[Assam] Amazing but true....!!!

[umesh sharma]

In USA such a child would have been long taken away from the parent by Child and Social Welfare Services Dept -and put in foster care.
   
  Umesh

debashish chakrabarty <deba_c23 at hotmail.com> wrote:
  I was amazed to read this.....

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060606/asp/frontpage/story_6316670.asp

regards,
Debashish

>From: assam-request at assamnet.org
>Reply-To: assam at assamnet.org
>To: assam at assamnet.org
>Subject: assam Digest, Vol 11, Issue 7
>Date: Tue, 06 Jun 2006 01:05:23 -0400
>
>Send assam mailing list submissions to
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>When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
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>
>
>Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Re: NETV (Ram Sarangapani)
> 2. Re: NETV (Alpana B. Sarangapani)
> 3. Say Assam - not - Asom (Barua25)
> 4. Re: Say Assam - not - Asom (Manoj Das)
> 5. FWD: The Assamese mind By HK Deka (Ram Sarangapani)
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Message: 1
>Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 19:27:21 -0500
>From: "Ram Sarangapani" 
>Subject: Re: [Assam] NETV
>To: "priyankoo sarma" 

>Cc: assam at assamnet.org
>Message-ID:
> <6e564ddf0606051727j6f8bf220tec3b318c969a2325 at mail.gmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>Thanks Priyankoo. I will try that. I have hi-speed dsl 10 Mbps. Maybe I am
>doing something wrong. Anyway I will test it out again.
>
>Ram da
>
>
>On 5 Jun 2006 08:01:40 -0000, priyankoo sarma 

>wrote:
> >
> > Hi Ramda,
> >
> > As Manojda said, NETV telecasts news in 16 NE langauges (incl. Hindi and
> > English).
> >
> > It is not normal to have distortions! Till now I have not observed any. 
>I
> > think it depends on your connection speed! I think the streaming is the 
>best
> > live TV streaming I have experienced. BTW if you are interested in more 
>live
> > TV streamings, www.wwitv.com is a great source!!
> >
> > Best
> > Priyankoo
> >
> > Dex matho eta dharona, thikonar xex xari...
> > The most important thing in life is never to forget who you are...
> >
> >
> > http://plaza.ufl.edu/priyanku
> >
> >
> > 
>
> >
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>
>Message: 2
>Date: Mon, 05 Jun 2006 21:36:05 -0500
>From: "Alpana B. Sarangapani" 
>Subject: Re: [Assam] NETV
>To: assam at assamnet.org
>Message-ID: 
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>
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>
>Message: 3
>Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 23:41:27 -0500
>From: "Barua25" 
>Subject: [Assam] Say Assam - not - Asom
>To: 
>Cc: rajen.barua at gmail.com
>Message-ID: 
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>
>Attaching a scanned copy of a news item that has appeared in "Protidin" 
>regarding the name "Asom". The view from AGP Leader Atul Bora.
>According to our information GOA is to revoke the decision to change the 
>name of the State - much to the sorrow of Mr. Chandra Prasad Saikia, The 
>Tribune Press (Assam Tribune & Gariyashi) and the Sentinel.
>Good for Assam.
>RB
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
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>------------------------------
>
>Message: 4
>Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 10:31:51 +0530
>From: "Manoj Das" 
>Subject: Re: [Assam] Say Assam - not - Asom
>To: Barua25 
>Cc: rajen.barua at gmail.com, assam at assamnet.org
>Message-ID:
> 
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>Name is nothing but a sign..the same piece of land has been named variously
>over time, with some changes in the boundaries.
>
>ASSAM was one such passing reference in the course time. Rulers have all
>the might to call the area under their jurisdiction. New rulers being
>democratic should not be arbitrary, rather scientific in finding an all
>acceptable nomenclature.
>
>MKD
>
>
>On 6/6/06, Barua25 wrote:
> >
> >
> > Attaching a scanned copy of a news item that has appeared in "Protidin"
> > regarding the name "Asom". The view from AGP Leader Atul Bora.
> > According to our information GOA is to revoke the decision to change the
> > name of the State - much to the sorrow of Mr. Chandra Prasad Saikia, 
>The
> > Tribune Press (Assam Tribune & Gariyashi) and the Sentinel.
> > Good for Assam.
> > RB
> > ------------------------------
> > ------------------------------
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > assam mailing list
> > assam at assamnet.org
> > http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>--
>Manoj Kumar Das
>B 109 Gr Floor Rear
>Sarvodaya Enclave
>New Delhi 110017 India
>Tel: 91 11 26533824
>Telefax: 91 11 26533829
>Hand Phone: 91 9312650558
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>
>Message: 5
>Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 00:05:18 -0500
>From: "Ram Sarangapani" 
>Subject: [Assam] FWD: The Assamese mind By HK Deka
>To: ASSAMNET 
>Message-ID:
> <6e564ddf0606052205i5e8beb6bi3c0703cf6467e356 at mail.gmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
>
>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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>End of assam Digest, Vol 11, Issue 7
>************************************



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