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least so far.
LANGUAGE AND SCRIPT: PASSION BEHIND CONFLICT
In pre-industrial agrarian societies like India s North East, sharp
demographic changes and the pattern of land ownership are linked
to the issue of ethnic identity. A century of continuous migration
from eastern Bengal (now Bangladesh) and the consequent rise in the
Bengali population have raised the question of whether Assam will be
a state of and for ethnic Assamese or will it be a polyglot entity with
many languages used as medium of instruction. The state s official
language has been one of the contentious issues that have unsettled
Assam ever since 1947. The ethnic Assamese have insisted that only
Assamese can be the official language of the state and that all busi-
ness and education should be conducted in Assamese. Bengalis have
demanded parallel status for their language, justifying it with their
growing numbers. So have tribal groups such as the Bodos.
British administrators, like the deputy commissioner of Sibsagar,
George Campbell, pushed to bring immigrant cultivators from east-
ern Bengal to improve Assam s food production after the state s
population started rising in the wake of the expanding plantation
and oil economy. Initially, the Assamese, particularly their landed
72 Troubled Periphery
gentry, looked upon the hardy East Bengali peasants as a source of
cheap labour for their huge estates or for cultivating the chars or
river islands. In March 1897, the secretary of the Assam Association,
Babu Gunjanan Barua, submitted to the government that as there
is 70.15 per cent of land lying waste [in Assam], the government
should give encouragement to their settlement by offering them
[the migrants] land on favourable terms as a speedy and effective
means of bringing waste lands under settlement to produce all sorts
of cash crops .20 Leading Assamese intellectuals like Anandaram
Dhekial-Phukan argued that the people of some badly provided
parts of Bengal could be invited to immigrate .21
By the end of the First World War, however, the demographic
change was becoming evident in Assam. Districts like Barpeta,
Dhubri and Goalpara already had a Bengali majority; so did the whole of
the Barak Valley area. This made the Assamese, who had once sup-
ported immigration, very restive. Under pressure from Assamese or-
ganizations, the government tried to implement the Line System by
creating a line to delineate the segregated areas of a frontier district
where migrants could settle down. But the Line System failed to
control immigration and the number of Bengalis continued to rise.
By 1931, the Bengali-speaking population had crossed the 1 million
mark, with the ethnic Assamese numbering just below 2 million.22
In 1836, Bengali was introduced as the official language of Assam,
provoking stormy protest among the Assamese and the foreign
missionaries who were committed to promoting local languages in
northeast India. The British were convinced that Assamese was a
mere variant of Bengali and not an independent language. Chief Com-
missioner Henry Hopkinson said: I can come to no other conclusion
that they [Assamese and Bengali] are one and all & with an admixture
of local archaic or otherwise corrupted and debased words. 23
But the incipient Assamese middle class were determined not
to accept the imposition of Bengali. Intellectuals, like Anandaram
Dhekial-Phukan, who had supported Bengali immigration, now
turned to fi ght the imposition of the Bengali language in Assam.
Dhekial-Phukan wrote an anonymous pamphlet titled A Few
Remarks on the Assamese Language, which was published by the
Baptist Mission Press in Sibsagar and distributed free to British
offi cials. In it, Dhekial-Phukan argued for the antiquity of the
Land, Language and Leadership 73
Assamese language and referred extensively to its ancient literature:
62 religious works and 40 dramas based on the Hindu epics
were cited. Finally, the British gave in. In July 1873, the lieutenant-
governor of Bengal ordered that Assamese be used in judicial and
revenue proceedings and recognized it as the ordinary language
of the five valley districts of Assam Kamrup, Darrang, Nowgong,
Sibsagar and Lakhimpur .24
The reintroduction of Assamese language did not allay the fears of
the Assamese. In 1874, when Assam became a chief commissioner s
province, Bengal s Sylhet district and the Bengali areas of Cachar
and Goalpara were added to Assam. Bengalis started pressing for
Bengali-medium schools as their numbers increased. Assam Congress
leaders like Gopinath Bordoloi tried in vain to persuade the Bengali
leaders to accept privately run mixed schools. As separate Bengali and
Assamese-medium schools flourished, the linguistic divide widened
and set the stage for the confrontation.
The Assamese were further shaken up when Muslim migrants
from eastern Bengal, relatively less educated than Bengali Hindus,
supported the cause of Bengali. Bengali Hindus, mostly urban dwell-
ers employed in administrations, the professions and business, thus
found support from the mainly rural Muslim Bengali migrants. Matiur
Rehman Miah, an immigrant peasant leader from west Goalpara,
told the Assam assembly on 16 February 1938: We are Bengalees.
Our mother tongue is Bengali & under the circumstances, if this
Assamese language be on our shoulders, on our children s shoulders
and if we are deprived of our mother tongue then that will amount
to depriving our children from opportunities of education. 25
The linguistic factor began to shape the contours of ethnic com-
petition and conflict between the Assamese and the Bengalis more
sharply as the British withdrawal from the subcontinent became
imminent. The Assamese became more and more protectionist and
resentful of Bengali immigration and they wanted Sylhet and other
Bengali-majority areas to be removed from Assam. In 1927, during
his presidential address at the annual session of the Asom Sahitya
Sabha (Assam Literature Society), Tarun Ram Phukan said:
We Asomiyas [Assamese] are a distinct nationality amongst Indians.
Though our language is Sanskrit based, it is a distinct language. A ris-
ing nationality shows signs of life by way of extending domination over
74 Troubled Periphery
others. Alas, it is otherwise; we are not only dependent, our neighbour
[Bengal] is trying to swallow us taking advantage of our helplessness.
Brother Asomiyas, refl ect on your past glory to have an understanding
of the situation.26
The Assamese soon realized the futility of confronting Bengalis as
an ethnic group and decided to play on the religious and class div-
ide. Realizing that they faced a more immediate challenge from the
relatively more educated Bengali Hindu middle class for positions
in bureaucracy and the professions, they tried to cultivate the
less-educated Bengali Muslim peasants and win their support on
the language question. In the 1931 annual session of the Asom
Sahitya Sabha, Nagendra Nath Choudhury said in his presidential
address:
To the immigrants from Mymensingh, I want to say they are not Bengalees
anymore but Assamese. They are equal partners in the happiness, pains
and the prosperity and deterioration in this province& They should learn
the local language and they are learning. At present the similarities they
have with the Bengali language is almost nil. Moreover, they are quite
a distance from the main Bengali language. We hereby welcome them
today. Let them join and contribute to the development of Assamese
culture and nationality.27
At the 1944 annual session of the Asom Sahitya Sabha, Nilmoni
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