The Plight of Bangla Language in the Linguistic-Political Situation of Assam

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The Plight of Bangla Language in the Linguistic-Political Situation of Assam
Assam is a state of the Republic of India located in the Greater Mymensingh and Greater Sylhet regions along the northeastern border between Bangladesh and India, in between which there lies a state of Meghalaya inhabited by the Garo and Khasia people. Its society and culture have been shaped by the influence of Hinduism and the Sanskrit language over centuries. However, some regions adjacent to Bangladesh, such as the Barak Valley (a region comprising Karimganj, Hailakandi, and Cachar districts) and the greater Goalpara region (a region comprising greater Goalpara and Dhubri districts), came under the influence of Islamization during the expansion of the Muslim empire, when the Muslim population increased due to migration and religious conversion. However, Assam proper remained an independent kingdom until it came under the control of Burma for a brief period in 1825 and was subsequently annexed to British India when the British occupied it after the defeat of Burma in the first Anglo-Burmese War in 1824–1826. After the annexation of Assam proper by British India, the Bangla-speaking population, most of whom were Muslims and a few were Hindus, kept spreading all over Assam through migration. As the migration of Bangla-speaking people went on, the demographic makeup began to change, instigating a new linguistic politics in Assam. By 1836, the British colonial authority had annexed it to the Bengal Presidency. It introduced Bangla as the language of education in schools and that of administration in government offices. However, this language policy created mass resentment among the Assamese speakers, leading to their protest against the Bangla language. As the Assamese language rights movement intensified, the British government was compelled to repel Bangla as an official language, re-introducing Assamese as the official language of Assam in 1874. At the independence of British India in 1947, the Barak Valley and Goalpara region became part of the Indian state of Assam. Thus, Bangla remained the official language of Assam for about 38 years, the legacy of which remained a sense of anti-Bangla and anti-Bangalee resentment among the Assamese.

In post-independence Assam, the ruling polity emerged as an enthusiast of Assamese linguistic supremacy. This anti-Bangalee polity has been promoting the Assamese language as a part of its exclusive Assamese language policy for the last decades. By now, the Assamese polity had grown hostile and violent towards the Bangla language and Bangla-speaking people. This is how the Bangla language and its dialects have been put in a detrimental linguistic political situation in the regions comprising a) Barak Valley, b) Greater Goal Para, and c) other districts in Assam. The motivations that are contributing to anti-Bangla and anti-Bangalee sentiment are as follows:
1) The dominance of Bangla speakers in the politics of Assam in the British and Post-British period,
2) Delaying the recognition of Assamese as an independent language by considering Assamese as a dialect of the Bangla language during the British period,
3) Linguistic-cultural comes out of the influence of the Bangla-speaking people,
4) Greater Bangladesh Theory, and
5) Illegal Bangladeshi Theory.

In recent decades, the Assamese polity has been exercising linguistic-political maneuvers against the Bangla language to interfere with its promotion of it. One instance of these many maneuvers that were undertaken was the introduction of Assamese as the only official language of Assam, ignoring the importance of Bangla, by enacting a law on October 10, 1960, which saw a protest both at the legislative assembly and in public. During the passage of this law, the MLA of Karimganj (North) Constituency, Ranendra Mohan Das, protested by stating that a language, i.e., Assamese, of one-third of the state population, should not be imposed on two-thirds of the population. However, this law was passed on October 24 of that year. This law, enacted to maneuver the Bangla language, sparked a long-running language rights movement in the Barak Valley. In the process of organizing the movement, 'Kachhar Gana Sangram Parishad' was formed on February 5, 1961. But at that time, no protest was seen in the Greater Goalpara and other Bangla-speaking regions. At one point during the four months of continuous agitation, the Assam government tried to dismantle the agitation through repression. On May 19, 1961, a massacre was carried out during the general strike, resulting in the deaths of 11 protesters. At this tragic incident, the agitation grew stronger, shaking the government of Assam, which compelled it to change the language policy and declare Bangla as the official language in the Barak Valley. Since that incident of the language rights movement, 'Bangla Language Martyrs' Day' has been observed in various parts of Assam on May 19.

The above is a story of the language rights movement through which the Bangla-speaking people in the Barak Valley got recognized in Bangla as the official language. In contrast, there was no movement for the cause of Bangla against the Assamese language among the Bangla-speaking people in Greater Goalpara and its adjoining districts. Because the Bangla-speaking people are afraid of being deported to Bangladesh as they are often identified as Bangladeshis and threatened with deportation to Bangladesh. Since the Goalpariya Bangla-speaking people could not dare launch their language rights movement, they have been forced to undergo education in Assamese and do their official work there. Hence, they are being deprived of exercising their rights to the Bangla language, have been losing their language, and are getting absorbed into the Assamese-speaking population in Greater Goalpara.

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