Assamese Nationality Question
By SAJAL NAG

Until very recently the making of an Indian was seen as a unilinear, mono-dimensional process manifesting itself in the Indian national movement. The sole objective of the national movement was to rally all the Indians together to combat British colonialism and establish itself as a ‘nation’. (1) The only diversion in this process came from the separatist attitude of the Muslims who played into the ‘divide and rule’ manoeuvres of the colonial administrators and brought about the partition of the country.

One of the foremost challenges to this historiography came when Indian national movement was refused to be seen as a ‘hallowed and blemish-less’ movement. It was pointed out that Indian national movement failed to channelise the currents of national and the social discontents into one single anti-colonial, anti-feudal revolution—a lapse which was described as ‘tragic’.(2) This movement also failed to ensure ‘perfect mobilisation’ (3) which happened due to its bourgeois character.(4) This radical historiography also pointed out that there has been a tendency of the ‘elitist’ historiography to concentrate on the Gandhian uprisings as ‘abnormal outgrowth’ peripheral to the study of the development of Indian nationhood.(5) These critics depicted that it was a distortion of the reality. The Congress-led movement and the popular upsurges in various parts of the country were coeval processes. In fact, often, at opportune times, the Congress leadership attempted to seize control of the latter so as to curb the outburst of any undesirable militancy. The third challenge disputed the theory that the achievement of Indian freedom was solely the work of the Indian National Congress. It brought to light vast new materials to show that the British attempted to retain the ‘jewel of the crown’ until the last-moment (6) but it was the immense panic created by the widespread revolt throughout the country that prompted the war-devastated Britain to make a hasty withdrawal from India.(7) The fourth dimension of the Indian nation making process was discovered by another group of historians who rejected the notion that India was already a nation. It brought into light the fact that colonial India experienced two streams of coeval processes as far as its nationality question was concerned. One was based on its pan-Indian identity and the other on its regional linguistic-cultural identity. While the former stimulated fight against the colonial rule, the latter at the same time worked towards self-assertion.(8)

This school rejected the pre-conceived one-nation-one-national movement theory and formulated that considering the diverse and multiple linguistic, cultural and even racial communities that India consisted of, who are all advancing towards a nation like entity, India can be described as a multi-nationality and multi-ethnic country.(9) India is, therefore, a country which contained a number of nationalities, both nascent and consolidated, who are at various historical stages of development. None of these, however, theoretically speaking, yet by themselves form a nation. Together they form the Indian nation-in-the-making.(10) The nationalist aspirations of self-rule of these entities are either satisfied or neutralised by the federal structure of the union. The period of Indian freedom struggle coincided with the period of awakening of these nationalities. These awakenings manifested themselves in the form of agitations and movements for recognition to their respective vernaculars, formation of unilingual provinces and separation from the dominant nationalities. These movements based on regional identities have been variously termed as ‘little nationalism’,(11) ‘regionalism’,(12) ‘sub-nationalism’ (13) and even full-fledged ‘nationalism’ (14). In general, historically speaking these movements flowed under the shadow of the anti-colonial movement during the colonial period and did not oppose the interest of the latter. In fact, these were not isolated movements but an integral part of the nation-making process itself. But, after independence, these movements occurred with more frequency and intensity as recognition to regional identities and regional autonomy was a promised nationalist agenda. It, therefore, often had to fight against the post-colonial state itself as it went back on its promises and failed to recognise the urgency of reorganisation of the colonial policy.(15) These struggles and the response to it by the colonial state thus form an important chapter of the history of modern India. Unfortunately, the text books of modern Indian history do not include these processes. Although, the resurgence of radical schools of Indian historiography in recent times has forced the entry of peasants, workers, tribals and dalits into the textbooks of modern Indian history(16) which so far were ‘elitist’ and ‘politics’ oriented, ethnic and nationality movements still remain excluded. But the developments that post-colonial India have experienced have made it amply clear that without the inclusion of these streams any understanding of the making of Indian nation would be in-adequate.

In India, the nationality formation process hastened with the advent of British capitalism in colonial form. The new mode of production required a homogeneous market, unified political territory and a common language. The British, therefore, administratively unified the country. In the process, among the groups which first came into contact with the British, the language of the major group was designated the official language of the area indirectly recognising the group as the major nationality. This resulted in suppression of small nationalities whose language was not developed or who were yet to come into contact with the British. Their linguistic-cultural claims were brushed aside. The big nationalities flourished while the small ones remained subdued. The big nationalities spread their social and economic domination(17) by controlling the employment sector owing to the head start they had in the new education system. To assert their nationality status the small groups had to break the domination of the big groups and reinstate their own language and culture in their rightful place. In this nationality formation process, language played a crucial role. It became a rallying point and a symbol of crusade. In Assam, Bengali was introduced as the official language overlooking the claims of the Assamese. The Assamese strongly resented this. The situation was aggravated by the dominance of Bengalees in the employment sector and suppression of Assamese culture. Complaints were voiced in Orrissa also about the unequal status of Oriya vis-à-vis the Bangali language. The situation here was similar to that of Assam. The Oriyas lamented that ‘the Bengalees assert that Oriya is merely a dialect of Bengali and has no claim to be considered as an independent language (though) at a period when Oriya was already a fixed and settled language, Bengali did not even exist.’(18) To this were added other issues which further strained the relationship between the two groups. ‘The new education system was dominated by the Bengalees. There was a movement in progress to replace Oriya by Bengali in administration and education.(19) The movement for the separation of Bihar from Bengal was Bihar’s first effort to ‘assert its own regional identity’.(20) Bihar was tagged to Bengal during pre-British times. This slowed its political and economic development. The emergence of British power sealed Bihar’s fate for another century. On the one hand, the official language of Bihar—‘Hindi’—was not the mother-tongue of any major population group.(21) While on the other, Bihar had to grow under the cultural shadow of Bengal. Bengalees were also the preponderant group in education and jobs. Thus, the agitation for separation of Bihar from Bengal was essentially an anti Bengalee movement.(22) In Madras presidency, the Telegus outnumbered the Tamils but because the Tamils were educationally advanced, they dominated Government service which was then the most important employment sector. This incited jealousy between the two communities.(23) Such conflicts between communities in India, though are often violent and a source of destabilization, were signs of development of nationalities.(24)