[ This is Essay No. 37 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

The Assam Agitation: A Subjective History

by Nitoo Das

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But then, I believe, all histories are subjective.

I was seven when the Assam Agitation started in 1979. I was ‘promoted’ to the next class without a final examination. I do not remember whether that made me happy or sad. Things at home seemed different. I would get very worried if I had to ask my parents for even the tiniest of new things. I managed with one pencil for weeks and when it eroded into a stump and became impossible to write with, I attached the dry, hollow body of an old pen to make it longer. I knew my parents had not received their salaries and they were struggling hard not to show the wrinkles in their small world.

My father’s youngest sister and a cousin who stayed with us joined the Agitation. Both were young and full of anger. They were constantly at meetings, mobilising people, picketing and sitting on dharnas and going for long, protest marches all over the city. I began to find it exciting. I did not know what they were fighting for. I only knew that Bangladeshi was a dirty word. Miyan was a dirty word.

I went with my aunt to early morning classes where we were taught to use lathis as weapons. I became quite adept at moving lathis in circular motions around my shoulders. As the youngest in the group, I received a lot of affection from my aunt’s friends. Most of them were students at Gauhati University and belonged to the AASU–the All Assam Students’ Union. Many had already dropped out of university. They created catchy slogans and painted posters after the lathi drill. We also sang songs. I think my father objected to my aunt taking me with her to such places and the 4 a.m. trips stopped as abruptly as they had started. I was heartbroken, but school soon reopened and I forgot about the intoxication of holding a lathi in my child-hands.

My aunt, whom I called Na-pehi, and my cousin, Anjan-da, became more and more embroiled in the movement. Whenever talk of unscheduled checking of houses took place, they frantically went around burning incriminating documents in the backyard. The flowers would be covered with bits of burnt-black paper for days afterward. Once, we ‘saved’ a young man who was running away from the CRPF by hiding him at our home. I was not allowed to see him. While escaping through the dry sandbanks of the Brahmaputra, Na-pehi was photographed by some intrepid photographer and her picture appeared on the front page of The Assam Tribune. I remember feeling proud.

The nightmares started quite early, though. The blackouts, the continuous fear of searches, the relentless patrolling by the CRPF, the lathi-charges, the protest marches, tales of torture inside jails, all this took a toll on me. My sleeping hours were peopled by demons, screams in the dark, cries of wolves from across the city, swollen corpses pulled from the river.

One night, I participated in a long, silent march. All of us were given torches to carry. I have no idea why I was taken, but I remember being with my father. I walked fearfully with my torch in my hands, uneasy about the lighted drops of kerosene falling from it. The silence, the faces radiant with sweat and reflected fire, the terror with which I walked–these are images that remain with me, memories intense with the scars of witnessing something beyond my grasp.

I did not know what was right and what was wrong. I did not understand the idea of a ‘pure’ Assam. I did not know why the Bangladeshi immigrants were targeted. I only saw them as fishermen selling fish by the river, sometimes as rickshaw-pullers. They were poor–people who could not speak ‘proper’ Assamese. Most of them were also Muslim. The fact that I was a child could easily be used to throttle guilt. I have used it, still use it.

When Nellie happened in February 1983, I was three months away from turning eleven. When news started trickling in to the city, the hush at home, in the streets was palpable. The silence throbbed with something unspeakable. I overheard a neighbour whisper, “They are cutting off the breasts of Bangladeshi women.” Even now, I wish I had never heard it. Besieged as I was by the panic caused by a body I could no longer recognise as mine, this statement reverberated within me. It has lived with me and grown with me through 1984, 1992, 2002. It stays with me like a canker that refuses to heal.

The Agitation, which had mostly remained peaceful through the years, had to come face to face with this aberration. Or was it an aberration? What if this was the natural outcome of a movement founded on intolerance? I think both Na-pehi and Anjan-da had to deal with this. Even if they did not, I would forever have to deal with it on their behalf.

Those mornings when I walked to Jurpukhuri Paar with a lathi in my hand and slogans on my lips–mornings sweet with birdsong and dew and the chatter of young men and women with a vision in their hearts–are forever tainted in my memories. Nothing will ever cleanse them. They will always droop like flowers heavy with the weight of burnt evidence.

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Nitoo Das blogs at river’s blue elephants.