The big impact
BY PRADEEP DASGUPTA
THE liberation of Bangladesh, which is as neighbourly to Assam as to West Bengal and Tripura, is an event of immeasurable import equally to this State. The impact of a republican Bangladesh on the Assam sector of the Indian territory will be manifold, pervading the latter’s economic, political and cultural spheres. But before discussing the possible impact in those spheres, it has to be Acknowledged that the success of the joint efforts of the Indian Defence Forces and the indigenous Mukti Bahini to vanquish the occupation forces in Bangladesh has saved Assam from a grim prospect of its isolation from the rest of India. Ever since it had entrenched itself in Bangladesh after killing, incarcerating or purging out its national leaders, intellectuals and other “undersieable elements”, the Yahya horde embarked on its mischievous game of cutting the slender geographic link between India’s North-Eastern region and the rest of its territory. As a part of that sinister game, Pakistan engaged Fifth Columnists and saboteurs to subvert India’s border security and disrupt the surface links between Assam and Tripura on the one hand and Cachar and the rest of Assam mainland-and, thus, the rest of India-on the other, However, the total capitulation of the occupation forces in Bangladesh has countermanded that threat of the north-east India’s territorial security. This is indeed, a most valuable gain that the Assam region as a whole has immediately derive from the liberation of Bangladesh.
Innate in this reassured territorial security are a number of other benefits, present or in the offing. If the partition of India snapped the natural and traditional routes of transport and communication between Assam and the rest of the country, the fresh emergence of East Bengal as a friendly terraqueous intermediary promises to reestablish those missing links. While Assam’s surfacelink with the rest of India through East Bengal had been cut off shortly after partition, its navigational channels to West Bengal both from the Brahmaputra and the Barak Valleys also were completely blocked following the Indo-Pakistan hostilities in 1965. Although Assam has since devised and adopted alternate means of communication, these have never been fully compensatory and economic. Cachar, for one thing, with its hinterlands in Mizo Hills, Manipur and Tripura, has been further pauperised by the snapping of the river route to West Bengal, while the closure of its surface communications with the rest of India beyond East Bengal earlier had given its economy a servere jolt. With the emergence of Bangladesh as an allied territory, Assam may now confidently look forward to a better and speedier channelisation of its imports and exports whether through Chittagong or through Calcutta.
Even at a lower key, there is enough scope of Assam’s economy being stimulated with the co-operation of Bangladesh. The preindependence economy of the common people of Cachar, Mizo Hills, Khasi and Jaintia Hills and Garo Hills was largely correlated with the economy of the people of the neighbouring districts of East Bengal. So much so that all of the successive Indo-Pakistan pacts or treaties included a provision on border trade for the benefit of the villagers living, within a stipulated proximity of the international border. In spite of Pakistan’s continued intransigence. India had constantly tried to comply with this provision and at the initiative of the Meghalaya Government, some border markets were functioning in the Khasi and the Garo Hills until the Pakistani army cracked down in Bangladesh. The border people of both the sides, who could not carry their small produces to towns or established trade centres because of distance or on other economic grounds used to attend these markets. Now, not only these markets can be revived, but the border people may expect much better facilities for the sale and purchase of many small items of their daily necessities, including foodgrains..
There are many other important facts in the economic sphere, on which Assam can derive benefit from a friendly Bangladesh and vice versa, provided some projects and programmes of coordinated economic activities are drawn up.
In the socio-political sphere, it is however difficult at this stage to make even any near-correct speculations as to what impact the nascent Republic of Bangladesh will have on Assam. The Assamese intelligentsia, jubilant over the deliverance of Bangladesh from, the ambit of a reactionary, theocratic junta, are however not still inclined to discuss publicly the possible socio-political effects of this unprecedented emergence of a new secular and socialist Republic in the vicinity of this State. Lesser intellectuals in their parlours are however often found debating the question if the liberation of Bangladesh is a precursor of a united Bengal and a forewarning of further isolation of Assam from the Indian mainland. If there is no perceptible rhyme or reason for such a hypothesis, actually the question was posed recently by an important member of the rulling party. The occasion was a political conference held several days before December 3, when this leader, while expresing his full support to the Prime Minister, favoured a political settlement between the two wings of Pakistan,
If this suspicion, evidently shared but by a few people has an element of fear in it, there are also people who believe that the liberated Bangladesh will attract many of the East Bengalis Hindu and Muslim—who had migrated to Assam following the partition and will thus lighten the burden of Assam’s internal economy. Likewise, it is also believed that since the birth of a new Republic in the neighbourhood is expected to open up many new vistas of IndoBangladesh economic activities, the deserving youths of Assam will get adequate employment opportnity-which will remove a stigma that has often acerbated the relations between the different sects of people in this State.
There has hardly ever been a deterioration of the relations between the religious communities in Assam, especially in the Brahumabutra Valley, with the emergence of Bangladesh and in the consequent absence of a theocratic territory nearby, these relations on the whole are likely to be further improved and the principles of secularism more steadfastly adhered to, “Ever since the attainment of Indian independence, the Muslims in Assam in general have owed their allegiance to the Congress and this allegiance, echoed during the mid-term Lok Sabha poll early this year, may be reechoed whenever necessary in near and distant future, at least so long as Mrs. Gandhi leads the ruling party.
According to an Assamese writer of eminence, who is also connected with a political party, the Bangladesh people’s movement both on the cultural and the political planes will, inspire the intellectuals of this State by and large to project the regional life and culture, rather than national, in their works to foster the development of a “regional personality.” Under the influence of a national movement, the Assamese writers and litterateurs, he said, had not given much attention to that aspect so long. And, about the political impact of the Bangladesh movement, he felt that not only in Assam but elsewhere too it will buttress the view that more autonomy should be granted to the States that they enjoy at present.
Reference: Hindustan Standard 25. 12. 1971