Bongal Kheda

Bongal Kheda[1][2][3][4] was a xenophobic movement in India, which aimed at purging out non-native job competitors by the job-seeking Assamese.[5][3][6][7][8][9] Soon after the Independence of India, the Assamese Hindu middle class gained political control in Assam and tried to gain social and economic parity with their competitors, the Bengali Hindu middle class.[10] A significant period of property damage, ethnic policing and even instances of street violence occurred in the region.[11] The exact timeline is disputed, though many authors agree the 1960s saw a height of disruption. It was part of a broader discontent within Assam that would foreshadow the Assamese Language Movement and the greater Assam Movement.

Background
Robin Dey, an ethnic Bengali Hindu writer of Assamese language teenage literature was forced to leave Assam.

Beginning in 1826, the British East India Company gradually brought the entire Northeast India under control and included Assam in the Bengal Presidency.[12] Over time educated elite Bengali Hindus began occupying colonial administrative and professional positions, locally they were called as Babus and the emerging Assamese nationalists began looking at both the British as well as this class of Bengalis as outsiders.[13] The concern for rapidly increasing amount of refugees arriving from East Bengal and later newly formed East Pakistan in the 1940s, created tension among the Indigenous Assamese people and many tribes in the state.[14] The first influx of Hindu refugees in considerable number was in October 1946 following the Noakhali riots.[15] By May 1949 the number of total refugees reached two-and-half lakhs increasing up to 2,740,455.[16] In May 1948, ethnic tension escalated between the Assamese people and the Bengali Hindus in the Paan bazaar area of Guwahati, which soon spread to different parts of Assam.[17] Bengali-owned shops were looted in Guwahati. Abusive wall graffiti were put out across the streets of Guwahati such as "Who ate all the fish?, the Bengalis! So out with them."[18] In 1956, there were widespread disturbances in the erstwhile undivided Goalpara district, when the States Reorganization Commission visited the district to ascertain the feasibility of the district's merger with West Bengal. Sarat Chandra Sinha, the Congress MLA who would later be the Chief minister of Assam, is known to have rallied in different parts of Goalpara district and made provocative speeches against the Bengali Hindus, instigating mob violence against them.[18] Around 250 Bengali medium schools were converted to Assamese medium schools overnight. As per a letter by PM Jawaharlal Nehru to the Assam government, at least one Bengali Hindu was stabbed.[19]

Annual Arrival of Refugees in Assam in 1946–1951[20] −
Place of Origin Year Number
East Bengal 1946 8,593
East Bengal 1947 42,346
East Bengal 1948 41,740
East Bengal 1949 33,138
East Bengal 1950 1,44,51−
East Bengal 1950 (Jan.&Feb.) 3,479
West Pakistan - 647
Total 2,74,455
Arrival of Hindu Refugees from East Pakistan after 1951[21][22][23][24]
Year Population Reason
(1952-1958) 2,12,545 1950 East Pakistan riots
(1964-1968) 10,68,455 1964 East Pakistan riots
1971 3,47,555 Bangladesh Liberation War
Total 16,28,555 Overall immigration are caused due to communal disturbance

Attacks
A Bengali Hindu refugee child being taken aboard a lorry at Alipurduar.

The attacks on the Bengali Hindus started in June 1960. It first started at the Cotton College in Guwahati and then spread to the rest of the state.[25] Assamese mob attacked Bengali Hindu settlements in the Brahmaputra Valley.[18] There were reports of stone-throwing by Assamese in a Bengali neighbourhood called Das Colony in Maligaon area. A petrol pump on the main road between Maligaon and Guwahati, the largest city in Assam, was set on fire. The Assamese people felt that the fewer Bengalis within their territory, the better. The 1979 agitation witnessed frequent curfews and strikes called by the All Assam Students Union (AASU) and other organisations belonging to the local community. At least two young Bengali men in Maligaon were murdered. One incident that happened where a young Assamese man, a school dropout in his early 20s, who used to reside in Maligaon locality. He stabbed his own childhood Bengali friend, who had just joined the Indian Air Force, to death in the middle of the street.[26] Violence took place in 25 villages of Goreswar in Kamrup district. A one-man enquiry commission was set up under Justice Gopal Mehrotra. According to the report nine Bengali were killed and more than one hundred were injured. There was at least one incident of attack on women. 4,019 huts and 58 houses belonging to the Bengalis were vandalised and destroyed. The District Magistrate of Guwahati who happened to be a Bengali Hindu was attacked by a mob of around 100 people inside his residence and stabbed.[27] The Deputy Inspector General of Police, also a Bengali Hindu was also stabbed.[27] The Bengali students of Guwahati University, Dibrugarh Medical College and Assam Medical College were forcibly expelled from the institutions.[28] In Dibrugarh, the Bengali Hindus were attacked in the mixed localities. Bengali Hindu houses were looted, burnt and the occupants were beaten up, knifed and driven out.[25] On 31 August 2019, the names of more than 13 lakh Bengalis were removed from the final list of N. R. C. based on 1971. In this situation, the Bengalis all over India, including Assam, is living with anxiety today.[29]

Displacement

Thousands of Bengali Hindus were displaced from the Brahmaputra Valley and they subsequently migrated to West Bengal. According to one estimate 500,000 Bengalis were displaced from Assam.[30] In West Bengal, thousands of refugees arrived in phases. The first batch of around 4,000 refugees arrived between 5 and 11 July 1960. The next batch of 447 arrived between 12 and 20 July. The rest arrived after 31 July. During July – September, around 50,000 Bengalis took shelter in West Bengal.

Robin Dey, the Bengali-born creator of teenage adventure series of Dasyu Bhaskar in Assam was forced to leave Assam and settle in Kolkata.[31] In 1959, Sukomal Purakayastha, who was later martyred during the Bengali Language Movement in 1961, was forced to wind up his business in Dibrugarh and flee to Barak Valley.[32]

Cumulative refugee figures from Assam
in Jalpaiguri district, West Bengal
Date Cumulative figures
16 July 1960 9,365
1 August 1960 8,975
21 August 1960 10,043
25 August 1960 50,000

Aftermath

Language Movement
Main article: Assamese Language Movement

In 1972, large scale ethnic riots erupted in Assam again when Assamese groups demanded for making Assamese the sole language for writing examinations under the prestigious Gauhati university, where as usual the Bengali Hindus were mostly targeted. This time the violence remained concentrated mostly in the lower Assam districts with minor outbreaks reported in Sibsagar and Dibrugarh.[33] Around 14,000 Bengali Hindus fled to West Bengal and elsewhere in the North East.

Assam Movement
Assamese mob drawing wall graffiti where Jyoti Basu, the then Chief Minister of West Bengal is described as the Bastard son of West Bengal and Bengalis as Indian dogs .
Main article: Assam Movement

During the first phase of the Assam Agitation, Bengali settlements were attacked throughout the Brahmaputra Valley. The killing of Rabi Mitra, an ethnic Bengali technical officer at Oil India's headquarters in Duliajan caused widespread panic among the Bengalis. In 1983, the Bengali Hindus were attacked again during the anti-foreign agitation. In Dhemaji district, the Bengali houses were vandalised by rioting Assamese mobs in Silapathar. Cases have been reported when tribals (Mishing people) were instigated to attack government sanctioned Bengali Hindu refugee settlements in the Lakhimpur district, resulting in horrendous massacres where Bengali babies were snatched from their mothers and thrown to fire, alive. Extremely abusive graffiti targeting Bengali Hindus became a common hate spreading mechanism for the Assamese rioters. "If you see a snake and a Bengali, kill the Bengali first", "Assam for Assamese", etc. were easily seen written on the graffitied walls across the Brahmaputra valley.[34] The Khasi tribals of Meghalaya, under the banner of Khasi Students Union (KSU) and under active collaboration and patronage of the Assamese rioters started targeting domicile Bengalis in Meghalaya, resenting their dominance in jobs and business. The attacks mostly restricted to Shillong. In 1980, a Bengali legislator was killed and the Bengali localities came under systematic attack repeatedly.

See also

Notes
  1. Manish, Sai (11 December 2019). "Resurgence of Bengali-phobia driving anti-CAB protests in Assam". Business Standard India.
  2. "The word Bongal is used in a wide sense in Assam. It does not refer to Bengalis alone. It embraces all outsiders." (Chakravarti 1960:1193)
  3. Bhaumik, Subir (1 January 2000). "Negotiating Access: Northeast India". Refugee Survey Quarterly. 19 (2): 148. doi:10.1093/rsq/19.2.142. ISSN 1020-4067.
  4. Horowitz, Donald L. (30 September 2020). "6. An Economy of Antipathy: Target Selection and the Imperatives of Violence". The Deadly Ethnic Riot. University of California Press. pp. 194–223. doi:10.1525/9780520342057-008. ISBN 978-0-520-34205-7.
  5. "The movement known as Bongal Kheda sponsored by Assamese job-seekers to drive out non-Assamese competitors." (Chakravarti 1960:1193)
  6. Banerjee, Paula; Chaudhury, Sabyasachi Basu Ray; Das, Samir Kumar; Adhikari, Bishnu (2005). Internal Displacement in South Asia: The Relevance of the UN's Guiding Principles. SAGE. p. 157. ISBN 978-0-7619-3313-7.
  7. Sufian, Abu (17 September 2020). "Geopolitics of the NRC-CAA in Assam: Impact on Bangladesh–India Relations". Asian Ethnicity. 23 (3): 556–586. doi:10.1080/14631369.2020.1820854. ISSN 1463-1369. S2CID 225010826.
  8. Singh, Birinder Pal (28 June 2016). "Mazhabi Sikhs of Shillong and Guwahati (India)". Sikh Formations. 13 (3): 177. doi:10.1080/17448727.2016.1147172. ISSN 1744-8727. S2CID 148236402.
  9. Nag, Sajal (1990). Roots of Ethnic Conflict: Nationality Question in North-east India. Manohar Publications. p. 140. ISBN 978-81-85054-93-3.
  10. "In 1947 the Assamese, particularly the Assamese Hindu middle class, won control over the government of the newly formed state of independent India. For the first time in a hundred and fifty years the Assamese were back in power. They used that control to assert the paramountcy of Assamese cultural identity and to seek economic and social equality in relation to the Bengali Hindu middle classes-their rivals for jobs in the administrative services, in the professions, and in the private sector." (Weiner 1983:284)
  11. Bijay Kumar, Dhar (31 July 2015). এনআরসি আরও একটি পৃথক রাজ্যের দাবিকে উস্কে না দেয়. Anandabazar Patrika (in Bengali). Kolkata: ABP Group. Retrieved 19 October 2018.
  12. "The British East India Company, with its center in Calcutta, gradually extended its control over the entire northeast region and in 1838 Assam was incorporated into the Bengal Presidency." (Weiner 1983:282)
  13. "This migration was accompanied by an influx of educated Bengali Hindus into positions in the administrative services and in the professions. The British dismantled the Ahom ruling structure, made Bengali the official language, and recruited Bengali Hindus to run the administrative services. By the beginning of the twentieth century Assamese nationalists were pitted against the Bengalis as well as against the British, both of whom were seen as alien rulers." (Weiner 1983:283)
  14. "Illegal Migration into Assam". www.satp.org. Retrieved 6 July 2019.
  15. Nag, Sajal (2015). "Nehru and the North East" (PDF). Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 October 2017. Retrieved 6 July 2019.
  16. Census of India, 1951, Vol. XII, Part I (I-A), 353.
  17. Nag, Sajal (2015). Nehru and the North East (PDF). p. 12. ISBN 978-93-83650-81-1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 October 2017. Retrieved 15 October 2017.
  18. Internal Displacement in South Asia: The Relevance of the UN's Guiding Principles. Sage. 2005. pp. 150–151. ISBN 0761933131.
  19. Bhattacharya, Nitish (25 July 2015). অসম বাংলাভাষীরও, বুঝতে হবে শাসকদের. Anandabazar Patrika (in Bengali). Kolkata: ABP Group. Retrieved 26 June 2017.
  20. India, Census of (1951). "Annual Arrival of Refugees in Assam in 1946–1951". Census of India. XII, Part I (I-A): 353 – via web.archive.org.
  21. India (1951). "Annual Arrival of Refugees in Assam in 1946–1951". Census of India. XII, Part I (I-A): 353 – via web.archive.org.
  22. http://iussp2005.princeton.edu › ...PDF The Brahmaputra valley of India can be compared only with the Indus ...
  23. "iussp2005". iussp2005.princeton.edu. Archived from the original on 22 April 2021. Retrieved 22 April 2021.
  24. "Adelaide Research & Scholarship: Home". digital.library.adelaide.edu.au. Retrieved 22 April 2021.
  25. Datta, Rathin. "A Taste of British Judiciary & infamous 'Bongal Kheda'". TripuraINFOWAY.com. Tripura Infoway News. Retrieved 15 October 2017.
  26. "We foreigners: What it means to be Bengali in India's Assam".
  27. Chakravarti (1960)
  28. Chowdhury, Anwar (19 February 2016). যে আগুন ছড়িয়ে গেল.... Daily Ittefaq (in Bengali). Dhaka. Retrieved 26 June 2017.
  29. এনআরসি-তে ১২ লক্ষ হিন্দুর নাম বাদ, অসমে প্যাঁচে বিজেপি. www.anandabazar.com (in Bengali). Retrieved 10 May 2021.
  30. Bhaumik, Subir (2008). Samir Kumar Das (ed.). Blisters on their Feet (PDF). Sage. p. 303. ISBN 978-81-7829-819-1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 March 2014. Retrieved 5 March 2014.
  31. Ray, Biswajit (21 February 2014). বাংলার বাইরে বাংলার খোঁজে কয়েক দিন. Anandabazar Patrika (in Bengali). Kolkata: ABP Group. Retrieved 26 June 2017.
  32. তোমরা ছিলে তাই লেখার সাহস পাই. Ei Samay (in Bengali). Kolkata: Bennett Coleman. 19 May 2015. Retrieved 26 June 2017.
  33. Sekhawat, Vibhuti Singh (2007). Assam: From Accord to ULFA. Anamika Publishers. p. 88. ISBN 9788179751695. Retrieved 6 March 2014.
  34. 'Bearing Witness': The Impact of Conflict on Women in Nagaland and Assam. Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research. 2011. p. 42.

References
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