New Delhi, Dec 21 (PTI) A new book discusses and debates Assam’s complex and troubled history since the early 1940s and shows how interconnected layers of political, environmental, economic and cultural processes shaped the making of the idea of this northeastern state during this tumultuous period.
“The Quest for Modern Assam: A History, 1942- 2000”, written by Arupjyoti Saikia, seeks to shed light on Assam’s past in newer ways that, in turn, will show fresh ways of viewing its present.
The book also aims to familiarise the readers with how a political and cultural region was formed in post-Independence India and how a state had to walk a difficult terrain to be a part of India’s complex nation-making process.
It traces the development of the state apparatus in Assam, and how different elite segments captured this arena through electoral and other processes.
The author says the idea of Assam has constantly evolved, with great adjustments having to be made in response to tectonic fractures caused by numerous and varied challenges.
The chapters move from the 1940s to recent times, from the British Indian province of Assam – that is, all of present-day Northeast India, minus Sikkim, Manipur and Tripura – to the present-day truncated Assam, minus Nagaland, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh.
The book illuminates, among other things, three crucial developments that have dominated the state’s long journey – Assam’s continuous sense of grievance against India’s federal economic arrangements; its relentless struggle to combat its internal challenges arising from the political, social and economic aspirations of various communities; and, most significantly, the evolving anxieties against those who were considered to be dangerous ‘outsiders’.
The decades between the early 1940s and the end of the 20th century, which are the focus of the book, proved to be decisive in the making of modern Assam.
Modern Assam was born out of several momentous events that played out from the mid-20th century onwards. This book does not necessarily encompass only Assam’s tumultuous past, but highlights promises for Assam’s future.
According to Saikia, his book amply demonstrates that Assam, like any other major state of India, could be a window to comprehending the enactment of the idea of modern India.
“Studying Assam of the post-1947 period brings into view the functioning of an Indian state whose regional identity is subsumed by many layers of cultural and social identities,” he writes.
“As the book recounts, Assam’s state apparatus took different forms after Independence and came to be controlled mainly by Assamese speakers, though this did not go unchallenged. the more the elites and the ruling class tried to impose a uniform political-cultural identity on those who lived in the territory, the more elusive their goal became,” he goes on to add.
Saikia, a professor of history at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, also says the “Assamization of the state machinery” vastly amplified the political turmoil of the 1960s and the 1980s.
“Yet, Assam was also a state where the aspirations of diverse communities – ethnic, linguistic and religious – were given shape and, sometimes, accomplished. In doing so, multilingualism and multiculturalism discreetly secured a place, despite intermittent periods of political and cultural turbulence,” the book, published by Penguin Random House, says. PTI ZMN RB RB
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