Contemporary South Asia (2001), 10(3), 343–360

Denial and resistance: Sylheti

Partition ‘refugees’ in Assam1
ANINDITA DASGUPTA

ABSTRACT This paper uses the Partition narratives of Sylheti bhodrolok refugees from East
Bengal to show that these people were displaced without experiencing direct violence or
violent expulsions. Based primarily on personal accounts, using memories as well as local
postcolonial texts, it tries to shed some light on a category of migrants so far marginalized
in Partition historiography. The attempt here is not to point out the great inconsistencies
between Partition theory and reality, but to try and identify what was ‘local’ about the
migration to Assam. Broadly, the paper argues that ‘refugee-hood’ continues to be a far more
pluralistic experience than assumed by popular, even academic conceptions, and it is this
plurality that is in urgent need of further exploration.

A deŽ ning experience of my Ž eldwork among Sylheti Partition migrants in the

northeast Indian state of Assam was the categoric denial of the Sylheti
bhodrolok 2 of their ‘refugee-ness’,3 and their resistance to being constructed as
such in Partition studies. Most of them put forward three overwhelming reasons
for not being refugees. First, that they were not ‘victims’ or ‘sufferers’ of
partition violence/riots as in the west. Second, that their lives, for generations,
had straddled the two valleys (the Brahmaputra and the Surma) of colonial
Assam. Third, that the Radcliffe Boundary Commission had retained four thanas
(districts) of the erstwhile Sylhet district in Assam and, therefore, a large number
of Sylheti Hindus became ‘Indians’ without having to move an inch. Thus, they
were refugees neither in the sense of being victims/sufferers driven out of homes
by riots, 4 nor in the sense of being uprooted.
Sylheti middle-class economic migrants to the Brahmaputra Valley and
Cachar areas were a population in motion in colonial Assam, moving back and
forth, many with simultaneous homes in both Sylhet and the Brahmaputra Valley
districts and Cachar since the late nineteenth century. As early as 1901, the
Census of India recorded that ‘Sylhetis who are good clerks and are enterprising
traders are found, in small numbers, in most of the districts of the province ’.5 For
most such economic migrants who moved to the colonial towns with entire
Corrrespondence : Anindita Dasgupta, Department of History, Cotton College, Guwahati, India. E-mail:
aninditadg@rediffmail.com

ISSN 0958-493 5 print/ISSN 1469-364X online/01/030343-18 Ó 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/0958493012010955 9
ANINDITA DASGUPTA

families, Sylhet remained the desher baari (village home) where one went for a
holiday or ‘festivals and marriages’, or to ‘visit grandfather and grandmother ’.
For most Sylheti bhodrolok, Partition meant a loss of landed property in
Sylhet or the desher baari, leaving intact their landed property and job in the
other areas of Assam that remained within India. What stood out clearly in
Sylheti bhodrolok narratives was the propositio n that here was a class of people
who ‘did not have to  ee for fear of life’. They did not see themselves as passive
objects of history swept away by primordial forces entirely beyond their control,
but as active agents and participants in the process of decision-making that, they
insisted, was their own. Also, that they possessed landed property, jobs or had
a strong social network in other areas of Assam made them active decision-mak-
ers exercising their right to choice.
For the Sylheti bhodrolok, there was shame in being a refugee; it meant a slur
on the social status of his family and re ected badly on their own economic
position. For this English-educated and professionall y qualiŽ ed group, ‘refugee-
hood’ implied that a person had no alternative source of income outside Sylhet,
or the requisite educational qualiŽ cation, to fall back on: ‘No, no … We were
not refugees. Refugees were living in Sealdah railway station. We never stayed
in refugee camps even for a day. My father had houses in Shillong and
Dibrugarh’.6
Another signiŽ cant insight thrown up by my Ž eldwork was the implicit
recognition that the separation of Sylhet from Assam in 1947 was caused not so
much by a rivalry between the Hindus and Muslims, but between the speakers
of two major languages in colonial Assam, the Bengalis and the Assamese. All
post-Partition riots are remembered by the Sylheti bhodrolok as having being
organized not by the Muslims, but by the Assamese Hindus who did not want
the Sylheti refugees to relocate themselves in the Brahmaputra Valley: ‘They
(the Assamese) wanted Sylhet and all the Sylhetis to go to Pakistan’.7 This was
how Partition was remembered and narrated by the Sylheti bhodrolok who lived
through it.
This narrative brings us face-to-face with some major problematics of the
postcolonia l discourse on Partition: one, the widely accepted stereotype ‘where
Punjab has come to Ž gure as a model of sorts’8 and the Partition refugee had to
‘suffer’; two, that Partition was primarily occasioned by communal sentiments or
Hindu–Muslim rivalry; and three, that displacement, violence and  ight were
essential conditions of refugee-hood. Since most Partition case studies have
focused on the refugee in the west, both academic and popular imagination have
been caught up by the Punjabi refugee who was situated against a backdrop of
‘the horror of partition, the anguish and sorrow, pain and brutality of the riots
of 1946–47’,9 and/or as innocent victims of ‘communal passions and riotous
mobs’.10 Even when the focus has moved towards eastern India, the representa-
tion of the Purbo Bongiyo (East Bengal) refugee has remained trapped within
predictable categories of shoronarthi (seeking refuge), vastuhara (homeless),
and udbastu (uprooted); 11 looked on with disdain and distaste by the local West
Bengali population as Bangals, a term that came to be synonymous with

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refugees. Popular images have moved from ‘train-loads of shoronarthi coming

into Calcutta’12 ‘stranded in Sealdah station ’13 or in refugee camps, penniless and
with no support system,14 to ‘those who  ed in the dead of night, entering
neighbouring villages, chars, seeking refuge, sleeping on the city sidewalks ’.15
Theories associated with Partition have kept such images alive and have
provided, in large measure, the terms of reference for post-independence
understandin g of the Partition refugee.
Such representations of refugees are jarred by startlingly different images
thrown up by Ž eld research in other settings; for instance, the Sylheti ‘optees’
in Gauhati city in 1947–1948 who are remembered as: ‘came like tourists,
camera in hand, clicking random pictures of the city. They thought Assam was
a jungle and were so excited.’16 Another interviewee recalls how:

My father’s colleagues refused to let us leave on the 14th of August and so we stayed back
for one more day in Sylhet town to watch the independence celebrations. The next
morning, we, the children piled up into a large police van … our dog was with
us … parents travelled separately in another car … and we drove to Shillong where my
father was now posted as the Superintendent of Police.17

Scholarly work on Partition is growing continuously , and memories are being

resurrected to revise and reconsider old assumptions and generalizations .
This paper will use the case of Sylheti bhodrolok narratives of Partition to
show that this class of people were displaced following the Partition without
experiencing direct violence or violent expulsions.18 Based primarily on personal
accounts, using memories as well as local postcolonia l texts (and archival
materials), it will try to shed some light on a category of migrants so far
marginalized in Partition historiography . The attempt here is not to point out the
great inconsistencie s between partition theory and reality, but to try and identify
what was different or ‘local’ about the Partition migration in Assam.
In the following, I will argue that relocation in the Brahmaputra Valley and
Cachar regions following the partition of Sylhet in 1947 was the informed choice
of a majority of Sylheti bhodrolok; that by 1946–1947, a large number of Sylheti
bhodrolok had already domiciled in the Brahmaputra Valley and Cachar areas as
economic migrants; that there were almost no major incidents of violence against
Sylheti Hindus in Sylhet during or after the referendum; and most of the fears
associated with Partition were perceived or based on rumours  oating in from
the west. I will also show that the settlement patterns of the Sylhet bhodrolok
after Partition followed the pattern of economic migration, to the same areas
where they had migrated in colonial years and where they had a strong social
support network, and that they relocated themselves with relative ease in the land
of their choice. Running through this refugee experience will be the suggestion
that Partition in Assam was occasioned by the rivalry between the Assamese and
Bengali middle-classes in colonial Assam rather than that between Hindus and
Muslims of the colonial province (although this will be a minor motif in the
larger story of Partition migration).

345
ANINDITA DASGUPTA

Sylheti economic migrants

The Sylheti bhodrolok was a dynamic and mobile class of British-educated

people, mostly low- and middle-level job holders in the colonial administratio n
in Assam whose families had held these positions since the incorporation of the
populous East Bengal district of Sylhet into the under-populated province of
Assam in 1874 to make the latter ‘Ž nancially viable’.19 Assam, as a semi-feudal
and semi-tribal self-ruled kingdom for 600 years, had lived in relative isolation,
political and diplomatic , from the rest of India until it became a late addition to
the British Raj. Colonization gradually broke this isolation of Assam by linking
it to the colonial capitalist economy. The economy was monetized, and the
‘closed’ society was exposed to immigration of labour, new skills, new vices and
new ideas. 20 Marwari trader-cum moneylenders monopolized the internal trade
as agents of the British trading houses of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), who in
turn worked for their metropolitan counterparts in London.
In the district headquarters of the colonial government of Assam, the Sylheti
was the quintessentia l baboo, disproportionatel y employed in various provincial
government ofŽ ces and in the emerging professions of law, teaching and even
trading and contract jobs. Bengali clerks, doctors and lawyers, most of them
Sylhetis, with the advantage of their early initiation to English education and
the British–Indian administrativ e system, monopolized government jobs and
professions. 21
Several factors helped the Sylhetis to Ž nd employment in Assam: Ž rst, their
efŽ ciency in serving the British had already been proved in Bengal; second,
Sylhet was now a part of the province of Assam; third, by the time the emerging
Assamese middle-class began to put forward their claims to these jobs, many
Sylhetis were already in superior cadres of service and in a position to resist and
regulate their entry. Also, the need for an expanding, imperial administration had
to be met and the government could not wait until the Assamese achieved the
required standard of English education. In 1901, the total number of the
population supported by ‘professions ’ in Sylhet alone was 44,573, while the
Ž gure for the entire Brahmaputra Valley added up to only 27,517.22 When the
province was re-constituted into a Chief Commissioner-ship in 1912, the number
of literate persons in Sylhet alone was 132,495 against 144,584 in the whole
of the Brahmaputra Valley. Again, English literates of that valley numbered
18,214 whereas Sylhet alone had 10,980.23 Posts were not yet clearly earmarked
on a valley basis and Sylhet obtained the lion’s share of services under the
government.
The balance of power between the Brahmaputra Valley, the traditional
homeland of the Assamese, and the Surma Valley, a predominantly Bengali
precinct, was maintained on an even keel through a parity formula in the
allocation of public expenditure and government jobs.24 What was of concern to
the people, therefore, was the maldistributio n of power and resources, not so
much between the two valleys as between the two major linguisti c groups: the
Assamese and the Bengalis. Tables 1–3 clearly reveal a pattern of Bengali Hindu

346
 SYLHETI PARTITION ‘REFUGEES’ IN ASSAM

Table 1. Statement showing communal representation in

Government departments in 1923

Communities Posts entitled Posts actually held

Bengali Hindus 39.64 106

Assamese Hindus 47.3 41
Muslims 64.82 32
Ahoms 7.09 0
Khasis 7.09 33

Note: Out of 231 vacant posts in March 1923, there were 212
incumbents, of whom 50% were Bengali Hindus, a little more than
19% Assamese Hindus, 15% Muslims and 10% Khasis.
Source: Makhan Lal Kar, Muslims in Assam Politics (Delhi:
Omsons, 1990), p 155.

Sylheti dominance in the professions and government jobs in early and mid-
twentieth-century Assam.
A large number of Sylhetis began to move out from the Sylhet district to the
Brahmaputra Valley districts and Cachar as new government departments and
ofŽ ces began to open up in those areas gradually. In a little-known Bengali book
published from Cachar, the author gives a vivid description of Sylheti migration
into the district headquarters:
The commissioner administered Cachar from Sylhet. Some courts and ofŽ ces were started
in Silchar town. Many bureaucrats came over and with the help of the government, built
houses in Nazirpatty, Dewanjibazar and the adjoining areas and started living there. With
them came lawyers, mukhtars and muhurrers. In their trail came shop-keepers and traders.
This is how, in Phatakbazar, Dewanjibazar, Nazirpatty and Janigunj areas, the nucleus of
Silchar town was founded. The original inhabitants of Silchar town are the descendants of
these traders, bureaucrats lawyers and mukhtars [translation mine].25
Similarly, such migrants settled in the district headquarters of Brahmaputra
Valley, especially in the tea districts of upper Assam, both as clerks in the
plantations and petty tradesmen supplying goods to the plantations . They were
a distinctly visible group in the urban areas of Assam, their homes located in the
prime landed areas near the Deputy Commissioner ’s courts on the banks of the
river Brahmaputra. Thick Sylheti settlements also were located in the hill-town
of Shillong, which had a large number of government departments; in the plains
of Gauhati, the most populous district of Assam with its excellent rail and river
communication, increased educational facility and a High Court; and in the tea
districts of Upper Assam and the little qasbas (small market-places) that cropped
up around the tea-gardens to supply them with plywood for tea-chests, rice and
other food items, medicine and repair works: ‘Sylhetis were everywhere. In the
ofŽ ces, bazaars, ship-yards of Dibrugarh and Tinsukia. Even the Assamese
people wanted to employ Bengalis because they knew that the Bengalis would
work harder and better than their own people’.26 As a considerable number of
Sylhetis were employed in both the valleys of Assam, many pronounced Sylheti

347
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ANINDITA DASGUPTA

Table 2. Posts of sub-assistant surgeons, Medical and Public Health, March 1935

Incumbents belonging to
Surma Valley Assam Valley Domiciled Others
division division (of outside origin) (of outside origin) Hill tribes Province total

122 (40.7%) 91 (30.3%) 9 (3.0%) 55 (18.3%) 23 (7.7%) 300 (100%)

Source: Tabulated from K.L. Barua’s reply, 4 March 1935, ALCP, pp 390–393.
 SYLHETI PARTITION ‘REFUGEES’ IN ASSAM

Table 3. Posts of sub-assistant surgeons, Medical and Public Health,

September 1935

Category Total numbers % share of jobs

Assamese 57 19.2
Non-Muslim Sylhet-Cachar natives 103 34.9
People of hills districts 23 7.8
Muslims 51 17.2
Outsiders (including domiciled) 62 20.9
Total 296 100

Note: According to the 1931 census, the percentage of non-scheduled caste Hindus
of Surma Valley in the total population of Assam was 9%, against the
non-scheduled caste Hindus of Assam Valley who constituted 26% of the
provincial population.
Source: K.L. Barua’s reply, 18 September 1935, ALCP, Vol 15, p 1669.

neighbourhood s came up in these areas. Bengali schools were opened and the
baboo was happy  aunting his status and power over the ‘native’ who, in turn,
viewed him with respect and fear: ‘My grandfather, an Asamiya landlord,
considered the Sylhetis as upstarts. And they were thought to be misers because
they did not like to spend their money’.27
While the Sylheti bhodrolok lived and worked in the emerging urban centres
of Assam, they generally went home to their desher baarion holidays and festive
occasions, where the older generations, often a jethamoshai (father’s elder
brother) or a bor-da (elder brother) lived and looked after the family property.
Most of these were joint families and the extended kinship network helped to
manage and maintain the landed property ‘back home’. In turn, the
jethamoshai ’s sons would come away to the towns to live and study in the
schools and colleges. Little mess-like houses were common in Shillong and parts
of Gauhati where young male cousins, both from the desher baari and the
town-er baari (town home) lived and studied together. They hardly ever returned
home to Sylhet but moved out from these centres in various government or
professional jobs. Thus, Sylhet continued to remain the desher baari for even the
new generation.
The economically and socially powerful Sylhetis not infrequently displayed
cultural contempt over the native Assamese, going along with the imperialist
projection of the ‘lazy, good-for-nothing ’ native of the newly conquered prov-
ince juxtapose d against the ‘disciplined , suitably hegemonised, English edu-
cated’ native of the Presidencies, especially since the  edgling Assamese
middle-class struggled to announce its arrival by demanding an equal share in
the government jobs:
The Assamese did not know how to eat Chal-kumra. So, they would give it away to
us … At the time when we migrated to Cachar, the Assamese would eat curds that were
so rotten that insects would be swimming in it. Of course, now they will be dead before
they admit to doing such a thing. Now they have become bhodrolok.28

349
ANINDITA DASGUPTA

I remember whenever any Assamese person came to our house to meet my father for some
work, my father would shout loudly to the servants: ‘Give him a moorha (cane stool) on
the verandah to sit on’, and the Assamese man would sit outside and wait for my father
patiently. 29

The Assamese are proverbially disinclined to serve far away from their own homes, and
headquarters ofŽ ces complain of the difŽ culty of getting Assamese clerks … we have done
what we can for them … An Assamese graduate … would not look at any appointment
under Rs. 75 to Rs. 100 per month.30

The new-born, weak and unsure Assamese middle-class of the period found
itself an insigniŽ cant minority and marginalized in the urban or middle-class
sector. By 1901, 48% of the population spoke Bengali and only 22% spoke
Assamese. 31 The Bengalis, propped up by a steady migration of Bengali-
speaking Muslim peasants from East Bengal districts since 1901, had come to
outnumber the Assamese-speaking population .
Under the circumstances, the ‘valley-jealousy’ formerly limited to the job-
seeking middle-classes was slowly transformed into a cult of aggressive and
defensive linguisti c nationalism .32 Several ‘nativist ’ organizations (e.g. the
Assam Sangrakshini Sabha and Asom Jatiya Mahasabha) were  oated, which
expressed alarm at the declining numbers of Assamese speakers and were
haunted by the spectre of ‘Bengalisation ’ by both Bengali Hindus and Mus-
lims. 33 A major section of the Assamese public was noticeably agitated over the
issue of the ‘outsider ’ and, indeed, since the early nineteenth century, the
primary concern of the Assamese leadership centred around two objectives: one,
save Assam from the constant in ow of Bengali Muslim migrants; two, separate
the Bengali-speaking districts of Cachar and Sylhet from the administrativ e unit
of Assam to free government ofŽ ces from the clutches of the Bengali Hindu
employees. ‘They wanted to get rid of Sylhet at any cost’ … They had wanted
to do so for a long time and Jinnah gave them the perfect excuse by demanding
Assam in his six-province Pakistan plan’.34
A survey of the existing thin literature on the Sylhet Referendum, which asked
residents to choose between joining India or Pakistan come Partition and
independence , clearly establishe s a pattern. These are not ‘histories ’ in any
sense, but highly emotive, polemical texts published mostly from Calcutta or
Cachar where the Referendum is remembered as a ‘betrayal’ or a ‘slur on the
history of India’ (Bharot itihashe r kolonko).35
Most of these texts resolutely deny that Hindu–Muslim relations had anything
to do with the demand for referendum in Sylhet which, however, was quite
neatly divided into two blocks, with the Muslims outnumbering the Hindus by
not so big a margin. Although these texts speak of Hindu–Muslim shompriti
(Hindu–Muslim good relations) in Sylhet,36 Muslim communalism was thought
to be incited by the Assamese political leaders who had wanted to get rid of
Sylhet for many years now. Even where there is recognition of the partisan role
played by the Muslims, it is never the Sylheti Muslims but more distant players
like the ‘Bihari Muslims’, ‘Muslim League leaders’ and/or vague entities like

350
 SYLHETI PARTITION ‘REFUGEES’ IN ASSAM

Musalmaan netara (Muslim leaders). QualiŽ ers like bishuddho chokranto (clear
conspiracy), onyaye (wrong), goondamee (hooliganism ) and jaliyati (perŽ dy) are
proliŽ c in these texts. The clearest example of the perŽ dy of the Assam
government towards Sylhetis was the disenfranchisemen t of some 1.5 lakh of
non-Muslim tea-garden labourers who could have been crucial in nullifying the
eventual verdict of the Sylhet Referendum.37 At the Sylhet Referendum, which
took place on 6–7 July 1947, things worked out as expected with the Hindus
voting for Hindusthan and the Muslims for Pakistan. The Muslim vote won by
a narrow margin of 55,578 votes.38
A last ditch effort was made by Assamese ideologues to separate even the few
thanas of Sylhet that the Radcliffe Commission had granted to India/Assam. The
Assam Pradesh Congress Committee took Chief Minister Gopinath Bardoloi
severely to task for not protesting against the inclusion of the four thanas in
Assam. They were in such a hurry to get rid of Sylhet that they forgot to claim
Rs 17 lakhs, which would have been India’s share in the value of certain
buildings in Sylhet.39 Although the Assam Government withdrew from the entire
district of Sylhet even before the decision of the Boundary Commission was
made known, they subsequentl y re-occupied only a portion of the territory
allotted to India/Assam and failed to take possession of the 12 thanas.40 Only
four thanas were retained in Assam: Karimgunj, Patharkandi, Badarpur and
Ratabari. Bardoloi was categorical in his statement before a deputation of Sylheti
government employees who had been discharged as ‘surplus ’ for having opted
to serve in India after Partition. The newly accepted policy of (his) government
was ‘Assam for the Assamese’.41

Syheti refugees in Assam, 1946–1951

The general expectation that the separation of Sylhet would put an end to
Bengali Hindu migration was proved wrong as Sylhetis began to return to India
in large numbers from 1946 onwards. The Assam Pradesh Congress had
miscalculated. The problem of the refugee in ux (almost all Bengali Hindus
from Sylhet) threatened to neutralize the gains achieved by the ouster of Sylhet,
and Bardoloi and his Congress ministry fought tooth and nail the Central
Government decision to settle Partition refugees in Assam.42
The Sylheti bhodrolok migrants who came permanently to India in the period
1946–1950 could broadly be divided into three categories:
· Those who migrated out of Sylhet before 1947 but had continued to have a
desher baari in Sylhet.
· Those who migrated after 1947, mostly ‘optees’ of the government of Assam
and other professionals and traders.
· Those who lived in the four thanas of Ratabari, Patharkandi, Karimgunj and
Badarpur, who did not have to move at all.
The  ow of migrants into Assam from Sylhet and adjoining areas was not a
single, rushed movement of a mass of people running for their lives. They came

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ANINDITA DASGUPTA

Table 4. Arrival of partition migrants in Assam, year by year

Number of
Name of place of origin Year of persons

From East Bengal 1946 6860

1947 42,346
1948 41,740
1949 33,138
1950 144,512
January–February 1951 3479
From West Pakistan (district of origin not known) 647
Grand total 274,455

Source: Census of India, Volume: XII, Assam, Manipur and Tripura, Part I A: Report, 1951, p 359.

in stops and bursts, in trickles and  ushes, throughout the entire period
1946–1950. This intermittent nature suggests an element of choice in the process
and direction of the migration; that the migrant was able to decide for themself
when to leave and where to go.
Immediately after Partition, there were three major  ows of migrants into
Assam; in 1946, 1947–1948, and in 1950. Sylhet accounted for the largest
number of such migrants, followed by Mymensingh and Dacca.43 The Ž rst group
of refugees came in 1946 following the Noakhali riots of 1946. One hundred and
Ž fty of such uprooted families were rehabilitate d in Assam. A refugee camp was
set up opposite Cotton College in Gauhati, where the refugees were temporarily
put up and later shifted to the ‘Noakhali Colony ’ in the Silpukhur i area of the
town. By the end of 1946, as many as 6860 persons had migrated to India.44
Soon afterwards came the Sylhet Referendum and the partition of Assam,
which gave a Ž llip to the migration. In August 1947 alone, as many as 12,297
persons came away, followed by 6348 in September and 4409 in October 1947.
There was a further falling off thereafter, but it never fell below the 2000 mark
in any month except November 1948 and October–November 1949.45 A large
number of optees from both private enterprises and state and central government
migrated to India at this time, and they were mostly Sylhetis.46 There were many
teachers from the well-known Murari Chand College (popularly known as ‘MC
College’) in Sylhet who had opted to serve in Gauhati’s Cotton College instead.
The largest number of optees in 1947–1948 was employees of the Assam
Railways, which shifted its original headquarters in Chittagong to Pandu on the
outskirts of Gauhati. The railway workshop was spilt into three and shifted to
Dibrugarh-Naliyapul, Pandu and Gauhati. Colonies were started for these optees
right next to the Noakhali Colony in Silpukhuri. Bijoy Das, General Secretary
of the All Assam Refugee Association, puts the total Ž gure of such optees at
about 7000. 47 With such a large number of Bengalis coming into Assam,
restlessness began to grow among the local inhabitants . Especially because these
optees came to Assam like tourists, camera in hand, merrily clicking pictures, as
if on a holiday. I remember one incident in front of the ofŽ ce of Howrah Motors

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 SYLHETI PARTITION ‘REFUGEES’ IN ASSAM

in Paltan Bazar in Gauhati when some of these optees even got beaten up by the
local people for their snobbery. And in their trail, came their relatives, slowly,
in small groups, gingerly looking for footholds in India.48
The coming of the Bengal ‘optees’ gave a Ž llip to the nascent Communist
Party in Assam which now began to draw support from these migrants and
opened bases in Gauhati, Pandu and Naliyapul. Demonstrations were organized
regularly in these areas as well as Mariani near Dibrugarh.49
There are no available Ž gures of such unofŽ cial migrants since they were not
counted among the refugees. These migrants were mostly upper caste and
middle-class Hindus and Scheduled Castes. But it can be safely asserted from the
interviews with eye-witnesses that the Ž gures of those who came unofŽ cially far
out-stripped that of those that came through refugee registration formalities with
their names in the Displaced People census and refugee-slips in hand. At the
height of the refugee  ow, there were in Assam 28 refugee camps sheltering
about 8000 displaced persons. By 1 January 1951, the number had come down
to seven camps, accommodating about 3500. The last camp was closed by the
end of September 1951.
It was in 1950, following instances of violence elsewhere in East Pakistan,
that the real rush of refugees took place. These were the victims of partition in
the east, as these were the people who  ed helter-skelter, in what they thought
was a life-saving attempt. A total of 144,512, or slightly more than one-half of
the total number of refugees in Assam, came in 1950.50

Was there violence in Sylhet?

From all available sources and Ž eldwork among the Ž rst- and second-generation
Partition migrants in the Brahmaputra and Surma Valleys in Assam, it emerges
that there was no major incident of violence in Sylhet immediately before,
during or after the Sylhet Referendum and Partition. The prime factor for
migration, it appears, was a psychologica l pressure, a fear of what could happen
if they stayed back, rather than what had actually happened or was happening to
them at that time:
They were mostly swayed by rumours and stories of atrocities on Hindus that  oated in
from Punjab.51
People feared that our religion, culture and self-respect will not be safe in Pakistan.52

Every new incident of violence against Hindus elsewhere in India gave a push
to fresh out-migration into Assam.
In his booklet, Bhulibe ki Praanaante y published from Silchar, Suresh
Chandra Biswas talks about his own experience in East Pakistan after the
Referendum and how he gradually decided out-migration was the best way out
for him and his family.
Many times, when I would walk down the road, I would hear snide remarks from the
road-side stalls, ‘Look, look … this one is still walking with a puffed chest … Sometimes

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they would send anonymous letters to my house. They would scare us.. ‘Leave your house
or be ready to die’. In some letters they would write ‘We will burn down your house on
such and such day, we will kill you along with your wife and children … In a few days
time I realised from the way the Muslim leaders were behaving themselves at public
meetings, that it will no longer be possible for us to sit together on the same platform
keeping our self-respect intact … Many Hindus had been leaving ‘desh’ and going away.
Gradually my brothers and relatives suggested to me that I too go away [translation
mine].53
Two things stand out from this and other testimonies: one, that it was the
migrant who actively decided when to move and where to go; and two, most
Sylhetis were swayed by perceived fear or violence rather than actual instances
of riots or mob-violence of any sort.
In another example, Paritosh Pal Choudhury said that his parents had not
come at the Ž rst go. Initially after the referendum, it was only he and his brother
who had migrated. His parents, he said, had no reason to come away. They were
well-placed people in Sylhet and they had good relations with everyone. It is not
so easy to leave one’s birth-place, he said.
But slowly, things began to change. Various kinds of political persecution of Hindus began
to take place … First, they requisitioned our drawing room. It was a question of prestige.
My parents were not able to show their face to their friends … so slowly they too decided
to move.54
Pal Choudhury also spoke of several other friends who too had decided not to
migrate but after a while moved out in fear. It appears that once the upper caste
middle-class Hindu leaders (shomaj-poti) began to migrate to India, the lower
castes and classes began to move out in apprehension of violence and out of a
feeling of insecurity.
Rumours had their own role to play in instigatin g fresh out-migration of
Hindus from Sylhet, although in most cases they were not borne out by facts.
Lala Chakravarty spoke about one such incident he referred to as Meghna Nodir
Dangga (The Riot on River Meghna) in 1950:
We had all heard that a train carrying Hindus to Dacca from Sylhet was stopped on the
middle of the bridge over river Meghna. Mobs entered the train, drew out the Hindus and
cut them into pieces and threw them into the river Meghna. We were told that not one
Hindu on that train had survived … all the compartments were  ooded with their blood. So
much so that the blood would not dry easily … This story created panic among the Sylhet
Hindus and initiated a fresh rush of refugees … I remember train-loads of Hindus coming
into Mahishashon Railway Station in Cachar. The women started praying and screaming
as the trains entered … Now we are safe, they said repeatedly.55
Similar accounts are found in the reminiscences of Mojammil Ali Laskar writing
about his childhood days in Cachar.
Every day new groups of refugees are adding fuel to the Ž re. Rumours are everywhere.
There was tension everywhere. People are believing anything (Manush jaa-taa bishshaas
korchhe). One day you would hear that hundreds of Hindu villages have been burnt
somewhere in Sylhet, whole scale loot and plunder carried out, women have been

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 SYLHETI PARTITION ‘REFUGEES’ IN ASSAM

molested. The next day you would hear that Muslim mobs have entered a Dacca-bound
train and killed every single Hindu passenger. Another day you would hear about
something happening in Komilla or Borishaal. There was no way to verify if these stories
were true … but later whenever I have asked any of our refugee friends if they had faced
any violence themselves or had been witnesses to any such incidents happening to someone
else, I have only had negative answers. We too have heard these stories, they would say,
nothing happened to us but we came away in fear that something may happen … They had
neither lost their property or money. Later on they returned to Sylhet to sell off their
properties, lamenting that they had not got the price that they had hoped for.56

Thus, not only was there no instance of large-scale violence in Sylhet before,
during or after the Referendum, it also appears from these testimonies that, for
some years immediately following Partition, there was free and easy back and
forth movement by migrants. It is possible that it was only after the introductio n
of passports in 1950 that this easy movement was checked. But many migrants
went back to Sylhet from time to time to sell off their landed property. For many
others, the ‘real’ Partition came only in 1950, after the riots and the passport
system had evolved: ‘For us, the real Partition was in 1950. Maybe that was why
my father did not bother to transfer his property to India because he hoped that
someday he would go back. In 1947 nobody expected that the Partition would
be permanent’, admits Krishnaa Dutta, now domiciled in Calcutta.57

Sylhetis in India after Partition: directions, settlements, professions

The Sylheti bhodrolok scattered themselves among the local residents, especially
in those areas that already had a sizeable Bengali population , to the extent that
certain ‘refugee-pockets ’ emerged in Assam and in the surrounding region in
Shillongn Tura (now in Meghalaya), the Cachar Valley, the erstwhile princely
state of Tripura, and in some of the urban localities of the Brahmaputra Valley.
Most Sylhet refugees managed to establish themselves comfortably in and
around Assam by the early-1960s. 58 The educated section again excelled in
business and the professions, while small-businessmen also found success in
various commercial enterprises. Central government sectors like banks, the
railways, the ofŽ ce of the Accountant-General, insurance, Post and Telegraphs
were also largely manned by Bengali Hindus. Many of the Ž rst-generation
migrants and optees even managed to send their sons abroad for education:
Most of us boys went for higher education, like law, medicine, engineering. Most of us
were foreign qualiŽ ed in those days. So many of us, cousins and brothers would go to
England to study. We almost had an extended family of cousins and friends in England
when I was studying there.59
You know, where your father was staying as a paying guest in 1964, I was staying at the
same house in Edinburgh just a few years back. Yes, the old man and his wife ran the
lodge. 60
Getting jobs was not so difŽ cult for us those days. Most of us were reasonably qualiŽ ed
and there was hardly any competition from local people. And if nothing else, we could at

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least join tea-gardens as long as we had good family background and could speak good
English. Life was not so tough those days.61
The livelihood and settlement patterns of the Sylheti Partition migrant differed
little from pre-Partition days of economic migration. The Census of India 1951
showed that 26% of the area’s population had a ‘miscellaneous ’ source of
livelihood. 62 The refugees’ preference for urban areas or the outskirts that were
the places most likely to provide such miscellaneous sources of living was both
a cause and an effect of this feature.
Of the total urban population of 414,418 residing in Assam in 1951, as many
as 230,817 persons (55.7%) were by at the census as born in the district of
enumeration. This meant that the population consisted of more or less equal
halves, the slightly larger half born in the districts of enumeration and the other
44% born elsewhere. Out of these, 112,751 (27%) were born in East Pakistan.
By far the largest majority of immigrants from Pakistan were located in the
Assam Plains, which accounted for 99,076 persons (29% of the state’s entire
urban population) .63
The number of displaced persons enumerated in each town in the Census of
India 1951 constitutes a migratory trend that can straightaway be recognized and
measured. Table 5 presents the names of all towns where Displaced Persons
congregated in numbers larger than 1000. The settlement pattern of the Partition
migrants followed a similar pattern as that of the pre-Partition economic
migrants. The former continued to be a class of job-holders, professionals as
well as petty businessme n and traders in postcolonia l Assam, and settled down
in those areas that already had a sizeable Bengali population . The increase
was most pronounced in the towns of Shillong, Silchar, Nowgong, Gauhati,
Dibrugarh, Lumding and Karimganj; that is, the same area that had a sizeable
Sylheti population in the pre-Partition days.

Table 5. Displaced persons in some

towns of Assam

Total number of
Town displaced persons

Silchar 11,133
Karimganj 8167
Lumding 6441
Shillong 4698
Nowgong 4122
Barpeta 3822
Hailakandi 3555
Gauhati 3459
Dhubri 2441
Dibrugarh 2087
Gauripur 1027

Source: Census of India, 1951, p 153.

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 SYLHETI PARTITION ‘REFUGEES’ IN ASSAM

Table 6. Growth of urban population in Assam,

1901–1950

Total Ž gures Percentage

Period for Assam of growth

1901–1910 19,190 21.4

1911–1920 38,122 35
1921–1920 44,361 30
1931–1940 58,305 30.4
1941–1950 164,652 65

Source: Census of India, 1951, p 150.

The Ž gures showing growth of urban population in Assam for the period
1901–1950 in Table 6 clearly establish that the largest increase in urban
population of Assam was in the decade 1941–1950, an increase that can be
attributed to the  ow of Partition migrants primarily from the erstwhile Sylhet
district of Assam:
We felt safe in these areas where we had some relatives and friends we could trust. We
knew the Assamese did not want us to settle here but where else could we go? This was
our own place.64
Oh, we did not face much problems at that time. We had so many friends in these areas
and we had visited Shillong and Gauhati many many times before. For a few months we
stayed with my maternal uncle and then my father managed a job at a local ofŽ ce. We
moved out very soon to our rented house which was close to my uncle’s place and we
continued to visit each others’ houses.65
The support offered by the kinship network was repeatedly emphasized by the
respondents during interviews. Most respondents focused on educational
qualiŽ cations and support from relatives already living in Assam as the two
principal reasons why the Sylheti partition migrant could relocate themselves in
postcolonia l Assam. Thus, familiarity and safety were two primary concerns and
important criteria for settlement for the Sylheti migrants.

Conclusion: denial and resistance

The proŽ le of the Sylheti bhodrolok is conclusively different from the refugee
stereotype thrown up by studies focused on Partition along the western Indo-
Pakistan border. This was a small British-educated urbanized class in colonial
Assam constitutin g a chunk of the colonial elite in all the Assam districts who,
in spite of losing their desher baari after the Sylhet Referendum, were not
pauperized or victims of communal violence. Instead, with the help of an
integrated social network and educational qualiŽ cations, they managed to re-
establish themselves in their land of choice without much difŽ culty. To this
class, refugeehood entailed a condition of shame, penury and helplessness , and
this was an appellation they were eager to resist and deny.

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ANINDITA DASGUPTA

Nobody cared whether he was a refugee or not when he was migrating. It was only after
we had come over that we were told we were refugees because we were from ‘that side’.
Even at that time, it was meant mainly for people who lived in camps and survived on
doles, an entirely pitiable class living in pitiful condition. We were not refugees!66

Refugee-hood has been and, in the contemporary period, continues to be a far

more pluralistic experience than popular, even academic, conceptions of it
assume. It is this plurality that is in urgent need of exploration. Clearly, the
predominant fashion of treating it as a uniform experience, albeit embellished
with some local  avour, is an obstacle to a proper understanding of Partition
migration.

Notes and references

1. This paper is based on material gathered from a University Grants Commission (India) Research Project.
The author would like to acknowledge discussions with Dr Sujit Chowdhury in Karimganj, Assam.
2. ‘The bhodrolok were well-educated and disproportionatel y employed in the administration and judicial
structure of the British colonial state. They were constituted by the three upper castes of Bengali Hindu
society: Brahman, Vaidya and Kayastha. The group marked itself as well through “reŽ ned” clothing, food,
speech etc’. See Gautam Ghosh, ‘Diaspora in Time? Bangal Bhodrolok and Partition of India’, paper
presented at ‘Displaced People in South Asia’ Conference, Chennai, India, 2–4 March 2001. Most scholars
have agreed that the bhodrolok can be described in large measure in class terms.
3. The mandate of the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees extends to any person who, ‘as a result
of events occurring before 1 January 1951 and owing to a well founded fear of being persecuted for
reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is
outside the country of his nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself
of the protection of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable, or owing to such
fear, is unwilling to return to it’. See B.S. Chimni, International Refugee Law: A Reader (New Delhi,
2000), p 2. The Protocol of 31 January 1967 related to the Status of Refugees did not tamper with its
deŽ nition of the term ‘refugee’.
4. Unless otherwise noted, this and other quoted comment s are taken from interviews with Sylheti partition
migrants in Guwahati, Silchar, Calcutta and other small towns of Assam and Meghalaya.
5. The Census of India, 1901.
6. Interview with Dr Pradipta Kumar Dasgupta, FRCS, Guwahati Medical College, Assam.
7. Interview with Shantanu Chakravarty, aged 70, retired governmen t employee living in Lumding, Assam.
8. Md. Mahbubar Rahman & Willem Van Schendel, ‘I Am Not A Refugee: Rethinking Partition Migration’,
paper presented at ‘Displaced People in South Asia’ Conference, Chennai, India, 2–4 March 2001.
9. Gyanendra Pandey, ‘The prose of otherness ’, in David Arnold & David Hardiman (eds), Subaltern Studies,
Volume VIII (Delhi: Oxford, 1994), p 5.
10. Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (Cambridge:
CUP, 1985), p 5.
11. Some of the refugee categories pointed out by Rahman and Van Schendel in their seminar paper, op cit,
Ref 8, p 7.
12. Common descriptions of how the refugees entered into West Bengal in Janmabhoomi, a daily soap on
Partition and its aftermath telecast by Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) Doordarshan on DD Channel 7.
13. Interview with Debasish Mitra, aged 59, a local inhabitant of Kolkata.
14. Interview with Subir Sorkar, aged 60, a resident of Guwahati.
15. Syed Abdul Malik, Rupaborir Polosh (Calcutta: Book Emporium, 1980).
16. Interview with Bijoy Kumar Das, aged 78, General Secretary of All Assam Refugee Association,
Guwahati.
17. Interview with Pradipta Kumar Dasgupta, FRCS, Guwahati Medical College, Guwahati. His father, the
Late Prafulla Chandra Dasgupta, was the last serving Hindu Superintenden t of Police in Sylhet.
18. For a discussion on the problem of deŽ nition in refugee studies, see Joya Chatterjee, ‘Refugee Movement
and ‘Economic Migration’, or ‘Who is A Refugee? The Case of East Bengalis in India’, papers presented
at ‘Displaced People in South Asia’ Conference, Chennai, India, 2–4 March 2001. ‘A second maxim of
the “ofŽ cial mind” is that refugees by deŽ nition are victims. In India after Partition, refugees had to jump

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 SYLHETI PARTITION ‘REFUGEES’ IN ASSAM

through no legal hoops; but the notion that refugees were not active agents but persons “displaced” by
political forces outside their control, has been central to the elaboration of refugee policy’ (ibid, p 2).
19. To make the newly created province of Assam Ž nancially viable, the colonial authorities decided in
September 1874 to incorporat e into it the populous, Bengali-speaking district of Sylhet that, historically
as well as ethnically, was an integral part of Bengal. Along with Sylhet, the Bengali-speaking district of
Goalpara also was transferred from Bengal to Assam. The transfer, especially of Sylhet, was crucial for
Assam as a whole for many reasons: one, the population of Sylhet alone matched that of the whole of
Assam; two, the Sylhet population was primarily Bengali speaking; and three, in the overall context of the
province, Muslims now constituted almost one-third of the population. While there were almost no
Assamese-speakin g elements in the Surma Valley, a majority of the population in Goalpara spoke Bengali.
Thus, the two valleys, Brahmaputra and Surma were now neatly divided into two separate linguistic and
cultural zones, one of which was primarily Hindu and Assamese speaking, and the other primarily Muslim
and Bengali speaking. Thus, the term ‘Assam’ that had originally stood for the erstwhile Ahom territory
alone, and later for the whole Brahmaputra Valley, was now given a wider signiŽ cance to denote the newly
emerged plural province in which no single linguistic group commande d a clear majority.
20. Amalendu Guha, Planter Raj to Swaraj: Freedom Struggle and Electoral Politics in Assam, 1885–1947
(Calcutta:Peoples Publishing House, 1977), p 25.
21. For details of the period 1826–1873 (‘a period of transition for Assam’s pre-capitalist economy into its
colonial phase’), see Guha, 1977, op cit, Ref 20, pp 1–25.
22. Census of India, 1901, p 174.
23. Makhan Lal Kar, Muslims in Assam Politics (Delhi: Omsons, 1990), p 145.
24. See Guha, 1977, op cit, Ref 20, for a detailed discussion.
25. Mojammil Ali Laskar, Aamar Balyo, Aamar Koishor: Cacharer Shekaal (Silchar: no publisher, 1999),
pp 128–129.
26. Interview with Shibu Das, aged 80, a resident of Dibrugarh town in Upper Assam.
27. Interview with Nilim Datta, aged 26, whose grandfather was a big Assamese landlord in the 1950s and
1960s.
28. Paritosh Ral Chouchury, aged 75, interviewed in Silchar. He was one of the front-ranking leaders of the
Language Movement in Assam against the imposition of Assamese as the sole ofŽ cial language of the state
in 1960.
29. Interview with Shorbani Das, aged 65, interviewed in Shillong.
30. See Kar, op cit, Ref 23, p 145.
31. B.C. Allen, E.A. Gait, C.G.H. Allen & H.F. Howard, A Gazetteer of Bengal and North East India
(Shillong: Government of Assam, 1905), p 48.
32. Guha, op cit, Ref 20, p 205.
33. ‘The Bengalis are adopting a devastating attitude towards linguistic imperialism over Assamese national-
ity … The Bengali Hindus and the Muslims who run at each others’ throats in their own province are all
one in Assam in this respect … for establishing their Bengalee kingdom in close co-operation with the
British government …’. From a Memorandum presented to Pt. Nehru on behalf of the Congree-
Shanrakshanite Group, Assamiya Sanrakshini Sabha, Gauhati, 28 November 1937. The fear of the
Asamiya middle class was re ected in the editorial articles of the time published by the Assam Tribune,
the mouth-piece of the Assamese middle class. Later, this fear was transformed into a fear of the Partition
refugees.
34. Interview with Chittaranjan Das, aged 77, a retired school teacher now living in Shillong.
35. Shyamolesh Das, Srihotter Gono-bhot : Bharot Itihasher Kolonko (Calcutta: no publisher, 1996), p 60.
36. ‘We have said many times before that Sylhet district was a temple of Hindu-Muslim brotherhood. Sylhet
never experienced communal feelings or riots. This feeling of brotherhoo d and this bond was shattered
during the time of the Sylhet Referendum in 1947’(translation mine), ibid, p 17.
37. ‘5,61,260 persons out of the district’s total population of 31,16,602 constituted the electorate in 1946 and
this was the basis of voting in the referendum. Of the voters, 3,11,733 were Muslims and 2,49,527 Hindus.
Therefore, in respect of voting strength the former had a majority of 62,206 though in the total population
they numbered 18,92,117 against 12,24,485 non-Muslims, mostly Hindus, thus showing a majority of
6,67,632. Registered tea-labour voters numbering 11,449 as mentioned above were not included among
non-Muslims. It was also claimed that out of 1,66,750 tea labourers altogether excluded from consider-
ation, at least 50,000 would be entitled to vote. Therefore, the total non-Muslim votes would come to
3,10,976. The Muslim League won by 55,578 votes’. See Kar, 1990, op cit, Ref 23, for further details of
the Referendum.
38. Ibid.
39. Sri Bishnuram Medhi (Chief Minister of Assam in answer to Q.No.215(c) in the Assam Assembly, 1 April
1954) had to admit this fact.

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ANINDITA DASGUPTA

40. J.K. Choudhury, 1954, Appendi x I, p 83. Memorandum submitted to States’ Re-organisation Commission
by Cachar States Reorganisation Committee (Silchar: 14 April, 1954).
41. The Shillong Times (Shillong), 29 August 1947.
42. Sujit Choudhury , ‘Foreigners in Assam: Myth and Reality’, unpublished paper.
43. Census of India, 1951.
44. Ibid, p 359.
45. Ibid, p 359.
46. ‘About 1800 ofŽ cers of the district of Sylhet opted to serve India instead of Pakistan to which Sylhet
passed after the referendum. They did so on unequivocal terms guaranteed by that governmen t regarding
uninterrupted retention of their existing terms and conditions of service including seniority. But when, after
Partition, they were discharged by the Governmen t of Pakistan, newly established in Sylhet, the
Governmen t of Assam transferred from Sylhet to the rest of Assam every Assamese but only a small
proportion of others, and a vast number was either discharged on gratuity or premature pension or kept
on a temporary basis as juniors to their own former juniors’. See J.K.Chowdhury, Memorandum submitted
to States’ Re-organisation Commission by Cachar States Re-organisation Committee (Silchar: 14 April
1954).
47. All information regarding employees of Assam Railways are collected from a series of interviews with
Bijoy Kumar Das in Guwahati.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid.
50. Census of India, 1951.
51. Interview with Dr. Pradipta Kumar Dasgupta, FRCS, in Guwahati.
52. Interview with Paritosh Pal Choudhury in Silchar.
53. Suresh Chandra Biswas, Bhulibe Ki Praanaante y? (Silchar: no publisher, 1998), pp 81–82.
54. Chowdhury , op cit, Ref 52.
55. Interview with Lala Chakravarty, aged 84, in Guwahati.
56. Laskar, op cit, Ref 25, pp 131–132.
57. Interview with Krishnaa Dutta, aged 55, in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta).
58. Monirul Hussain, ‘Refugees in the Face of Emerging Ethnicity in North East India: An Overview’, Studies
in Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol 2 No 1, 1995, p 123.
59. Interview with Shunu Dutta, aged 70, a resident of Shillong.
60. Interview with T.K. Nath, aged 72, a retired Assam Government ofŽ cer from Karimganj.
61. Interview with N. Biswas, Barrister, a resident of Guwahati.
62. Census of India, 1951.
63. Ibid.
64. Interview with Rabindra Choudhury, aged 66, a resident of Nowgong.
65. Interview with Shyamoli Saha, aged 70, housewife, a resident of Shillong.
66. Interview with Hori Sen, aged 80, a resident of Guwahati.

360