A magnanimous historical personality and the first Chief Minister of Assam, Lokapriya Gopinath Bordoloi (06.06.1890-05.08.1950) belongs to that galaxy of stalwarts who played a momentous role in shaping the destiny of Assam at the time of India’s Independence. Gopinath Bordoloi was a visionary leader with an unwavering dedication and resolve to fight injustice in all its forms. He is popularly known as Lokapriya (meaning, loved by all) among the people of Assam.

It was because of Gopinath Bordoloi’s firm commitment to the cause of protecting the Hindu identity of the state of Assam and its culture that chiefly accounted for Assam’s eventual integration as a full-fledged state with the Union of India. It is a less popular, yet a very interesting story of a pragmatic politician who, along with other lesser-known leaders such as Bhimbar Deuri, ensured the failure of the ill-conceived Cabinet Mission Plan.

Gopinath Bordoloi was born on June 6, 1890 at Raha in Nagaon district of Central Assam to Praneswari Devi and Buddheswar Bordoloi. A spiritually devout man, Bordoloi was particularly influenced by the Bhagavad Gita. It was Gopinath Bordoloi’s expertise in law that has paved the way for him to take an active part in the public affairs of the state. He was a member of the Assam Association which, along with the Jorhat Sarvajanik Sabha, was one of the mirror organisations of the newly-emerging Assamese middle class that included writers, lawyers, social workers, educationists, and politicians.

During the Non-Cooperation Movement in 1921, Gopinath Bordoloi suspended his legal practice and actively took up organisational work at the grassroots. He soon became the Joint Secretary of the Guwahati Congress Committee, actively promoting the ideas of Khadi and Swadeshi for reviving Assam’s rural economy.

Another leader of eminence in the freedom struggle of Assam was Tarun Ram Phookan. He is known as the mentor of Gopinath Bordoloi. Bordoloi had later acknowledged that it was Phookan who, for the first time, had helped him gain a fresh perspective on mass civil disobedience. Both Tarun Ram Phookan and Gopinath Bordoloi had offered their full support to the newly formed Swaraj Party within the Indian National Congress after its Gaya Session in 1922. They soon formed a State Unit in Assam, which registered significant success in the ensuing elections.

At this time, Gopinath Bordoloi was the President of the Guwahati District Congress Committee, and he actively campaigned and addressed several meetings in support of its members. However, differences emerged after the passage of the Lahore Resolution by the INC in 1929, voicing its support for Non-Cooperation. Both Bordoloi and Phookan did not agree with this approach of the Congress and issued a joint statement expressing their reservations about the Assembly boycott programme and also questioned its relevance and utility with respect to Assam specifically.

So firm and determined he was in his decision that he ultimately resigned from the Presidentship of the Guwahati District Congress Committee on February 27, 1930. Immediately after Bordoloi’s resignation, Tarun Ram Phookan revived the Swaraj Party and was soon re-elected to the Central Legislature. In retaliation, the All India Congress Committee (AICC) asked him to resign from not only the AICC but also the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC). Men of principle as they both were, they not only complied with this directive but also went a step further by tendering their resignation from the primary membership of the Congress too.

But Bordoloi never dissociated himself from the various pro-people activities that were going on at both the national and state levels as a part of the freedom struggle. Nevertheless, he started keeping himself aloof from the Congress mainstream. He was a staunch supporter of parliamentary politics and thus believed that unless some members were there in the Assembly, the special problems of Assam could not be addressed.

Bordoloi’s Differences with the Muslim League

Gopinath Bordoloi was elected as the leader of the Congress in the Assam Legislative Assembly in 1937. However, it needs to be mentioned here that the Legislature Party did not make any attempts to form the Government since the party at the national level was in favour of non-acceptance of any office. But the Congress soon changed its decision and favoured the formation of its Ministries at the provincial level, in provinces where the party was in a majority.

In the Assam Assembly, Sir Saiyyid Muhammad Sadullah became the Prime Minister of Assam (before the promulgation of the Constitution of India, the chief minister of a province was called the ‘prime minister’) and Bordoloi the Leader of the Opposition. The Governor of Assam preferred Sadullah over Bordoloi mainly because of his close rapport with Nehru and also the English-speaking Europeans in the Assembly.

Sadullah was an Assamese Muslim leader representing the Muslim League in the Assam Assembly. In view of a large number of defeats on the floor of the House and the extremely anti-people policies of his government, protests against the Sadullah Ministry grew with each passing day. Eventually, he had to tender his resignation on September 13, 1938. It was after a few days on September 20, 1938 that the Bordoloi Ministry was eventually sworn in.

During his 14-month long tenure as the Prime Minister of Assam, Bordoloi proved himself to be an able administrator and a popular politician committed to the welfare of his people. One of the most significant steps that Bordoloi undertook during his tenure was the protection of the grazing reserves and reserved forests of Assam. His cabinet also instituted a Tea Labour Conditions Enquiry Committee so as to investigate into the working conditions of the labourers working in the tea gardens of Assam.

However, despite all such progressive policy measures, the Bordoloi cabinet had to resign following the directive of the Congress Working Committee in 1939. It registered a sharp word of protest against the arbitrary action of the British government declaring India as one of the belligerent countries in the World War II without her consent. Taking advantage of the opportunity, the Government again quickly re-instated Sadullah at the helm of affairs although he did not have the requisite majority.

It was primarily considered as a ‘return gift’ for Sadullah’s whole-hearted support to the British. Sadullah went out of his way to contribute Rs. 1 crore from the state revenue towards the war fund. Gopinath Bordoloi, in the meantime, had formed santi senas along with a few other leaders of the Congress for helping the war evacuees from Burma and Malaya who had poured into Assam in the most wretched of conditions.

In 1940, several prominent APCC leaders including Gopinath Bordoloi, Gauri Kanta Talukdar, Bishnu Ram Medhi, Lakheshwar Barooah, and Debeshwar Sarma were jailed for their opposition to the British imposition of the War on India. In the Jorhat jail, they conducted what was called ‘Bordoloi’s Nation-Building Meetings’. These meetings were designed to discuss and deliberate upon the future territorial boundaries of Assam, its relationship with the frontier areas and Manipur, and finding a solution to Assam’s own internal problems.

Sadullah, on the contrary, harboured a parallel vision of a possible third nationality in the region. He always stood for the idea of a Greater East Pakistan which would include Assam in its fold. In due course of time, he became the principal political and ideological rival of Gopinath Bordoloi. An ideological tussle soon ensued between the Congress and the Muslim League. A small Muslim-majority town called Sylhet situated in Assam’s Barak Valley, gradually became the pivot of identity politics that emerged in the entire region. Unfortunately, this had led to a broad perception of Assam as a Muslim-majority state in the rest of the country.

It is not to be forgotten that Jinnah and the provincial Muslim League leaders had aspired for the whole of Assam to be included into East Bengal, while making Shillong their summer resort capital. Bordoloi lamented, “There is no one [in Assam] to explain to the general mass of Indians that Assam is not a state to be incorporated into the League’s concept of Pakistan.” In Bordoloi’s private diary (dated March 17, 1941), as quoted by Mahadev Sarma, it has been written: “I am astonished to know that even C. Reddy, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Andhra Pradesh, thinks that Assam is a Muslim-majority state.” Sadullah, however, exploited this confusion very well in the minds of the national leaders. He used it strategically to craft a new demand for a separate Muslim nationality.

The fact that Sadullah had facilitated the first wave of mass Muslim migration into Assam from East Bengal cannot be denied. The massive famine that struck Bengal in 1943 led to a mass exodus of people into the neighbouring province of Assam. In order to provide settlement to these fresh immigrants, the Assam Government led by Sadullah adopted a resolution called “Grow More Food” in 1943. This resolution provided for the opening up of the grazing reserves in Kamrup, Darrang and Nagaon districts to land-hungry immigrant cultivators from Bengal. It was this resolution which the then Viceroy of India Lord Wavell had famously interpreted as “Grow More Muslims”.   

It was during Sadullah’s Muslim League Ministry in Assam (1937-46) that a concerted effort was being made to encourage the migration of Bangladeshi Muslims into Assam en-masse, chiefly for nourishing a political vote-bank. It was earlier planned by Moinul Haque Choudhury, the private Secretary of Jinnah. After Independence, Choudhury became a minister in the Assam cabinet and promised Jinnah that he would “present Assam to him on a silver platter”. It was during the time of the Sylhet referendum that the East Pakistanis had declared – “Silet lole bhoter jure, Asom lobo laathor bole” (meaning, “We have taken Sylhet via referendum, we will take Assam via the power of the stick”). By the time Gopinath Bordoloi was released from jail, Sadullah had already bolstered the status of Assam’s migrant population via various government policies.    

Opposition to the ‘Grouping Scheme’ of the Cabinet Mission Plan

The Congress won Assam with a whopping majority in the Indian Provincial Elections of 1946, with Gopinath Bordoloi coming back to the Assembly again as the Chief Minister. The British Government had announced the Cabinet Mission Plan on May 16, 1946. It envisaged a ‘Union of India’ consisting of various provinces/units having full autonomy with all residuary powers being vested upon them, except in the areas of external affairs, defence, and communications. However, the principal deal-breaker in the Plan was the ‘Grouping’ Provision, which arbitrarily divided the British Indian provinces into three different groups or sections – A, B and C. The six Muslim-dominated provinces were constituted under the Sections B and C, and Section C included Bengal and Assam.

It was by virtue of this classification that Assam, a Hindu-majority province, was deemed to be a state in the Muslim-dominated region of the country. In reality, the Cabinet Mission Plan provided a fine blueprint of the future East Pakistan, leaving the citizens of Assam in a state of lurch. In its attempt to appease the Muslim League and find a hurried solution to India’s independence, the Congress agreed to the Cabinet Mission Plan, thereby betraying the interests of Assam. The All-India Muslim League also accepted the Plan, declaring that the ‘germ and essence of Pakistan was there’.

In the words of Nirode K. Barooah, “The problem with Assam was that since this Hindu-majority province would be together with the Muslim-predominated Bengal in one Section, the acceptance to the Section would automatically mean opting for the Group and getting thereby submerged in Bengal. In fact, there can be no doubt that the Grouping Provision was especially made to satisfy the Muslim League.” Barooah further stated that instead of conceding to the demand of ‘Pakistan’ as such, the Grouping Plan was conceived as a ‘halfway house’ such that two Muslim-dominated areas would emerge to represent the notion of a ‘Muslim nation’. Hence, trying to save itself from this Plan became yet another struggle for Assam within its demand for Independence.

On April 1, 1946 as the head of the provincial government, Gopinath Bordoloi met the Cabinet Mission. He strongly advocated for retaining Assam as a province within the Indian Union and not to include it in Group C. It became clear to Bordoloi that the merger of Assam with Bengal would seal the future of the Assamese people forever and Assam would eventually lose its distinct identity and individuality in the political whirlpool. He rejected the entire idea of Pakistan as absolutely preposterous and opined that Assam as a Hindu-majority province on the basis of language and culture already enjoyed provincial autonomy.

It was on July 16, 1946 that the Assam Assembly adopted a resolution moved by Gopinath Bordoloi, which expressed strong words of disapproval against the ‘Grouping Plan’. It also directed the ten representatives from Assam in the Constituent Assembly to not sit with any other province for devising the Constitution of Assam or any group Constitution with such other province for the settlement of any question relating to Assam.   However, despite Bordoloi’s repeated requests, no one higher up in the ranks of the Congress leadership showed any interest in the immediate problem of Assam. Sensing complete indifference from the Congress leadership, Bordoloi had sent out two of his emissaries, Bijoy Chandra Bhagwati and Mahendra Mohan Chowdhury, to enlist M.K. Gandhi’s support in preventing Assam from becoming a part of Pakistan.

Both Nehru and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad had thought that Assam’s case was acting as an obstruction to India’s freedom. While speaking to a Bengali delegation, Nehru stated – “Assam cannot hold up the progress of the rest of India and support to Assam would mean refusal to accept the British Prime Minister’s statement of 6 December and letting loose the forces of chaos and civil war.” On hearing of Nehru’s great betrayal and acceptance of the 6 December Statement which declared the Cabinet Mission Plan as an indivisible whole that had to be accepted by all parties in-toto, the people of Assam felt a sense of disillusionment with the central Congress leadership. But Bordoloi’s steely resolve to maintain the integrity of Assam intact as a part and parcel of the Indian Union had not been deterred.

The Provincial Muslim League began asserting itself when it saw a glimmer of a chance of the possible inclusion of Assam in its Pakistan project. When the Assam government, led by Bordoloi, planned to evict illegal land encroachers from the state, the League saw it as a measure to evict Muslims from the region. Jinnah himself visited Guwahati in 1946 to protest against the land eviction policy of Bordoloi’s Government and threatened him by saying – “If the Government does not immediately revise its policy and abandon this persecution of Muslims, a situation will be created which will not be conducive for the people of Assam.”

The Congress High Command failed to see that the Cabinet Mission Plan carried within it another subsidiary plan drawn up by Professor Coupland, a senior Professor of History at the Oxford University who also happened to be one of the political advisors in the Cabinet Mission. Coupland had formulated a dangerous plan, which envisaged that the contiguous areas of Assam including the Khasi, Garo, and Jaintia Hills, the Lushai Hills (present-day Mizoram), North Cachar Hills, Nagaland, and the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) were to be made into a self-governing “Crown Colony” under the protection of the British Crown. Bordoloi was quick to understand the underlying causes and consequences of the sinister designs of Coupland. He immediately grasped the full implications of Coupland’s plan for the future of North-East India and thus intensified his popular struggle against the Cabinet Mission Plan.

The leader and visionary in Gopinath Bordoloi finally succeeded in convincing other national leaders, including Gandhi and Sardar Patel, about the genuine concerns of Assam regarding the Cabinet Mission Plan. Finally, the controversial parts of the Plan had to be scrapped by the British Government. In this unique battle for survival, Gopinath Bordoloi emerged as a towering personality in the entire country. Had he not opposed the Grouping Scheme and instead chose to side with Nehru, there would have been no Assam left today in the map of India. With his sagacity and revolutionary zeal, Gopinath Bordoloi rescued Assam and in fact, the entire North-East from the mischievous conspiracy of the colonial rulers.

An Outstanding Leader, Patriot and Visionary

Bordoloi’s fight did not merely end at retaining Assam with India. He continued to work as an activist thereafter too, raising his voice for the common people of Assam long after he had won the political battle. After Independence, as the first Chief Minister of Assam, Bordoloi worked closely with Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. He fought for the protection of Assam’s sovereignty, including its continued separation from the borders with China and Bangladesh. He also played a very important role in the rehabilitation of millions of Hindu refugees who had fled East Pakistan due to widespread violence and intimidation in the immediate aftermath of the Partition.

Bordoloi faced the twin problems of a massive influx of immigrants into Assam and a severe paucity of funds and land to settle them. But instead of genuinely looking into this issue and resolving it, Nehru retorted by linking state grants to the vexed issue of refugee settlement. He said, “Assam could expect central financial help only if it liberally accepted refugees from East Bengal and granted them lands.” Even on the issue of paucity of land with respect to Assam, Nehru doubted its seriousness when Gopinath Bordoloi had brought it to his notice.

Despite his national stature, Gopinath Bordoloi was unable to instil confidence in Nehru who had deep-rooted misconceptions about Assam. He was outrightly less sympathetic towards the chronic problems of this state. The porosity of the Assam-Bangladesh land border allowed unabated migration for the next several decades after Independence. The degree of porosity can be gauged by the fact that the then Chief Secretary of East Pakistan and his family would often come to the resort city of Shillong without any documentation or permission. Whether it was merely for leisure or espionage activities, the purpose of their visit is still debatable. When Bordoloi raised the issue with Nehru, his response was, “We do not object normally to a particular person visiting India from Pakistan.”!

Gopinath Bordoloi died of a heart attack on August 5, 1950 while in office at the age of 60 years. Appreciating his phenomenal personality and immense contribution to the nation, the then Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel had said,

      “It is difficult to think of the state of Assam without Gopinath Bordoloi. He had identified himself so completely with the interests of his state, and for years the political life had so much intermingled with this great personality that we had come to think of the two entities as always being synonymous.”

An epochal leader, Gopinath Bordoloi had once famously said, “He [Jinnah] might as well expect the moon come down to him but could never have Assam in his Pakistan.” Successive Congress Governments at the Centre failed to give Bordoloi the due credit that he rightly deserved. It was only after the coming to power of the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre under Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1998 that its very first Bharat Ratna – the country’s highest civilian honour – was conferred posthumously upon Gopinath Bordoloi. With this recognition, Bordoloi also became the first person from the North-East to have been bestowed with this coveted honour.

It was in the same year (almost half a century after his demise) that the Bharat Ratna Gopinath Bordoloi Memorial Museum at Raha, Nagaon was established in the Raha State Dispensary premises, and inaugurated by the then Governor Lt. Gen. (Retd.) S.K. Sinha on the day of his birth anniversary on June 6. The Museum was reopened after renovation to the general public on June 6, 2017 by the former CM of Assam Sarbananda Sonowal. A life-size statue of him was unveiled in the Parliament House building on October 1, 2002 by the then President of India Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. No wonder, for obvious and quite well-understood reasons, such a realisation never dawned upon the Congress Party despite being in power for 50 long years!

The country pays a glowing tribute to this great leader on his birth anniversary today.

References:

1. Nirode K. Barooah. (1989). Gopinath Bordoloi: Indian Constitution and Centre-Assam Relations, 1940-1945. Assam: Publication Board of Assam, pp. 25-52.
2. Nirode K. Barooh. (2010). Gopinath Bordoloi, ‘The Assam Problem’ and Nehru’s Centre. Guwahati: Bhabani Books.
3. Nirode K. Barooah. (2010). Ejon Satyagrahir Rajniti: Gopinath Bordoloi aru Axom – Tetia aru Etia. Guwahati: Assam Publication Board.
4. Rajat Sethi & Shubhrastha. (2017). The Last Battle of Saraighat: The Story of the BJP’s Rise in the North-East. India: Penguin Random House.
5. Udayon Misra. (2018). Burden of History: Assam and the Partition – Unresolved Issues. India: Oxford University Press.

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