Bardoloi was Assam’s hero of the hour, the man who saved the province from going to Pakistan and becoming absorbed in East Pakistan under the Grouping system devised by the Cabinet Mission of 1946. Under this scheme, Assam, which was largely Hindu, would have been clubbed with the Muslim-majority, but larger Bengal state. They would then have drawn up the constitutions of their respective areas—but it does not need much to understand that Bengal would had decided the fate of Assam. This was rejected by Bardoloi, with the support of Mahatma Gandhi, and over the objections of Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who were extremely irked as what they regarded as Assam stalling the independence process.

Assamese nationalism, or what Sanjib Baruah describes as subnationalism2, has always ranged itself against the outsider, be it from Bengal or Rajasthan or other parts of India. The Assamese perception and concern over the illegal migrant, or any migrant and settler, has been articulated as early as the 1930s by politicians and writers. An influential thinker and organizer in the pre-and post-independence movement was Ambikagiri Raychaudhuri, a revolutionary poet, a radical and member of the Congress Party. Raychaudhuri proclaimed the need for Assamese to ‘ensure full control . . . over Assam’s land and natural resources, agriculture, commerce and industry, trade, employment, language and literature, culture and ethos.’

That long list hardly leaves out any subject of regional discourse!

Gynanath Borah wrote in a collection of essays in 1935 that the different provinces of India needed to recognize their own unique qualities. Borah strongly questioned the wisdom of trying to unite different literatures, languages and communities under the banner of ‘one language, one literature and one nation.’3 He believed that India would flourish as a federation of entities, each enriching the nation with its own special virtues and gifts.

Thus, the Assamese construct of the historical threat from the perceived outsider/foreigner is not a new one. The concept of the bidekhi too is different to that of mainland India where many communities have accepted ‘outsiders’ and settlers as part of their own land. In Assam, anyone who is not an Assamese speaker or one who does not speak any of the original aboriginal languages, whether Bodo and its numerous dialects, or Ahom, Tiwa, Rabha and Mishing to name a few, is viewed as an outsider, no matter how long he has lived in the region.