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By : SUJIT CHAUDHURI IN the wake of the Partition Assam lost one of her districts to Pakistan. Mountbatten’s partition-plan announced on 3 June 1947, provided inter-alia for a referendum to be held in the Sylhet district of Assam to decide whether it should remain a part of the Indian province of Assam or go to East Pakistan. The Sylhet referendum was held on 6 July 1947 and the result went in favour of a merger with Pakistan. Assam thus lost a wealthy district causing serious loss of revenue. But the Assamese people in general greeted this loss and the Assam press projected it as a gain. This attitude, somewhat unusual in the context of the national aspiration of the period, has its origins in what can be called the long-cherished quest of the Assamese – carving out a homogenous province for themselves. The Assamese perceived the partition of 1947 as a god-sent opportunity to attain that goal. In fact, the Assamese Congress leaders were sowing the seeds for subsequent man...

Linguistic identity, once a cornerstone of Assamese sub-nationalism, has come to the fore again. In Assam’s Brahmaputra Valley, the citizenship bill has opened old Assamese-Bengali fissures Swapnaneel Baruah, the owner of a popular eatery in Middle Assam’s Nagaon town, claimed he has “many Bengali friends”. But, of late, he said, he had started to feel that “a certain class of Hindu Bengalis has become too aggressive”. Said Baruah one sweltering June morning, “They were not like this in the Congress regime, but after the BJP came, they are starting to behave in a certain way.” This new-found assertiveness, Baruah claimed, came from “increasing financial strength”, courtesy the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government. He had heard from his friends that the party was particularly generous to businessmen from the Hindu Bengali community. Then, “there was, of course, the Sonalika incident”, he said. “Can you imagine that happening earlier?” The Brahmaputra divide ...

      By: Suvojit Bagchi Committee says that 25 lakh of those expected to be dropped from the list are Bengali Hindus and rest are Muslim Sitting in a central Kolkata guest house, Topodhir Bhattacharya, 69, nearly broke down. He took a good half-an-hour to recover to argue that he was born in Silchar town in south  Assam  in 1949. “My father was a freedom fighter. I have always stayed and worked in Silchar and ended up as the Vice-Chancellor [V-C] of Assam University, a Central university, where the Vice-Chancellor is appointed by the President. But I’m not a citizen of this country,” his voice choked. The first draft of the updated National Register of Citizens (NRC), 1951 was published on December 31, 2017 and Mr. Bhattacharya and his family members did not feature on the list. “It effectively means that we are not citizens of India,” he said. Less than 30% residents of three districts of Bengali-dominated Barak Valley featured in the first list...

By: Rahul Karmakar Say authorities coming up with new rules and officials taking decisions different from those on paper As the deadline for the final draft of the Supreme Court-monitored National Register of Citizens (NRC) nears, minority organisations have pointed out anomalies in the exercise that appears to be aimed at Bengali Hindus and Muslims. “The NRC authorities are coming up with new rules, and officials on the ground are taking decisions that are different from what is on paper,” Azizur Rahman, convener of the Coordination Committee of Minority Organisations, Assam, said. The committee represents 23 minority groups. “Since the exercise is being monitored by the Supreme Court, no one can intervene. But the Assam government came out with new rules such as the one on May 2 — making siblings of those marked foreigners ineligible for NRC updating. Such rules, if at all, should have been made before the exercise was undertaken. The complications are deliberat...

By :  Rahul Karmakar June 30 is deadline for final draft Of Assam’s 14 MPs, All India United Democratic Front chief Badruddin Ajmal and his brother Sirajuddin Ajmal did not figure in the first draft of the updated National Register of Citizens (NRC) published on December 31 last year. Also missing from the first draft containing 19 million names were at least 15 of Assam’s 126 MLAs. They included Badruddin Ajmal’s son Abdur Rahim Ajmal, who represents the AIUDF, perceived to be a pro-minority party, from the Jamunamukh constituency. Off the list too were Boby Bhuyan Baruah, wife of separatist Paresh Baruah, who has been operating from neighbouring countries, including China, for three decades now, and their sons Ankur and Akash. Mr. Baruah leads the United National Front of Asom-Independent. The MPs and MLAs — including the BJP’s Shiladitya Dev and Ashwini Rai Sarkar — and relatives of extremist leaders would rather wait for the final draft of the Supreme C...

I n response to Professor Sanjib Baruah‘s article ‘Stateless in Assam‘ which discussed a new focus on detention camps for ‘stateless citizens’, Suraj Gogoi, Gorky Chakraborty and Parag Jyoti Saikia reflect on the implications of reducing people to ‘bare life’. The Concentration camps that came to the fore during the Holocaust, left a deep impact on human history. It showed us that hate can be nurtured to humiliate, torture, and reduce people to ‘bare life’. The concept of the ‘exception’ used by Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben has been articulated in the context of Northeast India by Professor Bimol Akoijam, as to how the Indian state through the Armed Forces Special Power Act (AFSPA) inhumanely treats its own citizens and the whole region as a ‘different minority’. However, the manner in which Prof. Sanjib Baruah used this example in his article ‘Stateless in Assam’, in invoking the idea of camps sends chills down the spine, as he presents enforced settlements as normal ...

"The Barak Valley, which wants to separate from the state, has always had a strained relationship with the Brahmaputra Valley." There is a new surge in the old demand for the creation of a separate Union Territory out of Assam’s Barak Valley. The area consists of three districts of southern Assam – Cachar, Karimganj and Hailakandi. The Union Territory Demand Committee, an organisation spearheading the movement, has promised to take up the matter with New Delhi in the next few weeks. Sanjit Debnath, president of the committee, said a rally would be organised on January 16 in Silchar, the valley’s most important urban centre, to solicit public support. “People of the valley have been deprived by Assam for a long time now so, slowly, people have started to realise that separation is the only way out,” Debnath said. He alleged that successive governments, no matter which party, have neglected the region. Said Debnath, “The so-called leaders of Assam have not s...