Bongal Kheda

Bongal Kheda refers to an organised campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Bengali Hindus in undivided Assam, that originated in the Brahmaputra Valley during the 1960s and 1970s and spread to Meghalaya and Tripura in the 1980s.[1] During its peak in 1960, around 50,000 Bengali Hindus were expelled from Assam, who took shelter in West Bengal. Robin Dey, the Bengali Hindu-born creator of teenage adventure series of Dasyu Bhaskar in Assamese was forced to leave Assam and settle in Kolkata.[2] 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.[3]

Background

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

In May 1948, an ethnic riot broke out between the Assamese people and the Bengalis in the Paan bazaar area of Guwahati, which soon spread to different parts of Assam.[4] 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."[5] 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.[5] 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.[6]

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.[7] Assamese mob attacked Bengali Hindu settlements in the Brahmaputra Valley.[5] The most gruesome violence took place in 25 villages of Goreswar in Kamrup district. An 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.[8] The Deputy Inspector General of Police, also a Bengali Hindu was also stabbed.[8] The Bengali students of Guwahati University, Dibrugarh Medical College and Assam Medical College were forcibly expelled from the institutions.[9] 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.[7]

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.[10] 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.

Cumulative refugee figures from Assam
in Jalpaiguri district, West Bengal[11]
Date Cumulative figures
16 July 1960 9,365
1 August 1960 8,975
21 August 1960 10,043
25 August 1960 50,000

Protests

In 1962, Bengali folk poet Nibaran Pandit composed a collection of poems Sei Dingulir Katha (meaning 'the tales of those dark days') in protest of the Bongal Kheda movement.[12]

Aftermath

1972-73 Language riots

In 1972, large scale ethnic riots erupted in Assam again when Assamese chauvinist 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.[13] Around 14,000 Bengali fled to West Bengal and elsewhere in the North East.

It would be interesting to note that the anti-Bengali violence of the 1960s and early 1970s in Assam were jointly carried out by the Assamese Hindu leaders and the Na Asamiya (new Assamese) immigrant Muslims. Cases are reported in the Gopal Mehrotra commission report, where immigrant Muslim houses located between Bengali Hindu homes were left untouched, while the Bengali houses were burned down to ashes. Arson on Bengali Hindu settlements was carried out by both Assamese and immigrant Bengali Muslim mobs. Infact, East Pakistani infiltrators (read Bengali immigrant Muslims) masquerading as Assamese speakers, made a common cause with the Assamese leadership and marauded the streets of the prominent towns of the Brahmaputra valley to identify and massacre Bengali Hindu citizens.

1979-80 attacks

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 .

During the first phase of the Assam Agitation, Bengali settlements were attacked throughout the Brahmaputra Valley. The cold blooded 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.[14] 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. Gauri Dey, a pregnant Bengali Hindu women was gang-raped by a Khasi mob in front of her husband and then tied to a tree and lynched. The attacks took place mostly before Durga Puja, the most important Bengali Hindu festival. An estimated 25,000 to 35,000 Bengalis left Meghalaya and settled in West Bengal and other parts of India, since the 1980s.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Karmakar, Rahul (27 September 2017). "That Rohingya feeling: NE no stranger to xenophobia, genocides, say experts". Hindustan Times. HT Media. Retrieved 15 October 2017.
  2. ↑ Ray, Biswajit (21 February 2014). "বাংলার বাইরে বাংলার খোঁজে কয়েক দিন". Anandabazar Patrika (in Bengali). Kolkata: ABP Group. Retrieved 26 June 2017.
  3. ↑ "'তোমরা ছিলে তাই লেখার সাহস পাই'". Ei Samay (in Bengali). Kolkata: Bennett Coleman. 19 May 2015. Retrieved 26 June 2017.
  4. ↑ Nag, Sajal (2015). Nehru and the North East (PDF). p. 12. ISBN 978-93-83650-81-1. Retrieved 15 October 2017.
  5. 1 2 3 Internal Displacement in South Asia: The Relevance of the UN's Guiding Principles. Sage. 2005. pp. 150–151. ISBN 0761933131.
  6. ↑ Bhattacharya, Nitish (25 July 2015). "অসম বাংলাভাষীরও, বুঝতে হবে শাসকদের". Anandabazar Patrika (in Bengali). Kolkata: ABP Group. Retrieved 26 June 2017.
  7. 1 2 Datta, Rathin. "A Taste of British Judiciary & infamous 'Bongal Kheda'". TripuraINFOWAY.com. Tripura Infoway News. Retrieved 15 October 2017.
  8. 1 2 Chakravarti, K.C. (30 July 1960). "Bongal Kheda Again" (PDF). The Economic Weekly. Mumbai: Sameeksha Trust: 1193–95. ISSN 0012-9976. Retrieved 5 March 2014.
  9. ↑ Chowdhury, Anwar (19 February 2016). "যে আগুন ছড়িয়ে গেল..." Daily Ittefaq (in Bengali). Dhaka. Retrieved 26 June 2017.
  10. ↑ Bhaumik, Subir (2008). Samir Kumar Das, ed. Blisters on their Feet (PDF). Sage. p. 303. ISBN 978-81-7829-819-1. Retrieved 5 March 2014.
  11. ↑ Roy, Jagabandhu (January 2017). "Demographic Change in North Bengal in 19th and 20th century" (PDF). North Asian International Research Journal of Social Science & Humanities. Pulwama: North Asian International Research Journal Consortium. 3 (1): 11. ISSN 2454-9827. Retrieved 15 October 2017.
  12. ↑ "কবি নিবারণ পণ্ডিত". Milansagar (in Bengali). Retrieved 26 June 2017.
  13. ↑ Sekhawat, Vibhuti Singh (2007). Assam: From Accord to ULFA. Anamika Publishers. p. 88. ISBN 9788179751695. Retrieved 6 March 2014.
  14. ↑ 'Bearing Witness': The Impact of Conflict on Women in Nagaland and Assam. Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research. 2011. p. 42.
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