Assam is being talked about once again. The tale of immigration into the state is a long and sad one; sadder still because not all the affected people are aware of all that has happened. The bone of contention is not about numbers, but also about the indigenous culture so dear to those who love the Brahmaputra Valley. It began in 1874, when the three districts of Goalpara, Cachar and Sylhet were transferred from the Bengal Presidency to the Chief Commissioner’s province of Assam. That is when the cultural dilution of the Valley started. Understandably, the final version of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) has caused heartburn, not only among the minorities and their supporters both in the political circles and media, but apparently, even the ruling BJP’s Assam unit, which is none too happy at what has emerged.

Neither are other political entities like the All Assam Students Union (AASU) happy. Those left out of the final NRC count have the option of seeking redress under the law, though admittedly, they would have to go through the difficult route of appealing to the Foreigners’ Tribunal to establish their citizenship. It is important not to trivialize the seriousness of large-scale immigration into Assam, which not only threatens to alter the state’s demographic composition but also its culture, not to omit mention of the grave security challenge it would pose to India. Unless one has lived or travelled frequently in Assam, it is difficult to appreciate the Assamese anxiety about immigration, which they perceive as infiltration.

Assam’s people are gentle with a peace-loving nature. Its land, blessed by the bounty of nature, has not let them be competitive, and now they fear that this ethos may be erased by the steady influx of infiltrators. Assam’s plentiful land, watered by several rivers, especially the mighty Brahmaputra, was always attractive. A number of other rivers would become narrow during the dry season, exposing fertile margins called char lands, which were easy pickings for immigrants from East Bengal who weren’t slow in occupying them. Until about 1937 though, settlements by design, of East Bengali immigrants in Assam were still few. The roots of the present crisis in Assam actually lie in Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s Pakistan Plan, but even before that, the Muslim League was at work in trying to alter the demographic composition of the state.

Under the Government of India Act of 1935, provincial governments were formed by political parties; Sir Mohammed Saadulla of the Muslim League became the Premier of Assam. But the 1937 provincial elections left Jinnah disappointed, particularly on account of the League’s poor showing in United Provinces (later Uttar Pradesh), and spurred his demand of a distinct homeland for Muslims. From the Muslim majority angle, Assam appeared touch-and-go to Jinnah, although the Hindu impression was that they had a clear majority. Premier Saadulla began facilitating as many East Bengalis as he could to come across and settle in Assam.

A parallel whisper campaign was also started that the Adivasis in the state were not Hindus but animists or were Christian. In other words, the effort was to prove that there were more Muslims than Hindus in Assam. Viceroy Lord Wavell in 1945 noted in his diary during a discussion in Shillong that while the reason for Saadulla’s exertions was officially justified as being to grow more food, the real objective was to increase the number of Mohammedans (as recorded by BK Nehru in his book, Nice Guys Finish Second). The tale of illegal migrants into Assam is an old one, but has been swept under the carpet by the Congress and its supporters belonging to its traditional votebank.

Other distinguished Muslims like Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, went so far as to declare that the economy of East Pakistan would not be complete without incorporating Assam. In 1947, Jinnah nearly convinced the British that Assam was a Muslim majority province and should go to Pakistan. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, later extolled as “Bangabandhu” during and after the creation of Bangladesh in his book, Eastern Pakistan, stated that Assam’s tribals were not only not Hindus but were unfit for civilized life.

The general vague conclusion of sympathizers for Pakistan was that Eastern Bengal and Assam should be combined into one province. This indeed was the case under the first partition of Bengal, effected by Lord Curzon in 1905, which fortunately was undone in 1911 by Lord Pethick Lawrence, Secretary of State for India. Come the year 1931, and the census report showed that the minority population of the state had risen, due to migration from East Bengal, its Mymenshingh district in particular. By then they comprised 27 per cent of Assam, a figure that rose to 41 per cent by the time of the 1941 census. Clearly, Assam was being colonized by East Bengal, stated in so many words by Assam’s Census Superintendent CS Mullan, ICS.

This policy of colonization of Assam by the people of Bengal was continued under the joint auspices of the Muslim League ministries of Saadullah in Assam and Nazimuddin in Bengal. The Bengal government communiqué published in the last week of October 1944 quotes the census report of 1941: “The Government of Assam in their resolution dated 21 June 1940 prohibited settlement of land with persons coming from outside the province after January 1938. The Bengal Legislative Council went on to appeal to the Governor to ask for the Viceroy’s intervention in Assam”.

Further evidence of how immigration kept gnawing away at the identity and ethos of Assam is to be found in the report of S.P. Desai, an ICS officer who wrote in the Hindustan Standard (December 1944): “Every day, new bamboo sheds and temporary huts are springing up in the reserves. I found that the immigrants absolutely ignore the local officers. The few Nepali graziers and Assamese Pamuas, finding no protection from anywhere give doha in the name of the King-Emperor. Verily, the cup of humiliation for the Assamese was full”. India’s independence in 1947 brought no significant relief to our brethren in Assam. Successive Congress governments continued to ignore immigration from East Bengal; in fact, for the Congress, the immigrants were a potent and growing votebank, too precious to be dispensed with. Indeed, until a couple of decades ago, the Congress strategy for winning elections in Assam was popularly called “Ali, Coolie and Bengali”.

Coolie implied the tea garden workers and their families; Ali and Bengali are self-explanatory. The tea garden workers were Adivasis brought from Jharkhand and neighbouring areas. To this day, it is difficult to find an original Assamese who is a plucker in a tea garden. Indira Gandhi’s regime, in collaboration with Assam’s chief minister during the early Eighties, Hiteshwar Saikia, actually suppressed the people of Assam and their sentiments, their protests being of no avail. To rub salt into Assam’s wounds, her government passed the pernicious Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act in 1983, laying the onus of proving a particular person to be an infiltrator on the complainant and not the suspect. The ghastly Nellie massacre of thousands of immigrants in the state was a direct consequence.

Her son Rajiv Gandhi, after becoming Prime Minister in 1984, ceased the Congress’ ignoring of the people of Assam and entered into an accord with the stakeholders, especially the agitating Assamese students. One of the most important clauses of the Assam Accord of 1985 was the compilation of a National Register of Citizens. However, this was again thrown into cold storage and it is only the current dispensations, both in Delhi and Dispur, which took up this crucial exercise in earnest. One possible solution to this potentially serious problem is to make the district of Cachar a separate Union Territory with no special political connection to Assam. Of Cachar’s nearly 40 lakh people, a little over half are Hindus, with less than 2 per cent being Christians and the rest Muslims.

Nearly all of them speak Bengali. Cachar’s local economy is viable, especially with the help of a hundred tea gardens producing five crore kilograms of the beverage worth Rs. 800 crore annually. This would separate some 16 per cent of Assam’s current population, which would be a great relief to the Assamese. The Bodos may also perhaps use the opportunity to demand a Union Territory of their own between Kokrajhar town and the Sankosh river to the west. This is one sure way to bring relief and happiness to Assam.

(The writer is an author, thinker and a former Member of Parliament)