[Assam] FWD: The Assamese mind By HK Deka
Ram Sarangapani
assamrs at gmail.com
Mon Jun 5 22:05:18 PDT 2006
Here is an interesting article by HK Deka. The article is long, and for
those interested, it is both enjoyable and stimulating.
There is also a Word attachment.
Highlights are mine. HKD touches on a number of lightening-rod issues that
are often discussed on the net here.
For example:
*This tug of war between Indian nationalism and Assamese nationalism is a
modern manifestation ............*
or
*4The Assamese language derived from the Sanskrit root has been the
..........*
and many more.
Look forward to a stimulating discussion on some of the issues raised by the
author.
--Ram
TEXT OF "THE ASSAMESE MIND"
-------------------------------------------------------------
The Assamese Mind
----------------------
Harekrishna Deka
1.1 As I try to trace the map of the Assamese mind,I become aware of the
difficulty in exploring a landscape without visible boundary.I am writing
about one collective psyche whose submerged contours have to be traced out
from some exterior signposts but in this visible landscape, I encounter
numerous dots of tiny islands called individuals and each of these
individuals has an interior landscape of his own with stimuli of mental
categories rushing to and fro in all directions.I am also aware of my own
mind,a subjective self operating within myself,that may disturb my effort to
probe a collective interior, I call the Assamese mind.Having admitted these
limitations,I will still make an endeavour to trace the contours of a mind
that informs the cultural and political life of a people called the
Assamese.
1.2 *At this moment,the people who call themselves Assamese are facing a
political question to define themselves that is to say who they
are.Forreasons we will have occasion to discuss later,the Assamese
people find
themselves in a political situation in which they are required to propose a
definition to mark their identity,although they are a part of a greater
Indian nation and the nation-state accepts that they have a language,a
geographical location ,a culture and a literature contributing to the
multicultural ethos of the nation*.Their literature and culture are also
recognized in various ways by the academies and cultural institutions of the
country.The Assamese has a past history in written form for many
centuries(buranjis) where one gets to know that the region's political link
with the rest of India was tenuous but there are other evidences to show
that India's cultural investment here has been very old,continuous and
durable.As a cultural community it is born of an ethnic fusion of diverse
races tracing origin to the Aryavarta as well as the East beyond the
historic boundary of India. As a socio-ethnic linguistic community it
evolved through many centuries in a melting pot syndrome(1),migrants
assimilating with the locals till the recent times,the Aryans coming in
streams from the Indo-gangetic plains and the Tibeto-Burmans descending
through the low hills of Patkai range and the lower Himalaya,the language
developing from the Magadhi Apabhransa of Sanskrit origin(2) but with
infusion of many expressions of Tibeto-Burman stock of dialects and
therefore developing a distinct flavour.The physical features of the people
show a mixture of racial characteristics of both the Aryan and the
Mongoloid races with traces of the Dravidian and the austric people.Ahoms ,a
descendant of the Shun community from the Unan province of China played a
major role in bringing the Assamese speaking people within a common
political umbrella and gave the people the name Assamese(3),a derivative of
the word Ahom.This stock came down to Assam through the low hills of the
eastern border as late as the thirteenth century .Some of the local tribes
indistinguishably merged with them(Barahi) and in course of time they
themselves got fully assimilated within the Assamese-speaking
community.Theybecame Hinduised,which helped them to a large extent to
integrate into the
larger community whom they came to rule.They gave an efficient
administration to a large portion of the geographical area between Sadiya in
the east and Guwahati in the west,which helped a cultural community to
develop into a political people in whom Assamese-ness became the core
element of unity.This manifested in their heroic resistance against the
superior force of the Moghul, who invaded the Ahom kingdom a number of times
but were defeated because of determined resistance by the king and his
people.The finest example of this spirit was witnessed by history in the
battle of Saraighat where a heroic leader ,Lachit Borphukan,inspired a whole
people to rise as one force to resist alien invasion in a spirit of
freedom.(3)No doubt, the people defended a ruling monarch against an
invading empeor's army when they fought the Moghuls,but the spirit that
informed them was patriotism,love for motherland,and the ruling monarch was
only an unifying symbol that inspired such feelings in the mind of the
people.The Moghul invasions were the litmus tests of this spirit and it
triumphed.Without the concept of nationalism,what took birth was a kind of
nation-ness,a consciousness of identity, the Assamese found in the unified
resistance against an alien power.This amorphous nationalism was essentially
of political nature and had nothing to do with the latter pan-Indian
nationalism.This political consciousness did not undermine the much older
cultural union with *Bharatbarish *that was India of
Ramayana,Bhagavata,Purana,Madbhagavatagita.The cultural commerce with the
mainland of India was habitual and eventually unifying.
1.3 It would be wrong on my part to say that nationalism as a political
creed took a conscious hold of the mind of this people in the years of
fighting against the invading army of the Mughal empire.At conscious
level,it was a sense of patriotism,a collective feeling for the motherland
Assam which had to be defended.But in the submerged landscape of the mind,a
sense of being an independent people within a geographical region took
root and continued to seed itself.Much later, that is in recent times, it
manifested itself as a rallying cry of that section of this people who saw
both the pre-Independence British rule and the post-Independence Indian rule
as two different forms of colonialism imposed on an Independent
nation.Assamese *Jatiyotavad* grew out of this feeling of being politically
independent throughout History.This sense of political *Jatiyotavad * no
doubt drew its sustenance from an alienation affect arising from the
contemporary socio-economic situation but searched out its historical locus
in the seed-bed of the pre-modern political unconscious.In the eighties of
the 20th century,it began as a political assertion of a linguistic community
in the periphery of the Indian nation languishing at the edge of economic
development that also suffered from a sense of insecurity resulting from the
continued influx of a homogenous migrant population from across the national
border.To begin with,it was not secessionist in nature,rather it was a kind
of identity-assertion and a pshycological defence mechanism.The Assamese
mind sought a rightful place in the Indian polity and found itself almost
reduced to a non-player because of its distance from the Centre ,its smaller
population compared to the other major linguistic communities playing
important political roles and getting bigger slices of the economic
cake.The Indian Federation in its formative years failed to note the
asymmetry of the linguistically separated economic regions and the special
need of the smaller nationalities failed to receive special attention
.Heterogeneity was glossed over by the economic vision of the country as it
was read only as diversity.Thus the symmetrical approach of the Union might
not have addressed the micro-level inequalities requiring special attention
to the need of a people living their life in a geo-political unit away from
the Centre—the people who are weak in economy and feeble in say.Forinstance,if
distribution of fund is done on the basis of macro-criteria like population
and size,it fails to take into account the low level of development of the
economically weaker regions increasing the gap between the already-strong
and the weaker regions.Independent India,except in recent years,appears to
have a symmetrical federal approach to governance that blurs the
asymmetrical character of its different units.The Assamese mind was already
carrying a form of proto-nationalism in its sense of Assamese patriotism.
When it faced a situation in which it found itself at a lower stage of
economic progress compared to the other linguistic communities,further
compounded by the pressure of migration ,its proto-nationalism erupted as
conscious emotive *Jatiyotavad *.It found different expressions in the
socio-political domain with a centrifugal tug against Indian nationalism
that had pervaded the mind during the freedom struggle against the British
Raj, in which the whole of India had found a common mission.But this
trajectory of Assamese nationalism tells only one part of the
story.Thereis a cultural continuum in the Assamese mind whose
trajectory is different
and at this level the Assamese-ness is subsumed under cultural Bharat and it
has a durable presence with much longer sedimentation.If the centrifugal
force of Assamese nationalism (which the detractors call parochialism) has
not been able to tear away the Assamese from their centripetal bonding with
mother India, it is this cultural alluviam.
Assamese cultural consciousness
2.1 Assamese language and literature played a major role in forming the
Assamese cultural mind even before they came to be known as
Assamese.Kamrupabeing the ancient name of the region ,its language of
that time is to be
properly called Kamrupi.But once the community adopted its name as
Assamese,even the ancient language is being referred to as
Assamese.Forinstance,this is what late Suryya kumar Bhuyan ,an eminent
historian and
litterateur wrote,'It is generally accepted that Aryan culture had taken
root in Assam since very early time,and that Assamese is a Sanskritic
language directly connected with Prachya Magadha Apabhransha,…..physically
remote,Assam was not outside the cultural hegemony of
Aryyavarta.'(4).Despite the uncomfortable use of the word hegemony,this
description aptly brings forth the close cultural ancestry of the Assamese
people.But it would be simplistic to say that Assamese culture is an
unalloyed Aryan culture.Much before the Aryan migration to the plains of the
Brahmaputra,a people of austro-alpine stock inhabited the fertile valley and
there was a stream of Tibeto-Burman Mongoloid people coming down from the
east and branching off to various areas in the plains and the hills of Assam
evolving into distinct tribes,some of whom gradually assimilated with the
Aryan migrants to form the compound called Assamese.Late scholar Suniti
Kumar Chatterji,historian Kanak Lal Barua,culture critic and scholar Late
Maheswar Neog all agreed that the Assamese people adopted a good many
cultural practices from the pre-Aryan settlers.(5)Late Dr Pratap chandra
Choudhury had called it a 'compound culture'(6)He found many remnants of
words and phrases of austric and Tibeto-Burman origin in
Assamese.Despitesuch interpolation,Assamese language and culture
remained predominantly
Indo-Aryan. Continuous cultural intercourse with the cultured people of the
Indo-Gangetic plains joined the Assamese cultural mind to the Indian mind
with a strong civilizational glue.Bharat was present in this mind long
before India was conceived as a political nation-state.This Bharat as a
cultural presence pervades the Assamese mind despite its Jatiyo chetona (now
sub-national consciousness)taking a distinctive turn away from Pan-Indian
nationalism during the eighties of the last century.
2.2 As I have said, the seed of this emotional Assamese nationalism was
present from the days of this people's patriotic defence of its land against
the alien invaders but during India's struggle for freedom, it got subsumed
under Indian nationalism in search for a common destiny with the other parts
of the country,thanks to the Assamese nationalist leaders like Tarun ram
Phukan, Nabin Chandra Bordoloi, Chandra nath Sharma,Gopi nath Bordoloi,
etc.In the eighties of the last century,disillusionment with the federal
polity only provided impetus to the think-tank of the Assam agitation to
look for intellectual justification for reformulating Assamese
nationalism.An Assamese nationalist intellectual Late Ambikagiri
Roychoudhury, who took active part in India's freedom struggle and was
tortured by the police of the British Raj, used the epithet
'Jatiyo','Jatiyota' frequently when he spoke of Assamese identity but he at
the same time referred to other linguistic identities also as 'Jatiyota'
and called the Bengali a 'Jati'.As pointed out by the editor of his complete
works, Late Satyendra nath Sharma ,Ambikagiri's Assamese nationalism was but
an irrevocable part of Pan-Indian nationalism---one was Jatiyota and the
other Mahajatiyota ,both subsumed under Pan-Humanism,(7) Throughout the
Independence movement, in which Indian nationalism worked as an unifying
force, Assamese nationalism had no occasion to show any centrifugal tendency
*.If the Assamese political consciousness sought an Assamese identity,this
goal was not at variance with the national goal of the country.However,on
the eve of India's Independence, this mind was jolted by an event whose
vibration continued to disturb it even later.*This will be mentioned
below.After Independence, when the federal polity was struggling with its
plan of development and when the *Centre's macro-vision failed to register
the need of the periphery like Assam,it was then that Assamese nationalism
got pitted against Indian nationalism and the centrifugal tug became strong.
This meant that the Assamese mind started seeking an outlet in concepts
like autonomy and liberation*.This tendency has started becoming more
pronounced day by day, but there is still enough reserve of Indian
nationalism in this mind that has prevented the centrifugal force from
taking it over completely.
2.3 *This tug of war between Indian nationalism and Assamese nationalism is
a modern manifestation.*But spiritual Bharat never encountered any roadblock
in Assamese mind .*The inroads of the Gods and Godesses of the Hindu
pantheon happened from the ancient time*.Shiva and Shakti traveled earlier
than Vishnu and in fact there is agreement among scholars that Kamrupa was a
seat of Tantrism (with incursion of a deviant form of Buddhism through the
Sahajiya path).But it was the spiritual cultural renaissance ushered in by
the Bhakti movement in medieval India that swayed the Assamese mind more
deeply and extensively.Since Bhagavata was the principal religious text
influencing the teachers(also preachers) of Bhakti,it was
Vishnu(Krishna-Vishnu) who became the principal godhead in the Assamese
mind.Bhakti was an unifying spiritual force in medieval India and Assam was
no exception to it.This religious-spiritual movement traces its origin to a
period as early as the 6th century AD ( for instance in Tamil poet
Karakkal-Ammayar)but its high tide swept the country between 1400 and 1650
AD.Politically India was not one at this time, being divided into several
kingdoms( and then an empire as well), but the spirit of Bharat bound the
peoples with a spiritual-cultural tie in which Assam was no exception.
Shaivism,Shaktism and Vaishnavism, all these forms of the Hindu religion,
came under the influence of Bhakti and themselves changed in the
process.Simplification of rituals and use of vernacular for translating the
religious texts must have played their roles in popularizing Bhakti.That the
Muslim India also came under the influence of Sufism,its spiritualism
advocating a form of mystic communion with God, did help achieve a
harmonious co-existence between these two major religions and till the
British brought in the communal factor in its colonial administrative
ethos,Bhakti and Sufism flourished with benign influence on each
other.Bhakti swept Assam through the great influence and work of a
neo-Vaishnavite Assamese saint Shankardeva in the late 15th and early
16th centuries
and since then ,Neo-vaishnavite culture continues to have an abiding
influence on the Hindu Assamese mind(the Assamese being predominantly
Hindus) through the institutions of Satra (vaishnavite religio-cultural
centres) and Namghars (prayer halls which also function as community halls)
as also through neo-Vaishnavite literature,devotional songs(Bargeet),prayer
system( shravana-kirtana),drama(Ankiya Naat) and dance forms(called Sattriya
dance as it evolved through satras) that reached a high water-mark during
Shankardeva's time through his own preachings and contributions as well as
his disciples,particularly Madhavadeva.Shankardeva gave a liberal ethos
toVaishnavism and did not hesitate to invite Muslims to his discourses and
to vaishnavite cultural events.Chand sai ,a Muslim was one of his important
disciples ,who continued as a Muslim and yet became an ardent follower of
Shankardeva.Islam made inroads into Assam through Mohammedan
invasions.Manypirs and fakirs came to Assam in the wake of such
invasions.Ajaan Fakir was one of the most revered Islamic preachers in
Assam. For teaching his religion, he used the vernacular language.He adopted
the local cultural ethos using folk tunes in his group prayers in earthy
idioms and phrases.Both practices,Neo-Vaishnavism among the Hindus and
vernacularised Islamism influenced by Sufism among the Muslims stressed
devotion to one God as the primary religious vehicle for the attainment of
spiritual goal rather than elaborate practices and pursuit of scriptural
knowledge. Perhaps this similarity helped to create a harmonious atmosphere
for co-habitation of two distinct religions.In much of their life-styles and
cultural practices, the Hindu Assamese and the Muslim Assamese can hardly be
distinguished.Both the spiritual movements were tolerant to each other and
both carried their spiritual heritage from sub-continental
mainland.Eventhough Assamese nationalism (we may call it
sub-nationalism to distinguish
it from Indian nationalism) has raised its head in the political
consciousness of the contemporary Assamese, having found outlets from its
unconscious seedbed, it has not yet eroded the spiritual-cultural ethos of
Neo-Vaishnavism and pious Sufism that this mind inherited from India of the
medieval time.
2.*4The Assamese language derived from the Sanskrit root has been the main
vehicle for carrying Bharat to the heartland of the Assamese mind, but the
Neo-Vaishnavism preached by Shankardeva strengthened the bond by a spiritual
glue and it had rich investment in Assamese literature and culture which
mutated from the literature and culture of India*.In seeking spiritual
attainment through the devotional route rather than through the knowledge
route where the child-krishna became the human manifestation of
Vishnu-Narayan,a monotheistic eternal God,Shankardeva understood the
psychological need of his people and he gave to the masses a digestible
spiritual food and its main linguistic vehicle was Assamese
vernacular.Fascinating exploration of the language made the language itself
rich.He also created a literary language mixing the local vernacular with
the North-Indian vernaculars for his dramas and his Borgeet(devotional
songs) to enhance the flavour of the literary language, but he did not make
Brojabuli an elitist language and so it was easily understood by the
people.(6)The spiritual and cultural Bharat got this language vehicle for
easy entry to and cultural commerce with the Assamese mind and this has
become transformed into a heritage.
2.5 Migration of the people of Tibeto-Burman origin to this region appears
to be earlier than the Aryan incursion.In customs and culture and in the
Assamese language there is noticeable influence of the Tibeto-Burmans and
yet in the linguistic-cultural race, Indian sub-continent overtook the
East,particularly China,which was proximate to this region through Tibet and
which had reached a high stage of cultural civilization by
then.W.W.Huntersin his 'The Statistical Handbook Of Assam' of
1979(reprinted 1975) listed 67
ethnic castes in the district of Kamrup.A look here will show that this
ethnic mosaic is a compound of Aryan,Mongoloid and other non-Aryan stocks of
people and the non-Aryan elements may be more.But the sub-continental thrust
into the Brahmaputra Valley was much stronger than that of the
East.Geography might have played a role in this process.Navigating the
Brahmaputra was much easier than crossing the eastern hills and the
Brahmaputra Valley had a continuity with the alluvial plains of the Ganga
through Samtat.Before reaching the Bay of Bengal, the Brahmaputra had a
confluence with the Ganga to become the Padma.Imagine a hypothetical
situation, where Patkai range was much lower or non-existent, the slope of
Assam plains was towards Myanmar merging with its plains and the Tsampo
along with its sister rivers Dihong and Dibong in stead of taking a sharp
turn towards the West had moved towards the east to either join Irrawaddy or
had taken an independent southward course through Myanmar to meet the Indian
ocean. In this scenario, the cultural history of this region would have been
quite different.Even now some ethnic thinkers have been searching the root
of Assamese identity in eastern cultures and customs tracing it through the
compound remnants of Mongoloid influence in the customs and practices of the
people.It is not in ethnography but in socio-cultural history one can find
the strong presence of Aryavarta in the life of the Assamese people.
The lyrical layer
3.1 Why did Yoshoda-Krishna epitomizing the mother-child relationship
touched the heart-string of the Assamese people so much?When Shankardeva
chose the child Krishna of the Bhagavata and not Radha-Krishna ,the symbol
of devotional love,did he feel that the mother-child relationship would be
a better vehicle for the Assamese mind to reach its spiritual goal?There is
no answer to this.We only know that the Bhagavata interpreted by Shridhar
Swami impressed the Assamese saint more than any other Purana. But I want to
make a conjecture here.Mother-Child relationship as a cultural construct can
be symbolically related to the human's relationship with mother
Nature.Theearth is a provider of daily necessity of a people dependent
on agriculture
and she is regarded as a maternal entity.The flood plains of the Brahmaputra
has provided rich fertility to Assam's alluvial soil and the folk people
here have not only drawn their daily sustenance from the soil but have also
drawn mental inspirations from nature .They shared a common habitat with its
fauna and enjoyed the beauty of its flora. That communion with nature
generated a lyrical impulse in the imagination of this people can be seen in
the abundance of reference to nature in their folklore as well as their past
and present literature.Nature metaphor is very common in all forms of
artistic expressions of the Assamese people. No doubt there is eroticism in
Bihu dance and Bihu songs but such expressions relate to the seasons and not
to the earth.The sensuous vehicle for aesthetic expression of eroticism has
been the eyes and not the toiling hands.Since the changing seasons invested
the Assamese lyrical mind with eroticism, its spiritual search had to be
somewhere else and it was nowhere better than in the mother-child
relationship for an agricultural people.The maternal aspect of the earth was
already an expressive metaphor and its symbolization could be equally
attractive.Yasoda belonging to a cowherd tribe living in a natural
surrounding was an attractive mother-surrogate for the Assamese mind in its
quest for devotional attainment.The erotic need of the mind had already been
fulfilled by the seasons,which enticed it alluringly in many ways.In drawing
the map of the Assamese mind, this lyrical layer of the mind cannot be
forgotten, since the layer is very alluvial and expressive.
3.2 This lyrically inclined mind's encounter with Modernity was not
vertiginous, since the pace of Modernity happened to be slow.This new wind
blew to this part of India through colonization to serve the need of the
British Administration. Exploration of its natural resources was the main
reason why the British introduced railways and machinery here( e.g.
oil,tea).The British were welcomed because they drove away the Burmese
invaders whose horrific oppressions had become unbearable and the Ahom
monarch was unable to defend his people,the monarchy itself being in its
last gasp.(8)The scar of the Burmese oppression still haunts the Assamese
mind.The British easily imposed themselves on Assam through a treaty with
the Burmese,to which the legitimate Ahom king was not a
party.Thisillegitimacy of the British occupation is being questioned
only now but at
the time it happened the people became more occupied with the social changes
taking place in the wake of modernization, however slow it might have
been.The western cultural intrusion was found refreshing and progressive,
particularly because a middle class was taking shape and it was attracted to
western education and new fashion.Except a feeble attempt by Maniram Dewan
in 1857 , there was no protest, until the freedom movement, against the
British except local troubles over the introduction of a new system of land
revenue.But what the Moghul could not do, the British achieved that----the
whole country was unified under one system of administration.This along with
the western mode of education, uniformly applied throughout the country,
ironically helped national consciousness to take shape and this nationalism
politically connected the Assamese mind to the Indian national mind and its
finest manifestation was the freedom struggle under the leadership of
Mahatma Gandhi.During the Independence movement, this nationalism suffused
the Assamese mind so much that no fissiparous tendency could cause fissure
in it.
3.3 At the artistic level,the Assamese mind was already a ready receptacle
for lyrical modes of stimulus and the western mode of Romanticism found
eager response from this mind.This mode was cultivated in literature by
writers in order to respond to nature ,past glory and patriotism.In some
cases, it was a quest for an ideal beauty.Romanticism's manifold expressions
can be traced in the poetry of Lakshminath Bezbaroa, Chandra kumar
Agarwala,Binanda Chandra Baruah,Kamala kanta Bhattcharya,Raghunath
choudhary,Ambikagiri Roychoudhury,Nalinibala Devi,Jatindra Nath Duara,etc.
After the Second World War and mainly after Independence,Modernity evoked a
different kind of response in poets.If in some it was social realism(
e.g.Amulya Barua,Bhabananda Dutta), in some others it was romantic
socialism(Hem Barua).There was modernist expressions of
anxiety,ambivalence,detached mode of observation and irony(Navakanta
Barua,Hari Barkakoti,Ajit barua,Bireswar Barua,Hirendra nath Dutta etc),and
metaphoric response to nature and exploration of human predicament in modern
society(Nilamoni Phukan).If one searched for a musical modern idiom as a
poetic vehicle for evocation of feeling(Hiren Bhattacharya), another tried
to readjust a romantic mirror to see reflection of modernity in the inner
self(Nirmalprova Bordoloi).Each one explored the language in his/her own
way. Overall, in absence of a western mode of classicism in the past
literature,the Assamese lyrical mind generally kept away from a classical
mode of literary response to Modernity(except some conscious attempt by Ajit
Barua).This romantic impulse is still visible in contemporary
literature.Romanticism has not come to the Assamese mind as a break from
classicism but as an extention of the existing lyricism of this
mind.Theliterature veered away from the religious domain to the
secular area without
creating a great chasm.
The wounds within
4.1 But a chasm between Indian nationalism and Assamese sub-nationalism has
become visible.I am calling Assamese nationalism sub-nationalism, since in
the federal polity of India, the Assamese have become a nationality within a
nation.The separate-ness of Assamese Jatiyota is gathering many adherents
who give justifications for this separate-ness.The Assamese Jatiyo Chetona
is exploring new language of expression having come to the open from the
unconscious through many fissures of the mind imperiling mahajatiyota
(Ambikagiri Roychoudhury's word as mentioned before). When a nation newly
emerges,the leaders of the nation not only have to device a development
strategy with emphasis on economic growth,but have also to learn a few
things about mind management ,particularly if the polity is
multicultural.The national leaders with their national perspective have not
been able to accommodate the perception of the sub-national periphery like
Assam.In macro-gaze,the micro-needs have often failed to register. The
Centre often flaunts statistics to prove to the periphery that it is just
,but it often fails to find out the psychological causes of
discontent.Thesyndrome swaying the Assamese mind can be called the
'neglect syndrome' for
want of a better description.But the opinions making up the syndrome are not
imaginary.In the psycho- frame of the Assamese mind there is an accumulation
of discontent.I will give a few examples.Firstly,Assam is languishing far
behind the nation in economic growth and its per capita income and per
capita consumption expenditure are much lower than the country's.Its human
development record is dismal,with child mortality rate very high and general
health-care abysmal.(9) Secondly,influx of illegal migrants has been
changing Assam's demographic profile and yet the fear of the Assamese people
of becoming minority in their own state has not been appreciated by the
national leaders. There is a growing concern that the Government is
protecting a vote bank to the detriment of the interest of the indigenous
people of Assam.(10)Some other events also accentuated the feeling that the
interest of the Assamese people is given short shrift.At the time of
partition,Assam would have landed on the lap of Pakistan but for the
intervention of Mahatma Gandhi and the untiring effort of Gopinath
Bordoloi.Even a tall leader like Jawaharlal Nehru failed to appreciate
Assam's anxiety.Nehru was insensitive even to Assam's difficulty in
accommodating a large number of refugees from East Pakistan and threatened
to cut off financial aid at a very difficult period of Assam's
economy.(11)The national leaders frequently interfered in the state's
administration and tried to'plant' their men of choice in the bureaucracy
including the chief secretary.(12) Though oil was produced in Assam, the
first public sector refinery was taken to Barauni in Bihar without
justificationWhen Assam launched a massive agitation,a tiny refinery was
established at Guwahati as a solace.Then there was a bigger wound awaiting
Assam.In 1962, China invaded India and reached the foothills of
Assam.PrimeMinster Nehru made a radio broadcast which in essence meant
that he bade
adieu to Assam.The shock of being deserted caused a deep wound in the
Assamese psyche and it refuses to heal up to this day.
4.2 The wounds within the Assamese mind are deep.A sense of insecurity is
troubling this mind.Theconscious mind is in turmoil being agitated by its
unconscious anxiety and the resultant agony.Its one part has already
revolted and now wants to severe connection with the Indian mind,and the
other part asks for proper recognition and an honourable place in the
polity.The Assamese feel threatened by a migrant population from across the
international border but unlike in the distant past,they are not ready to
accomodate them.They have found that the present migration is but an
expansion programme in pursuit of a policy of 'lebensrum'(13).And after a 6
year long agitation spearheaded by its student community,the Assamese people
reached an accord known as 'Assam Accord' with the Centre which promises to
give them safeguard.Since the safeguard is of political nature, the Assamese
have been asked to define themselves and they find themselves in a
quandary.Since Assam has a complex ethnic mosaic, the definition must
recognize this reality and so linguistic definition is
inadequate.Adefinition to bring only the indigenous people within its
boundary has also
become a problem ,since a whole lot of pre-1971 migrants have already been
accepted as naturalized inhabitants of the state and cannot be left
out.Butit causes a fear that any definition to embrace the pre-1971
migrants would
also open a door for the post-1971 illegal migrants to make surreptitious
entry into the fold of the definition.The Assamese is at a acrossroads and
their anxiety is growing.
4.3 The Assamese mind's aesthetic lyricism is a layer but its anxiety is a
complex.The lyrical layer can be reached even if the complex is not removed,
because the complex has been formed at a different level.The lyrical mind
constantly hears Krishna's flute and that saves it from nihilistic
despair.But the anxiety may grow to such a degree that this lyrical mind may
be destroyed.
4.4 I have to leave the story of the Assamese mind at this crossroads. The
map of the mind I have sketched is of a people who trace their origin to
diverse ethnic sources but who speak one language and belong to one
culture.(5162 words).
-----------------------
Notes
1. See the Gazetteer of India:Assam State1971,the portion 'history'( I
consulted the 6th volume).
2. Asomiya Sahityar Ruprekha, page 11 by (late) Dr Maheswar Neog.
3. A History of Assam by(late) Sir Edward Gait.
4. Studies in the Literature of Assam by (late) Dr Surya kumar Bhuiya.
5. Kirata Janakriti by (late) Dr Suniti kumar Chatterji,The Early
History Of Kamrupa by (Late) Kanak lal Barua,Asomiya Sahityar Ruprekha by
(late) Dr Maheswar Neog.
6. Prak-Ahom Yugor Asomiya Sanskriti-article By (late) Dr Pratap
Chandra Choudhury in the collection Asomiya Sanskriti,Asom Sahitya Sabha.
7. Ambikagiri Roychoudhury Rachanavali,Introduction.
8. A History of Assam by (late) Sir Edward Gait,The Comprehensive
History Of Assam ed.(late) Dr H k Borpupujari.
9. East India Human Development Report Oxford (2004),Indian
Development Report 2004-05 edit Kirit s Parekh and R Radhakishnan, Oxford.
10. Demographic Threat to Assam, article by D N Bezbarua ,
Dialogue,vol. June-March 2005.
11,12 &13 The Periphery Strikes Back, the chapter 'The quest for Swadhin
Asom' by Udayon Misra.
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