ignored in non-ethnic-Assamese areas, the voting rates were low in ethnic Assamese areas. The state-

wide polling rate was 61 percent compared to 75 percent in 1996.”° The low turnout was crucial in tilting the balance against AGP.

160

Chapter7

Avoiding the Key Issues The Indian State’s way of “solving” the “Assam problem” has not included any interest in a comprehensive political settlement of the key issues that have animated Assamese subnational protest. There are no fresh efforts to deal with the difficulties faced in implementing the commitments made in the Assam Accord of 1985. The hope seems to be that the public will simply forget them. Despite the neatness of the compromise formula on “foreigners” laid out in the Assam Accord, the task of identifying illegal aliens in Assam proved impossible. The commitment to protect the identity and heritage of the “Assamese people” also proved to be a rather clumsy formulation — out of line with Assam’s complex ethnic landscape. These difficult-to-implement clauses of the Assam Accord generate intense public debates in Assam. The “foreigners” question, the validity of electoral rolls, the number of “foreigners” in Assam, and the Illegal Migrants (Determination of Tribunal) (IMDT) Act of

1983 that has made the job of identifying “foreigners” in Assam virtually impossible are topics on which newspapers and politicians in Assam have had much to say. Yet there are times when there seems to be an attempt to trivialize the Assamese perception of the “foreigners” issue by public officials. During his five years in office between 1991 and 1996, Chief Minister Hiteswar Saikia made

widely divergent statements on the number of “foreigners” in Assam. At one point he said that there is not a single “foreigner” in Assam; and at another point said the number of “foreigners” is in the hundreds of thousands.*® The contrary statements were responses to different political imperatives — one to please the “immigrant” communities and the other an overture to the ethnic Assamese and the “tribal” peoples. There seems to be little faith in the possibility of resolving this difficult issue through reasoned debate and discussion. The official voters’ list published on December 10, 1997 came up with an ingenious way of handling the controversy on the enfranchisement of “foreigners.” Thousands of names on the voters list were marked by the letter “d” meaning disputed citizenship. Their cases were sent to tribunals. Their names were to be included in the final list only after the cases were resolved by these tribunals. However, the persons were not to be kept from voting. This odd practice

Militant Subnationalism, Human Rights, and Pan-Indianism

161

apparently followed a judgment of the Gauhati High Court (see note 40 of Chapter 6) of January 1994 that “inquiries into one’s citizenship at the time of the preparation of the draft rolls was not

necessary” and that objections could be “entertained at a later stage in the case of suspicion.”*? The IMDT Act of 1983, discussed in Chapter 6, has been a source of frustration to supporters of the Assam movement. The number of people determined to be illegal aliens in Assam has been extremely low since the passage of the IMDT Act. As I pointed out in Chapter 6, the law was passed by the Indian parliament at a time when only two of Assam’s fourteen parliamentary seats were filled (and none representing the ethnic Assamese areas) because of the successful boycott of the parliamentary elections of December 1979. Following the Assam Accord, there were some minor modifications of the act, making it slightly easier to make a complaint. But during the nearly five years of the AGP government between 1986 and 1990 fewer than a thousand illegal aliens were expelled. According to government figures of September 1993, 8,632 people were declared as illegal immigrants, expulsion orders were served on 5,018 of them, and 1,186 of them were actually expelled. Furthermore, since the Assam Accord and March 1993, 16,334 new

“infiltrants” including 908 “reinfiltrants” were discovered.”* Debate on whether the IMDT Act should be retained or repealed takes place regularly in Assamese newspapers and among Assamese politicians. Defenders of the law argue that without it Indian citizens would be harassed and deported. Opponents of the law argue that it makes it impossible to identify and expel illegal immigrants, and that in effect, it creates a discriminatory situation because the procedures for identifying illegal immigrants in Assam are now different from those in the rest of the country. The difficulty in implementing another important clause of the Assam Accord is significant in terms of what it says about the explosiveness of certain cultural policy issues in Assam today. Here too the policymakers’ inclination seems to be not to talk about those commitments and hope for the best. Clause 6 of the Assam Accord says that “constitutional, legislative and administrative safeguards, as may be appropriate, shall be provided to protect, preserve and promote the cultural, social, linguistic identity and heritage of the Assamese people.” This formulation is anything but realistic, con-

162

Chapter7

sidering the difficulty with the very concept of the “Assamese people,” in Prabhakara’s words, “the nuances

that distinguish them

from ‘Assamese-speaking people’ (ethnic Assamese in my usage) and the ‘people of Assam.’ ”*® Formally, both the AGP government and later the Congress government have conveyed to New Delhi a number of proposals to translate this commitment into action. The proposals include amending the Constitution and electoral laws. Among them are proposals that would require that laws considered by the parliament affecting Assam would require the prior approval of the state legislature. Other proposals include making Assamese “the state language of Assam for all purposes”; giving freedom to the Assam Assembly to prescribe the conditions for acquiring the status of permanent residents in Assam and to impose restrictions on who can be employed in the state; and giving consideration to Assam’s claim on taxes levied outside the state on tea, timber and other products of the state. One indication of how lightly successive state governments have taken the commitment of the Assam Accord to protect the cultural identity of Assam is that the proposals submitted to New Delhi by the Hiteswar Saikia government in 1993 were an exact reproduction of proposals made by the AGP government in 1986. The Saikia government's official statement included comments on progress to date; even the comments did not change in the intervening six years. There was “no response received from the GOI” (Government of India) on some proposals and “action” was “pending with the GOI” on some proposals. As Prabhakara noted, “the continuity of perceptions about what constitutes the vital and permanent interests of the Assamese people” between the AGP and the Congress (I) government was as remarkable as “the total indifference” of the

government of India to these anxieties. “What earthly reason is there,” Prabhakara asks rhetorically, “for the separatist sentiments not to take root in the state?”°° While India’s policymakers have chosen to ignore these crucial but difficult to implement clauses of the Assam Accord, during the anti-insurgency operations they tried to move toward implementing some of the easier parts of the accord. In January 1994, as the Congress government under Hiteswar Saikia began to claim successes against ULFA, India’s Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao

Militant Subnationalism, Human Rights, and Pan-Indianism

163

visited the state. The reception of the Prime Minister’s visit dramatized why this approach was unlikely to work. The Prime Minister’s major public engagement during his visit was to inaugurate ceremonially the construction of the buildings of two new central universities in the state, following through on another commitment of the Assam Accord. Central universities are generally prestigious institutions in India; there are only a handful of them in the country. Only the populous and politically important state of Uttar Pradesh has two central universities — Benares (Varanasi) and Aligarh —and they go back to 1915 and 1920. For Assam, where the desire for better educational opportunities has been an important theme in Assamese subnational politics, to have two new central universities should have been a matter of rejoicing. But most Assamese saw the Prime Minister’s visit as an attempt to divert attention from the crucial parts of the Assam Accord on the “foreigners” question. “What is really happenning,” said the moderate English language daily Sentinel, which is supportive of the government’s tough stance on ULFA, “is that the government has merely toyed about with the peripheral provisions of the Assam Accord” and has tried to sideline the “crucial life-and-death clauses” for the people of Assam, that is the clauses regarding “foreigners.” Indeed, so skeptical was ethnic Assamese opinion about the government’s enthusiasm for what they saw as the peripheral parts of the Assam Accord that the new universities even raised some suspicion: would the new central universities mean a lessening of status of the two universities in the Brahmaputra Valley that by now were seen as Assamese national institutions? Even the choice of a name for one of the universities

— Assam University— to be located in the

Bengali-dominated Cachar district became controversial. The Sentinel wrote: “Locating the Assam University in a part of Assam that has perversely chosen, over the years, to underscore its differences rather than identity with the state, the very idea would seem to bea

sick joke.” Cachar deserves a good central university, said the editorial, but it should be called something else and it should not be “designed to sabotage two existing universities dear to the people.”8? The Assam University in Silchar, a city in the predominantly Bengali district of Cachar, is now in operation. Considering the cultural politics of Assam, there is indeed an irony about this university

164

Chapter7

being established as part of the commitment made in the Assam Accord, For with its authority to grant affiliation to undergraduate colleges and to grant undergraduate and graduate degrees, this new university brings back the spectre of an officially bilingual Assam that has haunted Assam for so long and had animated some of the major cultural policy controversies discussed in Chapters 4 and 5. During his visit to Assam, Prime Minister Rao was greeted with bandhs — general strikes —in varous parts of the state. Shops, businesses, government offices, and roads were closed in response to a call given by the All Assam Students Union

(AASU). Indeed the

Prime Minister’s travel plans had to be changed a number of times in view of the protests. A cartoon in the Assam Tnbune showed the pilot of the Prime Minister’s plane asking ground control for the Prime Minister’s itinerary.*? If the mainstream Assamese press gave the Prime Minister less than a rousing welcome, Assam’s more radical subnationalist press was downright hostile. “What does the prime minister's visit represent?” asked the militant Assamese subnationalist newspaper Xadin. “The government of India’s policy in this region,” said the editorial, is to “destroy the struggles of the indigenous peoples of the area.” The military expeditions against ULFA of the last three years, said the editorial, are efforts “to destroy the Assamese

nation.”

While the “conspiracy to turn the indigenous people into a minority” has gone on for a while, “now they have added to it a conspiracy to destroy the Assamese nation completely.” It termed Operation Bajrang, Operation Rhino, and other military operations efforts to “destroy and kill Assamese by non-Assamese people.” Would the Prime Minister, in his own state, have allowed “his own people” to

be “annihilated and turned into a minority?”*4

The Human Rights Question It is impossible to discuss the question of human rights in Assam without addressing the controversy that surrounds most discussions of human rights in India’s insurgency-affected areas. The situation in Assam and the rest of the northeast does not receive the same attention in international or in Indian forums as that of Kashmir or Punjab. However, the parameters of the debate on Assam are the

same as those of the better-known cases. The Indian government,

Militant Subnationalism, Human Rights, and Pan-Indianism

165

stung by criticism of its human rights record, often accuses Indian and international human rights organizations of being soft on the militants, whose human rights abuses, it argues, have compelled the State to react. It is important not to let this controversy take attention away from the human toll and the costs in terms of the growing chasm between subnationalism and pan-Indianism that becomes more evident in Assam every passing day. Many of these charges of human rights abuses by security forces are solidly documented by human rights organizations and by newspaper reporters; others are not so well documented, and some are even disproved. There is also little doubt that ULFA and other insurgent organizations are remarkably callous about human life and engage in serious human rights abuses such as killings, extortions, and kidnappings. But that does not change the fact that the means the Indian State has used to deal with ULFA violate global and Indian human rights standards and seriously undermine respect for India’s democratic institutions, the rule of law, and the

project of pan-Indianism. The human rights activism of Assam-based Manob Adhikar Xongram Xomiti (Human Rights Struggle Forum) has been especially controversial. It has had as its primary spokesmen figures such as the late Parag Kumar Das and Ajit Kumar Bhuyan — dissident figures well known for their sympathy for ULFA. However, this forum has also painfully put together the most comprehensive, detailed,

and chilling reports of human rights abuses by army and security personnel in Assam. Given the controversy surrounding this organization, let me leave aside their reports and rely only on international and pan-Indian human rights organizations to present this brief summary of the human rights situation. I have already cited the 1991 report Restless Frontier by the Delhibased People’s Union for Democratic Rights. In March 1992 New York-based Human Rights Watch sent an investigator to Assam. The investigator was “harassed, questioned and followed by police” all through her travels in Assam. Despite that, she managed to visit some of the worst affected areas of Assam, where she interviewed families of victims of the Indian army’s abuses. She found confirmation of reports of a pattern of human rights abuses by security personnel and of acts of violence committed by members of ULFA. The following is an excerpt from the Human Rights Watch report:

166

Chapter7

The Indian army has conducted massive search-and-arrest operations in thousands of villages in Assam. Many victims of abuses committed during these operations are civilians, often relatives or neighbors of young men suspected of militant sympathies. Villagers have been threatened, harassed, raped, assaulted and killed by soldiers attempting to frighten them into identifying suspected militants. Arbitrary arrest and lengthy detention of young men picked up in these periodic sweeps, or at random from their homes and from public places are common, and detainees of the armed forces are regularly subjected to severe beatings and torture. Deaths in custody have occurred as the result of torture, and in alleged encounters and escape attempts.*°

The report also notes that dissent in Assam was severely curtailed, that human rights activists and journalists were arrested for reporting on human rights abuses, and that militant groups were responsible for human rights abuses through acts of violence including bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations, targeting dissident ULFA members and suspected informers.*® Amore recent report, Where “Peacekeepers” Have Declared War, by a 14-member fact-finding mission of lawyers, journalists, and human rights activists from various parts of India, was published in April 1997. The team visited all seven northeastern states in April 1996 to examine the impact of the frequent use of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act of 1972 (AFSPA) on the region. The mission found

“that despite denials to the contrary, the security forces have, over the last four decades, blatantly violated all norms of decency and the democratic rights of the common people of the region.” The central government, it says,

has failed to find political solutions to the problems of the seven northeastern states, choosing instead, to resort to extensive militarisation and repressive legislation like the AFSPA. In the bargain, it has distanced itself from social, economic and cultural ground realities, and the needs and

aspirations of the people of the region.*”

In the case of Assam, the report lists abuses by the army in the course of dealing with ULFA and the Bodo insurgents as well as the campaign for Karbi autonomy. It was not just the Indian army, “at times as many as six different military and paramilitary forces — the Assam police, Assam Rifles, Border Security Force, Army, Punjab Commandos and Black Panthers — were operating in Assam.”

Militant Subnationalism, Human Rights, and Pan-Indianism

167

Let me cite an episode from a report on Assam by the Delhi-based People’s Union for Democratic Rights that poignantly illustrates the human toll and the chasm with the ideals of pan-Indianism that the army’s abuses have caused. The visiting team met “a group of young men tortured by the army in an abominable manner.” One Englishspeaking young man became the interpreter. The report notes that the team later learned that he had lost his only brother in India’s war with China in 1962. The young man translated “the harrowing tales of torture that the others were recounting.” But sporadically he lost track, “kept waving his hands and kept on interjecting ‘You know, it is our army, you know it is our army.’ ” The doctors told the visiting team that as a result of torture he was suffering lapses and occasionally was unable to coordinate his body movements and thoughts. The team hoped that doctors would cure him of his neurological and psychological disorders, but “the lasting impact of army operations on him and his generation should be obvious. The antipathy towards the army will linger on for a long time to come.”*? To these painfully familiar kinds of human rights abuses, one must add incidents that raise the possibility of more clandestine state operations that point to techniques of a dirty war resembling those under military regimes in Chile and Argentina and the apartheid regime in South Africa. I have noted above the policy of allowing many ULFA militants who surrender to keep their weapons and the advent of a new breed of political violence that newspapers attribute either to SULFA or to “unknown assailants.” The convergence between the State’s interest in defeating ULFA and some of these killings raises the possibility of the involvement, or at least the acquiescence, of the State. The fact that most of these murders remain unsolved tends to reinforce these suspicions. A particularly macabre set of killings took place on August 12, 1998. Five family members of ULFA leaders, who themelves had no involvement with ULFA, were killed, apparently to send ULFA a message. Dimba Rajkhowa,

the brother of ULFA’s

chairman

Arabinda

Rajkhowa,

was gunned down in Dibrugarh, and in a village in Nalbari district on the same day the mother, sister, brother, and sister-in-law of ULFA’s publicity secretary Mithinga Daimary were killed by masked gunmen. Newspapers attributed the murders to SULFA. ULFA’s chairman Rajkhowa pointed his finger at the State for the murder of his brother.”

168

Chapter7

Indian policymakers must muster the political imagination and the will to rethink fundamentally their knee-jerk reaction to insurgencies. Since the police and judicial institutions are weak, using the army has become the favored response to insurgencies. Yet the army is not primarily trained to fight internal wars. The inadequate law courts resources available to the police and the logjam in India’s do not make the army a better option. The military and paramilitary forces can win battles against insurgents quite easily, but their modes of operation risk turning the tension between subnatienalism and pan-Indianism into an abyss. Let me focus briefly on some of the laws that make the worst of the human rights abuses by the State possible. Rethinking these laws may be the first step in rethinking the Indian State’s way of dealing with insurgencies. The report Where “Peacekeepers” Have Declared War deals with the impact on the northeast of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which, as the report puts it, allows the government to “promulgate de facto martial law through the back door.” However, AFSPA is only one of the laws that provide

the legal context for India’s anti-insurgency operations and the human rights abuses by security forces. Among the others are the National Security Act, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act of 1967, and the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Preventive (TADA), which lapsed in 1996.

Act

Let us take AFSPA for illustrative purposes. AFSPA gives the Indian government, in consultation with the governor of a state, the

right to declare an area “disturbed.” Once an area is declared “disturbed,” an officer of the armed forces has powers (a) to “fire upon

or otherwise use force, even to the extent of causing death” on groups that violate either orders prohibiting the assembly of five or more persons or orders prohibiting the possession of weapons (an army officer can do so if he is of the opinion that it is necessary in order to maintain

“public order”);

(b) to arrest without warrant

and with the use of “necessary” force any person who has committed an offense or if there is a reasonabie suspicion that he or she has comitted such an offense; (c) to enter and search any premises to make such arrest. Army officers are given legal immunity for their actions. “No prosecution, suit or any other legal proceeding shall be instituted, except with the previous sanction of the central government” against anyone acting under the act.*! The visiting

Militant Subnationalism, Human Rights, and Pan-Indianism

169

team investigating the impact of AFSPA on the northeast found in parts of Assam what it called “militarisation as a way of life.”* So broad are the powers of the armed forces that the Indian debates about restricting some of these powers would seem remarkably arcane. In 1996, for instance, there were reports of adebate on “major amendments” of the AFSPA. It was reported that India’s Home Ministry was “planning significant changes” to make security forces more accountable. Officials were quoted as saying that while giving up legal immunity for army officers engaging in antiinsurgency operations is out of the question, army officers should not have the power to indulge in “senseless killings.” Thus the amendments sought to increase accountability without giving the courts jurisdiction over the actions of army officers. One of the amendments considered was to require that the power to “fire upon or otherwise use force, even to the extent of causing death” not apply to situations when in the opinion of an army officer it is necessary to do so for maintaining “public order,” but only to “situations where they are fired upon or are being threatened to be fired upon.” Given the serious allegations that many of the army’s encounter-killings are fake encounters (without legal procedures of accountability there is no way to know for sure), it is not clear why changes in the law—without more transparency —will make any difference. Yet many Indian policymakers apparently believe that with this amendment the armed forces will “show discretion before killing people in insurgency-prone areas.”** An editorial in the middle-of-the-road Assamese daily Ajir Axom on the celebration of Human Rights Day in India in December 1997 perhaps best illustrates the way the human rights question appears today to most Assamese,

and its dissonance

from formulations—

popular in the rest of India —that justify the State’s abuses in terms of the seriousness of the threat posed by separatists. “The programs celebrating Human Rights Day that received official cooperation,” wrote Ajir Axom, “were so perfunctory that there was little concern or criticism expressed at the role of the government in the violation of human rights in the country.” The President of India, Shankar Dayal Sharma, and leading intellectuals and politicians have “tried

to show that terrorism is the main form of human rights violations in the country.” Thus Human Rights Day in the government’s hands has become “anti-terrorism day.” Even human rights organi-

170

Chapter 7

zations seem to go along with this. For they feel that “they have done their duty once they criticise extremist organizations.” The editorial acknowledged that killings and kidnappings by ULFA are human rights violations. But to make “terrorist activities” the only examples of human rights violations, said the editorial, is “to obfuscate the other side of human rights violations.” The main party responsible for human rights violations in the country is the State. The State has been violating human rights backed by antidemocratic laws . . . that go back to the colonial period as well as new laws such as TADA legislated in the name of controlling terrorism, There have been numerous incidents of rapes, custodial deaths, deaths in fake encounters in Assam and the rest of the northeast. Many youths of the region have disappeared after being arrested by armed forces.**

The mainstream newspaper Ajir Axom and this editorial can hardly be termed pro-ULFA. They reflect the commonly held attitude on the subject of human rights in the Assamese public sphere today. I have not said much so far about restrictions on intellectual and press freedom. Draconian laws have enabled the State to restrict these freedoms as well in order to fight insurgency. For instance,

two editors of Assamese newspapers, the late Parag Kumar Das and Ajit Kumar Bhuyan, were arrested a number of times during this period of the State’s war on ULFA. The charges against them were many, but they include publishing statements by ULFA and articles sympathetic to ULFA. Whatever charges were brought against them, the courts have released them every time. Sometimes they have been released on bail, but Indian courts have broad powers to deny bail to a person against whom serious charges such as aiding a banned organization have some plausibility. One cannot avoid the impression that the arrests are attempts to harass and intimidate radical journalists. Both journalists have been known for their relentless muckraking. It is likely that the real motive of the successive arrests has been to intimidate them into silence, and that the laws that give the government sweeping powers to fight insurgency are also used by officials threatened by their muckraking journalism. B. George Verghese, in discussing issues of press freedom in Assam, refers to the proscription of a book by Parag Kumar Das, Proposal forFreedom, in which he argued in favor of the Indian Constitution recognizing the right of secession. Verghese summarizes the

Militant Subnationalism, Human Rights, and Pan-Indianism

171

reaction of the pan-Indian civil rights community. While the panIndian press has criticized these actions, there has also been some “soul searching within the press with regard to its role and code of conduct in times of stress.” Apparently the conclusion is that a distinction must be made between the “actions of a citizen as a journalist or editor and as an activist,” and the latter cannot be protected “under the rubric of freedom of the press.”* Whatever one may say about this soul-searching among panIndian journalists about whether intellectual freedom in India should include the right to publish a separatist tract, it shows little awareness of the stature of this “provincial” intellectual in the Assamese public sphere and the likely impact on Assamese civil society of his arrests, the banning of his books, and eventually his murder under suspicious circumstances. Das was killed in May 1996, in the middle of the day, in a busy city street in Guwahati, allegedly by progovernment gunmen. Das was an unabashed spokesman for the cause of northeastern political independence from India. He is probably best described as an organic intellectual of Assamese and northeastern insurgencies. His popular novel Sanglot Fengla celebrates the coming together of guerrilla insurgents from northeast India and Burma.

In Assam’s conspiratorial political culture, it is

widely believed that the government had a hand in his murder or was at least complicit in it. The public grief expressed at this death surpasses that for any other public figure in recent memory. By contrast, the honors accorded to Chief Minister Hiteswar Saikia, who died only weeks earlier, were a rather tame affair. Das’s death was major news, if not the primary headline, in most newspapers in Assam. ULFA proclaimed him a “national martyr,” and most newspapers reported that story. ULFA along with a few other organizations called for a day of protest, and the editors of all Assam’s major newspapers joined a silent procession sponsored by the Guwahati Press Club. There was a public memorial service where Das’s mother was joined by the mothers of other “martyrs” — that is, mothers of suspected insurgents killed by the Indian army. The memorial meeting was addressed by major figures from Assam’s cultural and political life, including a former vice chancellor of Gauhati University (see note 40 of Chapter 6) and a former chief minister of the state. The funeral procession was the largest in Assam in most people’s memory.

172

Chapter7

Yet one saw very little about such a remarkable memorial to a separatist intellectual in pan-Indian newspapers. Nor has finding

Parag Das’s assassin received the priority it would seem to deserve, if viewed from the vantage point of the Assamese public sphere. In Assam it is common to hear the charge that the perception ofthose on the side of the State that Das was on the side of ULFA explains why his murder remains unresolved. The damage done by the Indian

State’s apparent lack of interest in solving the murder of an Assamese hero, in terms of further erosion of faith in the impartiality of India’s legal and governmental institutions, may be irreparable. As Assam has lived through the violent years described in this

chapter, the overwhelming mood among the Assamese is one of disbelief, helplessness, and hurt. There are, of course, a few who

may be taken by the dangerous romance of an independent Assam. But to most, even when there may be some sympathy for “our boys”

locked in an unequal fight with the Indian army, the ULFA “boys” are no heroes. Let me

turn once again to Bhupen Hazarika, the

unofficial chronicler of the Assamese mood. In a song about these violent years, he depicts an Assam where the stillness of death has overwhelmed

life. “There is neither joy, nor sorrow. There is no

laughter and no tears... . There are no rules, and no norms... . There is only the chess game of death day in and day out.-And

amidst it, all things of beauty flee in fear.”*® In Chapter 5 I cited a song by Hazarika that makes the Assamese spring and new year festival Bihw a national birthday—the day of renewal when the Assamese nationality takes stock of its past and future. In recent years, for many Assamese, especially in rural areas where both ULFA and the security forces have more of a presence, it has been hard to celebrate Bihu in this life-denying environment. A 1992 song by Hazarika on Bihu is sung to the tune of a lullaby— trying to bring life back into the Assamese body politic. The lyric makes a plea to Bihu: “please do keep coming once a year and wake up mother Assam, and even in these dangerous times, please O Bihu, come and give the Assamese body and mind its ritual bath.”4”

Chapter 8 “We Are Bodos, Not Assamese’: Contesting a Subnational Narrative

In January 199] a letter to the editor by a Bodo gentleman about ULFA's call for an independent Assam appeared in Guwahati’s English language daily newspaper Sentinel. Lakhi Kachari asked what gave ULFA — which represents only the upper-caste Assamese — the authority to demand an independent Assam? ULFA, he said, has no

right to demand Assam’s independence. Assam in fact is “illegally occupied” by the “so-called Assamese.” He refers to them as “socalled Assamese” because they, or rather their forebears according to him, were immigrants from Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar.

They came to Assam in search of “economic salvation” and have

dominated the “local Assamese and aboriginals” ever since. It is time for the “the tribals and aboriginals” to seek “freedom” from the illegal occupation of Assam by the “so-called Assamese.”' The notion that “upper-caste Assamese” are descendants of immigrants from other parts of India ironically draws on myths that are popular among the “upper-caste Assamese” themselves: myths by which they had in the past sought to distance themselves from their “less sophisticated” neighbors and countrymen. The spirit of the letter is at the heart of the cultural and political rebellion of Assam’s “tribal” communities — notably the Bodos and the Karbis, but potentially other communities such as Tiwas and Rabhas as well. Historically they have seen themselves as part of the composite “indigenous” population of Assam, but they now seek to withdraw from the Assamese subnational formation and, in the case of the Bodos, even

seek territorial separation.

174

Chapter 8

The Bodos are the largest of Assam’s “plains tribes.” Of Assam’s population of about 22.4 million in 1991, approximately 9.2 percentare “plains tribal” and 1.9 percent are “hill tribal.” In 1991, 1.2 million people, or 5.3 percent of the population, identified themselves as speakers of the Bodo language.” Before the formation of new states in the 1960s and 1970s, a much larger proportion of the population of Assam were “tribals.” Today the demand for a Bodo homeland, constituted as a distinct state within the Indian Union, is

the most serious source of political violence in Assam — potentially, perhaps, even more than the separatist militancy of ULFA. The demand for a homeland for the Bodos follows the logic of forming new states in Assam, itself a consequence of the colonial geography discussed in Chapters 2 and 5. Significant hurdles to creating a Bodo homeland, however, bring to focus the limitations of separate

states as a way of dealing with subnational aspirations in the northeast. The violence around the question of a Bodo homeland suggests that this policy may have reached the end of the road. But why should the Bodo claim to a nation-province of their own be any less legitimate than that of any other nationalities in India? In Chapter 1, I discussed theoretically the contingent and contested nature of nations and nationalities. The increasingly violent politics of a Bodo homeland bring to sharp focus the contradictions that are at the heart of the projects surrounding nations, nationalities, and homelands. That the Assamese subnational narrative

should be so violently contested just as it challenges the pan-Indian narrative lends both political and theoretical poignancy to the Bodo case. The objections of Bodo leaders to two important clauses in the Assam Accord, signed by the leaders of the Assam movement and the Indian government in 1985, are especially telling. Clause 6 of the accord had promised safeguards to protect the cultural identity of “the Assamese people.” In 1985, when the Accord was signed, it could not have crossed anyone’s mind that the term “Assamese people” in this context could have meant anything other than the composite “indigenous” population of Assam. But given the concern of the Bodos about differentiating themselves from the ethnic Assamese, Bodo leaders have been apprehensive that the clause might give legitimacy to the imposition of Assamese language and culture on Bodos. Bodo leaders object to another clause in the

Contesting a Subnational Narrative

175

Assam Accord that promised evictions from protected public lands. Here, again, the leaders of the Assam movement clearly thought only about “foreigners” settled in those lands, with little regard for the fact that some of Assam’s most indigenous people — shifting s cultivators who had lost their traditional land entitlements under the “modern” regime of permanent land rights — might have found their way into those lands. During the first AGP government, attempts to evict illegal settlers from protected forests led to the eviction of some Bodos, providing a significant spark to the Bodo movement. Indeed, to some extent the movement for a Bodo homeland was

an outgrowth of the Assam movement. It is not surprising that the intensive political mobilization in support of the demand began in 1987 during the first AGP government. The student leaders of the Assam movement, who became the leaders of the AGP, got caught in their own rhetoric and failed to recognize that Assameseness itself is a contested formation. In failing to select sufficiently inclusionary historical and cultural symbols, and in being insufficiently sensitive to the human impact of their policy demands —as applied to “foreigners” and “indigenous” peoples alike — the leaders of the Assam movement contributed to what I called in Chapter 6 the process of ethnicization of the Assamese. Bodo student leaders accused ethnic Assamese leaders of anti-”tribal” prejudices and portrayed the first AGP government as an “Assamese government,” meaning a narrowly based ethnic Assamese government that cannot be trusted to speak for Assam as a whole.® There are at least three significant hurdles to creating a Bodo homeland today. (a) While the demand is animated by the memory of ancient Bodo kingdoms, and of a distant past when Bodo culture may have flourished uncontaminated by Assamese culture, the population that today can be identified as Bodo speakers are only 1.1 million, or 11.5 percent of the population of the north bank of the Brahmaputra, where

the Bodos want their homeland

to be.* (b)

Even though there are Bodo-majority villages and areas where the Bodo population is more concentrated, together they do not constitute a contiguous area that could be easily turned into a territory called Bodoland. (c) The Bodo demand has occurred in a context

of a resurgent Assamese subnationalism that resents Assam’s past divisions at the behest of New Delhi and opposes any further ter-

176

Chapter8

ritorial division of Assam. Even though, constitutionally speaking, India’s weak federalism would permit it, no government in New Delhi now would be foolhardy enough to expect that Assam could be split with the ease of the 1960s and early 1970s without the consent of the Assam state assembly. The small number of Bodos in a part of Assam that Bodo activists consider to be a historically Bodo area is the result of two factors. First, the term “Bodo” can be used in a broad as well as a narrow sense —a fact that reflects the historical process of ethnic change in Assam. Activists of the Bodoland movement typically use the term in a broad sense to mean not just the people (“tribe”) referred to as Bodo-Kachari, but all the peoples (“tribes”) who speak or used to

speak one of the languages of the Bodo family. The broad meaning thus includes a significantly larger group of people than just today’s Bodo speakers. Second, the historically Bodo areas have also been

where many of Assam’s “immigrant communities” have settled through much of this century. In these circumstances, the idea of a Bodo homeland — the product of a political discourse shaped by the legacy of past governmental policy, itself growing out of the intellectual legacy of colonial geography — has produced the political context for a significant part of the violence that has taken place around the issue. There is now a political impasse produced by these real impediments to a Bodo homeland. One response to this impasse has been for competing Bodo political factions to try to outbid one another in militancy, believing that all that is needed to secure a Bodo homeland is demonstrated political capacity. The gap between the contempo-, rary reality of mixed ethnic settlements and the romance of a Bodo homeland has even led some extremists to try to achieve a form of ethnic cleansing — especially targeting settlements of “immigrant communities” that have settled in these historically Bodo areas. The rest of this chapter is divided into three parts. The first part describes the process of ethnic change under which Bodos who in the past saw themselves as part of the Assamese subnational formation have begun asserting their difference. The second part describes the cultural politics of Bodo subnationalism in terms of the symbols of differentiation. The third part discusses the present impasse and the ethnically targeted violence it has produced.

Contesting a Subnational Narrative

177

Who Are the Bodos? A document

of the All Bodo

Students Union

(ABSU),

the most

influential organization campaigning for a separate Bodo homeland, gives an estimate of the number of Bodos. The task is difficult. The ABSU document rejects official census figures because they exclude from the Bodo category “tribes” that as a whole or in part now speak Assamese and those that “used to speak Assamese” — the implication being that there are Bodo-origin peoples who had once switched

to speaking Assamese,

but have now

switched

back to

speaking Bodo. ABSU’s use of the term “Bodo” includes those who speak or are supposed to have once spoken languages defined by linguists as belonging to the Bodo group. And that population extends to other northeastern states and north Bengal (both the In-

dian and the Bangladeshi portions) as well. Among the groups of people which they list it is useful to distinguish four categories: (a) people currently speaking the language known as Bodo; (b) people whose languages are defined by linguists as belonging to the Bodo group, such as the Rabha, Sonowal, Lalung, Deori, Dimasa, Barman, Garo, Hajong, HajongKochari, and Tripuri (Tipperah); (c) groups such as Chutia and Moran Kachari, who are said to be “completely Assamized and as such their figures could not be known”; and (d) Hindu Assamese castes such as Koch and Xaroniya, who were once Bodos but now

call themselves Assamese. These categories need qualification. The groups in the second category may not all currently speak a language of the Bodo group. As the ABSU document itself says about one of the groups in this category, the Sonowal Kacharis, they “have completely lost their Bodo language” and have now “adopted [the] Assamese language and Vaishnavite religion.” The document makes a somewhat ambiguous but interesting claim on a group that it does not even include among Bodos. The Rajbongsis of north Bengal and western Assam are said to be “of the same stock of Bodo,” but they “have totally forgotten Bodo languages” and are hence excluded.’ A three-member expert committee of the government of India in 1992 concluded that in the north-bank region of Assam, where Bodo activists want Bodoland to be established, the

total population was 9.6 million, of which 1.6 million or 17 percent

178

Chapter8

were “scheduled tribes,” and 1.1 million or 11. 5 percent were Bodo or Bodo-Kachari.® ABSU and BPAC rejected the figures and called them “incorrect and unacceptable.”” In asking for a Bodo homeland, Bodo intellectuals have relied on nineteenth-century colonial texts that are based on the assumption that “language families” tell a definite story about race.* One of the earliest English-language references to the Bodos— referred to as Kacharis, a name the Assamese once used and most Bodos today reject—was in Captain R. B. Pemberton’s Report on Bootan (Bhutan), first published in 1838. Pemberton observed that the inhabitants of the duwars (Assamese for doors) — customs gates on the frontier between Bhutan and the Koch and Ahom kingdoms— were mostly Bodos. The claim of the Bodos to the north bank of the river Brahmaputra today is based on the the fact that historically they inhabited the duwars, not on present-day settlement patterns. Pemberton wrote: The Kacharee tribe, by which these Dooars [Duwars] are principally inhab-

ited, appear to be a race quite distinct Valley; they are muscular in appearance, a language peculiar to themselves; they as well as in those Dooars over which control.®

from the aborigines of the Assam though small in stature, and speak are found within the British limits, the Bootan Government exercises

While Captain Pemberton noticed the Bodos in a region where they are concentrated, later observers — equating language family with shared race — noted that they were much more spread out in the region than the.Duars alone. The Reverend Sidney Endle in his classic ethnography called The Kacharis, first published in 1911, divided the Bodos into Northern and Southern groups, each consisting of a number of subgroups scattered through different parts of what was then Assam.'° In the classic Linguistic Survey of India by G. A. Grierson — an enabling text for the racial theories of colonial officialdom — “Bodo” is used as the name of one of the branches of the Assam-Burmese branch of the Tibeto-Burman subfamily of the Tibeto-Chinese family of languages. Grierson included nine languages /dialects in the Bodo group.'! Based on this body of knowledge, Endle inferred that the Bodos “were in earlier days the dominant race in Assam and as such they would seem to have left traces

Contesting a Subnational Narrative

179

of this domination in the nomenclature of some of the physical features of the country” and that the “race” is very widely distributed in the region.!? Sidney Endle proselytized among the Bodos. Even by the standards of his time, Endle was considered too much of an enthusiast. In the introduction to his book, his friend J. D. Anderson of the Indian Civil Service wrote that Endle’s “interest in the Kachari flock was that of an evangelist rather than that of a linguist or ethnologist, and this preoccupation coloured his style and affected the matter of his book.”'* Endle believed that a number of distinct peoples of Assam speaking different languag — Bodos, es Rabhas, Lalungs, Garos, etc.—were all “members of the Kachari or Bada race.”!4 Nevertheless he noted the sharp differences that were apparent among some of these groups. The “separation” between the western, that is, Bodo “section” and the southern, that is, Dimasa “section,” he wrote, “would seem to be almost final and complete.” A

question Endle posed betrayed the fallacy of his race-language family equation. “How a people so clannish and united as the Kacharis are well-known to be,” Endle asked, “should ever become so widely separated?”!>Of course, Endle little anticipated that in the closing decades of the century there might be a Bodo political project to bring them and other members of the Bodo “race” together into a single subnational formation, partly inspired by his writings. The Bodos and the Assamese

Linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji’s formulation on the issue is more nuanced, and recognizes the impossibility of strictly separating Bo-

dos, along racial lines, from the Assamese and some of the Bengalispeaking peoples of today. Noting the traces of the influence of Bodo languages, he wrote that the Bodos were clearly “the most important Indo-Mongoloid

people in Eastern India, and they form

one of the main bases of the present-day population” of the Brahmaputra Valley and North Bengal as well as East Bengal. Except for

the Khasi and Jaintia Hills, the eastern parts inhabited by the Nagas and the southeastern parts inhabited by the Kuki-Chins, Chatterji wrote, the whole of [undivided] Assam and North and East Bengal

was “the country of the great Bodo people.” But at present “except

180

Chapter 8

where some islands of Bodo speech remain,” the Kirata Bodos have s — Hindu merged into the Bengali and Assamese speaking people and Muslim alike.'® Indeed, the evidence of Bodo language and culture being the predominant element in the pre-Indic culture of Assam is overwhelming. For instance many of the names of rivers in Assam have the first syllable “Di” — the Bodo word for water— for example Dihing, Disang, Disoi, Dibru, Dibong.'” Even the Brahmaputra has a pre-Sanskritic name, Dilao, that Bodos still use now. In 1974, ata

time when the Bodo demand for a separate state was supported only by asmall fringe, M. S. Prabhakara wrote: “In a way, it is silly to make a distinction between the Assamese and the Bodo, for the Bodos are Assamese.”!® Prabhakara in that essay makes some insightful comments on the nature of the Bodo-Assamese intermix. While many ethnic Assamese — faced with the early phases of the Bodo rebellion — might have begun saying that the Bodos were Assamese, he noted, “the eager apologist will never reverse the equation and claim that the Assamese are Bodos.” Prabhakara is particularly sensitive to the unequal terms on which the Bodos were historically assimilated into the Assamese formation. It is this inequality that has led Bodo activists today to repudiate the process and to assert the distinctiveness and equality of the Bodos vis-a-vis the ethnic Assamese. Prabhakara wrote that it is doubtful that Bodos were really considered part of Assamese society “while they remained Bodos.” Their “acceptance into Assamese society” was dependent on “their acceptance of Hinduism, which also meant, in course of a few generations, the loss of the native speech and the adoption of the Assamese language.” Those who stayed outside the Hindu caste order remained “Kacharis, a term which, at least in private conversation among caste-Hindu Assamese, continues to have its traditional pejorative connotation.”!* The history of the assimilation of Bodos and of many “tribal” peoples into the Assamese formation provides one of the most dramatic examples of how Indic civilization in India’s northeastern periphery managed to recruit converts from the “primitive” peoples, and of the continuity between caste and the supposed “primitive isolates” — the “tribes.” Caste seems to have been a remarkably open system in Assam. But that also means that, contrary to the myths popular among the ethnic Assamese,

Contesting a Subnational Narrative

181

most of them — Hindus and Muslims alike — are separated by only a few generations from their “tribal” cousins. E. A. Gait, the scholar and civil servant in charge of the 1891 census of Assam, oberved the process of assimilation of Bodos into

the Assamese formation. His account provides a good benchmark to contrast the contemporary urge for differentiation and political autonomy among the Bodos. At the end of the nineteenth century, so unmistakable was the process of assimilation of Bodos into the Assamese formation that, analyzing the language data of the census of 1891, he could write that the languages of the Bodo group were “dying out” and that “the entire extinction of these languages” was “probably only a matter of a very few years.”*° Gait was commenting on the decline of the number of speakers of languages of the Bodo group from the 1881 to the 1891 census. Kachari (today’s Bodo) speakers declined by 24 percent from 263,186 people to 200,129, and Lalung (today’s Tiwa) speakers declined by 14 percent. By contrast, Mech

— that is how newly Hinduized speakers

Bodos in

— increased from the old Goalpara district described their dialect 57,890 to 69,217 —an increase of 19.6 percent. Gait suspected the process of ethnic change and attributed the increase in the number of Mech speakers to “some confusion between the language and Kachari.” In a footnote he pointed out that the caste and tribe data of the census showed a large increase in the number of persons describing themselves as Mech and a corresponding decrease in the number of Kacharis in Goalpara district.?! Gait’s intellectual engagement with a process of ethnic change seen through colonial lenses and using a static conception of caste and tribe is interesting. Under the tribes of Assam, he defines the

category the “Bodo group” as follows: The group of tribes known as Bodo forms the most numerous and important section of the aboriginal tribes of the province. The group includes the Kachari, Mech, Tipperah, Chutiya, Lalung, Hajong, Rabha, Mahalia, Garo and other tribes, and also the greater part at least of the Koch which is now recognised as a Hindu caste, and has for this reason been shown in

group 2.”

When it came to the Koch caste, he wrote, they are no longer a tribe, but a Hindu caste, “into which all converts to Hinduism from

182

Chapters

different tribes —Kachari, Garo, Hajong, Lalung, Mikir, etc. —are

admitted on conversion.” The census even had data on the “subdivisions of the Koch caste,” and Gait has a succinct description of

the subdivisions, referring to them as “stages of corversion.” He noted that the terms used to refer to converts in different districts varied. Noting that “in most places the first stage is that of the Sarania [Xoronia],” he adds in a footnote “in Darrang and Kam-

rup a Kachari when he first becomes a Sarania is still looked at as a Kachari rather than as Koch.”*° The category Sarania, or Xoronia Koch, refers to Sankritic Saran or the Assamese Xoron—the feet of

the guru; surrendering at the feet of the Vaishnava Goxain being the ritual of conversion to Assamese Vaishnavite Hinduism. Gait describes the other names used for Koch subcastes, such as Madahi

Koch, Heremia Koch, Xoru Koch (called Phairi in Nowgong) and Kamtali or Bor Koch. Madahi Koch, like Xoronia Koch, is “another

name for the early stage of conversion.” Madahiin Assamese means one who drinks alcohol, obviously referring to the fact that the neoconvert continues old habits of which the Vaishnava guru disapproves. At the top of the hierarchy, writes Gait, stand the Kamtali or Bor Koch, who at least in outward appearance are pure Hindus. They are supposed to follow Hindu precepts such as refraining from drinking alcohol or eating pork. However, “whether this purity exists in fact — as well as in theory is doubtful.”*4 Indeed, Gait realized that a person of the Koch caste could move

into some higher status Hindu caste as well. Noting that the increase in the number of people of the Koch caste was not substantial, he wrote, “in view of the way in which the Koch caste is constantly being recruited from the ranks of the hill tribes, the only possible explanation was that a number of Koches must have returned themselves as belonging to some higher caste.”25 Asa rule, those who join the Assamese formation no longer identify themselves as Bodo or as belonging to any other “tribe,” and after a generation or two they may not even speak a “tribal” language. For instance, the Rajbongsis in western Assam and north Bengal (both Indian West Bengal and Bangladesh) trace their descent to the royal family of Koch Bihar. The Koch Behar royal family trace their lineage from the Mech leader Haria, alias Haridas Mandal. But “the Rajbongsi intelligentsia emphatically deny that there is any affinity between the tribals and themselves.” They also do not

Contesting a Subnational Narrative

183

see themselves as being connected to the Muslim Rajbongsis. Indeed, only Hindu Rajbongsis are referred to as Rajbongsi, and Muslim Rajbongsis are simply referred to as Muslims without that caste appellate.° Since 1998 the “Koch Rajbongsis” of Assam have been included in the official list of Scheduled Tribes. Insofar as their newly granted “tribal” status would qualify them for affirmative action programs meant for “tribals” and even for political representation reserved for “tribals,” it might further reduce the Bodo share of benefits from these programs. While the process of ethnic change from “Kachari” to Assamese is clear, considering the way Assam as a colonial province was put together, as described in Chapter 1, not all groups that are part of the Bodo population of today’s Assam have had the same history of interacting with the ethnic Assamese. To the extent that the assimilation was the consequence of political ties, not all the Bodos of today’s Assam interacted with the Ahom State. This is significant because the culture of the Ahom kingdom is more constitutive of what became modern Assamese culture than the Koch kingdom, the other major component of today’s Assam. For instance, the Sonowal Kacharis, one of the Bodo sub-groups that speak only Assamese, are concentrated in Dibrugarh district— the center of the Ahom kingdom. It is plausible that the Bodos inhabiting the Duars, along the foothills of Bhutan,

had much

less contact with the Ahoms

culturally.?” Clearly Assamese Vaishnavism did not have an impact on the Bodos who live in today’s Kokrajhar district.” It is not surprising that the Bodos of this area have a history of activism in the struggle for cultural differentiation and political autonomy from the Assamese.”9

Reversing Assimilation: The Cultural Politics of Bodo Subnationalism The central theme in Bodo cultural politics today is to repudiate the process of unequal assimilation into the Assamese subnational formation and to seek differentiation from, and equality with, the

ethnic Assamese. Apart from the democratizing impact of modern times, there are two contextual reasons for this urge for differentiation and autonomy. J have already discussed the first of these factors: the example of the new states (Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland,

184

Chapter 8

Meghalaya, and Mizoram) controlled by “tribal groups” that were all once part of Assam has made the idea of political separation from Assam both attractive and seemingly viable. There is a second factor that explains the urge for cultural differentiation. The cultural, economic, and political transformation of Assam that began in the colonial period has made mobility into the Assamese formation seem unattractive and pointless. To the “tribal” peoples of the ‘northeast the Christian missions, with their association with.the

“modern” West, became a powerful rival to the Assamese Vaishnavite institution of Xotro, which under the colonial dispensation had lost its old prestige and political patronage. Among the cultural trends of differentiation among the Bodos today are those in the realm of religious practices. There is a revival of the worship of “Bathou” as the supreme god and the cactus (Xizu tree) as the emblem of that god. Bathou puja (celebration of Bathou) has become the most common form of religion — especially noticeable among the educated sections, who have returned to that practice. The courtyard of many Bodo families has an altar of Bathou. While the intent to differentiate from the Assamese Vaishnavite Hindu practices is apparent, the relationship of traditional Bodo religion to Saivite and Shakta Hinduism, however, is

more complex. For the history of Bodo interaction with Hindu culture precedes the conversion of Bodos under the Vaishnava Goxains since the sixteenth century. Some Bodos refer to their deity Bathou as a name for the Hindu God Shiva.*° Hinduism in Assam has traces of the pre-Hindu religions of the area, and the pre-Hindu religions of peoples such as the Bodos had not avoided the influence of Hinduism.

For instance, the Kamakhya

temple in Guwa-

hati—now a major pan-Indian Hindu temple of Shakti worship— predates Hinduism in the area and was probably originally a temple for a pre-Hindu mother goddess. Among practices of Bodos today that underline the urge to differentiate from the Assamese is a preference for burial over cremation. When I visited the memorial site for the Bodo leader Upen Brahma— referred to by many Bodos as Bodfa or the father of the Bodo nation —I was struck by the fact that it was a grave and nota cremation site. A Bodo activist explained to me that the traditional custom of the Bodos was to bury their dead, and that the practice had stopped as a result of “Assamesization.” Upen Brahma, he told

Contesting a Subnational Narrative

185

me, wanted his people to return to the practice of burying the dead and willed a burial for himself. Burials, the Bodo activist told me, may even have an additional advantage: it will ensure that “our” bones will tell future generations about “us.”3! There is, however, some room for controversy about burial being the “traditional” Bodo practice. According to a Bodo author, Bhaben Narzy, the most common traditional practice of the Bodos was to leave the dead body for wild animals, vultures, and birds. Cremation and burial were both rare. Animals feasting on the dead body were considered to be auspicious, and animals not preying on a body on the first or second day was considered very inauspicious.*® The most visible symbol of the desire to differentiate — and one of the most important battlegrounds of Bodo cultural politics — is language. In 1974-75 the Bodo Xahitya Xobha launched agitation demanding the adoption of the Roman script for the Bodo language. Bodo was not a written language in the past, and in recent years it had been written using the Assamese script. On the face of it, as M. S. Prabhakara wrote,

“if representative literary/cultural

organizations of the Bodo people like the Bodo Xahitya Xobha agree that the Roman script is more suited to their language, then that should have been the end of the matter.” But it became quite a violent confrontation, and the reason, suggests Prabhakara, is that to the ethnic Assamese the demand for a Roman script was “the thin end of the wedge, the thick end being Udayachal,”*’ or in today’s terms Bodoland. At the end of the movement, on the cen-

tral government’s intervention, the script selected was Devnageri — the script some Hindi language enthusiasts believe could someday become a pan-Indian script. Bodo organizations, however, continue to raise the demand for Roman script. A reporter noted in 1988 that Bodo leaders admit that the “Assamese script which they used earlier was much easier for them than Devnageri. But then they could not swallow their pride as their movement was basically against the Assamese script and had to accept Devnageri.”** Only in 1998 did the Assam government finally accept using the Roman script for writing Bodo in officially sponsored publications. Many Bodos, especially of the younger generation, now speak only Bodo and prefer not to speak Assamese. There is also a growing preference for Bodo names for people and places. For example, the grounds in which the Bodo cultural organization, the Bodo

186

Chapter 8

Xahitya Xobha, met in its annual meeting in 1996 was called “Iradgao Fouthar.” lradgao was the Bodo name of the last Kachari king,

whom colonial documents and traditional history books refer to by the more Sanskritic name Govinda Chandra.*° The implications of speaking Bodo as a marker of differentiation became evident to me when I accepted an invitation to attend a rally in May 1992 on the occasion of the second anniversary of the Bodo leader Upen Brahma’s death. Given the local norms of hospitality, being an invited guest, I could not, in good form, decline

their invitation to sit on the podium and speak a few words. The dilemma I faced on what language to use was a new experience for me in Assam. I considered speaking English, but that would have been absurd. A much larger number of people would understand me if I spoke Assamese. I decided to speak Assamese, but with apologies for not knowing Bodo. I am not sure whether my apologies, coming from an “ethnic Assamese,”

came

across as sincere.

The speeches by Bodo leaders were mostly in Bodo. In my notes I wrote about the irony of my being “in a land that has the appeal of home for me” and listening to speeches “in a language that I didn’t understand.”°° My experience is hardly unique in today’s Assam. In October 1996 there was a major rally in Guwahati by Bodo organizations. Bodo political actions have the ethnic Assamese as one of their main intended audiences. Yet the largest-circulation Assamese newspaper concluded its report of the event with the note that “most Bodo leaders spoke in Bodo and their speeches were not comprehensible.”*’ Not being able to communicate in the same language has obviously become a powerful marker by which Bodos today differentiate themselves from the ethnic Assamese. A memorandum of the ABSU articulates the Bodo position crisply. Taking on the argument often made in support of Assamese that it is essential to have Assamese as a link language in the interest of Assam’s integrity, the memorandum asks, why don’t “the Assamese people” read, speak, and accept Bodo as a “link language” in the interest of the “integrity of Assam”? After all, the language of “the Bodos, the Kocharis [Kacharis] — the original] master ruler of

Assam,” says the document, is “the most aboriginal and widespread in Assam.”°8 Food and dress are other arenas in which Bodos today assert their difference. At dinner during the rally in Kokrajhar I attended I was

Contesting a Subnational Narrative

187

served pork, not exactly a common meat among Assamese Hindus. Most Bodo women, especially activist and educated Bodo women, wear the dokhona instead of the Assamese mekhela-chador or the Indian sari, and many men use the traditional Bodo scarf, the Arunai.

The Demand for Bodoland: The Beginnings The first demand for a separate state for the “plains tribals” of Assam— then the proposed name was “Udayachal” —was made by the Plains Tribal Council of Assam in 1967. That was after the formation of Nagaland, but when Meghalaya and Mizoram were still part of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh had a less direct relationship but was still tied to Assam. But it was only in 1987, during the first AGP government, that younger Bodo leaders began successfully to mobilize large number of Bodos in support of a demand for a separate state. Since 1987 the demand has been for a separate state, to be called “Bodoland,” on the north bank of the Brahmaputra.

The preference for a name that has the English word “land” over the Sanskritic “Udayachal” among this newer generation of Bodo activists is, of course, not accidental. Underlying many of the recent separatist political movements in the northeast there is a general assertion of the non-indic aspects of their cultural identity. As I have indicated earlier, to some extent the emergence of a group of Bodo student leaders who articulate a radical agenda and who have managed to sideline the older generation of Bodo political leaders — many of them culturally more comfortable with Assamese language and culture — was the result of the Assam movement. The success of Assam’s student leaders in sustaining a prolonged campaign and then capturing political power inspired other student movements in the northeast. Monirul Hussain writes, “Sociologically speaking, the leadership of the Assam movement has be-

come their reference group.”*? There are remarkable similarities between the Assam movement and the Bodo movement in terms of the techniques of political mobilization. And, like the Assam movement, Bodo campaigns show the power of cultural and historical symbols and of societal networks in being able to mobilize large numbers of people behind a political demand. The Assam movement’s major theme of “indigenous peoples” protesting the presence of “foreigners” also touched a chord among the Bodos,

188

Chapter3

though not quite in the way the leaders of the Assam movement may have intended. This new generation of Bodo leaders believe that Bodo demands for greater public recognition of Bodo language and culture and for greater economic and educational opportunities for Bodos can

best be met by a separate state. The 92-point charter of the All Bodo Students Union (ABSU) — the most important of the organizations campaigning for Bodoland —lists the Bodo grievances. The manifesto lists numerous cultural and economic demands. The charter concludes with the argument for the creation of a separate state — a Bodo homeland being seen as the only certain instrument for achieving those goals. The Assamese and the central governments, notes the ABSU charter, have historically not been responsive to Bodo demands. But “when a separate state is created most of these 92 demands would be fulfilled within a short period of time.”* So far I have highlighted the role of the central government’s policy of reorganizing state boundaries in the northeast — made possible by India’s weak federalism —in shaping the demand for a Bodo homeland. But by doing that I do not wish to underestimate the role of ethnic Assamese insensitivity and cultural chauvinism — experienced by Bodos in everyday relations with ethnic Assamese in general and with officials in particular —in alienating Bodos. An expert commmittee investigating the Bodo question found that “in the manner that the Assamese organizations and individuals talked of colonization from Delhi,” leaders or Bodo and “plains tribal” organizations spoke of colonization by the “Assamese chauvinists.” Bodo organizations complained of “dispossession of their lands, non-compliance with the reservations in public services and posts, imposition of language etc. all by an administrative system biased against them.”*! But whatever the relative role of Assamese exclusivism and the legacy of New Delhi’s northeast policy in shaping Bodo political discourse, the dangerous level of violence that has

been generated by the project of a Bodo homeland can hardly be underestimated.

Behind the Relative Deprivation of Bodos Let me briefly return to the 92-point charter of the All Bodo Students Union to point out the entire range of grievances under-

Contesting a Subnational Narrative

189

lying the campaign for a Bodo homeland. The demands can be classified into (a) cultural and language demands and (b) demands related to economic development and the expansion of economic

opportunities. A third set of demands is best placed in a residual category. Among the cultural and language demands are the implementation of Bodo as associate official language in Bodo areas, introduction of the Roman script for Bodo, the teaching of Bodo in schools

and universities, government support for cultural projects such as Bodo filmmaking,

the establishment of a museum

and television

stations focused on Bodo programming, expansion of Bodo programs on existing State-owned radio and television networks, and the abolition of the language requirement of Assamese for state government employment. The demands that relate to economic development include expansion of employment and educational opportunities for Bodos. Among them are locating in Bodo areas educational institutions such as universities and colleges for both general and professional education, including high-prestige central universities and an Indian Institute of Technology, expansion of financial assistance for education of “scheduled tribes,” communication projects such as major roads and an airport in Kokrajhar, irrigation and industralization projects, provision for safe water in Bodo areas, employment

opportunities in rural areas, and protection of “tribal” belts and creation of new ones. In a residual category are demands such as detection and deportation of foreign nationals, settlement of border disputes between Assam and Nagaland and security for the Bodo people living there, and even stopping “political assassination and extremism” — an apparent reference to ULFA, for in that period such violence was still

limited to ULFA and some Bodo activists see ULFA as an ethnic Assamese organization.*” The relative economic deprivation of Bodos and other “plains tribals” has its roots in the plight of people whose traditional entitlements to land suffered in the regime of recorded land rights introduced by the British. In Chapter 3, I alluded to the dispossession involved in the introduction of a property regime by colonial rulers. Among the worst victims of this change were people such as the Bodos and Tiwas (referred to in Chapter 6) who were primarily

190

Chapter 8

shifting cultivators. Bodos as

A nineteenth-century document describes the

erratic cultivators of the wilds; though no longer savages or herdsmen, but wholly cultivators they are so little connected with any one spot, that their language contains no word for village. They never cultivate the same land beyond the second year, nor remain in the same neighbourhood after the fourth or the fifth year. After four or five years, to allow the jungle to grow and the land to resume its former high productiveness, they return, unless forestalled by others, and resume

identical fields they tilled before, but

never the houses or site of the old settlement, that being thought unlucky.*

While shifting and settled agriculture have come to be associated with a primitive / civilized dichotomy, in land-abundant Assam shift-

ing cultivation was common among the “primitives” and the “civilized” alike. It is possible that, being mostly shifting cultivators, after the new property regime of recorded land rights was introduced by colonial rulers many Bodos continued to move around cultivating lands that the colonial regime designated as public lands, such as protected forests and grazing lands. _ The colonial regime of recorded land rights was, of course, the foundation of the policy of turning Assam first into a capitalist plantation economy and later into a region that supposedly had a lot of waste lands available for settlement by cultivators from East Bengal. When large-scale land alienation by “tribals” threatened to have serious political repercussions, colonial officials sought to limit the damage by policies such as the Line System that supposedly protected “tribal” land from settlement by immigrants. But the Line System was rather weak, and over time more and more areas were freed up for settlement. Furthermore, such protective policies granted to groups that are now known as “plains tribals” were nothing compared to the protection against outsiders enjoyed by most of today’s “hill tribes” of the “excluded areas” — areas that today constitute “tribal”-majority states. The “tribal” blocks remain a part of Assam’s land system, but the record of illegal transfer of land from “tribals” to “nontribals” is abysmal.*4 Furthermore, large “tribal” areas have been “detribalized” for public purposes. Indeed even Assam’s capital city of Dispur stands on land that once part of a “tribal” block. The picture of what was once an area with Bodo and other tribal villages now occupied by expensive middle- and upper-

Contesting a Subnational Narrative

191

class houses, many of them owned by ethnic Assamese families, makes a visually powerful case of Bodo land being taken over by ethnic Assamese. The relative economic deprivation of Bodos today is also due to their inadequate share in “modern” occupations, a condition that Bodo activists attribute to discrimination by the ethnic Assamese. A pamphlet by a Mising author points out that while 10 percent of the state government jobs are reserved for “plains tribals,” in practice they have far fewer jobs than this. He quotes data from the Statistical Handbook of Assam for the number of “plains tribals” em-

ployed in state government jobs. In 1975 there were only 5,488 “plains-tribal” government employees, while if 10 percent were really reserved, the number should have been 10,066.

,

The inadequate public recognition given to the Bod language in Assam is both the result of the relative newness of the Bodo project of differentiation and the inevitable consequence of the very logic of language-based subnationalisms and the cultural grammar of the nation-province in India. Theoretically one can argue that a more sensitive brand of Assamese subnationalism could have accommodated Bodo cultural aspirations. But to the extent that Assamese subnationalism, like most Indian subnationalisms, has been based on a language that is, or aspires to be, a regional standard,

there are inherent limits to how inclusionary Assamese subnationalism could have been. Furthermore, to the extent that the symbol of an Assamese Assam was another way of talking about and protesting Assam’s

demographic

transformation,

there was even

less likeli-

hood of Assamese subnationalism ever operating outside the framework of the cultural grammar of nation-province and of being able to accommodate a multilingual conception of Assam. Nevertheless,

in recent years, as the movement for Bodoland as well as the rebellion by other “tribal” groups that are still left in the residual state of Assam has gathered steam, Assamese cultural organizations such

as the Axom Xahitya Xobha and Assamese politicians have been trying hard to accommodate Assam’s multilingualism, at least the multilingualism represented by the “indigenous” communities. Nevertheless, analytically it is possible to separate Bodo cultural and economic demands and the discourse of a Bodo homeland. More public recognition to Bodo culture and language and their historical symbols, and substantive and visible commitment to im-

192

Chapter 8

proving economic opportunities for Bodos, could be the basis of a political settlement. Such a settlement could take the policy discourse beyond the notion that only a homeland can guarantee the achievement of Bodo cultural and economic goals. At the same time it could accommodate the multiethnic nature of the historical Bodo areas today. As I have argued in the case of ULFA in the last chapter, in the Bodo case too, a political settlement can, in principle, restructure the Bodo political discourse and political agenda. It can do so precisely by appealing to the constituencies that sustain the movement for Bodoland. However, such a political settkement would require the State to devote significant intellectual, political, and material resources. Unfortunately, that does not seem forthcoming. Instead Indian policymakers, along with using the army to tackle Bodo extremists —with the usual trail of human rights abuses—have sought to find a way out of the political impasse by getting Bodo leaders to agree to something that is less than a nation-province, but is still within the intellectual framework of the

idea of ahomeland. An accord signed between the government and Bodo activists in February 1993 made a commitment to forming an elected body called the Bodoland Autonomous Council (BAC) within the state

of Assam, leaving open the question of its precise territorial jurisdiction. The accord said that the BAC would comprise “contiguous geographical areas between river Sankosh and Mazbat/river Pasnoi” and that the government will “scrutinise the list of villages submitted by Bodo activists having 50 percent and more population which will be included in the BAC. For the purpose of providing a contiguous area, even villages having less than 50 percent tribal population shall be included.”** Even though a BAC consisting of members nominated by the state government was formed later that year, elections to the BAC could not take place because of a failure to agree on the territorial jurisdiction of the new body. By 1996 most Bodo activists had given up on the idea and returned to their demand ofa separate Bodoland. By the end of the year, hopes of an end to the Bodo turmoil raised by the Bodo accord had completely vanished. Two militant factions, the Bodoland Army and the Bodo Liberation Tiger Force (BLTF), “derecognized” the council and termed it a “stooge of Dispur” —a reference to Assam’s capital.47

Contesting a Subnational Narrative

193

The Road to the Current Impasse Significant political mobilization for a Bodo homeland, as I have said before, began in 1987. The primary sponsor of the campaign in its initial years was the All Bodo Students Union (ABSU) under the

leadership of the late Upen Brahma, who coined the slogan “divide Assam fifty fifty.”** Perhaps the slogan itself— focused on splitting Assam in two—underscores the twin themes of the Bodo movement: a critique ofthe state government's cultural and employment policies as being narrowly oriented to the ethnic Assamese, and the Bodo quest for equality with them. Among the most characteristic features of the campaign for Bodoland have been general strikes (bandhs), that typically bring life in Bodo-dominant areas, such as the district of Kokrajhar on Assam’s border with West Bengal and Bhutan, to a standstill. The strikes have often disrupted the road and rail links between the northeast and the rest of India—all of which go through Kokrajhar. At the helm of the campaign for Bodoland have been the ABSU and ad hoc organizations that bring together a variety of Bodo political and cultural organizations. However, political violence by small militant Bodo organizations has been as much a part of the campaign for Bodoland as the civil disobedience campaigns sponsored by the more moderate organizations. The links in the communication infrastructure have been a favorite target both of civil disobedience and of extremist violence. Thus in the closing days of 1996 there were three acts of sabotage on roads and trains in three days. On December 29 a bridge was blown up and five people were killed. The next day a bomb in the Brahmaputra Mail — the major passenger train connecting the northeast with New Delhi— killed 38 people. The following day another railway bridge was blown up, very close to the site of the bomb attack of the previous day.*? News reports attributed these attacks to a “grim game of oneupmanship” between the two rival Bodo militant groups — the Bodoland Army and the BLTF. Other officials attributed all the incidents to the BLTF.” These are not the only organizations engaged in political violence; in recent years the National Democratic Front of Bodo-

land (NDFB) has been another organization associated with acts of

political violence.

194

Chapter 8

Moderate Bodo leaders publicly disassociate themselves from the acts of violence and extremism. But the political culture around the Bodo demand

for a homeland,

to put it mildly, has been rather

tolerant of much of the violence. Statements by moderate Bodo leaders suggest that they could do more to control the violence. For instance, on October 26, 1996 ABSU president Ukhrao Grawa

Brahma, after his meeting with then Prime Minister Deva Gowda in Guwahati, which he described as “extremely frustrating,” was asked about the ethnic violence by Bodos against Santhals in Kokrajhar. The Bodo leader replied: “Sure there will be some disturbances. If the government shows such an attitude towards us, who can stop the people?”>! In January 1998, following two episodes of ethnic violence, one on December 3] in Tangla and the other on January 13 near Rangiya, one Bodo organization demanded that the president and vice president of ABSU resign and accept moral responsibility for the incidents. The ABSU leadership responded by saying that it is the government, not a “student organization,” that is responsible for maintaining peace — an eminently reasonable proposition under normal circumstances, but certainly not in Assam of the 1980s and 1990s. Relations between “extremist” and “moderate” Bodo political leaders and organizations, like those in most northeastern conflicts, sometimes seem uncomfortably close. The career of the Bodo leader Prem Singh Brahma is a case in point. In the 1998 parliamentary elections, he was the candidate of the Congress Party in the Bodo-dominated Kokrajhar constituency. Brahma had joined the Congress Party shortly before the election. Earlier he was the chief executive officer of the short-lived BAC, when it was

made up of members nominated by the government. In the early days of the movement for Bodoland, Brahma was the chairman of the Bodo Volunteer Force — the military wing of ABSU. The Bodo Volunteer Force was formally disbanded after the signing of the Bodo accord. But newspaper accounts, citing government sources, had suggested that BLTF was the new name for the Bodo Yoluns teeer Force.5? The most disturbing aspect of the political violence around the question of a Bodo homeland is a pattern of violence that sometimes looks like an ethnic cleansing campaign. The continuing public discussion about a dissonance between what is seen as a historically Bodo area and the contemporary demographic reality of

Contesting a Subnational Narrative

195

overlapping ethnicities has served to focus attention on the issue of who “belongs” to the area and who does not. After the failure to define the territorial jurisdiction of the BAC, groups such as Muslims of Bengali descent, Hindu Bengalis, and Santhal immigran — many ts of them settled in the area for generations — have been the targets of violence. The fact that some people belonging to these “immigrant communities” have, with the acquiescence of government officials, settled in lands where there is some ambivalence about their rights to settle— “tribal” blocks or reserved forests—has made their residency rights suspect in the eyes of some Bodo activists. Second, controversies over a Bodo homeland have gone on as Assam has had a number of elections. The fact that voting may follow ethnic lines and “immigrant communities” may vote for, or may be suspected ofvoting for, candidates and parties other than those favored by militants has also been an added cause of this ethnic violence. The following are some of the major episodes of ethnic violence, as reported in the press: — There were riots against Muslims of Bengali descent in October 1993 and May 1994 in Kokrajhar and in July 1994 in Barpeta. In May 1994 22 Muslims of Bengali descent were massacred.°? More than 3000 people became homeless; about 1000 took shelter in a relief camp at Hakaipara and another 700 at Bhotgaon.*4 — On October 9, 1995 militants killed eight people in Kalaigaon. The killings were believed to be retaliation against the Samagra Assam Bengali Yuva Chatra Parishad (SABYCP). The organization

had called a rally which was scheduled to be addressed by BAC chief Prem Singh Brahma as well as two Assam ministers. According to a news report, two “tribal” boys came at noon and inquired about the local office of the Bengali organization. The target of the attack was

the Kalaigaon Ancholik unit of the SABYCP.”° — On October 15 the BSF killed 8 in Mussalpur, 40 km north of Nalbari. Those killed included one ethnic Assamese, a Bengali, and the rest Nepali.5© The same newspaper earlier reported that the killings were “viewed as a kind of retaliation by the BSF against non-

Bodos settled in the BAC area.”°” — There were riots against Santhals in May 1996. There were “not less than 200 dead, perhaps more, tens of villages torched and 200,000 refugees.”°8 In June 1996 new cases of arson were reported

against Santhals; at least 12 houses of Santhals were set on fire and

196

Chapter 8

in November 1996 there were more ethnic clashes between Bodos and Santhals.*? Intended or not, these ethnic riots appear to have an ethnic cleansing function. For instance, it was reported in November 1996 that about 129,000 people —victims of the ethnic riots of May— were in 65 relief camps. The people of the Santhal camp in Ranikhata told a reporter that they could not go back to their villages because they feared that Bodo militants might attack again. The chief minister of Assam admitted that the violence had made it difficult to get the refugees to return to their villages. “Certain sections of people,” he said, not very obliquely, “did not want the refugees to go back to their villages.”® At least to some Bodo activists, ethnically targeted violence seemed to hold the promise of changing the demographic facts on the ground, which they have been told repeatedly stand in the way of a separate Bodoland. Non-Bodos have not been the only victims of Bodo violence. A large number of Bodo leaders have fallen victim to interfactional warfare. Apart from the victims of ethnically targeted violence, civilians have been victims of kidnappings, extortions, and, of course, attacks on railways and roads. Security personnel have been targets of numerous

bombings. Furthermore,

ethnic violence has not al-

ways been onesided. There are examples of revenge killings of Bodos by Santhals and by Bengalis, as names of organizations like the Bengali Tiger Force would suggest. The State’s response to this violence has been the use of the army and other paramilitary forces with the usual trail of charges of human rights abuses. The human rights report on the impact of AFSPA in the northeast cited in the previous chapter observed the following about the armed forces in certain Bodo areas: The Government is obviously following a policy of terrorising the ordinary people through such a heavy deployment. When we were travelling we ourselves felt uncomfortable about heavy and oppressive presence of the police and paramilitary forces. Our car was stopped many times, questions were asked and only then were we allowed to proceed. This is a regular pattern. For every few steps there were uniformed men with guns pointing at people on both sides of the road. In the market places there were the members of the Special Task Force (STF) dressed in black scarf tied on their head and another tied around their nose and mouth exposing only

Contesting a Subnational Narrative

197

their eyes pointing their guns at the passers by. At busy market crossings one had to bend one’s neck or body to avoid the pointed guns like one would avoid a basket or a bag or a pole being carried in a busy street.”®!

The legacy of New Delhi’s northeast policy, which has privileged separate states, is a major factor in creating this impasse over Bodoland. Looking at examples from the neighborhood, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Meghalaya, and Mizoram —all states where the “indigenous” population is “tribal” — Bodo activists feel that Bodos too will do better in a separate state. But confronted with a contemporary ethnic settlement pattern that is at wide variance with the Bodo activists’ imagination of aBodo area, and a moment in Assamese subnational politics that is sure to resist further loss of territory, New Delhi's northeast policy seems to have reached the end of its tether. Bodo militants feel that, if they apply enough pressure, New Delhi will have to give in to their demand. And since, constitutionally, the Indian parliament has the power to create states with a simple majority without consulting Assam, some Bodo activists see it as a contest of political capacity between the ethnic Assamese and themselves that would determine which side would win in New Delhi. It is not surprising that such a political conjuncture would produce so much violence. The ease with which the Indian Constitution allows the making and breaking of states contributes to creating the context for this violence. And at the same time, since the state-level political arena is so manifestly powerless, ideas about

alternatives that would give “indigenous” northeasterners more power over their destiny win more adherents. Perhaps a look at other policy environments—with groups in situations similar to that of the Bodos+ might throw some fresh light on this impasse. I will draw once again on Malaysia. The relationship between the Malays and the orang asli population — the —is not unlike the relationship between “aboriginal” population the ethnic Assamese and Bodos. That the political discourse of the orang asliis so radically different draws attention to the role of policy legacies in shaping political imagination. In Malaysia the legal category Bumiputera— “sons of the soil” — includes the Malays and the orang asli. The concept of Bumiputera, as Judith Nagata explains, has had “a diffuse and imprecise currency in the Malay language as a

198

Chapter 8

general way of expressing ideas of indigeneity.” But the term has been “resurrected” to give it its contemporary meaning “in the form of a union between Malays and the orang asli and endowed with a new legal and political significance.”® The fact that in Malaysia there is an alliance between the Malays and the orang asli in the name of shared indigeneity, and in Assam there is growing mistrust between the ethnic Assamese and the Bodos, are two different re-

sponses to problems of a land frontier reflecting the cumulative impact of different legacies of policymaking. But the choices need not be limited to a discourse of Bumiputera or a discourse of separate states. There is no reason to think that more inclusionary political projects that could bring “immigrants,” “ethnic Assamese,” and “tribals” together are inherently less viable. However, such scenarios begin to seem plausible only in a polity that allows more space for local solutions to local problems. If such conditions were to prevail in Assam, it is difficult to imagine any political configuration which would have allowed the immigration crisis to fester. That is at least a precondition for more inclusionary political projects to become viable in this land frontier.

Conclusion: India Against Itself

There are many myths among ethnic Assamese families, both Hindu and Muslim, that deal with their forebears coming to Assam from

the Indian heartland. Assamese history does record some cases of migration from the Indian heartland, for example, ritual experts

and craft workers who were invited by Ahom and Koch kings, soldiers who participated in the Mughal invasions of the region, and religious men who came on their own and made Assam their home. However,

the number

of ethnic Assamese

families claiming that

their ancestors were immigrants to Assam would probably far outnumber those that can be explained by the known cases of immigration. The myths of immigrant origin in Assam have had a function that is quite independent of their historicity. In a region on the periphery of Indic culture, such myths enabled those who assimilated

into the “high cultures” of Hinduism and Islam to distinguish themselves from their “less sophisticated” neighbors and countrymen. In recent years these myths may have come to haunt many ethnic Assamese because of the challenge to the very construction of the Assamese subnational formation posed by the Bodo and other “tribal” cultural rebellions. But whatever second thoughts they may have today, these myths convey something about the way ethnic Assamese have historically seen themselves: that they are Indians. The irony of the separatist insurgency in Assam and. the popular sympathy it has commanded is that it involves a population that in the past has tried so hard to establish its connection to the Indian heartland.

200

Conclusion

I began this book with a critique of the concept of nation-building. Because all national projects are contingent and contested, the innocuous-sounding term “nation-building” could make political analysis complicit with whatever combination of coercion and consent a governing elite may choose in the name ofbuildinga nation. I have argued for a mode of political analysis that can accommodate a more historical understanding of the global order of nation states than one that is grounded in a nationalist self-representation of nations as primordial. The postcolonial Indian State is a part-legatee of asubcontinental civilization and of an empire, and is the product of an anticolonial movement that combines both pan-Indian and subnational ideological currents. As such it must have an inclusionary public philosophy that not only emphasizes pan-Indian unity, but also makes institutional accommodation to its subnational

communities. Some of the institutions with which postcolonial India has tried to accommodate subnational communities are impressive. India’s states, I have argued, most of them constituted on the basis of the

major language of the area, are de facto nation-provinces. At least potentially these nation-provinces can accommodate subnational communities not just within some hegemonic project of pan-Indian nation-building, but in a way that can recognize “dual but complementary political identities.”! But India’s commitment to federalism has also been rather tame. Indeed, India’s Constitution-makers

even shied away from actually describing the polity as federal and settled for a phrase they found safer: the Union of India. In earlier chapters I have criticized India’s weak federalism, especially the extraordinary powers of the central government to change the boundaries of states and to create new states by simple parliamentary majorities, without even the consent of the relevant state

legislature. The laws that broke up Assam and created a number of new states were all passed with simple parliamentary majorities. Ironically, this power has perhaps been used more cavalierly in the northeast than in any other part of the country, because policymakers in New Delhi regard the northeast as a sensitive border region. If the goal of breaking up Assam and creating new states was to contain and preempt separatist insurgencies, the policy has clearly failed. The policy failed to control old insurgencies or to preempt several new ones. Furthermore, by privileging separate

India Against itself

201

statehood as the preferred outcome, New Delhi's northeast policy has both created the context for ethnic violence and been a disincentive for a politics of accommodation. It is because of this policy legacy that, for instance, Bodo militants today can portray accommodation to ideas other than that of aseparate Bodo homeland as a sign of weakness and successfully outmaneuver moderate Bodo politicians. India’s ambivalence on federalism is not unique. Most postcolonial States retained for their central governments enormous powers presumed necessary for the twin projects of nation-building and national development. And indeed, in the second half of the twentieth century, increased centralization of power was a feature of

nation-states in all parts of the world. Critics have called even the present federal system of the United States, which has more of the

formal attributes of federalism than many other polities, as having little to do with federalism in the historical sense of the term. It is, rather, a “figleaf for an inefficient nationalism.” Rationalization has produced a level of centralization of power, and as a consequence, the units of most federations have ceased to be autonomous entities and have become mere administrative branches ofa central government.” Yet, in principle, federalism

as an institutional arrangement

is

ideally suited to protect historically constituted cultural-territorial identities. In concluding this book, I would like to consider, rather

speculatively, whether the subnational tensions illustrated by the Assam case would have been better managed in a more federal India. I rely here on a somewhat radical notion of federalism, not on the trivialities of center-state relations to which discussions of federalism are sometimes limited. Some of the fundamental values of federalism are worth recalling; among them are local autonomy, respect for cultural particularity, and more democracy — making up for some of the democracy deficit in today’s centralized liberal democracies.

Indeed,

as a political principle, a federation

in the

sense of an “aggregate of politically organized territories” can be seen as the opposite of the nation-state. As Paul Piccone and Gary Ulmen put it, if a political system is directly related to individual citizens, rather than places, it is a nation and not a federation.® One of the normative arguments for federalism is that it is a way of limiting government: the tyranny of countrywide populist major-

202

Conclusion

ities is checked by the constitutionally guaranteed autonomous spheres of action reserved for cultural-territorial units. But for that to happen the units of afederation must have control and lawmaking prerogatives, especially on matters that are important to the life of the unit. Somewhat arbitrarily, let me select three sets of issues raised by the politics of subnationalism in Assam discussed in earlier chapters, and speculate on how these issues might have been addressed differently under a more federal dispensation. The three sets of issues are (a) immigration and enfranchisement policy, (b) cultural

policy, and (c) developmental policy, especially the question of control over resources. The chances of political resolution of these controversies, I would argue, would have been much better if Assam

had had autonomous jurisdiction over these policy arenas.

Immigration and Enfranchisement Policy Control over immigration and enfranchisement has been at the center of much of Assam’s political turmoil. Assam’s incorporation into British India in 1826, followed by her nineteenth-century economic transformation, turned colonial Assam into one of the subcontinent’s last land frontiers attracting massive immigration. It continued to be a land frontier through much of the twentieth century. Fortunately, in the Assamese public sphere opposition to immigration has been framed by cultural meanings derived from the Indian Constitution and laws; focusing only on immigrants whose status falls within, at least, a legal gray area. But since immigration policy falls within the jurisdiction of the central government, policymakers in New Delhi have been singularly unresponsive to debates on the issue in the Assamese public sphere. Indeed, far from seriously engaging the issue, the central government has chosen to react to Assam’s immigration crisis rather opportunistically. Thus in the Assam Accord of 1985 it made a series of public commitments to respond to the immigration crisis, and yet the Indian parliament— at a time when Assam was largely unrepresented — passed laws that were sure to defeat the purpose of those very commitments. The deterioration of the political situation in Assam — including the rise of separatist militancy—I have argued, is to a significant extent the result of the nonresolution of the immigration crisis. Would there

india Against Itself

203

have been a more purposeful and energetic engagement with Assam’s immigration crisis if India were more of a federal polity? I have made some comparison between Assam's demographic transformation and that of Malaysia. The latter has managed potental immigration-related tensions through a political formula that includes (a) differential incorporation of citizens according to ethnic origins, (b) preferential policies for “indigenous” groups, and (c) an immigration policy specifically geared to promoting a stable demographic balance. Officially Malaysia has frozen immigration, in principle because it is careful to avoid any characterization of Malaysia as an “immigrant society,” in practice in order to prevent any increase in the proportion of non-Malays. Indeed, demographic balance has been such a priority in Malaysia’s immigration policy that, while it has not permitted ethnic Chinese boat people, it has discretely permitted refugee Cham people, a minority Muslim population from Cambodia, who are thought to be distant relations of the “indigenous” Malays.* By contrast, in Assam, despite significant Assamese opposition, high levels of immigration — and precisely from an area that could only worsen an already precarious ethnopolitical balance — continued for decades after the end of colonial rule. The fact that Malaysia is an independent sovereign country and therefore makes its own immigration and enfranchisement policy, while Assam is a part of India so that the debates about immigration and enfranchisement in the Assamese public sphere could be all but ignored in making India’s immigration policy, at least partly explains the difference. Policymakers in New Delhi continued to ignore Assam’s immigration crisis even after it began to seriously destabilize Assam. To be sure, there are no easy solutions to Assam’s immigration

crisis. But what is striking is the disjuncture between the way the immigration crisis has destabilized Assam — including today’s two insurgencies and political and ethnic violence, some of which look suspiciously like ethnic cleansing campaigns — and the low priority given to the issue by India’s policymakers. The point is not so much that a certain

number

of “foreigners”

could, or should,

be de-

ported or disenfranchised, as the campaigners of the Assam movement had demanded and to which the Indian State had publicly committed itself. A political settlement could actually give amnesty to all immigrants ifit simultaneously made a serious commitment to

204

#£Conclusion

stopping future immigration and to a fair resolution of the issue of Assam’s public cultural identity. Debates in the Assamese public

sphere suggest that such compromises are possible. It does not take much to imagine alternative scenarios to the policy incoherence that has pushed Assam on the road to a serious crisis of legitimacy of governmental institutions. If Assam’s “indigenous” communities worry about becoming minorities in their lands, a persistent cloud of suspicion about the legal status of “foreigners” have not helped Assam’s “immigrant” communities either. It has put the task of creating a political culture in tune with Assam’s contemporary demographic and ethnopolitical realities permanently on hold. If India’s federal system had allowed the state level political arena jurisdiction over immigration and enfranchisement policy, I would venture to suggest that, without the impingement of pan-Indian politics, the shared interest in social stability would have led politicians from Assam’s “immigrant” and “indigenous” communities alike to find a political settlement that would have put the immigration controversy behind once for all. While I have focused on the question of resolving Assam’s immigration crisis within the framework of the discourse of “foreigners,” Assam’s immigration crisis raises the larger issue of control over population movements in a federation. If particular territories in a federation are defined as autonomous

political entitiés, and the

people living in them are assumed to have the power to determine their own affairs, “such communities must be exclusionary or else

they cease to be communities.” If the rights and obligations of citizens are the privileges of those belonging to these communities, federal arrangements might facilitate interaction across a federation, but in the process they cannot be allowed to cripple local autonomy in the name of some abstract universalist principles. Autonomy of acommunity cannot be meaningful unless it includes some notion of closure. As Michael Walzer puts it, there cannot be any community without a minimum right of closure.®

Cultural Policy If immigration into Assam is sure to have received more attention under a more federal dispensation, what about the problem of making cultural policy in a multicultural society like Assam? Isn’t

India Against Itself

205

there a danger that, if the state-level political arena were

more

autonomous, a potentially hegemonic group such as the ethnic Assamese would have tried to impose its cultural hegemony on cultural minorities? In principle, a strong federation is not less conducive.to its units being able to make inclusionary cultural policies. If in recent years Assamese subnationalism has sometimes seemed exclusionary, part of the explanation may lie in the embattled situation in which it finds itself. With the state-level political arena powerless to act on the immigration crisis, or against further territorial fragmentation of Assam, less inclusionary tendencies may have occasionally gotten the upper hand. It is significant that the ethnic Assamese have never been asked to choose between cultural policies with potentially exclusionary implications and the periodic divisions of Assam. In a political system that left more control over such matters to the state-level political arena, the Assamese may have had to confront such a choice. In such a political space, it is not unreasonable to expect that political bargaining could generate inclusionary and nonhegemonic cultural policies. However, in a constitutional federation, protection of the interests of cultural minorities need not be left to such an expectation alone. An autonomous

state-level political arena, backed

by the disci-

pline of constitutionalism, could better guarantee inclusionary cultural policies than could a watchful central government, with the power to cut states to size, playing the big brother. To be sure, “charter federalism” — which combines autonomy for states with a strong regime of individual and group rights—demands a fairly wellfunctioning set of political and legal institutions. Alan C. Cairns, who coined the term, calls it an institutional blend that requires an “even more complex, demanding, and nuanced balancing of contradictory tendencies than federalism itself.” Federal institutions must not only cultivate the commitment to dual loyalties to “the provincial ethnie and to the country-wide community.” Charter federalism adds a third limitation on majority power — minority rights against both provincial and country-wide majorities.’ Whatever the older rationale for giving India’s central government the power to make and break states, it is important now to rethink this power. In terms of constitutional principles, this power is key to where the foundational authority of sovereignty lies. Feder-

206

Conclusion

ations must try to locate some ofthis foundational authority in their constituent units, not just in the nation as a whole. That in turn can allow a multicultural place like Assam the space to debate and make cultural policy without some parties to the debate being seduced by the temptation of ethnic homelands and others being threatened by the Damocles’ sword of yet another territorial division.

Development Policy and Control over Resources The question of Assam’s claim to its resources has been a persistent theme in the politics of Assamese subnationalism. There is probably no other area where the political demands of separatist militants are more continuous with mainstream Assamese social discourse than the issue of Assam’s economic underdevelopment and what is described either as the “neglect” of Assam by New Delhi or as a colonial relationship. In the area of control over fiscal resources, Indian federalism is probably at its weakest. If the concern for Indian unity made India’s constitution-makers reluctant federalists, their enthusiasm for national development turned them into central planners keen on grabbing as much control over resources and powers of economic management as possible. Furthermore, the legacy of a unitary colonial state hung heavy. As far as financial arrangements are concerned, the Indian Constitution has been called a “carbon copy” of

a colonial law, the Government of India Act of 1935.8 India’s central government controls the great bulk of financial resources including income tax, corporate tax, import and export duties, and excise duties on major items. It of course controls the

money supply and exercises control over the central bank besides the nationalized banks, currency, and foreign exchange. Except for taxes on agricultural income and property, and sales taxes on certain goods and services, all the major sources of tax revenue are in the hands of the center. The Constitution provides for a Finance Commission to allocate the proceeds of the centrally collected revenue to the states. But over the years an extra-constitutional body, the Planning Commission, has overshadowed the Finance Commission, further strengthening the hands of the central government as the arbiter of fiscal resources.® It is difficult to say whether Assam would have been economically

India Against Itself

207

better off under a more federal dispensation; there are too many

variables to consider for the space I have for these concluding thoughts. However, let me take up a politically no less important question: would greater federalism have given a different form to the political discourse of Assam's economic underdevelopment? In recent years, the Indian State’s response to the radicalization of Assamese subnationalism has been to increase the allocation of funds for Assam’s development. This has followed a pattern of the response to political turmoil in other northeastern states. Chapter 7 discusses how in Assam the focus on a few visible development projects is seen as an attempt to push under the rug the key commitments of the Assam Accord on the immigration crisis. It has failed to buy the goodwill of the Assamese. But under India’s centralized fiscal system, larger financial allocations also have another prob-

lematical dimension. K. Saigal, a former Indian civil servant who was Assam’s Planning and Development Commissioner and is intimately familiar with the State-led economic development experience of the northeast, describes the process as follows. A major beneficiary of the increase of funds for development in northeastern states, he believes, has been

a group of contractors and license holders — mostly from outside the region — whose “main ambition is to make a fast buck and get out of the area as quickly as possible.” As developmental funds are increased as a response to the voices of discontent in the northeast, there is therefore a “quicker siphoning off of funds to the heartland with the few benefits accruing to those in power through the usual corrupt forces of the license-permit raj.” Indeed, Saigal believes that this has led to “increasingly corrupt regimes in areas like Manipur, Nagaland, Meghalaya and, recently in Assam.” The political consequences are serious. These regimes are increasingly seen as corrupt and controlled by a compradore-like class: “representatives of the central power to keep the people in a state of underdevelopment.”!° If this interpretation is even partially correct, the northeast seems to have become a frontier in another sense: it attracts adventurer-entrepreneurs who seem to feel that doing business in this frontier land means a holiday from whatever moral codes exist in the heartland. It is scarcely surprising that insurgent groups in Assam and the northeast have sometimes successfully isolated state governments that are seen as being in league with these adventurer-

208

Conclusion

entrepreneurs, and have targeted some people who are perceived as heartland adventurer-entrepreneurs as the “enemy.” At the same time, factions of insurgents have begun competing with these adventurer-entrepreneurs for a share of the loot. Would the situation have been different if the primary responsibility for economic development, with corresponding fiscal powers, were in the hands of states? It is plausible that if Assam had complete control over its oil and natural gas resources and the capacity to collect customs duties, it would have been a considerably richer

state. But that issue aside, let me examine how the political discourse of Assam’s underdevelopment might have been different under a radically federal dispensation — under which the responsibility for raising resources and developing Assam was firmly in the hands of those in control of the state government. In India’s centralized fiscal system, states have typically been unwilling to mobilize financial resources on their own, and have looked at the central government as a cash cow that can be milked in order to bring the state’s income in line with its expenditures.'' The state governments have generally taken the task of raising resources very lightly. This has been the case even more in the northeast, where insurgen-

cies have further sapped the political will to raise local resources. Another dimension of India’s centralized mode of resource allocation is that it provides incentives for state governments to get along with the government in power in New Delhi. This is not an unimportant factor in explaining why Assam’s AGP and a number of other regional political parties in the northeastern states, once in power, find themelves toeing the line of the central government in New Delhi in their public rhetoric on insurgencies. If economic development and the raising of resources were more of a state responsibility, it would be reasonable to expect that there would be more of a politics of accountability. “If the economy of a state fails to take off,” as economist Ashok Mitra puts it, then “the responsibil-

ity for that failure will belong to the state government; it will not be able to run to the Centre either for filling the gap in resources, or for saddling it with the blame for lack of development.”!? Mitra’s point was made in the context of India as a whole. In the case of Assam, this may have almost revolutionized the political discourse

on Assam’s underdevelopment and significantly weakened the ap-

India Against Itself

209

peal of both moderate and radical versions of the Assamese subnationalist argument. I do not want to suggest that radical federalism would be a panacea. If that were to happen, at least in the short run, one would expect at the state level a rise in corruption and in the leakage of developmental resources. Any reorganization of the division of resources, functions, and powers between the central and state governments in India,J.D. Sethi reminds us, may only shift “irresponsibility and inefficiency” from one level to another.' But unlike the centralized fiscal system of today, a radically reformed federalism at least would have had the potential for some day developing a more effective politics of accountability and of better accommodating the logic of subnationalism within a pan-Indian polity. What then are the prospects of India becoming more of a federal polity? In the immediate future, the prospects seem bleak. One of the ideologies in political ascendancy today claims that India has always been

one

nation, one

people, and one

culture, and that

Hindutwa has been the cultural foundation of that nation. This Hindu nationalist ideology parallels the official ideology of the Pakistani state that constructs a history of “Muslim India” separate from that of “Hindu India.” Both these constructions reject the idea of India as an inclusionary civilization that had for centuries absorbed diverse peoples and cultures.'* My account of Bodo and Assamese cultural history in Chapter 8 highlights the incorporative nature of Indic civilization in northeast India. The heartland ideology of Hindu nationalism, arguably, has less resonance in this region, where, incidentally, a significant proportion of the population —the overwhelming majority in the states of Mizoram and Nagaland and a near-majority in Meghalaya—are Christians. Not all votaries of a strong pan-Indian nationalism in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), however, are unaware of the high costs of the repeated mishandling of subnational discontent. Jaswant Singh, the major BJP thinker of India’s national security policy, puts it perceptively. India’s “national

endeavor,”

he writes, could be adversely

affected by the State’s failures in its commitments and to its citizens since citizens, after all, may withdraw their To Singh, Assam, Punjab, and Kashmir are examples sions” of such discontent.'® But even if the high costs

obligations allegiance. of “exploof mishan-

210

Conclusion

dling subnational dissent may be apparent to some ofthe leaders of the BJP government, it is unlikely that this more resolute group of nation-builders will suddenly discover the virtues of federalism. While Hindu nationalism may have given a new lease on life, with a Hindu culturalist twist, to the argument for a centralized State in India, the secular ideclogies that were markedly more influential until recently have been no less strident in justifying a centralized ‘State. Indeed, one of the anxieties the “western-educated Indian” has lived with since the early nineteenth century, according to cultural critic Ashis Nandy, is India’s supposed inability to develop and sustain central political authority. Historically there have been successful States that were pan-Indian in scope. But most modern Indians seem to believe that India has not been able to maintain such authority, and that the source of the problem lies in the very nature of Indian personality and culture. This mindset, along with

the institutional legacy of the unitary system of colonial rule, has led to the half-hearted federalism of the Indian Constitution. New Delhi’s knee-jerk tendency to turn to raw power to defend the nation against subnational challenges is perhaps symptomatic of that anxiety. Modern Indians find it hard to believe that India today, to

cite Nandy again, “has a powerful, fully legitimate nation-state, that she has actualised the dreams of her nineteenth century social reformers and political thinkers.” And at least from the perspective of the northeast, India indeed is what Nandy calls “no longer an unsuccessful soft State but a powerful hard State with all the necessary trappings of such a State.”!® Fortunately, significant countervailing trends to centralization are evident in India’s cultural and political realms. Among them Nandy lists the pluralism of Hindu thought, the nature of precolonial States in the subcontinent and the theoretical conceptions of the State in Indian thought, and the Gandhian suspicion of the State and what is actually a mixed legacy of the colonial State. If the awe-inspiring centralization of the colonial State impressed many Indians, it also produced distrust of central authority among many other Indians — Gandhi's political ideas being an example of that.

The future therefore, Nandy believes, is not closed. For open politics in a society long used to diversity has its own logic.!” Indeed there have been moments in India’s recent history when the prospects for greater federalism seemed good. As I have pointed

india Against Itself

211

out in Chapter 5, the Constituent Assembly as late as 1946, when partition was not yet a fait accompli and the incorporation of the princely states was still being negotiated, had taken for granted that a strong federation is the only form of postcolonial polity that could work. In terms of more recent history, perhaps even more significant than the rise of the Hindu nationalist BJP is the rise of numerous “regional” — or rather subnational — parties and the role of these parties in more than one coalition government in New Delhi. From a long-term perspective, it may be helpful to remind ourselves not only of the historicity of the global order of nation-states, as I argued in Chapter 1, but also of the historicity of existing nation-states. Until quite recently, the conflicts between European nation-states seemed never-ending. No one could have predicted that these nation-states would be on the road to forming what one day may become a confederation of European States. In that light, it is perhaps worth recalling that the Aga Khan’s suggestion in 1935 that India should be made into a confederation —a United States of Southern Asia as he put it— did not seem absurd to his contemporaries. Indeed, this was the germ of the idea for a confederation —a Muslim group of provinces and a Hindu group of provinces— that

was the basis of the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946. Even though the plan fell through, it is a sobering thought that a confederation that would have included today’s India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh seemed plausible even as late as 1946."* The notion of restoring the unity of Indic civilization, in the manner of that of European civilization — from nation-states to real

federation — may seem preposterous today. But the fact that such a federation was seen as a possibility not long ago may bring home an important lesson. Subnationalisms — militant or otherwise — need not be seen only as threats to “national integrity” that is, the territerial integrity of the nation-states of today. The stubborn subnational conflicts of India today — Assam, Punjab, and Kashmir — all to some extent bear traces of the destabilization and trauma of the partition of the subcontinent into two and subsequently three nation-states. From the perspective of the northeast as well as other regions torn by subnational conflicts, the vision of a subcontinental confederation may contain an important possibility. To Europeans of the Middle Ages, Catalonia. the Basque country, Corsica, and South Tyrol were familiar regions. But in the era of the nation-state

212

Conclusion

these were among the regions that did not become nation-states. European nation-states, in their heyday, saw them as threats. But in the confident Europe of today the same States seem less threatened by assertions of regional distinctiveness by these regions. It is likely that a confident South Asian confederation would have found attempts to reclaim historical identities by regions like Assam, Manipur, Nagaland, Kashmir, or Punjab less threatening. Such visions therefore can give some perspective to the self-bleeding effects of a dogmatic nation-building project. The new willingness of nation-states to live with self-confident regions is not limited to Europe, nor are the forces pushing this process primarily political. The logic of economic globalization also has favored autonomous regional economies— politically integrated into loose federations. It has been argued that traditional nationstates have become “unnatural, even impossible . . . units in a global economy.” The viable economic

units, Keniche Ohmae

believes,

are more focused geographical units, sometimes within a nationstate, and sometimes straddling the borders of two or more nationstates. The emergence of these “natural economic regions” in a globalized economy is the other side of the decline of the nationstate.'? Among these regions are Catalonia, Hongkong and the adjacent area of southern China, the Kansai region around Osaka in Japan, and the area combining the Canadian province of British Columbia with the U.S. state of Washington. In India, too, there are

regions such as those around Bangalore and Hyderabad — the centers of India’s software and pharmaceutical industries— that might play a similar role in the global economy. The disappearance of a few familiar national entities such as the U.S.S.R., Czechoslovakia, ot Yugoslavia are only the more extreme

examples of the decline of the nation-state.2° The delegation of unprecedented powers to individual Landers in unified Germany, to the autonomous

communities

of Spain (including Catalonia), to

Scodand and then to northern Ireland in the United Kingdom, and to the provinces in Canada, are part of the same phenomenon of the declining relevance of the nation-state. Even though centrist nation-builders might shudder at the implications of what Ohmae calls “region-states,” the habit of control over

economies by centralized States is not a permanent feature of economic life. Ohmae believes thatit is partly the result of an accident of

India Against Itself

213

intellectual history: of modern economic theory crystallizing at about the same time as the modern nation-state. “Had Adam Smith written one century earlier,” Ohmae writes, “it might be much easier for us now to view the connections between economic theory and the modern nation-state in quite a different light.” Even though there was a time when centralized power of a nation-state over economic affairs had made sense, that moment has now passed.?! As India takes advantage ofthe globalized economy and develops growth centers around cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Bombay, and Delhi, given the political conditions, Assam and the northeast, in the foreseeable future are unlikely to attract many investors,

domestic or foreign. Well-meaning but naive commentators in India sometimes make the point that insurgents in the northeast should see the light of day, go home, and create the political space for the region's participation in the liberalized new Indian economy. Unfortunately, such éxpectations that put the ball in the court of insurgents are based on a misreading of the political conjuncture in the region. In the present condition of mistrust between the region and New Delhi, made worse every day by evidence of the State’s human rights abuses, such well-meaning pan-Indian arguments are unlikely to shape public discourse. What is more likely is that, as some parts of India make a great leap forward, the radical argument that the northeast’s economic underdevelopment is the result of the heartland’s tight control and its treatment of it as a frontier will sound even more

plausible. Indeed, the present im-

passe in Assam shows signs that the region might join the growing ranks of rough neighborhoods in the “global village.” One of the ironic lessons of history, underscored by the breakdown

of the Soviet Union, is that when

strong centralized States

want to hold on to the “illusion of power” because they want to do good for their people, in reality that power may be already eroding.”® I hope that India’s nation-builders will learn from such ironies. Those at the helm of the Indian State, I hope, will be able to distance themselves from the derivative, suffocating, and quite outof-date paradigm of nation-building and return to a more confident vision of the civilizational unity of the subcontinent. It is only such self-confidence that can enable India to launch a bold project of genuine federation-building, which ultimately is the only way to bring subnationalism and pan-Indianism closer together.

ry

@ &

ad

> “s'}

.

je.

a

wee eamiagAcot an

* sequatlimoreomegaitt: fori

stoke

Friend rca barb sete teotomannyeon soy

ad

. Mou ondgidt i” yearl oe gnome Pestvanttel eH * Vieembcatwonmnengren insanalivantsnary aig velirets 3 hatyhinerteitn

Se ae oe terete anette aah Wit lhehsondeny stilt sevsneiesrsi eeehiy ti bad wighbolicancons, —

| _galivatrb msgrace

ithe

unli siperohie ell We =

jodie decile ax iagawy sil evita byueth erin divarry,

__ Meaadtsrmey 9 bh briecrriined recat veonstiapsitibony gel hemes oars _ meant: vec TN omy oekitery ome atest colle patie | “aceon ids wists tech chins aglowaabaiersenAbaF +,

sawed ress ne “nie aeep stat) ortherp act lant eoiniraneee ntl eee Ops Geannerr stim, Sena aap sent Ty rarer me .

thet mth bsg

vincpeaeteis ined: ain) ters

ate abinigapntinemeaner oat

eng aes Woe ‘tects ae

ER ALipTeasitih gpa Vaptitet wiliy(eee kes

oileraadabemmiiaie toils

dere

tet vient on

;

sitet: ‘potehiew yet yaks wind tena@shang thiiieti/esitilamnaln Agha Mentbo nter Ley QA Menthe tee aleee asrne warty herenee

voll sunerend reads farsyreenity orf ompetle cnytsaiiiaae ah Herbie duly, bTeweratoagtsohtema yyvalves sucha ter usp UE

tity# ‘eennitenratystn ety Miers saab ene at ie eo io

«esa bony getshiehepnich igh «lhheisd wh Fo

as

ctretcoinegmsrneg tts Peoeabs ee ata tiatietioy stpeaens. aay BAUMAN tsesat

senewncrig rote aie miter neotyatmnte serie Ong tale Poe at

ee" aga lbvertudd at” set ‘ateMiavoghradlatginn dyuen heed

culate -1eigh Saikenerabiast ew heed Gomes eunderd fhOUTED

CA

eatery, 4ihe stra

OWT Sims eit ect

| cher ae, Ab perk wie

4

teal

Haye Se

wie: ous

mole fyeagehsrip oe ter

ney Ry ne Bickclgunepaey

Ute siege me

saih hy

_ Wbete Aeeett rerad dea oth hretarorinsepee Ddnety egpilAy

mt

f

wi mle leopd Lite peqpeartt cota ratio’ jaely bo:lad che Sene tamatg a: HOMO pian. agpriine Foti aelinertonds aat Du y eet a “le a7orw © or cata vice ee hi hieeved artery

ew

Oregon

ntenaian ke pe

ee

wt heryinithesshlinntedy le

f

onset blcet ae: Aaeaeet exact ielues does Selb

4s

(Role

;

Gute hry hut eileen foe ahlindwenscd

“ones nein

re

nh

=

a saienay

> : 7

Notes

Preface

1. This is a paraphrase of astatement made in the context of militants in the Armenian diaspora by Télélyan 1993, p. 221. 2. I borrow the phrase from the title of the Indian law, the Terrorist and

Disruptive Activities Preventive Act, which was then in effect in Assam. 3. S. Baruah 1994, p. 663. 4. New Republic 1983, pp. 7-8. There are more quotations from this article below. 5. I borrow the term “cargo cult theory” from R. Guha 1987, p. 3. 6. Cited in Surita 1981, p. 25. 7. Ibid. 8. Ignatieff 1993, pp. 13-14. 9. Ibid., p. 13. 10. For the distinction between “law as meaning” and “law as power” see Cover 1992, p. 112. 11. Gusfield 1981, p. 185. 12. Appiah 1997, p. 438. Chapter 1. Theoretical Considerations: The Limits of “Nation-Building”

1. Connolly 1991, cited in Shapiro 1994, p. 489. 2. McCloskey 1990, p. 154. The quotation from P. T. Bauer is cited by him. 3. Knutsen 1992, pp. 256-57. 4. Anderson

1992, p. 3.

5. Etzioni 1993, p. 21. 6. As Prasenjit Duara puts it, “the instability of the concept of the nation

216

Notes to Pages 3-14

is such that we are unable to even say whether it is in ascendancy or in decline.” Duara 1996, p. 4. 7. Bourdieu 1991, pp. 221-24. 8. Cited in Knutsen 1992, pp. 254-56. 9. Harvey 1989, cited in Ruggie 1993, p. 147. 10. Anderson 1983. 11. Ibid., p. 123. 12. Rushdie 1997, p. 86.

13. Rudolph and Rudolph 1993, p. 25. 14. Majone 1990, pp. 67-68. 15. Duara 1996, p. 4. 16. Young 1976, p. 72. 17. Hroch 1996, p. 62. 18. Eagleton 1990, p: 28. 19. It is significant that the Assamese term Jatiyotabad, which is typically used to refer to Assamese nationalism, translates as nationalism without any qualifier. 20. Connor 1994, p. 111. 21. Xonjukto Mukti Bahini Axom

1979, p. 4.

22. I owe the neologism “nation-province” to Stern 1993, p. 104. It might seem to be an inaccurate description of India’s states, and the term sounds awkward. None of India’s provinces are unilingual, and the Indian State is ambivalent about recognizing the notion of linguistic states as a generally applicable principle. But similar ambivalence applies to the word nationstate as well, which, incidentally was a neologism before it came to be commonly uséd in post-World War II era. I elaborate on the concept of cultural grammar in Chapter 4. 23. Hobsbawm 1990, p. 164. 24. V. Das 1994, pp. 148-56.

25. Gellner 1983, p. 49. 26. Walzer 1995, p. 324. 27. Balibar 1991, p. 93. 28. In developing this idea I have borrowed from Bachelard’s idea of the poetics of space. See Bachelard 1964. 29. Stepan 1997, p. 18. 30. Skurski 1996, p. 393. The term “horizontal comradeship” is from Anderson 1983. 31. Toldlyan 1996, p. 429. 32. Bayart 1986, pp. 111-12. 33. Ibid., pp. 117-19. 34. Stepan 1997, pp. 17-18. 35. Ibid., p. 18. 36. Habermas 1995, pp. 337-38. 37. Verghese 1996, p. l.

38. Ibid., pp. xi-xii. 39. On sedentarist metaphysics or a sedentarism that is taken for granted in social practice, see Malkki 1996, pp. 434-53, especially p. 441.

Notes to Pages

14-31

217

40. Toldlyan 1996, p. 428.

41. Malkki 1996, p. 447. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

Verghese 1996, p. 304. Berger 1993, p. 21. Verghese 1996, p. xi. Kunstadter, ed. 1967, p. 205. Burling 1967, p. 215. Endle 1975, p. xi.

48. See Census of India 1971a, p. 90; 1991a.

49. K. Sharma 1990, p. 2. Chapter 2: Colonial Geography as Destiny: Assam as a Province of British India 1. The Ahom or Tai-Ahom rulers of Assam, in ethnic terms, are an off-

shoot of the Tai people (Shan, i.e., Sham, cf. Siam) of southeast Asia; they are called Shan in Burma, Thai in Thailand, Lao in Laos, Dai and Zhuang

in China, and Tay-Thai in Vietnam. The Assamese branch, the Tai-Ahoms,

came to Assam in the early thirteenth century, most likely from Mong Mao in China’s Yunnan province, and established a state that survived for six hundred years. SeeJ.N. Phukan 1992, pp. 49-50. 2. Treaty of Yandabo, in Bose, ed. 1979, pp. 61-62. 3. Sarkar 1993a, b.

4. Gait 1990, p. 336. 5. Government of Bengal 1873, Part 3, pp. 2-3.

6. Lord Northbrook’s despatch, April 4, 1871. Cited in Barpujari 199293, vol. 1, p. 271.

7. Barpujari 1992, vol. 4, p. 275. 8. Ibid. 9. Chief Commissioner Fuller to Lord Curzon, cited in A. Guha 1977,

.70. 4 10. Letter from Seraj-ul-Islam to Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, December 15, 1903, cited in Bhattacharjee 1993, p. 255. 11. Cited in Bhagabati 1989, p. 33. 12. Bhattacharjee 1993, p. 256. 13. Government of Eastern Bengal and Assam 1907, pp. 33-34. The same statement with the exact words appears in Gait 1990, p. 337. 14. Breckenridge and van der Veer 1993, p. 15. 15. Rose 1977, p. 65.

16. Mackenzie 1979, pp. 89-90. 17. Ibid., p. 55. 18. Jacobs et al. 1990, p. 9. 19. Ibid. 20. Horam 1975, p. 41. 21. Ibid., pp. 6-7. 22. Mills 1973...

218

Notes to Pages 31-43

23. Jacobs et al. 1990, p. 21. 24. Elwin 1961, p. 18. 25. Gait 1990, p. 314. 26. Mackenzie 1979, p. 91.

27. Ibid., pp. 94-95. 28. Ibid., p. 89. 29. Robinson 1975, pp. 383-84. 30. Ibid., p. 385. 31. Minute of meeting of the Anthropological Institute, March 8, 1881. Introductory paragraph in Woodethorpe 1969, p. 46. 32. Woodethorpe 1969, p. 47. 33. Ibid. 34. Simon Commission Report, cited in Elwin 1961, p. 36. 35. Furer-Haimendorf 1962, pp. 4-5. 36. “Backward territories” were not limited to Assam. There were territories so designated in a number of provinces. 37. Chaube 1973, p. 85, citing a speech by Sse Choudhury. 38. B. P. Singh 1987, pp. 278-79. 39. Assam Memorandum

1973) 40. 41. 42. 43.

to Statutory Commission,

cited in Chaube

p. 19. Elwin 1961, pp. 38-39. Cited in Rao 1976, p. 84. Cited in Elwin 1961, p. 39. A. Guha 1977, p. 324.

44. A. Frazer, note of December 6, 1904. Cited in A. Guha 1977, p. 71n. 45. Barpujari 1992, vol. 4, p. 276.

46. Speech by Sarveswar Baruah in the Assam Legislative Council. Cited in A. Guha 1977, p. 204. 47. See S. Das 1989, pp. 20-21, 27. The percentage of Bengali speakers, however, came down to 26.8 percent in 1931 as a result of Bengali Muslim immigrants in the Brahmaputra Valley identifying themselves as Assamese speaking. The Assamese percentage by contrast went up from 22 percent in 1911 to 32% of the population in 1931. 48. Cited in A. C. Bhuyan et al. 1980, p. 356. 49. Among the earliest evidence of Assamese protest against Bengali dominance are the petitions submitted by Anandaram Dhekial Phukan and Maniram Dewan to Judge A. J. Moffat Mills in 1853, See Moffatt Mills 1984, pp. 105-6, 607. 50. A. Guha 1977, p. 260. 51. Ibid., p. 82. 52. Ibid., p. 79. 53. Cited in Bhuyan et al. 1978, p. 292. 54. Cited in ibid., p. 288. 55. A. Guha 1977, p. 167.

56. Ibid., pp. 319-20.

Notes to Pages 44-54

219

Chapter 3: The Making of a Land Frontier: Assam and Its Immigrants

1, Butler 1978. 2. Ibid., pp. 23-24. I am grateful to Tasiruddin Ahmed and Jugal Kalita for helping me with locating Mohendijuwa (the place that Butler spells as Mohung Dehooa) on a contemporary map. 3. Ibid., pp. 249-50. 4. Ibid., p. 250. 5. Griffiths 1967, p. 96. 6. Cited in Visvanath 1990, pp. 6, 7.

7. A. Guha 1991, pp. 186-205. 8. C. A. Bruce, cited in Griffiths 1967, p. 55. 9. A. Guha 1991, p. 195.

10. Neale 1969, pp. 6-7. 11. For the influence of English utilitarian thought in colonial policymaking in India see Stokes 1959. 12. A. Guha 1991, p. 13.

13. PaulJ.Bohannan, cited in Neale 1969, p. 4. 14. Moffatt Mills 1984, p. 6.

15. A. Guha 1991, p. 191. 16. A. Guha 1977.

17. A. Guha 1991, p. 191. Contrary to a common belief that only “tribal” peasants were shifting cultivators, historical evidence suggests that that most peasants — “tribal” as well as “nontribal” — did some amount of shift-

ing cultivation. See A. Guha 1991, p. 13. 18. A. Guha 1977, pp. 134-35. 19. Weiner 1978, p. 79. 20. Ibid., pp. 81-82.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

Ibid., p. 80. Census of India 1991c. Weiner 1978, p. 81. Goswami and Gogoi 1984, p. 61. S. Das 1989, p. 2. Ibid., p. 45. Ibid., p. 33. Goswami and Gogoi 1984, p. 67. Census ofIndia 1961, p. 71.

30. The term is from Starr 1987. 31. S. Das 19839, p. 44. 32. Rose 1994, pp. 110-11. 33. U. Phukan 1984, p. 10.

34. 35. 36. 37.

Ibid., p. 9. Ibid., p. 2. Cited in Weiner 1978, p. 90. U. Phukan 1984, p. 123.

220

Notes to Pages 54-71

38. U. Phukan 1984, p. 23. 39. Kar and Sharma 1990, p. 150.

40. Ibid., pp. 157-58. 41. Edward Gait in Census Report of 1891, cited in Census ofIndia 1921, 42. 43. 44. 45, 46.

Allen 1984, p. 13. Cited in Census of India 1921, p. 40. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

47. C. S. Mullan, cited in S. Das 1989, p. xi. 48. Hussain 1993, p. 207.

49. Weiner 1978, p. 93. 50. Datta-Ray 1978, p. 173.

51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

Moffatt Mills 1853, p. 607. Ibid., p. 105. Datta-Ray 1978, p. 163. Ibid., pp. 156-57. Nag 1983, p. 165. Allen 1906, p. 75. Nag 1983, pp. 164-75. Weiner 1978, pp. 103-4. Moffatt Mills 1853, p. 607. Rose 1994, p. 107. Ibid., p. 105. Ibid., p. 106. Ibid. A. Guha 1977, pp. 92-93.

65. Census of India 1971, Census of India, 1991c. 66. Government of Bengal 1873, Part 2, p. 141.

67. Ibid. 68. Allen 1984, p. 4. 69. Ibid., pp. 4-5. 70. Note of dissent by Rabi Chandra Kachari, Kameshwar Das, and Sarbeswar Baruah. In Government of Assam 1938, p. 20. Chapter 4: Cultural Politics of Language, Subnationalism, and Pan-indianism 1. Said 1990, p. 77; Chatterjee 1986, p. 40.

2. Chatterjee 1986, p. 40.

3. 4. 5. 6.

R. Guha 1987, pp. 41-43. Barpujari 1993, vol. 5, pp. 275-76. Moffatt Mills 1853, p. 105. The first Assamese magazine, Orunodoi (Sunrise), was published by

Notes to Pages 71-81

221

American Baptist missionaries from 1846 to 1882. The history of modern Assamese literature begins with a period named after this magazine. 7. Barpujari and Sarma 1993, p. 220. 8. Cited in M. Neog 1976, p. 3. 9.Official goals of the Axomiya Bhaxa Unnati Xadhini Xobha, cited in Barpujari and Sarma 1993, p. 220. 10. For this argument made with reference to Indian languages in general see Cohn 1985, especially pp. 327-28. 11. The words in quotation marks paraphrase Ranajit Guha. See R. Guha 1987, pp. 41-43. 12. Kakati 1962, p. 6. 13. U. Goswami 1974, pp. 62-70. 14. Ibid. 15. Chatterji 1970, p. 108, emphasis added. 16. The old district of Goalpara is now divided into four districts: Dhubri, Kokrajhar, Goalpara, and Bongaigaon.

17. Memorandum from Prabhat Chandra Barua and others to Governor Genera] Chelmsford, in Government of India 1919. 18. Memorandum from Hariprasad Nath and others to Governor General Frederic John Napier, in Government ofIndia 1919. 19. A. Sharma 19839, p. 144. 20. Cited in ibid., p. 120. 21. Barthakur 1968, pp. 17-18. 22. Rules of the Assam Association, cited in A. Sharma 1989, p. 117.

23. A. Sharma 1989, p. 123. 24. These ideas appear in essays by Raychaudhuri that are part of a collection called Ahuti. See A. Raychaudhuri 1986, pp. 587-88, 597. I was led to these sections of Raychaudhuri’s writings by Apurba Kumar Baruah’s analysis of Raychaudhuri’s political ideas. See A. Baruah 1991. 25. Essay in Deka Axom, vol. 1, no. 1. Reprinted in H. Neog, ed. 1968, pp.

234-35. 26. Cited in Bhuyan et al., eds. 1978, p. 294.

27. Raychaudhuri 1989, p. 68. 28. The Assamese word bidexi literally means “foreigner.” But since in this usage it makes no reference to citizenship status “outsider” may be a synonym as well. 29. G. Borah 1996, pp. 1-2. 30. Cited in A. Guha 1977, p. 316; also in A. Guha 1974, p. 359. 31. A. Baruah 1991, p. 61.

32. 33. 34. 35.

D. Goswami 1989, pp. 90-91. U. Goswami 1990, pp. 233-34. Raychaudhuri 1989, pp. 74-75. Ibid., pp. 69-71.

36. Assamese Election Leaflet. Translated and cited by A. Guha 1977, pp.

302-3. 37. A. Guha 1977, p. 303.

222

Notes to Pages 82-96

38. G. Borah 1996, pp. 25-26. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43, 44, 45. 46, 47, 48. 49.

Ibid., p. 42. Cited in D. Goswami 1989, p. 89. A. Guha 1974, p. 359. Ibid., p. 359. Ibid., p. 361. See Chapter 3, pp. 66-67 K. Barua 1972. pp. 131-32. Tayebulla 1962, p. 383. Raychaudhuri 1989, pp. 78-79. Tayebulla 1962, pp. 387-88. Rafiq Zakaria, speech in the Rajya Sabha (Upper House of the Indian

Parliament), 1983, cited in N. Barooah

1990, p. 3n.

50. B. Barua 1990, citing Rajmohan Gandhi. Barua in this essay contrasts two positions on this issue, one expressed by Abul Kalam Azad and the other by Rajmohan Gandhi. 51, N. Barooah 1990, pp. 29-30. 52, Cited in ibid., pp. 30-31. 53. Cited in ibid., pp. 31-32. 54. A. Guha 1977, pp. 316-17. 55. Gohain 1970, p. 284. 56. Excerpt of speech by Mahendra Mohan Choudhury, reproduced in A. Hazarika 1968, Appendix, p. 93. 57. B. Hazarika, cassette tape. This song is sung by Hazarika, but was composed by Mukul Baruah. 58. Anderson

1983, p. 19.

59. B. Hazarika, cassette tape.

60. B. Hazarika 1993, pp. 315-16. 61. This phrase is from Said 1979, p. 55.

62. B. Hazarika 1993, pp. 75-77. 63. Ibid., pp. 4-5, 118. 64. B. Hazarika in Dutta 1984, pp. 434-35.

Chapter 5: Contested Identity, Culture Wars,

and the Breakup of Colonial Assam 1, Prabhakara 1994. 2. Indian Statutory Commission 1930, pp. 14-16. 3. Bhattacharya 1992, p. 101. 4. Ibid. 5. Report of the Union Powers Committee of the Constituent Assembly. Cited in ibid., p. 95. 6. Cited in Schwartzberg 1985, p. 162. 7. Cairns 1995, pp. 26-27. 8. Cited in Geertz 1973, p. 256. 9. Ibid.

Notes to Pages 97-111

223

10. See S. Das 1989, pp. 18-19, 27. 11. Schwartzberg 1985, p. 177. 12. Ibid., p. 165. 13. I borrow the term “distinct society” from Canadian debates on Quebec. In the Meech Lake Accord the phrase was suggested as a way of giving constitutional recognition to the notion of Québec being the primary homeland offrancophones in Canada. See Houle 1992, pp. 37-46. 14. See Weiner and Katzenstein 1981. 15. The notion of cultural grammar is borrowed from Orvan Lofgren. See Lofgren 1980, pp. 21-22. 16. Cited in Prabhakara 1972c. 17. Geertz 1973, pp. 274-77.

18. Statement of the Centrale de l’Enseignement du Québec (Québec Teachers’ Union), reprinted in Dodge, ed. 1992, pp. 177, 178. 19. Assam

Tribune, editorial, May 27, 1949, cited in S. Goswami

p. 87. 20. Cited in S. Goswami 1990, p. 87. 21. Ibid., pp. 93-95. 22. Chakrabarty 1984, p. 72.

23. Cited in Gupta 1984, p. 132. 24. Danda 1978, pp. 5-7. 25. Bordoloi 1984, p. 35. 26.J.B. Bhattacharjee 1977, pp. 14-15, citing P. N. Bhattacharjee. 27. Bhattacharjee 1977, pp. 2, 214.

28. Pal Choudhury, 1972. 29. Chakrabarty 1984, p. 65.

30. 31. 32. 33.

Report cited in ibid., pp. 67, 72. Choudhury 1954, p. 4. Ibid., p. 6. Pal Choudhury 1972.

34. See ibid., frontispiece. 35. Chakrabarty 1981, p. 23.

36. Prabhakara 1972b. 37. Chakrabarty 1984, pp. 91-92. 38. Misra 1988, p. 122.

39. 40. 41. 42.

Chaube 1973. Article 3 of the Constitution of India. Austin 1993, p. 108. Statesman, August7,1962. Cited in Johari 1975, p. 35.

43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

See Go 1996, pp. 7-21. Chaube 1973, pp. 168-69. Ibid., pp. 184-85. Ibid., pp. 120, 127. Horam 1974, p. 1227. Prabhakara 1994. Prabhakara 1989. S. Ghosh 1988.

1990,

224

51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

Notes to Pages 112-133

B. Hazarika, cassette tape. Cited in S. Goswami 1990, p. 119. Cited in ibid. Deka 1976, pp. 34, 45. Weiner 1978, p. 124.

Chapter 6: Protest Against Immigration, Ethnic Rifts, and Assamss Crisis of Governability 1. Government of Assam 1988, pp. 12-13. 2. This is the implication ofa statement like: “The Assamese sought not only to have the minorities accept a subordinate political position; they wanted also to physically expel many of them and take away their lands and

livelihoods.” Wilkinson 1993, p. 7. 3, The contrast between law-as-meaning and law-as-power is from Cover 1992, p. 112. 4. This estimate is made by the North East Regional Students Union. Cited by D. Barooah 1984, p. 291.

5. Tarrow 1992, p. 189. 6. Verghese 1996, p. 38. 7. Ibid., p. 39. 8. Gupta 1984, p. 47. 9. Ibid., p. 45. 10. Cited in Hussain 1993, p. 102. 11. Gupta 1984, p. 48.

12. See Government ofIndia 1984a. 13. Government ofIndia 1984b. 14. B. Hazarika 1993, pp. 75-77. 15. Ibid. 16. N. Bhuyan 1967, pp. 22-23. 17. Cited in Misra 1988, pp. 123-24. 18.J.Goswami, ed. 1971, p. 103. 19. See A. Borah 1985. 20. Cohen 1981, pp. 307-31. 21. PUCL 1980, pp. 18-21. 22. U.M. 1979, pp. 1993-94; Misra 1988, pp. 81-84. 23. Sunday 1981, p. 34. The term “professional” is an equivalent of the Indian bureaucratic category “gazetted officer.” The news report, unfortunately, did not distinguish between ethnic Assamese Muslims and Muslims of Bengali descent. 24. See Chapter 5, p. 114. 25. Economic and Political Weekly 1983. 26. Gupta 1984, p. 29. 27. Shourie 1983a, p. 56. 28. Cited in ibid. 29. Ibid.

Notes to Pages 133-145

225

30.J.Singh 1984, p. 1067. 31. Gupta 1984, p. 145.

32. Message from Zahiruddin Ahmed, Officer in charge of Nowgong Police Station, cited in Shourie 1983a, p. 66. 33. Mehta Commission 1985, pp. 44-45. 34. Gupta 1984, pp. 11, 12. 35. B. Hazarika 1993, pp. 522-24. 36. The political impact of the international coverage can be gauged by the fact that Indira Gandhi sent an emissary—an Assamese Muslim politician —to the Gulf countries to explain the situation in Assam. See India Today 1983a, p. 31.

37. India Today 1983a, p. 31.

38. Misra 1988, pp. 119-20. 39. Cited by Misra 1988, pp. 110-11. The quotations are attributed to AASU leaders. 40. The new spelling “Guwahati” is not used in the cases of the Gauhati University and the Gauhati High Court. This, perhaps, is not accidental. The spelling, closer to the Assamese pronunciation of the name of the city, has potentially exclusionary implications. The Anglicized spelling “Gauhati” can be seen as more inclusionary. Thejurisdiction of the Gauhati High Court extends to all the northeastern states and the Gauhati University continues to include educational institutions located in nonethnic Assamese regions of Assam where the symbolic association of the name of the university with ethnic Assamese aspirations could be seen as exclusionary. 41. India Today 1983b, p. 33.

42. For a description of an incident where the police shot and killed seven ethnic Assamese villagers see Misra 1988, pp. 101-6.

43. For a critique of the procedures followed in the revision see Choudhuri 1985, pp. 2146-47. 44. The 1984 figure is from Sunday 1985. The figure of the final electorate is from Sentinel December 30, 1985. 45. A pre-poll report had also concluded that the UMF’s support was evident primarily among East Bengali Muslims. Times ofIndia November 15, 1985. 46. Some parts of this analysis parallel that of Udayon Misra 1988, pp. 136-43. 47. Sunday 1986, p. 47. : 48. S. Baruah 1986, pp. 1205-6. 49. Xonjukto Mukti Bahini Axom 1979, p. 2. Chapter 7: Militant Subnationalism, Human Rights, and the Chasm with Pan-indianism 1. PUDR 1991, p. 32. 2. Hindu, November 3, 1997.

226

Notes to Pages 146-169

3. Linz 1978, pp. 35-37.

4. Assam Tribune, October 1, 1996.

5, Xonjukto Mukti Bahini Axom 1979, p. 4. 6. Xonjukto Mukti Bahini Axom n.d., pp. 15, 19. 7. Aami 1992. 8. B. Hazarika, cassette tape. 9. Bidwai 1990. 10. B. Barua 1988, 11. ULFA memorandum to the Secretary General of the United Nations, reprinted in Das 1992. 12. Das 1992, p. 111. 13. Sentinel December 21, 1990. 14. The term, of course, is always problematical in Assam.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

Hindu October 9, 1997. Abdi 1999, p. 1. India Today May 15, 1990, p. 21. Thakur 1991, p. 19. Prabhakara 1991, p. 16. S. Ghosh 1995. Prabhakara 1991, p. 16.

22. Assam

Police statement, reported in Assam

1997, and Telegraph January

Tribune December

31,

1, 1998.

23. Thakur 1991, p. 19. 24. S. Goswami 1998. 25. B. P. Singh, Home March 12, 1998.

Secretary, Government of India, cited in Hindu

26. Saikia’s statements were the subject of much commentary in newspapers. See, for instance, “Illegal migration,” editorial in Assam Tribune June 3, 1992, and “Axomot Ejono Bidexi Nai” (There is not a single foreignerin Assam), news report in Ajir Axom November 1, 1993.

27. Telegraph December 29, 1997. 28. Government of Assam statement in the Assam Assembly, September 6, 1993. Cited in Prabhakara 1993c. 29. Prabhakara 1993c. 30. Ibid. 31. “Needless Unpleasantness,” editorial, Sentinel January 22, 1994. 32. “The ‘Assam University,’ editorial, Sentinel January 18, 1994. 33. Assam Tribune January 22, 1994. 34. Xadin, January 21, 1994, pp. 1, 4.

35. Human Rights Watch 1993. 36. Ibid. 37. Where “Peacekeepers” Have Declared War 1997, p. 96.

38. Ibid., p. 53.

39, 40. 41. 42.

PUDR 1991, p. 31. Sentinel August 13, 1998. Government ofIndia 1972 When “Peacekeepers” Have Declared War 1997, p. 53.

Notes to Pages

169-180

227

43. Telegraph May 9, 1997. 44. “Manab Adhikar Ulanghan: Jogoria Kon” (Human Rights Violations: Who Is to Blame), editorial, Ajir Axom December

45. Verghese 1996, pp. 56-57. 46. B. Hazarika 1993, p. 484. 47. Ibid., pp. 325-26.

12, 1997.

Chapter 8: “We Are Bodos, Not Assamese”: Contesting a Subnational Narrative

1. Kachari 1991. 2. Since the results of the 1991 census for Assam are only partly published so far, the percentage of “tribals” in the population is from the 1971 census. The population figures and the number of Bodo language speakers is from the 1991 census. 3. S. Phukan 1988. 4. Government of India 1992, pp. 118-19. The committee examined the data submitted by Bodo organizations and collected by ABSU volunteers in 1990, and made some sample comparisons between their data and the census data. The 1991 census data which had not been public as yet— and are not yet fully published — were made available to the committee. 5. ABSU 1987, pp. 11-15. 6. Government ofIndia 1992, pp. 118-19. 7. ABSU and BPAC 1992. 8. Methodologically the problem is analogous to that of the theory of the Aryan race. Historian Romila Thapar has argued that this nineteenthcentury theory, premised on an equation of language with race, significantly influenced and distorted the study of Indian history. The theory, writes Thapar, “derived academic sanction from the work of comparative philologists such as Max Miller, Auguste Pictet and Christian Lassen, ideological sanction from the essays of Comte de Gobineau and political sanction by the end of the nineteenth century from the competing imperialisms of West European nations.” The equation of race and language, which was the basis of this theory, led to the dichotomy between Aryan and Semitic in Europe and between Aryan and Dravidian in India, with the “upper castes seen as descendants of the Aryan.” Thapar 1980, p. 96. 9. Pemberton 1865, pp. 11-12.

10. Endle 1975. 11. Grierson 1967, p. 2. 12. Endle 1975. 13.J.D. Anderson, “Introduction,” in Endle 1975, p. xi.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

Endie 1975, pp. 4-5. Ibid., p. 8. Chatterji 1974, pp. 45-46. Endle 1975, p. 4. Prabhakara 1974, p. 2100.

228

Notes to Pages 180-195

19, Ibid.

20. Census of India 1891, p. 163. 21. Ibid., p. 163. 22, Ibid. p. 224: 23. Ibid., p. 216. 24. Ibid., pp. 216-17. 25. Ibid., pp. 215. 26. Dasgupta 1992, pp. 11-12. 27. However, the argument that the Bodos of contact with” the Ahom administration seems India 1992, p. 44. 28. Government ofIndia 1992, p. 44. 29. Government ofIndia 1992, p. 65. 30. See for instance a statement in an ABSU religion” of the Bodos, it says, is Bathou, “i.e., 1987, p. 15. 31. Personal

1992. 32, 33. 34. 35.

notes, Dotoma

the Duars “hardly came in extreme. Government of

document. The “original worshipping Siva.” ABSU

village, Kokrajhar district, Assam,

May 1,

Narzy 1966, p. 148. Prabhakara 1974, p. 2101. Chanda 1988. Doimari 1996.

36. Personal

notes, Dotoma

village, Kokrajhar district, Assam, May 1,

1992. 37. Axomiya Protidin October 29, 1996.

38. ABSU 1987, pp. 31-32. 39. Hussain 1987, p. 1332. 40. ABSU 1987, pp. 24-29. 41. Government ofIndia 1992, p. 164. 42. ABSU 1987, pp. 24-29. 43. Cited in Government of India 1992, p. 47. 44. See Bordoloi 1991. 45. Doley 1988, pp. 18-19. 46. “Memorandum of Settlement,” Bodo Accord, February 20, 1993, Appendix 1 ofG. Phukan 1993, p. 32. 47. Telegraph January 1, 1997. 48. ABSU 1987, p. 78. 49. Telegraph January 2, 1997. 50. Assam Tribune January 13, 1997. 51. Axomiya Protidin October 27, 1996.

52. Telegraph December 31, 1997. 53, Assam Tribune May 31, 1994. 54. Assam Tribune May 29, 1994. 55, Assam Tribune October 11, 1995.

56. Editorial in Assam Tribune October 27, 1995.

57. Assam Tribune October 16, 1995. 58. Telegraph May 23, 1996.

Notes to Pages

196-213

229

59. Assam Tribune November 25, 1996. 60. Assam Tribune November 25, 1996.

61. Where “Peacekeepers” Have Declared War 1997, p. 53. 62. Nagata 1993, p. 103.

Conclusion: India Against Itself 1. Stepan 1997, p. 18.

2. 3. 4. 5.

Piccone and Ulmen 1994, pp. 7, 5. Ibid. Nagata 1993, p. 102 Piccone and Ulmen 1994, p. 10.

6. Walzer 1970, p. 220. 7. Cairns 1995, p. 32

8. Mitra 1988, p. 61. 9. Mitra 1975, p. 1706. 10. Saigal 1992, pp. 215-16. 11. My argument borrows from Ashok Mitra’s proposal for restructuring financial powers. See Mitra 1975, pp. 1707-9.

12. Ibid. 13. Sethi 1990, pp. 51-52. 14. In developing this argument I have drawn on an essay by Rajat Ray. See Ray 1992. 15. Singh 1998, pp. 10-11. 16. Nandy 1992, pp. 27-28. 17. Ibid., pp. 37-38. 18. Ray 1992. The statement by the Aga Khan is cited in this essay. 19. Ohmae 1995, p. 5. 20. Ibid., pp. 8-9. 21. Ibid., pp. 99-100. 22. Ibid., p. 97.

x

en

Pr oi

ae 9 oe

Te

:

Oea

fd

ee

se.

Veal)

Gis

cal

2 A Bamghiiccis DER tes,9 it.

.

“i nna

A

ath pyar

alelehe

fhe

Teen

ne

oY tay

#

oa”.

tad rs gv 1, ince age ta oe

-@

; Pigeast Likiseiy #

7

tay :

aes

Pine

hh

my!

i

tua

‘i

| _ hte gal) Heed Gigante nd see ayey abslqaidied paleonitabeege ee oe

i.e

(eal

Nis tinyChyee cadres

> peavcelvh oly tnahialpgeel,'|

ow terapr tly,

meth wim pibres de rsq A saduberscgey:dent teeth ein) |

okie ibe ucnkasA. Mem Ausihith Yetticuier bru cuctd) d oc Hua oul:

ieee ope

*

sine hi PoP (Pek! wsxlointy) My PRqutae’, Bee

?

beh

ier

rt biaerant gyi aed ori atl ue dou? aes tlh oF oll talerepay i

of tdrvsilt coal, wae

Le

sh

cerllavalibivhs

™“,

OD) errno eee cog litinnod belpeogs

tT } Wwotoest ide peed Siecprtey woh pened sctawrl® arta’ ; ‘

uence diy wihadeylegortiny wil wert tbe - -

ai tins weap me (Li cioey watt to perma ‘tata Bid aebargas vl bic sale qe oictl) repettan Te wilaerwrard Wy, curiteceretbel ony, tacks ¥O ti s4aeny bye

penance HP Aiaiery binetansomedangt sand mmole neat

Sebo een Tas} nsthy HHA leyoneary agi ign erates, is iebige Oo Oeeandls espe wo dowd och” ='

(i

1g

Varnes

j

a)

es

1S, Pay

5

4

=

. r

:

rule!

iia } a

1p

1) (ests

nde

“1a

4

‘i

“yy

|

=

Adi ann

ae

¥

nara da

0Ge7

;

\

Js

pg

if er

TL

ya?

Wj

\

we

‘a Alea”

ta

»

f

I

,

:

—

® l; a

ie by paar

ie 4

A

o Put...

on

ei). re nan

a

7

°

i]

7

—s

:

a

ety

:

rs

wi

7

*

cs

oie

"

i

1

a

a

4

a

3

>

a

u

}

v

7,

Pe

*

:

ee

uD

a

ea

SS

7

:

ody

J

7

os

4 OP

.

ee

-

Tees

_

——

rn

>=

'‘

ae.

1

>

Fin

p=.

ee

- ny> " ‘7

‘oan

ae

f

a

a

y

é

y

a

-

-

-

tn

Ses

if

=

FPoa

ee

:

2

yr

a.

_

z Te >

ate

¢

ets

ee

.

a

=

ae hog

=)

ipa

=

on

ee

fe

-

7

:

_

7

er

a

;

7 i a

—_

i=.

=

a

Say Oy iy,

a

d

Cer

oP :

a? rs

we

& vist

>

a5

oo

=i

0

. 7

>

aj

ie tae

=

K_

ew

a

>:

a

ae

_

-

n

a .

=.

;

7

ie

a

=e

7

-

; Pie —

i

“fangs

SG es :

oe

Ou

eitt etn

ae

ae Ty:

ae

1:

;

a

_

INDIA AGAINST ITSELF Assam and the Politics of Nationality SANJIB BARUAH Are decentralized forms of government better able to manage conflicts in multi-ethnic polities? In a time of failing states and ethnic unrest this questions acquires a new urgency. Baruah argues that loosely organized federations are not only less prone to violent conflicts but they also make better democracies. He traces the history of conflicts in Assam and tensions between pan-Indianism and Assamese subnationalist concerns ever since the province became a part of British India and one of the world’s leading teaproducing regions in the nineteenth century. He argues that human rights abuses by both security forces and insurgents, ethnic violence, and the steady slide towards illiberal democracy are largely due to India’s formally federal but actually centralized government structure. This book combines scholarship, political engagement, and an insider’s intimate knowledge of northeast India. It will interest historians and political analysis. Sanjib Baruah is Professor of Political Studies at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, USA.

‘This brilliant book, meticulously researched in the history of subnationalisms and cultural politics in Northeast India, is the best critique of general theories of agonistic democracy that I have encountered.’ —Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Columbia University

*...will stimulate critical thought at a historical moment when political and economic forces are propelling India toward a looser federation. And it will provide a base for comparison with ethnic politics in other contexts from Bosnia to Kashmir.’ —Susanne H. Rudolph and Lloyd I. Rudolph, University of Chicago ‘...a remarkably innovative line of analysis that even proceeds to suggest a solution.’ —Tapan Raychaudhuri, Times Literary Supplement Jacket design: Heather L. Truelove

Jacket illustration: Golden City Arches II. Panel in acrylic, gold leaf and clay. Nandini Chirimar, 1996. Private collection.

OXFORD UNIVERSITY

www.oup.com

PRESS

ISBN O-19-5b5840-x ||

977460195

| |

£65840 &

ace