Did the first instance of Apartheid in India happen in Assam?- A case study
- In History & Culture
- 10:58 AM, Nov 14, 2018
- S K Deb
It’s unbelievable but true! The APARTHEID system of institutionalized racial segregation and discrimination was in existence in India’s Assam Province much before the expression earned a sense of disgust and loathing from its South African experience and notoriety.
In order to appease the Assamese middle class and to prevent the rural tension, the Colonial officials in the Nowgong district of Assam had initially devised an administrative measure called the ‘Line System’ on a trial basis in 1916. Its actual implementation started in 1920. Under this system, the Bengali Muslims of India’s Mymensingh District of East Bengal (then in India) adjacent to Assam – barely 150 KM away, were allowed to settle only in certain earmarked areas of Brahmaputra Valley of Assam. In the beginning, the Line System was not a clear-cut policy of the British government that used to encourage settlement of Muslims in Assam from its neighboring districts of East Bengal. The Colonial rulers engaged these extremely hardworking Bengalis as agricultural laborers for improving agricultural output and thereby augmenting their agricultural revenue. The Assamese gentry also welcomed the Bengalis with open arms and gladly facilitated their resettlement on the vast expanse of unused lands of Assam for their own profit.
Although the Line System was the result of some personal initiative of few British District officers in the wake of large-scale arrival of the Muslims from East Bengal since the early decades of 20th century, the colonial government and subsequently the successive Legislative Provincial Governments of Assam in British India did not interfere in the enforcement of the Line System. This was more or less formalized in the districts of Lower Assam, with the exception of Goalpara District where the system was reportedly not introduced. This discriminatory system was designed supposedly as a measure to protect the local Assamese against any possible disturbance of demographic plus communal balance and eventually against any social conflicts. With the introduction of this mechanism, the Government segregated the new Bengali speaking settlers from the ‘indigenous' Assamese communities of Assam.
Under the Line System four broad demarcations were made:
- Villages reserved exclusively for the ‘indigenous’ communities;
- Villages meant for the “immigrants” {the new settlers were being described with the misnomer “immigrants” although they too belonged to India}
- Villages in which a line was drawn on the map or on the ground, on one side of which the “immigrant” could settle; the other side was earmarked for the ‘indigenous’ communities; and,
- Villages where both the immigrant and indigenous people could settle.
The uncanny resemblance of the ‘Line System’ that was implemented in Assam in 1920 and the ‘Apartheid System’ that was followed in South Africa (1948 – 27 April 1994) is noteworthy. The unparalleled brutality in enforcing the eviction under the “Line System” in Assam was garishly documented by Abdul Matin Choudhury representing the Assam’s (then) Surma Valley Muslims and by Syed Abdur Rauf, representative of ‘Immigrant’ Muslims from Assam’s Barpeta District in their joint NOTE OF DISSENTS on the Report of the Line System Committee (1938) [1]. Only one paragraph under its sub-head EVICTION in page 29 of this NOTE OF DISSENTS quoted below should be enough to figure out the extent of cruelty that went with the “Line System”.
Page 29, EVICTION
“The story of Koraguri Reserve was repeated at village Pukuripar, mauza sub Chamaria in the Gauhati subdivision. About 58 families were in residence there for the last 6 or 7 years. On 26th January, only two days after the Line system Enquiry Committee left Gauhati, Eviction Party raided the village of Pukuripar, and burnt the entire village to ashes, rendering about 200 persons, including women and children, homeless. It is alleged that hardly any opportunity was given to the people to remove their belongings and that even articles of daily use, taken out of the house, were thrown into the fire again. A copy of the Holy Quran was also partially burnt in the all-consuming flames – a most sacrilegious incident, which no Muslim can contemplate without pangs of pain, horror, and dismay. The burnt copy of the Holy Quran was shown to us and is in our possession now.”
In fact, the racial and communal discriminations which formally started in Assam from 1920 and in South Africa from 1948 are synonymous with apartheid - a political system in which people of different races are separated.
Astonishingly as early as in March 1936, much before the system of apartheid started in South Africa, Abdul Mazid Zioshshms, a Council Member, complained in the Assam Legislative Council that on the one hand the Indians were protesting against the inhuman and indiscriminate attitude of the South African government towards Indian, then why similar sympathy should not be shown towards Bengali immigrants. He also mentioned that for political reasons the immigrants were counted upon but when their purposes were served they were thrown aside.” Zioshshms was speaking in support of a resolution brought by Nuruddin Ahmed demanding the abolition of the Line System as he felt that it had stood in the way of absorbing the immigrants into the Assamese Society. [2]
“After the abolition of slavery, the British settlers in the Natal (a province of South Africa) arranged with the Indian Government to recruit indentured labour for their sugar, tea and coffee plantations. Thousands of poor and illiterate Indians were enticed to go to South Africa with promises of attractive wages and repatriation after five years or the right to settle in Natal as free men. The first indentured laborers reached Natal on November 6, 1860. They were soon followed by traders and their assistants. After some time, the whites faced serious competition from the traders, as well as the laborers who became successful market gardeners after the expiry of their indenture. They began an agitation to make it impossible for Indians to live in Natal except in semi-slavery as indentured laborers. In 1893, when Natal was granted self-government, the Government began to enact a series of discriminatory and restrictive measures against the free Indians”.
What was true of the Indian laborers of South Africa in the latter half of the 20th Century was equally true, mutatis mutandis, of the Bengalis of Assam in the earlier decades of the same Century. If some words of the above paragraph were tweaked here and there, the above write-up could more or less be applied easily to describe the Assam’s situation as well. It would be amazing to note that the narrative quoted above actually appeared in a paper written at the request of the United Nations Special Committee for a special meeting in honor of Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, Prime Minister of India, in October 1985. This was published by the United Nations Centre against Apartheid and reprinted in London and New Delhi titled INDIA AND THE STRUGGLE AGAINST APARTHEID [3]
Going by the comparison and similarity, it won’t be wrong to assert that what was practiced in Assam as the “Line System” during the British rule was no less abhorrent than the “Apartheid System” of South Africa. That way, Assam has the infamous distinction as a pioneer of this condemnable practice of apartheid – a reality not known to many people even in Assam or in India not to speak of the world population at large. Perhaps Mahatma Gandhi, who was considered to be a messiah for his campaign against apartheid in South Africa, was also in the dark about this Assam-type apartheid that prevailed in India in the name of “Line System”. It was introduced by the British and subsequently continued by the Legislative Provincial Government of Assam. Nevertheless, it is most unlikely for someone of the stature of Mahatma Gandhi to turn a blind eye on the evil practice that he stood against in his entire political life to allow it to be followed at his own backyard - knowingly.
On 16th March 1936, a resolution was brought in the Assam Council by its member Nuruddin Ahmed demanding the abolition of the Line System as he felt that it had stood in the way of absorbing the immigrants into the Assamese Society. In support of his resolution, he said that the immigrants had long been suffering from disadvantages and hardships under the Line System, like -
- The immigrants could not be engaged as ‘adhiers’ or ‘bhagidars’ by the owners of annual lease lands outside the Line as persons engaging them might lose his land as per Assam Land rules.
- Due to restriction on both the immigrants and local people from taking lands outside their reserved areas, the prices of land remained low.
- The Line System effectively obstructed the assimilation of immigrants with the Assamese people in spite of earnest solicitude expressed by the Assamese people for it.
- It gave the immigrants a feeling of segregation and also of inferiority which they would not relish.
- It kept a sense of animosity and rivalry between the immigrants and the local people.
- For lack of close co-operation between the two sections of the people, the development of the different districts of the Assam was generally hampered.
- The Line System facilitated to a great extent the exploitation of the immigrants by non-immigrants.
Mr. L.A Roffee, a European member, said that he had sympathy with the indigenous Assamese people who might be swamped, but eventually the weaker was bound to go to the wall in favor of the stronger. The indigenous people must work out for their own salvation. Mr.W.L.Scott, Revenue member pointed out that the Line system could not be continued indefinitely. He said that the “immigrants” had cut off all their connection with the place of their birth and must be regarded as people of Assam. He admitted that the barriers, which for the time being separate communities of different economic levels were artificial. Either the indigenous people must rise to the level of the immigrants or be submerged. Other members also put forward various reasons in supporting the demand for abolition of the Line System like (a) similar rules do not apply to the ex-tea garden laborers and up-country people; (b) by abolishing Line System, immigrants could easily be merged into the Assamese people; (c) it's undesirable and unfair that the settlement rules should be harsh to one set of settlers and quite easy as regards others; (d) since the Indians were protesting against inhuman and indiscriminate attitude of the South African government towards Indian, so similar sympathy should be shown towards Bengali immigrants (e) for political reasons the immigrants were counted upon, but when their purposes were served, they were thrown aside; (f) the Line System not only blocked the way of expansion on the part of the immigrants but also tended to encourage the racial distinction among different communities. However, the resolution was lost by seven votes to twenty. All the seven supporters were Muslims and almost all the Hindu members of the Council voted against the motions. [4]
"In the Budget Session of 1940, the immigrant leader Abdur Rouf accused the Congress of being ‘hypocritic (sic) preachers of Hindu-Muslim Unity as their principles and professions are but poles apart’.
In his opinion “they are very particular about providing land to the tigers, rhinos, buffaloes, and other wild beasts to roam in but they won't give land to the landless immigrants to live upon …. Some twenty lakh bighas of land have been kept as a grazing reserve for half-a-lakh of buffaloes. On the other hand, one lakh human souls are going to perish for want of food, clothing, and shelter”
Another League member remarked: “It is really surprising that the exponent of the Indian National Congress which is pledged to the one-nation theory should raise on artificial barrier between Indian and Indian against the peaceful settlement in vast cultivable waste land lying fallow for centuries, only on the ground that they happen to be Muslims” [5]
“If Sir, your ancestors came to Assam with Mirzumla or Ahom kings, if you came as invaders, despoiled the population, usurped the land and settle here, you will be called an indigenous Assamese, you will be treated as a pet child, you will be shown all the favor that a benign government can bestow. But Sir, if your ancestors came as pioneers, if they developed the country, if they cleared the jungle and made prosperous villages and habitable tracts, if they contributed to the development of the province, you will be treated as a pariah in your land and you will be saddled with all the difficulties and all the disadvantages that human ingenuity can invent. Sir, a more unjust, a more illogical and a more absurd system it is difficult to conceive ……………. a sort of vested interest is created in favor of the so-called indigenous population to the detriment of the interest of the so-called immigrants”.
This fiery speech delivered by Abdul Matin Chowdhury, a Muslim League leader of national status, continues to stand out as a charter of the rights of the ‘immigrants’ in Assam, showing the sense of injustice felt out at the time in 1937 when Assam politics was overwhelmed on the question whether Line System should go or stay.
Abdul Matin Chowdhury repeated the specific charge that while migrants from Madras, Ranchi and elsewhere were welcome to settle in Assam, an objection was raised towards the predominantly Muslim settlers from Bengal. Just as Jinnah's ‘two nation' theory was about to be asserted, Chowdhury warned against the political effect of this policy of segregation stating ‘it closes all avenues of approach and reconciliation between the two major races inhabiting this province. The political effect of this policy is disastrous’ [6]
That was a prophetic speech delivered by Abdul Matin Chowdhury in the year 1937. Subsequently, a nine-member Line System Committee was appointed by Assam Provincial Government under the Chairmanship of F. W. Hockenhuli where Abdul Matin Chowdhury was also made a member. The composition of the Committee gave representation to almost all interest concerned namely two Assamese Hindu - Sarveswar Barua and Kameswar Das, one Plains Tribal - Rabi Chandra Kachari, one Depressed Class - Dr. Mahendra Nath Saikia, one Surma Valley Muslim - Abdul Motin Choudhury, one Immigrant Muslim - Syed Abdur Rauf, one Assamese Muslim - Khan Bahadur Sayidur Rahman. But surprisingly, there was no representative of a large number of Bengali Hindus of Assam in the Committee as if they did not have any stake in the affairs of Assam.
The Committee submitted its 34 page 9 Chapter joint reports in 1938 with a SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION in the 9th Chapter plus three Notes of Dissent. Significantly, the three Notes of Dissent were submitted by as many as six members out of a total of seven elected members in the Committee (excluding two Government nominees). The first note of dissent was submitted jointly by Rabi Chandra Kachari, Kameswar Das, Sarveswar Barua, the second one was submitted jointly by Abdul Matin Choudhury and Syed Abdur Rauf and the last one by Dr.Mahendra Nath Saikia. These notes carried widely conflicting views. The lone exception who did not dissent on the report was Khan Bahadur Sayidur Rahman, representing the Assamese Muslim!
In one of the paragraphs of their joint NOTES OF DISSENT, Rabi Chandra Kachari, Kameswar Das and Sarveswar Barua, in Page 20 of the Report wrote:-
“We look upon the Assam Valley as the home of the Assamese people – who have got a vested interest in the soil of these districts – which they successfully defended against hordes of invaders in pre-British days. If they had the sovereign power to-day they would have still resisted the occupation of the lands here by outsiders against their will by armed force if necessary. When the Assamese people welcomed the British Government as their rulers they did not anticipate that the new rulers would invite foreigners to come in such large numbers so as to swamp the indigenous population. The present Government, therefore, has got a sacred duty by the Assamese as the guardians of their rights and privilege to protect them from the onrush of Eastern Bengal immigrants. Development of the province from the point of view of land revenue should not be only consideration – nay not even the main consideration.”
Obviously, the three members of the Committee were still emotionally attached to the era of the Ahom Kings and the idea of ‘one India’ propagated by the Indian National Congress at that time did not soak into their psyche. Eighty years down the line, the mentality of some Assamese leaders of present-day Assam has remained the same. They still consider the entire Bengali community in Assam as ‘foreigners’ with the only difference that presently they do not speak it out as blatantly as the three members of the Line System Committee did in the year 1938. They now speak it in hushed tones but continue to act almost in a similar fashion always adopting the most ingenious methods to humiliate the so-called ‘foreigners‘ in every conceivable way from time to time. In fine, the ghost of “foreigners” is still chasing some Assamese leaders.
Amazingly, it may be noted that only in 19th October 2006 the Government of Assam had constituted a Committee of Ministers to examine inter alia the definition of “Assamese people”! [7]
The joint NOTE OF DISSENT by Abdul Matin Chaudhury and Syed Abdur Roup had vividly described the reality that existed in Assam in those days; what was happening in the name of the Line System; and, how brutally the eviction drive was conducted against the new settlers. According to them, even the proletariat including their helpless womenfolk and children were not spared from the cruelty of the merciless ‘Eviction Party’. There was an unmitigated accusation against the East Bengal Immigrants, as a class and race. The problem, essentially economic and administrative, was converted into communal, racial and political. Wide outlook and catholicity of views were conspicuously absent. Bigotry and parochialism predominated. Under various sub-heads, the NOTE exposed some dark and tragic realities. Only one paragraph narrated under one its sub-head LANGUAGE AND CULTURE depicted below in its totality would be enough to realize the extent of racial discrimination the so-called “immigrants” had to face even during those days.
“The spurious character of opposition to immigrants, on economic grounds, is evident from the persistency with which it is urged that the East Bengal Immigrants must “assimilate” with the Assamese by “adopting their language and culture.” The word “assimilation” hardly admits of precise definition. To ask a Bengalee, to give up his mother tongue and inherited culture, of which he is as much proud as an Assamese of his own, in exchange for a patch of land – to which he is as much entitled as an Assamese – is to ask him barter away his birthright for a mere mess of pottage. This attempt to convert the Bengalee immigrants into an Assamese, under the duress of economic pressure, is foredoomed to failure. Years of German rule failed to compel the people of Alsace and Lorraine to adopt German language and German culture; where mightiest forces, in other parts of the world, have failed, the protagonists of Assam Sanrakhini are not likely to succeed. Minorities in all parts of the world cling tenaciously to their own language and culture. The League of Nations everywhere concedes to the minorities this inalienable right. This is one of the fundamental rights which no one would light-heartedly agree to relinquish. Taking advantage of the numerical superiority of Assamese in Local Boards, in Assam Valley, and of the economic helplessness of the immigrants to start educational institutions unaided, systematic attempts are being made to impose Assamese as the medium of instruction even in primary schools. Boys of tender age, living in compact immigrant areas, segregated from contact with Assamese boys of similar age, never hearing of Assamese spoken either at home or outside are required to have their lessons in Assamese when they attend the elementary school. No wonder progress of education amongst the immigrants is retarded, and one has to tour many a mile, before coming across an Immigrant Matriculate. Grants from Local Boards are refused to primary schools, which use Bengal as a medium of instructions. So the practice has grown in many schools of boys keeping two sets of books. One in Assamese and other in Bengali, the former for inspection by Visitors and the latter for actual use. The position would have been ludicrous if it were not so tragic too. No one objects to Bengalee Immigrants “learning” to speak the Assamese language. In many cases, it may be a necessity for daily intercourse in life, but to insist that the “Immigrant from East Bengal, Sylhet and Cachar should adopt” it, is an entirely different proposition. There ought to be limits, to which even blatant aggressive Jingoism can go. This digression into controversy over ‘language’ and culture has been necessitated by the fact that during the course of our enquiry, this topic loomed large in the statements and oral evidences of the Assamese witnesses and the cultural conquest of the immigrants and their “assimilation” into Assamese fold has been a prominent plank in the Assamese programme. The question of Line System has thus been complicated by the introduction of this irrelevant and extraneous consideration.”
For the Assamese, the fear of being swamped by the Bengalis seemed to be more dangerous than the threat of poverty and underdevelopment. This was evident in 1939 when a bill was presented in the Assam Legislature to impose tax on Agricultural income aimed at taking care of revenue deficit of the Province. Participating in the debate, its member Abdul Matin Chaudhury criticized the Government with another stinging speech asserting:
“ … He (Hon'ble Finance Minister) says the Bill is solely intended to wipe out the provincial deficits. I have always held, and I never missed an opportunity of expressing it, that there is enormous scope for expansion of the revenues of this province by developing the unsettled areas of land lying idle and fellow; hundreds and thousands of landless people are clamoring for land, but Government will not provide for these landless people. If they only do so there will be enough money not only to wipe off the deficit but also for meeting the requirements of the Government. The All India Congress passed the Resolution on Fundamental Rights at Karachi, which was proclaimed as the Magna Carta of the people of India. When it is a question of blackmailing the Assam Oil Company, the Congress remembers its Karachi Resolution. But when it is a question of dispensing with “domicile certificate for the Bengali settlers, or the question of granting land to the landless immigrants, Karachi Resolution is put on the shelf. The Hon’able Fakhruddin talks of the masses. His duty is to give land to the landless. It is the racial prejudice of the Congress Government that is at the root of all financial difficulties in Assam. I am not prepared to agree to the imposition of the taxes on Agricultural income when better and less onerous methods are available to the Government…..” [8]
It is pertinent to mention here that another discriminatory practice first introduced by the British against the Bengalis (both Hindus and Muslims) in Assam was designating this group of people as “immigrants” rather than migrants - putting a question mark on their citizenship even before the partition of India. Although the Bengalis came from the adjoining districts, both within and outside Assam, the British administration dubbed them “immigrants”, as if they came from a foreign land. Surprisingly, this misnomer was applicable for the Bengalis alone but other outsiders who had migrated from faraway places like UP, Bihar, Madras etc. were kept out of it. “The word ‘immigrant’ was defined in Mr. Thomas’ (District Officer, Nowgong) standing order in 1934 as ‘including all persons coming from districts in Bengal and Surma Valley but not including tea garden coolies and ex-coolies…”[9] (Assam’s Surma Valley was the amalgam of two politico-administrative units of present Barak Valley and Sylhet District, now in Bangladesh). At first the British administration distorted the identity of the new Muslim settlers only but subsequently, this misnomer ‘immigrants' became applicable to the entire Bengali population, both Hindu and Muslim, of Assam which included the aboriginal Bengalis of Assam as well. Thus, both indigenous and fresh Bengali settlers literally became foreigners in their own land even before independence of India that carried a far-reaching ramification even today!
More than eighty years down the line, the same allegations, the same grievances, the same discriminations, the same rivalry, the same conflicts, and the same racial prejudices still exist in Assam. The century-old apprehension of being swamped by the large-scale ‘immigration’ threatening their distinctive identity and becoming minority in their own homeland still persist in the minds of the Assamese people. So, time to time drive is still going on in Assam against the so-called ‘outsiders’ or ‘foreigners’ or ‘Bangladeshis”. A Bengali by any name finds it daunting in Assam!
As I was writing this narrative in the comfort of my home in Kolkata, a newspaper headline on the 22nd October 2018 “NRC: depression drives Assam lawyer to death” [10] shocked me. “Third such case since publication of the complete draft of the NRC on July 30” was its sub-headline. Again within seven days, a similar news report under the headline “Assam man marked doubtful voter found dead behind home”. [11] A Bengali newspaper reported this to be case of another suicide [12]. It sent a chill down my spine!
I instantly recalled that as high as four million-odd residents failed to get their names incorporated in the final draft of Assam's National Register of Citizens (NRC) published on 30th July 2018. The mere thought that I almost stayed back in Assam where I was born and brought up unnerved me for a moment. Luckily for me and for my family, I bade adieu to Assam ten years ago when some locals started calling me “Bangladeshi’ in a sotto voce tone behind my back. The fact that I was born and brought up in Assam way back in 1950 is not a guarantee, I was told, for my name to be incorporated in the final draft of Assam’s NRC, had I stayed back and applied. Putting together the real story of 1930s “Line System” in Assam and that of Assam’s NRC of 2018 side by side, it became evident that there is something more to this than meets the eye!
Significantly, 1951 Assam NRC is being updated with the sole aim of detecting and deporting “illegal foreigners”.
Source
[1] Report of the Line System Committee (1938) is an Assam Government Publication that was obtainable from the Office of the High Commissioner for India. One copy of the same is presently available at the National Library, Kolkata.
[2].Page – 108, Chapter IV The Immigration Issue, Line System and the Assam Politics http0 0 ://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/90311/10/10_chapter%204.pdf).
[4] Page 107 to 111 – http://shodhganga.Inflibnet.ac.in/ bitstream/10603/ 90311/10/10_chapter%204.pdf
[5] Page 200, ASSAM IN THE DAYS OF BHASANI by Bimal J. Dev and Dilip K. Lahari J. Asiatic Soc. Bangladesh (Hum.) xxiv-vi, 1979-81.
[6] Page 159 – 160, Remembering Sylhet by Aninditata Dasgupta.
[7] Chapter 3, 3.1.1 of (undated) White Paper on Foreigners Issue brought out the Government of Assam Political and Home Department available at https://assam.gov.in/web/home-and-political-department/white-paper
[8] Proceedings of the Joint Sitting of the Two Chambers of the Assam Legislature Official Report Volume 1, No. 1, Thursday 3rd and Friday 4th August 1969 on the Assam Agricultural Income-tax bill, 1939 – Page 23.
[9] Para 11. Page 4, Report of the Line System Committee (1938).
[10] The Hindu, page 3, October 22, 2018 (Kolkata edition).
[11] The Hindu, page 2, October 29, 2018 (Kolkata edition).
[12] Bengali Newspaper Dainik Jugasankha, page 1, October 29, 2018 (Kolkata edition).
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