By Prasenjit Medhi

BHARAT RAKSHAK MONITOR - Volume 3(4) January-February 2001

Genesis 

Assam, long considered a part of Indic civilization, remained relatively isolated however, from developments in the rest of the Indian subcontinent, in the medieval, and early modern period. This continued until Burmese incursions in the early 19th century, forced the British to intervene and annex Assam in 1826, incorporating it into British India. The discovery that tea could be easily cultivated in Assam caused an expansion of British imperial activity and entry of large numbers of laborers from the rest of India, to Assam. Further expansion of commercial activity and linkages with the entry of a large commercial Marwari merchant class into Assam, brought the province closer into a British Indian orbit, and ultimately, firmly into the federal, independent, Indian state.

The entrance of new elites and the end of dominance by Assamese elites was a cause of grievance for the Assamese. There were brief attempts to reassert Assamese dominance, in the sphere of education, for example, under one of the early CM’s, Bishnuram Medhi. However, these were not only met by opposition by the new entrants into Assam, the Hindi speaking Marwaris and the Bengalis, but by other indigenous peoples who had their own linguistic and cultural traditions and would not have welcomed being forced to learn Assamese, in their schools. The splitting of Assam into eventually 6 other states and a rump Assam, was seen in some quarters as a deliberate further attack and a weakening of Assamese dominance in the region. However, the more likely cause was the simple fact that governing such a heterogenous entity efficiently was not possible, and hence the division of the Assam into smaller, more homogenous, more governable states.

Assamese fears and grievances, fueled by the perceived sidelining of the Assamese in Assam, were further aggravated by the perception that the natural resources of the state were being exploited by the Center, and that little benefit accrued to Assam. A myth of Assam’s vital importance to India grew in the 1970’s, a period in which, before the development of Bombay High, some 70% of India’s then marginal crude production came from Assam, saving India much foreign exchange. Additionally, large quantities of tea for export, was produced in Assam and earned India valuable foreign exchange. The Assamese grievance, that little in the way of royalties from crude production, or from tea, went to Assam, could have been amicably solved. But in some Assamese eyes, this was just one in the long list of a litany of grievances against the Indian Union, that begins with the perceived marginalization of the Assamese, and that talking to ‘Delhi’ would have served little purpose. The fundamental grievance and cause for Assamese disenchantment with the Indian Union, has been and remains the perceived current and future sidelining and removal of indigenes from positions of power and dominance. Conflict between indigenes and settlers is a familiar one, the world over, of course. In Assam, the relatively small Marwari community and the sizable Bengali community - who are closely related to the Assamese in culture and language – became targets of Assamese ire. From 1970, onwards, waves of mainly Moslem migrants from Bangladesh became another cause for Assamese (and Indian) fears.

In any case, a valid criticism can be made of the Central government in that there was insufficient assimilation of the Assamese into the Indian nation, and insufficient weakening of Assamese nationalism, as a result, with unfortunate consequences. It is also the case that the Assamese feeling of exceptionalism contributed to the slow assimilation and subsuming of Assamese national identity into a feeling of pan-Indian nationalism. The Center, especially toward the late 70’s and 80’s, mired in the Emergency and the political upheavals in Delhi, and fighting the fires of insurgency in the Punjab and later in Kashmir, reacted slowly, and hesitantly, if at all, to the threat of Assamese separatism. In this climate of insecurity and chaos, the largest of the insurgent movements in Assam, the United Liberation Front of Assam, or the ULFA, was born. In 1979, at the city of Rang Ghar, the seat of power of the former rulers of Assam, the Ahoms, ULFA declared its desire for independence and secession of Assam, from the Indian Union.

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