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Courtesy: Asomiya Pratidin
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A ‘god-sent’ opportunity?

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...
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The NRC is a Mess

"Creating an ‘indigenous’ category is only going to speed up the NRC verification process" On March 27 the Hindustan Times carried an article titled “In Assam, rape and murder of minor takes a ‘Bangladeshi’ turn”. The article pertained to the brutal rape of a minor, the accused had allegedly tried to burn the victim to death. The child died due to the burns. What became an issue was not just the brutality of the act, but also the fact that all the three accused were Muslims. This then has coloured the discourse on the crime. The general public appears to have already decided the citizenship of the three accused. Though the issue of illegal immigration from Bangladesh has been a long-standing issue in Assam, the general view tends to be that all those who speak ‘Bengali’ fall within this category. If the person is a Muslim, the suspicion is only greater. The Anup Chetia led "Khilonjia Joutha Mancha" (Indigenous People’s Forum) had in February declaredthat a...
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‘Not Assamese, nor Bengali’, Assam’s Barak Valley has bigger issues to worry about

The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016 which has seemingly divided Assam, forces open old wounds of the Bengali speaking population of the Barak Valley. indianexpress.com visits the the southern tip of Assam to find a story of a people who are longing to belong. A memorial for one of the 11 martyrs who lost their lives in the May 19, 1961 firing in Silchar. Photo Courtesy: Saptarshi Bhattacharjee. “If you run around the city of Silchar, you’ll come back to where you started in forty minutes,” says Saptarshi Bhattacharjee, a Silchar-based student. Forty minutes — cars, auto rickshaws, cows, potholes and people, notwithstanding. Amidst the congested cacophony of the second most populous city of Assam, also the unofficial “gateway” into the Barak Valley (named after the river that flows through it), it is easy to miss the region’s decades old history of quiet struggle. But time and again, it comes up in fits and starts. It simmered earlier this month when a Joint Par...
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