What is the geographical image the average Assamese living in the Brahmaputra Valley gets when he or she is thinking of Assam? Does he think of Diphu? ‘Where is that’, he is likely to say? Does she think of Silchar? ‘No way’, she thinks. They eat dried fish called ‘shutki’. What does she think about Gossaigaon or Boxirhat? ‘Where on Earth they are?’ they plead their utter ignorance. Most of the Assamese think of Assam as comprising of Guwahati, Jorhat, Dibrugarh, Sibasagar, Tezpur, Nowgong and few other places in the neighborhood.
As such, the recent arrest of two activists who promote ‘Kamatapur Rajya’ shouldn’t brushed aside as some law and order aberration of few individuals. Because, that’s not the case. There is movement afoot in the Cooch Behar district of West Bengal to unite ‘Koch Rajbongshi’ population of the entire area under a common banner. A little more than year ago, the SP of that district was killed on the spot when a huge bolder was thrown at the officer in a minor incident. It’s collective rage.
The Maharaja of Cooch Behar was a Koch Rajbonshri. Over much generation, the Kingdom’s lineage got diluted. The Maharaja family developed a close marital relationship with the Rajas and Maharajas of Rajasthan. Maharani Gayatri Devi of Jaipur or Udaipur was the sister of the last Maharaja of Cooch Behar.
If you go to Cooch Behar while visiting Madhupur Satra, make some time to visit the old Maharaja’s imposing palace, which has been converted, into a valuable Museum. In that museum, you would get an idea of what prominence and patronage the Koch Rajbonshis enjoyed in the Kingdom. But, if you have no time to go visit Cooch Behar, read a book written by a professor of Bengali, Dr. Chakravorty by name, of the Cotton College. He did his doctorate on the kingdom in the mid fifties.
But, what the Koch Rajbanshi have now or in the future? I met many rickshaw pullers and housemaids in Guwahati who are from that area. They are banded together with the welcome but can’t-do-without Bangladeshis. The language was the give away. They haven’t mastered Assamese yet. I can’t resist saying a little of tit-bit of the area.. Mrs. Anima Guha who was in Pune in the fifties made a important discovery while walking in the street of Pune. The Marathi word ‘sarkek’ is used in the same meaning as in Goalparia use. The word means, ‘Don’t hog the road. Make some room for me, too’. Mrs. Guha wrote in a delightful anecdotal article in an Assamese magazine in the mid-fifties or early sixties. She is from Chapar.
I now say ‘sarkek’ to make for us at the table called Assam. We can pull rickshaw in Guwahati, we can be housemaids in Guwahati, we can be educated in any institution in Assam without any hindrance, we can get jobs if there is any. But, that’s not point. The point is paying attention to us. Huge attention
We have suffered long ‘benign neglect’. Not, ‘we’ we. We’re the elite. My brother Silabradra is a noted literary figure in Assamese literature. But, the opening of our eyes makes us see things in real light. As a matter of fact, that neglect started early on. We’ve been collectively heaped various epithets like ‘Ban-gal’, lazy and ‘good for nothing’ ‘Zaminders’. These are not ‘pan dokani’ types but high and mighty anointed types. But, we didn’t care because we’re genuinely sons and daughters of beautiful Assam. Thousands and thousands of us came out in the streets to let the members of the State Reorganization Commission (SRC) headed by Pandit Hriday. Nath. Kunjru know that we were going nowhere. ‘We are happy being where we are’, we said in one voice. The year was 1954. Sarat Chandra Sinha was at the head of the massive but peaceful demonstration.
But, after Gopinath Bordoloi, the statesman, the political thinking and execution in Assam was the politics of narrow regionalism. There emerged the Kamrup politics of Bishnuram Medhi, Mahendra Mohan Choudhury. Fakuruddin Ali Ahmed played no part in it. He was an outsider. He came to Barpeta only every once a while to get elected and went back to Delhi and Allahabad. There emerged the politics of Jorhat. It was headed by B. P. Chaliha, and a very powerful politician by the last name of Sharma. These were the two most prominent groups the so-called movers and shakers.
There was Cachar group of Moinul Haque Choudhury and Abdul Matlif Mazumdar. Behind the scene of that group was Santosh Mohan Deb who was an MP from Cachar. The K and J Hills, and Garo Hills group was headed by Capt. Williamson Sangma and J. J. Stanley Nichols Roy. They eventually exited the scene and drove out the Assamese government out of Shillong.
The Nowgong group was headed by Motiram Bora. At the bottom of the totem pole was the ineffectual group of Rupnath Brahma and saintly Sarat Chandra Sinha. Oh, don’t forget the one-person group of Ingty. That group took care of the North Cacharis or did it?. I don’t recall who headed the Sonitpuri interests. Was it headed by one Das who was professor physics at Darrang College in Tezpur and lived in Uzan Bazar area of Gauhati? But, they, the Sonitpurians, came out alright.
In the fight for supremacy, two groups came out on the top of others. Do I have to mention what those two groups are? But, I will mention painfully the one at the bottom of the pile - that group is vying for the last place with North Kacharis. It’s the erstwhile district of Goalpara. All progress and development not only squarely bypassed the district but the whole region regressed. For the government officials who are posted there, it’s the Joseph Conrad’s ‘The Outpost of Progress’.
Before, ‘they’ used to come from all over Assam to eat good stuff and say effusively, ‘They sure know how to cook. They talk funny, though. (They) must have been ‘Bangali’ at one time. Did you understand a word of what man said?’ The other man said ‘Yes, I do’. He said. ‘aa..gh. kaiben na, didi. Dosh-dosha kala maruch bhangeya basiya bittri bhater panta khaya oi je ammon tika chair-chena, akebare astat dellai lagi geiche. Akebare opake jawa jay na (He ate some day-old rice with hot green chillies. But, that didn’t go well. The consequences are there all over the road)’. ‘How did you learn the odd language?’, the conversation continued. ‘I was born and raised right here’, replied the man. ‘I thought you’re a ‘nibhaj Akhomiya’ like us, the other man tried to continue the conversation.
Have you visited the region? Have you gone to ‘Lenghti Chinga’? Where could be there to see? Even, Assam Government Tourist Department does not mention anything worthwhile to visit though Asharikandi gets lots of press like the industry is its savior. Many dignitaries came to participate in ‘Chilarai Celebration’ held in a dusty barren field near Balajan, which is near Golakganj which near Boxirhat.
Traveling extensively in the region in the last four and five years, I have mentioned the desolate and barren look of the region to my wife. She replied, ‘Why there is no strong leadership here?’
I wanted to say to her, ‘Leadership doesn’t grow in a barren and desolate lands. But, there is forming a kind of leadership. But it’s honing its skills in denuded forests. We don’t want that kind of leadership. To combat that kind of leadership, huge development funds should flow in immediately to build institutions but not like the abandoned water tank in Gauripur. The AGP government built that to garner votes’.
I said to her, ‘as a starter for a new beginning, the chief minister of the State would do well if he could make some time to visit the region from his busy schedule of distributing free TVs in his constituency. The institutions would build the right kind of progressive leadership. But, I did say to her that the theme at the opening game at the National Games at Sarusajai hit the right note of inclusiveness. Now, comes the money part - lots of lots of money flowing in to build an engineering college, a medical college, computer centers, an university and all other nation building things’
‘Can you give that kind of leadership?’, my wife asked me innocently.
‘That kind leadership comes at grassroots level like what, perhaps, Hitesh Deka talked about in the Assamese book ‘Pritibi Kar?’ (?), Bibhuti Bhusan Mukhopadhay talked or hinted about in his famous book, ‘Aranye Rodan’. I can talk loudly about glaring inequities. The people have to pick up from there’, I said.
Is anybody out there listening? It’s thousand times or million or trillion times better to be proactive rather than reactive!
By Kalyan Dutta-Choudhury
Berkeley California
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