A little more than fifty years ago the southern tip of Assam witnessed in the course of an ongoing Bhasha Andolan/language movement the falling of eleven Bengali men and women to state police bullets on 19 May 1961.¹ Protesting as they were against the declaration of Assamese as the sole official language of the state, their deaths ironically marked not the end but the beginning of a new chapter in the post-independence history of Assam. Given the crucial role the movement played among others, in shaping up the future language policy, including the discourse of (cultural/ linguistic) minority rights in Assam, and eventually the territorial reorganization (by carving out the hill states in the 1970s) of the state, it is surprising that it failed to attract the kind of attention that it should have.

For those based mainly outside Barak Valley, the language based mobilization of the 1960s in Assam is often treated as an instance of ‘language riot(s)’/‘disturbance’² or ‘resistance’, and not a movement. Not only that, even that ‘resistance’ is subjected, if at all, to an ahistorical, simplistic and often partisan analysis. ‘As recently as 2010, T.K. Oommen, the well-known scholar and commentator, in his two volume edited work on social movements in India also misread the situation that prevailed in Assam during the two decades that followed partition – including the "resistance" of 1960s – and thereafter.’³

In an attempt to address the oversight, this essay suggests that the language movement, contestations about its characterization notwithstanding, needs to be considered as one of the most significant components of the larger language question discourse in Assam in particular and the subcontinent in general. Also, no rumination on the identity configurations in contemporary Assam, Barak Valley in particular, can be complete without a critical look at its ‘bloody’ legacy which continues to live on even after half a century.

 

Over the last two centuries, the intertwined issues of immigration and language (culture) have occupied the heart of the Assamese weltanschuang. Having emerged safely out of the choppy cultural politics of the colonial era – which eventually led to the referendum and ceding of Sylhet, a Bangla speaking, Muslim majority district of the province to Pakistan in 1947 – sections of the Assamese intelligentsia led by organizations such as Assam Jatiya Mahasabha and Assam Sahitya Sabha, and the Gopinath Bardoloi-led provincial government, decided to set things straight, which included among others, the consolidation of the (colonial) political discourse that aimed to construct an unilingual/cultural identity of the province.

Pitched vis-à-vis the Bengalis, the largest linguistic minority of the province even after the separation of Sylhet in particular and non-Assamese linguistic groups in general, the provincial state sponsored brand of ‘aggressive’⁴ linguistic nationalism saw the introduction of a series of language policies which were meant to reclaim the position of supremacy and pride that the Assamese language (and culture) had been ‘deliberately’ denied but to which it obviously had a history-attested, legitimate right.

Drawing upon the post-1950s central policy of linguistic reorganization of states, such measures eventually found a single, substantive voice in the Assam Official Language Bill introduced by the Bimala Prasad Chaliha government in 1960. The Assam Official Language Act (ALA) which was passed the same year granted Assamese the status of the sole official language of the state. Given Assam’s historically multilingual character, the ALA only added to the often violent communal clashes between the Assamese, whose population rose by almost 150 per cent following the Census of 1951, and the non-Assamese speakers. With an existing Bangla speaking majority and its numbers rising due to the inflow of Bengali partition-migrants from the geographically contiguous Sylhet and other parts of East Pakistan, Cachar (present Barak Valley) was, as noted, the site of heaviest protest against the ALA.

 

Much as the ALA was the product of colonial – and post-colonial – politics, so was the public protest of the Bengalis of Cachar, the roots of the latter going back to 1874 when Sylhet and Cachar were separated from Bengal and attached to Assam. Be that as it may, following the partition of colonial Assam and redrawing of Cachar’s political-geographical contours, a slice of Sylhet, Karimganj, being attached to it in 1947, the Bengalis of the district ‘spearheaded campaigns for territorial reorganization of Assam (and in fact, the entire north eastern frontier) on the bases of language, culture, geography and other factors, by proposing, first, a Plan for Purbachal in 1948 – and not Purbanchal as Oommen (2010) writes – and second, Purbachal Reconsidered to the States Reorganization Commission of India in 1954.’⁵

 

In fact, as the noted historian Sujit Choudhury argues, the Bengalis of Cachar, despite having been part of a ‘discontinuous political history’, should have had no reason to be anxious about their existence vis-à-vis the Assamese given the ‘historical continuity of their Bengali heritage.’⁶ However, such failed campaigns, as also ‘the state government’s policies related to political-economic [under]development, [denial of constitutional] rights of a linguistic/cultural minority, fate of Bangla language medium educational institutions, …[and] the gradual "loss of position of social dominance" they had had under the colonial administration’⁷ generated a deep sense of fear and as Subir Kar says, ‘atmaparichayer sankat’/crisis of self-definition, among them (and the hill tribes too).⁸

In the Congress, Communist Party of India and other civil society groups created political imbroglio that followed, the ALA acted as nothing short of an incendiary. Led by organizations such as Nikhil Assam Banga Bhasha-Bhashi Samiti, Sangram Parishad, Cachar Zila Gana Sangram Parishad and Bhasha Andolan Samiti largely non-violent protests by students, eminent community leaders, intellectuals, and others were launched against the ALA in Cachar; Bengalis elsewhere in Assam registered their protest too.

 

In the aftermath of the killing of eleven protesters on 19 May 1961 at Silchar railway station, that being the moment of significance in the movement, ‘Paritosh Pal Chaudhary, the chief architect of the Sangram Parishad …categorically stated that "the movement would be resumed and carried on until the Bengali language was recognized at the state level’’.’⁹ In turn, the Congress-led central-state government combine appointed Lal Bahadur Shastri to look into the matter and he suggested, much to the dissatisfaction of both the Bengalis and the Assamese, and district level political groups, an amendment of the ALA. The two enquiry commissions – the official Mehrotra Commission and the independent N.C. Chatterjee Commission – constituted to enquire into the 19 May killings also submitted their reports, but the situation in Cachar continued to be volatile, the growing political differences among others, within the leadership of the movement adding to that.¹⁰

Meanwhile, the state cabinet taking cue from the Shastri formula amended the ALA which granted Bangla the status of the other official language (but only of Cachar district) in October 1961. But that elicited little more than a lukewarm reception from the Bengalis of Cachar and deep resentment from sections of the Assamese civil society. ‘The Bangla language/culture issue, however, continued to simmer [during the "language riots" of 1972 and 1986], and Cachar – The Cachar Gana Parishad Union Territory Demand Committee – demanded autonomy, that is, grant of Union Territory status in 1972, and reiterated that – during the high period of the anti-immigrant Assam movement – in 1980 and 1986 by submitting a memoranda to the then prime ministers.’¹¹

 

It is obvious from the short description that the language movement, addressing the official language issue as it did, hardly put an end to the conundrum in the state. By providing a fillip to the future competitive identity based mobilizations for autonomy and statehood, the movement – its pace much slower after the 1970s – contributed most substantively to the consolidation of the discourse of cultural/political protest or ‘culture wars’ in Assam as Sanjib Baruah notes.¹² Though the larger language question has merited considerable theoretical attention from Marxist and non-Marxist scholars alike, yet the language movement per se has hardly had such good fortune.

Sujit Choudhury does offer clues by way of discussion of say, the class composition of the movement. In his reading, the leadership and the rank and file comprised both urban and rural segments drawn from all classes, the latter being vital to the movement. His sustained Gramsci influenced analysis of the political machinations, including subversive activities of a section of Bengalis and other linguistic groups, hand-in-glove with the Assamese ruling apparatus that underlay the movement, is extremely important too. Sadly, his arguments, crucial as they are, do not lend themselves to a theoretically coherent and complete explanation of the language movement.¹³

Now, whether the movement was mass based or represented the making of a mass base lacking Hindu, upper caste, urban, refugee, middle class, or was an illustration of ‘counter-hegemonic striving’ of the subalterns as for instance, S.M. Shamsul Alam citing Gramsci suggests in the context of the language movement in East Pakistan in 1952, requires to be debated. So do other shades of opinion including say, the one which claims that the Bengalis as a primordial identity bearing collective, launched the movement to attain both symbolic and instrumental goals which included a demand for autonomy as well.¹⁴

 

Arguably, only if such otherwise contested opinions are supported by an elaborate, critical evaluation of the movement – its historical roots, ideology, organizational structure, goals, class, caste, and religious composition, leadership profile, mobilization tactics, state response, and negotiation strategies, and so forth – is a theoretically cogent understanding possible. That, now more urgently needed than ever, would extend to not only ensure its rightful place in the larger language question discourse but also throw light on the legacy that it came to bequeath to Barak Valley.

As the one political struggle successfully waged and won, though perhaps only partially, by the Bengalis of Barak Valley since 1874 and through 1947, the language movement certainly remains at the centre of their post-colonial historical imagination. In contemporary Barak Valley, the legacy of the movement, a carefully and closely guarded historical resource as it is, helps reaffirm the cultural/linguistic identity of the young Bengalis. Lived and breathed across generations, the legacy bears an undying, everyday character. It is this everyday remembrance that enables the legacy to be viewed as the only, available indestructible, protective shield or ‘raksha kavach’/amulet as Sujit Choudhury would say, vis-à-vis others, and predictably, the Assamese in particular.¹⁵

 

The everydayness, of course, is permitted to be punctuated, much to the ardent and emotional desire of the Bengalis, annually by the public commemoration of the Bhasha Shahid Dibash/Matri Bhasha Dibash/Language Martyrs’ Day/Mother Tongue Day on 19 May. Christened as Matri Bhasha Shahids/Mother Tongue/Language Martyrs, the eleven men and women who died on 19 May to uphold the honour of Bangla, their mother tongue, are deeply venerated. Indeed, as a day when the blood congealed discourse of martyrdom was born, 19 May is imbued with a near sacred quality.

Needless to say, it is the ever alive symbol around which the heroic pride of being a Bengali who is able to fearlessly confront his/her adversary gets constructed, the example of Bengalis martyred on 21 February 1952 in neighbouring East Pakistan further supporting that. Whether the celebration of that pride is an illustration of anxiety-free fearlessness or an actual (or perceived) ‘astittwer sankat’/existential crisis, or even both, obviously begs exploration.

Anyhow, the pride has a touch of poignancy too, coloured as it remains by the blood of ekadosh/eleven martyrs, but that is negotiated through the discourse of martyrdom whose central register draws upon the intertwined ideas of altruism, sacrifice and justice. As Subir Kar citing Tagore writes: ‘By "wiping away the tears" of the Bangla bhasha janani [Bangla language mother] by the "blood of the heroes", the Bengalis of Barak Valley have themselves turned into history.’¹⁶ The following poem also illustrates that: ‘With tears in eyes did I tread many a/blood stained path/Beside many a death, in Silchar Railway Station./ Engulfed in the endless gunpowder fume,/O painful, essence of nineteenth, can I/Ever forget this day? History written/In blood stained Palash and Simul –/Nineteenth is my essence, my love,/My awakening.’¹⁷

 

Apart from inspiring a very large oeuvre of predominantly Bangla writings, the collective urge to preserve the glorious legacy of 19 May is manifest in the numerous monuments, statues and Shahid Bedis/Martyrs’ Altars that dot the Barak Valley landscape as also in the repeated (failed) appeals to officially rename Silchar Railway Station as Bhasha Shahid Station. Such efforts, however, fail to fully assuage the hurt that Bengalis of contemporary Barak Valley feel because of the lack of wider recognition of the legacy of 19 May in particular, in the wider public imagination. Had the Indian state, and the predominantly Bangla speaking West Bengal, they argue, not let the ‘production’ of eleven Mother Tongue Martyrs – including one woman named Kamala Bhattacharjee – on its own soil go unnoticed, 19 May could have been bestowed the honour, among others, of being declared the International Mother Tongue Day.

 

Otherwise a legacy by, of and for the Bengalis, its celebration, at least in the public sphere, generally appears to involve all other constituent linguistic communities of Barak Valley. Indeed, of critical significance among the multiple registers that the legacy throws up is also one which concerns the character of its reception among the non-Bangla speaking communities of the valley. In this context, Sujit Choudhury’s observations are relevant. He notes that differences not only exist between Bengalis and the numerous minority non-Bengali groups of Barak Valley, but also among the Bengali community, marked as it remains by internal ‘bibhajans’/ divisions along lines of rural-urban, local-non local (non-refugee-refugee), Muslim-Hindu, lower caste-upper caste, Cachari-Sylheti, and so forth.

Having said this he makes three pertinent, albeit contested, points: (a) the Bengalis were the earliest arrivals in Cachar followed by others; (b) historically and demographically, Barak Valley has been and is a Bangla speaking – and not ‘Assamese-Cachari akin Baraki’ speaking as Assam Sahitya Sabha in its 54th session held in Hailakandi suggested – and Bengali majority region; and (c) the construction of two large oppositional categories comprising of: (i) rural Bengali Muslims, lower caste Hindus, Meitei Manipuris, Bishnupriya Manipuris, Dimasas, Tea tribes and other tribes, on the one hand and (ii) urban Bengali, upper caste Hindus on the other is a political conspiracy hatched by a section of the Assamese and their Bengali ‘dalals’/middlemen/lackeys, as Bijit Bhattacharya would say.¹⁸

Given the complex cultural/ political scenario, it is interesting why the legacy of the language movement draws to itself Barak Valley’s non-Bengali populace too. Perhaps the reasons for that are: one, the legacy’s dual – symbolic and instrumental – importance in the ever relevant context of minority politics in Assam, though as a symbol of protest against state power the former outweighs the latter; two, the Bengali community, including its intelligentsia, does not publicly disapprove of the claims of other linguistic minorities of the valley, say for instance, the Bishnupriya Manipuris; three, the consistent projection of sections of the Assamese society and the state (and surely not Bengalis) as the real instrument of divisiveness and threat to the minorities of Barak Valley; and finally the ‘duty’ of the minorities to ‘respect’ the tradition and sentiments of the Bengali majority who do not stand in the way of their identity claims.

 

Though on the surface it appears that all is well with the legacy-reinforced Bengali identity, manages as it does to negotiate with its Assamese and other non-Bengali counterparts, yet further interrogation points to the contrary. In fact, the negotiation with the latter occurs through their gradual and careful incorporation into the shared culture of Barak Valley which despite all projected claims of pluralism, is essentially Bengali with a Sylheti core.¹⁹ It is in this context that the legacy turns into an instrument of cultural domination at the hands of a section of the Bengali community: for instance, Dinesh Goala’s poll victories in the state elections may not suggest a direct resistance by Hindi speakers to the Bengalis, but if explored further, has a lot to say about the identity politics of contemporary Barak Valley. Also, those Bengalis – Sylhetis and non-Sylhetis alike – who are not Barakians, and therefore presumed to have no regard for the legacy in particular and welfare of the valley in general are profiled along exclusionary lines.

 

Sadly, the model of Assamese ‘chauvinism’ as Apurba Baruah taking cue from Hiren Gohain puts it, that the language movement had challenged, is now replicated in the valley, the recent politics surrounding the appointment of the Vice Chancellor of Assam University, Silchar being a pointer towards that.²⁰ Amongst Barak’s Bengalis too, clearly reflecting the schisms that run through them, the issue of authentic claimant(s) of the legacy casts a long shadow on that. Among others, for instance, its projected Cachar (Silchar) centric location is resented by the other two districts, Karimganj in particular, while the role of eminent Muslim leaders like say, Moinul Haque Choudhury and Abdul Matlib Majumdar in particular and Muslims in general, in the language movement remains contested too.

Even though the Muslim response to the controversy, internal variations notwithstanding, is controversial in the communally polarized atmosphere of the valley, it nevertheless necessitates serious investigation so as to ensure its historical contextualization within the larger (and ever shifting) structure of Hindu-Muslim political alliances – aided and abetted by secular and communal political parties alike – in the state, the former including both the Bengalis and the Assamese.²¹

 

Indeed, the legacy turns out to be a mixed one for the Bengalis of Barak Valley as it is for the Assamese. For the latter it is both a reminder of the compromise (in fact, failure) that they had to unjustifiably, and hence unwillingly, accept in the 1960s, and perhaps also a testimony to their ‘magnanimity’. In any case, it is best ignored and forgotten in contemporary Assamese public imagination as essentially another bad deal with the ‘chauvinistic’ and ‘communal’ Bengalis.

The Bengalis too have been unable to shed their historically accumulated suspicion, if not animosity, towards the Assamese Other. Howsoever ironical it may appear, their contested cultural history has equally been the source of political realism that animates the everyday traffic between these two communities as they continue to inhabit the same administrative-political space. Yet, it would be trifle premature to proclaim the evaporation of long existing cultural fault lines that have been so central to competitive identity articulations of these warring communities. But then, a social movement has its own ingenious ways of deploying its legacy to respond to unanticipated historical conjunctures. And, the Bhasha Andolan may not be an exception.

 

* The author wishes to thank Shyamananda Bhattacharjee, Sajal Nag, Manish Thakur and Param Bhattacharjee for their critical inputs.

Footnotes:

1. The southern tip of Assam comprises of the three districts of Cachar, Karimganj and Hailakandi and is popularly known by the epithet, Barak Valley.

2. See for example, Myron Weiner, Sons of the Soil: Migration and Ethnic Conflict in India. Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1978; Paul Brass, The Politics of India Since Independence. Foundation Books, New Delhi, 1994; Sanjib Baruah, India Against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality. Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1999; Sandhya Goswami, Language Politics in Assam. Ajanta Publications, Delhi, 1997.

3. Nabanipa Bhattacharjee, ‘Language of Love and Death: Fifty Years of Assam’s Language Movement’, Mainstream, 18 February 2012, p. 23; see also T.K. Oommen (ed.), Social Movements I: Issues of Identity, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2010.

4. Sujit Choudhury, ‘Assam: Quest for Homogeneity’, Mainstream, 1 November 1986, pp. 11-14.

5. Nabanipa Bhattacharjee, op cit., p. 24.

6. Sujit Choudhury, Barak Upatyakar Samaj O Rajniti. Jugashakti Prakashan, Karimganj, 2007, p. 55 (translation mine).

7. Nabanipa Bhattacharjee, op cit., p. 24.

8. Subir Kar, Barak Upatyakar Bhasha Sangramer Itihash. Rita Kar, Karimganj, 1999, p. 1.

9. The Times of India, 30 May 1961, cited in Sandhya Goswami, op cit., p. 62; see also Paritosh Paul Choudhury, Cacharer Kanna. The Author, Silchar, 1972.

10. See Sujit Choudhury, op cit.; see also Subir Kar, ‘Unisher Prasanga O Kichu Jaroori Katha’, Satptahik Barakkantha, 16 May 2012, pp. 3-4 for discussion on the unpublished Mehrotra Commission Report.

11. Nabanipa Bhattacharjee, op cit., p. 25.

12. Sanjib Baruah, op cit., p. 99.

13. Sujit Choudhury, Barak Upatyakar Samaj O Rajniti, op cit.

14. S.M. Shamsul Alam, ‘Language as Political Articulation: East Bengal in 1952’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 21(4), 1991, 469-487; see also T. K Oommen (ed.), op cit.

15. Sujit Choudhury, Barak Upatyakar Samaj O Rajniti, op cit., p. 65.

16. Subir Kar, Barak Upatyakar Bhasha Sangramer Itihash. Rita Kar, Karimganj, 1999, p. 1.

17. Chameli Kar, ‘Nineteenth is my Essence’, in Subir Kar et al. (eds), Poems on the Language Movement in Barak Valley: A Bilingual Anthology. Shakespeare Society of Eastern India, Silchar, 2005, p. 12 (translated by Dipankar Purkayastha).

18. Sujit Choudhury, Barak Upatyakar Samaj O Rajniti, op cit.; Personal Interview with Bijit Bhattacharya, Hailakandi, 14 March 2008; see also Nabanipa Bhattacharjee, ‘ "We are With Culture but Without Geography": Locating Sylheti Identity in Contemporary India’, South Asian History and Culture 3(2), 2012, pp. 215-235.

19. See Nabanipa Bhattacharjee, Communities, Cultures and Identities: A Sociological Study of the Sylheti Community in Contemporary India. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, 2011.

20. Apurba Kumar Baruah, ‘Chauvinism in Assamese Society and the Bengali Elite in Assam’, Proceedings of North East India History Association, IX Session, Guwahati, 1988, pp. 422-437; Param, ‘Matribhasha Andolan O Assam Vishwavidyalaya, Proyojon Punahpath’, Saptahik Barakkantha, 16 May 2012, pp. 1and 4.

21. See for example, Myron Weiner, op cit.; Sujit Choudhury, Barak Upatyakar Samaj O Rajniti, op cit.; Sujit Choudhury, ‘A "God-Sent" Opportunity’, Seminar, February 2002, pp. 61-67.