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The Making and Unmaking of Assam-BengalBorders and the Sylhet Referendum

ASHFAQUE HOSSAIN

Modern Asian Studies / Volume 47 / Issue 01 / January 2013, pp 250 - 287DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X1200056X, Published online: 09 August 2012

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0026749X1200056X

How to cite this article:ASHFAQUE HOSSAIN (2013). The Making and Unmaking of Assam-BengalBorders and the Sylhet Referendum. Modern Asian Studies, 47, pp 250-287doi:10.1017/S0026749X1200056X

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Modern Asian Studies 47, 1 (2013) pp. 250–287. C© Cambridge University Press 2012doi:10.1017/S0026749X1200056X First published online 9 August 2012

The Making and Unmaking ofAssam-Bengal Borders and the Sylhet

Referendum∗

ASHFAQUE HOSSAIN

Department of History, University of DhakaEmail: [email protected]

Abstract

The creation of Assam as a new province in 1874 and the transfer of Sylhet fromBengal to Assam provided a new twist in the shaping of the northeastern regionof India. Sylhet remained part of Assam from 1874 to 1947, which had significantconsequences in this frontier locality. This paper re-examines archival sources onpolitical mobilization, rereads relevant autobiographical texts, and reviews oralevidence to discover the ‘experienced’ history of the region as distinct from the‘imagined’ one. The sub-text of partition (Sylhet) is more intriguing than the maintext (Bengal), because events in Sylhet offer us a micro-level study. Generationsof historians—writing mostly in Bengali and relying on colonial archives—havetended to overlook the mindset of the people of Sylhet. This paper, on thebasis of an examination of combined sources, argues that the new province wasimplicated in overlapping histories, across Bengal-Assam borders. The voice of theindigenous—mostly Hindus but partly Muslim—elites were dominant from 1874onwards. However, the underdogs—particularly ‘pro-Pakistani’ dalits (lower-casteHindus) and madrasa-educated ‘pro-Indian’ maulvis—emerged as crucial playersin the referendum of 1947. Hardly any serious study, however, has focused on theSylhet referendum—a defining moment in the region. This study of the Sylhetreferendum will reveal a new dimension to the multiple responses to these issuesand provide a glimpse of the ‘communal psyche’ of the people in this frontierdistrict, rather than a binary opposition between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ forces.

Introduction

The shaping of Sylhet as a region from the 1870s onwards has beenremarkable and, to some extent, ‘dramatic’. The emergence of tea

∗ I am immensely indebted to the anonymous reviewers whose critical commentsmade it possible to put my arguments into proper perspective. This revised versionof the paper was read by Professor Colin Heywood, Professor Fakrul Alam, and DrIftekhar Iqbal whose comments were also much appreciated. All limitations of courseare mine.

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A S S A M - B E N G A L B O R D E R S A N D S Y L H E T R E F E R E N D U M 251

as a global product was the underlying factor behind Sylhet’s shiftingborders. Its separation from Bengal in 1874 gave its Hindu—andlater Muslim—elites a dominant position in Assam in the spheresof politics, administration, and education within the colonial polity.The questions that will be asked are: What was the reaction of theSylhetis to this new political and administrative set-up? What werethe consequences? Looking at aspects of political mobilization since1874, this paper examines the construction of nation/s and observeshow religious communities in South Asia were interwoven with theparallel emergence of ‘identities’. The shifting position of Hindu elitesis interesting: in the 1920s and 1930s they insistently supported a‘Back to Bengal’ movement, but later the same leaders reversed theirposition and mobilized political forces against Sylhet’s reunion withBengal. These ‘self-confessed’ Bengali nationalists had become awareof the possible effects of losing power in the new state, as well asa shrinking social space as a result of the emerging power of lower-middle class Muslims and Muslim peasants. With some misgivings,these fears ultimately compelled them to demand that Sylhet shouldbe retained by non-Bengali Assam in 1947. Focusing on the Sylhetreferendum, this paper looks at how multiple ‘identities’, based onclass, caste, and religion, worked at the grassroots level. Even theSylheti seamen of London’s East End—though at a distance of 5,000miles—were involved in the struggle. This paper will argue that theannexation of Sylhet by Assam and its return to East Bengal in 1947 setchallenges for the elites—irrespective of whether they were Hindus,Muslims or Assamese. As a result, an element of contradiction wasalways present in their responses. The underdogs such as the dalitsand maulvis were not silent and showed remarkable awareness duringthe referendum; nonetheless, their responses to this issue were notonly varied but also complex.

Revisiting existing studies and the scope of the investigation

Abundant secondary material is available on eastern India, especiallyon Assam. However, very few of these studies have attractedthe attention of scholars. Amalendu Guha presented a Marxistperspective highlighting class formation and class struggle in Assam.1

1 Amalendu Guha, Planter Raj to Swaraj: Freedom Struggle and Electoral Politics in Assam,1826–1947, ICHR, Delhi, 1977, p, 45.



252 A S H F A Q U E H O S S A I N

The question of identity has rarely been treated in this kind ofhistoriography. More recently, in her study of Assam, Jayeeta Sharmafocused on Assamese identity, but devoted hardly any space to Sylhetiidentity. In addition, her study ends in 1935 and the perspective ofAssamese leaders on the Sylhet referendum was not included.2 DavidLudden’s major works focus on agrarian capitalism in South Asia,mostly drawn from his empirical study on South India. His recent workon Sylhet and Assam sheds important light on ethnicity such as Khasias,on the one hand, and space or modernity, on the other.3 AnindiataDasgupta points out that the ‘refuge-hood’ of the Sylheti-BengaliHindu was a more pluralistic experience than has been assumed byboth popular writers and academia. However, she rightly argues thatthis plurality should be explored further.4 Although it is surprising that(except for Dasgupta) no one has included the Sylhet referendum intheir studies, the reason is understandable. Sylhet was an integral partof Bengal for a thousand years; it only became a key district of Assamin the 1870s. Researchers depend on archival data and governmentreports, and so when they find Sylhet in a different administrative set-up and its official data kept separately, it is easily excluded. Thus thereshaping of Sylhet’s boundaries, first in 1874 and later in 1947, placeit outside the parameters of the abovementioned studies. Dasguptahas tried to unearth Hindu and Muslim voices from the forgottenstories of partition, but she has mainly confined herself to SylhetiHindu bhadralok, ‘displaced without experience of direct violence’.5

This paper departs from both the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ historiographyof partition. It takes a holistic approach designed to treat real issuesand experiences rather than existing piecemeal approaches based on‘imagined’ historiography, particularly in the context of the Sylhetfrontier. It may be pointed out here that identity politics was crucialin Assam from the 1870s to the 1940s. On one side, this was a matterof Bengali versus Assamese, and on the other, Hindu versus Muslim.In Sylhet, the local elites were in the forefront of any mobilization;nonetheless, underdogs such as peasants, labourers, dalits, and maulvisalso made significant contributions. In this process, a number of

2 Jayeeta Sharma, ‘The Making of Modern Assam 1826–1935’, PhD thesis,University of Cambridge, 2003.

3 David Ludden, ‘The First Boundary of Bangladesh on Sylhet’s NorthernFrontiers’, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, Humanities, 48 (1), 2003.

4 Anindiata Dasgupta, ‘Denial and Resistance: Sylhet Partition “Refugees” inAssam’, Contemporary South Asia, 10 (3), 2001, pp. 343–60.

5 Dasgupta, ‘Denial and Resistance’, p. 343.




divisions and contradictions emerged, particularly among the elites,which brought about irreversible changes. There was, for example,the demise of the already mentioned ‘Back to Bengal’ movement—thebrainchild of the Hindu elites. These issues can be linked to a broadersocio-political and ideological framework to highlight their effectson the people of Sylhet and beyond. This paper therefore intendsto move from existing studies of partition and explore intertwined,multifaceted cross-borders’ histories, where proceedings were dictatednot only by mighty colonizers but also by locals, irrespective oftheir class, caste or religion. It will be argued here that the Sylhetreferendum was a watershed not only for the elites but also forpeasants, maulvis, seamen, tea labourers, and dalits.

Many historians of modern South Asia tend to analyse partitionin the context of a greater Bengal or Hindu-Muslim binary. Only afew historians have researched the question of how Britain soughtto fashion the borders during the transfer of power. Some innovativestudies have been carried out on cross-borders’ history, particularlyin the context of Bengal. For example, Willem van Schendel arguesthat partition created a ‘borderland society’.6 Joya Chatterji’s studyon British Bengal draws attention to the complex relationshipbetween nationalistic politics and religion in South Asia. She presentsimportant information on how the bhadralok in Congress and HinduMahasabha formed the Bengal Partition League. She focuses onthe twin processes of Hindu revivalism and the rise of the Muslimpeasantry in Bengal politics.7 In contrast, Bidyut Chakrabarty arguesthat the partition of Bengal and Assam was ‘probably inevitable’.8

He also suggests that the results of the referendum were skewedin favour of the division of Sylhet on the basis of its demographiccomposition. However, having used selective archival sources, hepresents a partial picture of the Sylhet referendum and partition.Chakrabarty suggests that the role of the maulvis was extremelysignificant in popularizing League demands, because they participatedactively in mobilizing support for the amalgamation.9 This argumentis not tenable since the maulvis mainly supported the cause of

6 Willem van Schendel, The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in South Asia,Anthem Press, London, 2005, p. 385

7 Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932–1947,Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 103–91.

8 Bidyut Chakrabarty, The Partition of Bengal and Assam 1932–1947: Counter of Freedom,RoutledgeCurzon, London, 2004, p. 27.

9 Chakrabarty, The Partition of Bengal and Assam, p. 192.




Pakistan. Such a narrow approach does not help us to understandthe complexity of the situation on the ground. For example, in mostcases local communists sided with the ‘Hindu elites’, though Muslimreligious groups, such as Jamait-Ulema-e-Hind (the Indian Associationof Muslim Theologians, henceforth Ulema-e-Hind), particularly inSylhet, supported the concept of ‘one state’. It is for this reason thatthis paper will re-examine both traditional and non-traditional sourceson political mobilization and attempt to discover the ‘experienced’history as distinct from the ‘imagined’ one. Many important facts andissues are not included in official records and thus cannot be locatedin the colonial archives. Some key sources can, however, be traced inautobiographies and vernacular materials.

Methodology and sources

Publicly available archive documents such as government and non-government papers, legislative proceedings, Sylhet referendum papersheld in the British Library, population censuses, and gazettes havebeen extensively used in writing this paper. It also uses a wide range ofnon-archival sources, particularly oral histories and autobiographies.For instance, the interviews with Abul Mal Abdul Muhith and HajiMohammed Younus were held in London and Essex. The latter madeavailable a collection of family papers which revealed that only thosepeasants who paid nine annas tax were able to cast their vote in theSylhet referendum.10 The interview with the late Dewan MohammedAzrof took place in 1996 and it helped with the analysis of the Sylhetreferendum. Azrof was a representative at the Boundary Commission,from the Muslim League.11 The interview with Major General C.R. Dutta was held in 1997. General Dutta is a war hero who led the

10 Haji Mohammed Younus, interviewed in Goodmayes, Essex, 12 April 2008, andAbul Mal Abdul Muhith, interviewed in West London, June 2008. Haji MohammedYounus also showed me some family papers on land tax in the 1940s. Both wereactive campaigners in the Sylhet referendum. Muhith is now the finance minster ofthe People’s Republic of Bangladesh. Sadly Haji Mohammed Younus died just twodays after his interview took place.

11 I was the principal investigator in an oral history project on the life historyof Dewan Mohammed Azrof in 1996. Abdul Gaffur, now a banker, was also aninvestigator. While preparing this paper, I reread these interviews, which are stillunpublished. The two of us undertook many interviews that are still fresh in mymemory.




Bangladesh Liberation Force in the Sylhet sector in 1971.12 Interviewswith Nurul Islam13 were also undertaken in London. Although most ofthe research on the Sylhetis in the United Kingdom is primarily basedon interviews carried out between 2006 and 2008, use has been madeof some earlier interviews conducted by the late Caroline Adams. Sheassembled a unique collection of papers and tapes that are now heldin the Tower Hamlets Local History Library. Oral evidence has alsobeen used to understand the political mobilization of Sylhetis at homeand abroad.14

Textual narratives from autobiographies sometimes substantiateoral versions of events, but on occasion they do not. Nevertheless,there is much to be learned from individual histories that exist beyondarchival sources. Hindu, Muslim, and European elites provide differentaccounts of events from the late nineteenth century to the early 1970s.Such sources are almost unexplored and tend to be overshadowed bythe historians who use more conventional sources and archives. It isimportant to analyse what nationalist leaders or social elites thinkabout their own times, and there is much to be learned from theirnarratives. However, care needs to be taken where autobiographicalsources are concerned. Colin Heywood argues that ‘ego documents’need careful scrutiny, like any other primary source, taking intoaccount such considerations as the genre in question, the literaryconventions of the period, and the personal agenda of the author.15

Keeping this in mind, the autobiographies of locals who articulatedtheir ideas regarding the engagement of political and social eliteswere chosen: the memoirs of three Congress leaders of different

12 Major General (retired) C. R. Dutta was interviewed in Dhaka, November 1997.In 1997, I published a book on resistance movements, focusing on the Liberation Warof Bangladesh, which took place in Moulvibazar district, one out of four districtsof Sylhet. Numerous interviews, including one with Major General Dutta, wereconducted in that period.

13 Nurul Islam was interviewed at 32 Gibson Road, Dagenham, London, on 14October 2006 and on 2 January 2007. Born in 1930 in Sylhet, he is a writer who wrotethe first vernacular history of the Sylhetis abroad. He can discuss the living history(eyewitness tales) of his community under three flags—the late British period, thePakistani period, and the Bangladeshi period. Islam’s two maternal uncles went toCalcutta to become seamen and one of them died in the Second World War. NurulIslam, Probashir Kotha (The Tale of the Immigrants), Probashi Publications, Sylhet, 1989.

14 Caroline Adams’ Personal Papers (Letters, Tapes and Type Transcriptions File) areheld under the title P/ADM in Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives,Bancroft Road, London. P/ADM/2/11-12-13.

15 Colin Heywood, Growing Up in France: From the Ancien Regime to the Third Republic,Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007, pp. 32–34.




generations: Bipin Chandra Pal,16 Borjendra Narayan Chaudhury,17

and Suhasini Das.18 All three narratives are interesting sources forconceptualizing the discourse of nationalism within the CongressParty and the approach to the separate discourse of the MuslimLeague. Chanchal Kumar Sharma, one of the founders of the SylhetCommunist Party and the commander of the ‘Volunteer Core’ duringthe Sylhet referendum, has provided an eyewitness account.19 DewanMohammad Azrof,20 the representative to the Boundary Commissionfrom the Muslim League who later became known as ‘principal’, and C.M. Abdul Wahed,21 a student activist from the Muslim League duringthe referendum, represent examples of Muslim thinking and polityof that time. In brief, these texts demonstrate attempts to influencecontemporary politics and the intellectual dilemmas of the age.

As well as these local narratives, some autobiographies writtenby European officers are also available. Sir Henry Cotton and G.P. Stewart produced their version of what they experienced asadministrators.22 Henry Cotton, the chief commissioner of Assam inthe late nineteenth century, noted the influences of planters on theBritish administration in India. G. P. Stewart was appointed assistantcommissioner in Sylhet in 1930 and in 1936 he was promoted todeputy commissioner of Sylhet, the main officer of the district. Hisautobiography, still unexplored, is of interest for many reasons. Thelife and work of a district officer in Assam is graphically describedwith some historical details. His dispassionate account of the hybridculture created by the new plantation economy is useful for historical

16 Bipin Chandra Pal, Memories of My Life and Times, 3rd edition, Bipin Chandra PalInstitute, Calcutta, 1973. Bipin Chandra Pal is one of the greatest ‘sons of the soil’ ofSylhet. He was the son of a Zaminder and a prominent lawyer in Sylhet who studiedat Presidency College, Calcutta. He was one of the architects of the Indian Nationalmovement along with Tilak and Lajpat Rai. He compelled the Congress to take upthe cause of the Assamese tea labourers.

17 Borjendra Narayan Chaudhury, Smriti and Pratiti (An Autobiography), OrientalBooks, Calcutta, 1982.

18 Suhasini Das, Sekaler Sylhet (Sylhet during the British Raj: Memories of Suhasini Das),Sahitya Prokash, Dhaka, 2005.

19 Chanchal Kumar Sharma, Sreehatte Biplobbad O Communist Andolon: Smritikatha(Memories on Revolutionary and Communist Movement in Sylhet District), NarendraMohpatrya, Calcutta, 1984.

20 Dewan Mohammad Azrof, Attajiboni (Autobiography), Utso Prokashan, Dhaka,2007.

21 C. M. Abdul Wahed, Sylhet-e Gono Bhot (Referendum in Sylhet), C. M. Abdul Wahed,Dhaka, 1999.

22 Henry Cotton, Indian and Home Memories, Unwin, London, 1911.




research. He has sketched the importance of Sylhet in the 1930s inAssamese history.23

The Assam ‘Planter Raj’ and Sylhet: the inclusion of a‘rebellious partner’

Sylhet was a frontier of Bengal, particularly before the emergenceof Assam as a northeastern province of British India in 1874.24 BipinChandra Pal had the privilege of witnessing, indeed personally sharing,the toils and turmoils which transformed Sylhet in the second half ofthe nineteenth century. He tried to use the thread of his personallife to weave together the history of his times. In his autobiography,published just five days before his sudden death in 1932, he depictedthe reshaping of Sylhet in the following language:

I was born in a village, Poil, in the District of Sylhet, on Kartik 22, Shakabda1779, (1265 Bengali year) corresponding to November 7, 1858. Sylhet isnow a part of the administrative province of Assam; but at the time of mybirth, and for many years afterwards during the whole of my boyhood, it wasa Bengal district in the Commissionership of Dacca. Assam too was then apart of the Lieutenant-Governorship of Bengal under a Commissioner. Whenthe Commissionership of Assam was made into a separate Province undera Chief Commissioner in 1874, Sylhet and Cachar were transferred to thenew Administration very much against the wishes of the people of theseDistricts, who were all Bengalees (sic) and were still crying out for re-unionwith Bengal.25

Bipin Pal revealed that historically and culturally Sylhet was aBengal District under the commissionership of Dhaka. He pointedout that the British ruled Assam as part of Bengal before it emergedas a northeastern frontier province of the Raj in the 1870s. Thusthe inclusion of Sylhet in Assam created one kind of identity crisis.Identity gradually emerged as a burning issue for Sylhetis living inthe Bengal-Assam borderlands. One of my interviewees, Nurul Islam,who witnessed the events of the Sylhet referendum at the age of 17,

23 G. P. Stewart, The Rough and the Smooth: an Autobiography, Heritage Press,Waikanae, 1994.

24 In fact, Assam came under British rule for the first time in the 1820s—beforethat Sylhet was last eastern frontier of the British Raj. The Anglo-Burmese War in1824 and the victorious British treaty of Yandaboo signed in 1826 resulted in theshifting of the colonial boundary.

25 Pal, Memories of My Life and Times, p. 1.




explained how identity was constructed and reconstructed. Puttingthe situation in its wider context, he said:

Well, it changes with the creation of new states and regions. For example,I was born in 1930, and till 1947 it was the British period, we were Britishsubjects of His/Her Majesty. Our identity was then Indians. Our secondidentity was that of Bengalis. At that time we used to live in greater Bengalor Assam. Although we were in Assam, we never called ourselves Assamese.The Assamese people used to call the Sylheti people Bengali. The Bengaliused to call us as Assamese. So we were Bengalis, we were Indians, we wereAssamese; then we became Pakistanis. Then with the creation of Bangladeshwe became Bengalis or Bangladeshis.26

So the notion of a Sylheti identity is more or less distinct froma Bengali one. Similarly, a linguistic perspective shows that SylhetiNagri is the linguistic expression of Sylheti identity.27 The adventof Shah Jalal, the mystic Sufi of the subcontinent in the fourteenthcentury, ushered a new era for Sylhet and northeastern India. ShahJalal and his 360 disciples left a unique legacy. Scholars argue thatSylheti Nagri emerged during the time of Shah Jalal as the languagefor writing on religious and social matters. This is an alternativescript used to write Bangla and provides a new source of informationabout the region, documenting a complex period of local history whenIslam was emerging as a social force. Thus, Sylheti Nagri was one ofthe key elements of acculturation, as a result of the encounter ofthe indigenous culture with Perso-Arabic traditions.28 It acted as avehicle for the formation of Muslim identity and created a traditionof high Islam as expressed in regional popular culture. From theeighteenth century, texts were directed towards women, who werethe primary consumers of these predominantly religious verses. B.C. Allen wrote that Sylheti Nagri was used among the ‘low caste’Muslims of Sylhet.29 Discarding this opinion, Nagandra Nath Basuargued that converted Nagar Brahmins (Hindu priests) wrote Muslim

26 Islam interviews, London, 2006, 2007.27 Abdul Musabbir Bhuyia, Jalalabadi Nagri: A Unique Script and Literature of Sylheti

Bangla, Jalalabadi Press, Badarpur, Assam, 1999.28 This script has 32 letters with no conjunctions and evolved between the

fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. Moulvi Abdul Karim, an eminent Sylhetieducationist, designed the typeface in the1860s and printed texts appeared in the1870s. This helped to spread the uses of the script. By the early twentieth centurythere were three presses, one in Calcutta and two in Sylhet. By the 1950s the scripthad become almost extinct.

29 B. C. Allen, Assam District Gazeeters: Sylhet, Government of Assam, Calcutta, 1905,Vol. II, p. 74.




religious books in Sylheti Nagri characters.30 These contending viewsreveal that it was a popular script for a considerable cross-section ofpeople. Even today, many people as well as academics refer to it asJalalabadi Nagri to commemorate Shah Jalal.31 Furthermore, linkingfamily history to Shah Jalal and his followers is quite common in Sylhet.It appears that this particular notion has captured the imagination ofalmost all the Muslim masses of Sylhet and these beliefs have beenreflected through devotional songs celebrating Shah Jalal, which arestill in circulation in Sylhet and in Brick Lane in London. Thus, Sylhetiidentity is also transnational. Later in this paper there will be evidenceto show how ‘British Sylhetis’ were emotionally and physically involvedin the events surrounding the referendum. Although 1971 issues willnot be discussed in this paper, one can also find evidence of BritishSylhetis’ participation in the Bangladesh War. Many studies indicatethat Sylhetis have had a long diasporic experience, particularly inBritain.32 In his autobiography, Robert Lindsay, a late eighteenthcentury resident of Sylhet, mentioned that in 1809 Syed Ullah wasthe first Sylheti to migrate to Britain. Lindsay also wrote that he wasable to carry out business regularly with help of Sylhetis from Sylhetto Calcutta and, on a few occasions, also from southeast Asia.33 At theclose of the nineteenth century, however, the traditional river-trade

30 Nagandra Nath Basu, The Social History of Kamrupa, Northern Book Centre,Calcutta, 1983, Vol. III, pp. 139–40.

31 Bhuyia, Jalalabadi Nagri, pp. 2–5.32 The Bengali associations in Britain, led by Sylhetis, acted as agencies for raising

political consciousness from the 1950s. In the late 1960s Shiekh Mujibur Rahmanwas arrested by the Pakistani military rulers and expatriate Sylhetis set up a SheikhMujib Defence Fund and sent Sir Thomas Williams, QC, to Dhaka to argue forthe defence. In 1970, the first foreign branch of the Awami League was formed inthe Britain and Ghous Khan was elected as the president and Taybur Rahman assecretary, both of whom were Sylhetis. In 1971, London became the outside hubof the Bangladesh freedom struggle. See Ashfaque Hossain, ‘Historical Globalizationand its Impact: A Study of Sylhet and its People, 1874 to 1971’, PhD thesis, Universityof Nottingham, 2010, pp. 142–52. Sarah Glynn, ‘The Home and the World: BengaliPolitical Mobilization in London’s East End and a Comparison with the Jews’ Past’,PhD thesis, University College, London, 2003. Katy Gardner, Global Migrants, LocalLives: Travel and Transformation in Rural Bangladesh, Oxford University Press, Oxford,1995.

33 Robert Lindsay, Anecdotes of an Indian Life, Oriental Miscellanies, British Library,London, 1840, Vol. IV, pp. 98–99. Lindsay was the administrator in Sylhet from 1788to 1790. His autobiography provides important information on the region. DavidLudden argued that merchants brought cowries from the Maldives to Chittagong andCalcutta, stored them in Dhaka, and carried them to Sylhet by water and returneddownstream with rice, fish, and upland products. See Ludden, ‘The First Boundary ofBangladesh’, pp. 14–15.




on boats or ships had declined as a result of the introduction of riversteamships and the railway into the interior of Sylhet and Assam.Moving goods from Assam via Sylhet to Calcutta by steamships andrail was quicker and easy. Thus hundreds of Sylheti boatmen foundthemselves out of jobs, but they were soon recruited on seagoing shipsin Calcutta. In this way, they moved from ‘river to sea’—trading ships,after all, required experienced crews to run them. The Calcutta-basedwriter Shankar argues that the people of Sylhet were the pioneersamong Bengalis in the ‘conquest of the sea’. By nature, he asserts, theywere ‘brave’ and they showed that characteristic in sailing around theworld. Leaving Kiderpore dock, they created history and participatedin global trade.34 Later, particularly from the 1940s, they began tosettle in Britain. Today up to 90 per cent of Bangladeshis living in theUnited Kingdom either originate or come from Sylhet. Interestingly,one diaspora poet and performer Shamim Azad asserts, ‘I firmlybelieve that these Sylheti seafarers probably had a special migratorygene that drove them across rivers and seas.’35

Colonial officials and the local Bengali gentry in Assam consideredit to be an extension of Bengal. In contrast, the tea planters hadlong demanded the creation of an exclusive province to securetheir own interests and the efficient use of state tools. Due to theincreased work brought about by the growth of tea plantations andimmigrant labourers, very soon every branch of the administrationwas overhauled and special regulations were drafted to provide forlocal needs. Accordingly, on 6 February 1874, a new province wascreated comprising the area of Assam proper, Cachar, Goalpara,Garo Hills, and the other hill districts. Although vast in area, thisnew province, with its population of 2.4 million, had a low revenuepotential. Initially Sylhet was not included in this province but withinsix months, the colonial administration realized the need to redrawthe map of Assam. To make it financially viable, and to accede todemands from professional groups, they decided in September 1874to annex the Bengali-speaking and populous district of Sylhet. With its

34 Shankar (whose real name is Mani Shankar Mukherjee) is a popular writer inthe Bengali language. Shankar, Banga Basundhara [Bengal and World], Dey’s Publishing,Calcutta, 1999, pp. 294–95. The Sylhetis’ seafaring traditions stretched back at leasttwo centuries, and evidence suggests that in the late nineteenth and early twentiethcenturies, there were groups of Sylheti men in London’s East End, Liverpool, Cardiff,and other port cites. See Hossain, ‘Historical Globalization and its Impact’, pp.142–55.

35 Shamim Azad, interviewed in Grants Hill, Essex, 6 April 2008.




population of 1.7 million, Sylhet had been historically and ethnicallyan integral part of Bengal. In effect, the creation of the new provincemerely merged the four uneven areas. These were as follows: thefive Assamese-speaking districts of the Brahmaputra Valley, knownas Assam proper, which was congruent; the Goalapara district of thesame valley where Assamese and Bengali cultures overlapped; the‘pre-literate’ hill districts where different dialects were spoken; and,finally, the two populous and Bengali-speaking districts of Sylhet andCachar. This is how this new province was created. It remained withouta legislature from 1874 to 1905. From the 1920s to the mid 1940sthere was a provincial legislature in which the planters and local elitesmaintained significant influence until the end of British rule in 1947.36

The integration of Sylhet with Assam separated Bengali-speakingpeople on either side of the Meghna. It was threatened by theantagonism between the people of Assam and the Surma valleys,which was characterized by occasional outbreaks until 1947.37 Theadministrative reorganization and subsequent public protests on theeastern frontier of the Raj need to be analysed in the context ofthe political economy of the region, spearheaded by the tea business.Publicly, there was always a demand for reunion with Bengal. Thissentiment found emphatic expression when the new province was firstformed in 1874. Sylhetis felt that their district was deliberately tornfrom Bengal in order to incorporate it into Assam province, whichcould not pay its own way financially. The elites, mostly Hindus, wereagainst the transfer of Sylhet as they regarded it as disadvantageousto be yoked to a ‘backward region’. Newspapers published in Calcuttaand Sylhet by Hindu elites tried to mobilize public opinion againstthis government move. The influential Hindu Patriot published a seriesof articles and editorials echoing the sentiment of the Bengali elites.K. Das Pal, its editor, wrote that Sylhet was the golden calf, beingsacrificed for the new idol, the province of Assam.38

A memorandum of protest against the transfer of Sylhetwas submitted to the viceroy on 10 August 1874 by leadersof both the Hindu and Muslim communities.39 Although thegovernment immediately rejected this demand, Governor General

36 Hossain, ‘Historical Globalization and its Impact’, p. 5.37 Chaudhury, Smriti and Pratiti, pp. 132–33.38 Proceedings of the Assam Legislative Council (henceforth PALC), Shillong,

August 1924, Assam Gazette, Part IV, p. 568.39 National Archives of Bangladesh (hereafter NAB), No. Pol-1917-5585. Details

were given in The Letter of the Government of Assam, dated 30 October 1924.




Lord Northbrook came to Sylhet to assure the people that their cultureand tradition would not be affected because of the new administrativearrangements. It was also decided that education and justice would beadministered from Calcutta University and the Calcutta High Courtrespectively.40 The administration of this new province adopted twomajor policies: first, it would ensure the smooth recruitment of tealabourers from outside and, secondly, it would oversee a policy ofsponsored migration of Bengali peasants from East Bengal districtsto the countryside of Sylhet and Assam to facilitate the expansionof agriculture. This was done under the slogan ‘Grow more food’.Evidently, colonial officialdom did not consider historical or culturalcontiguity when it declared Assam to be a new administrative province.

Although the Hindu gentry of Sylhet and Calcutta initially resistedthe creation of the new provinces, they soon shifted their position fortwo reasons. They accepted assurances from Lord Northbrook thatSylhet’s education and justice system would be administered fromBengal. They could also see that the benefits conferred by the teaindustry on the province would also prove profitable for them. Forexample, those who were literate were able to obtain numerous clericaland medical appointments in tea estates, and the demand for rice tofeed the tea labourers noticeably augmented its price in Sylhet andAssam enabling the Zaminders (mostly Hindu) to dispose of theirproduce at a better price than would have been possible had they beenobliged to export it to Bengal. It appears from the data that there wasan overwhelming dominance of Bengalis from Sylhet in the colonialbureaucracy in Assam as well as in different offices in the tea estates.Sanjib Baruah, writing in 1999, suggests that by the early twentiethcentury, Bengali Hindus in Assam dominated the medical, legal, andteaching professions and held many of the mid-ranking and clericaljobs in the railways and post offices.41 Having been part of Bengal,British India’s most dynamic province, Sylhet had more experienceof colonial rule and an English-educated professional class that couldimmediately take advantage of the opportunities opened up in thenew frontier. Baruah points out, ‘As they came to occupy the bulkof the positions in Assam’s colonial bureaucracy, their dominancewas resented, especially after an Assamese western-educated class

40 India Office Records (hereafter IOR), L/P&J/9/59, pp. 30–31.41 Sanjib Baruah, India Against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality, University

of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1999, p. 59.




began to emerge.’42 Sylhet was thus cut off from the larger life ofBengal and continued to be so for 30 years until it was reintegratedin 1905. In that year a short-lived province was created (through apartition of Bengal) under the name ‘Eastern Bengal and Assam’ withits capital at Dhaka. So when the partition of Bengal was annulled in1912, Assam was reconstituted into a separate province into whichSylhet was again integrated. The district was consequently convulsedby agitation in towns, marketplaces, and important villages. Therewere public meetings of protest and a petition that was signed bymembers of the Provincial Legislative Council. The titleholders, theZaminders (with two exceptions), and lawyers submitted their protestmemorial to Lord Hardinge in 1912, but without any success.43

In 1920 the Sylhet-Reunion League was formed under the auspicesof Brojendra Narayan Chaudhury. It was decided that a deputationshould wait upon the viceroy, but with the advent of the Non-cooperation Movement the matter was temporarily dropped.44 In the1920s, as evidenced by the proceedings of the Assam Legislature,the Hindu gentry and a significant number of Muslims fought for theissue of Bengali identity—a goal that was jointly shared by the Hindusand Muslims of Sylhet. There was a possibility that Sylhet would loseits special status regarding education and justice. There was alsoa question of establishing a university in Assam. These issues wereclearly of concern to both the Hindu and Muslim elites. In the 1920sand 1930s, Brojendra Narayan Chaudhury acted as a spokesmanfor Sylhet’s reunion with Bengal. He captured the contemporaryimagination regarding the Bengali ethnicity of Sylhetis. In an upbeatmoment in the Assam Legislative Council, in August 1924, he argued:

In moving the resolution I need to point out that the transfer of Sylhet fromthis Administration to Bengal is the chief concern of the representatives ofSylhet. Indeed this is our only politics. . . I have supplied hon. members withcopies of a booklet called ‘Back to Bengal’ by Rai Bahadur Girish ChandraNag, a very experienced and retired member of the Assam Civil Service anda representative of Sylhet in the first Assembly. . . I will not read it fully, butmerely give extracts.

Barring the small imported labour in tea plantations, nearly cent percent(100 per cent) of the indigenous population speaks Bengali, belongethnologically to the Bengali race, have the same manners, customs and

42 Baruah, India Against Itself, p. 40.43 PALC, August 1924, p. 569. Also see IOR/L/P&J/9/59, p. 31.44 IOR/L/P&J/9/59, p.12.




traditions and thoughts as their brethren in Bengali and are indissolubly bound upwith them by ties of blood and social relationship [emphasis added].45

In the same speech, Chaudhury declared:

It is stated that fears were entertained about our connection with the CalcuttaHigh Court and University. . . We of Sylhet will stand to a man against anythought of transferring us from the protection of the Calcutta High Court,whose traditions are bound up with our Bengali traditions. . . can I or anyother member from Sylhet consent to an expenditure from which Sylhet willdeprive no benefit? Let the naked truth be told that Sylhet, so long as it ishere will stand in the way of Assam. . . This will be Assam’s legacy of beingbound to an unwilling and rebellious partner [emphasis added].46

The Assamese also dreamed of their own homeland, and sawBengali-speaking Sylhet as a major obstacle to that goal. So theJorahat Sarbajanik Saha (an Assamese social organization) passed aresolution to exclude Sylhet from Assam, which received supportfrom the Assamese newspapers.47 In 1933 the president of theAssam Association publicly argued that Assam could not have itsown university or high court, nor could it develop its language andliterature for as long as Sylhet remained in Assam.48

As the upper class Muslims of Assam and Sylhet became increasinglypowerful in provincial politics, a considerable number of their leaderssuch as Khan Bahadur Aluddin Chaudhury and Maulvi Dewan WasilChaudhury spoke out against reunion and questioned whether theMuslims of the districts supported it.49 Abdul Matin Chaudhury, aformer congressman who had become a member of the Muslim Leagueand an influential Muslim leader of Sylhet, wrote a letter to membersof the Assam Legislature in 1924 declaring that the Muslims of Sylhetdid not want to be part of Bengal, and argued that the only oneswho wanted this were the Sylheti Hindus.50 Khan Bahadur AluddinChaudhury explained his decision to shift his position thus, ‘I havealready confessed in my speech that I was one of those who advocatedthe re-union of Sylhet with Bengal in 1918 but I changed my views

45 PALC, August 1924, p. 568.46 PALC, August 1924, pp. 572–73.47 PALC, August 1924, pp. 569–70.48 Arun Chandra Bhuyan et al., Political History of Assam 1920–1939, Government

of Assam, Guwahati, 1978, Vol. 2, p. 292.49 PALC, August 1924, p. 570.50 PALC, August 1924, pp. 586–87.



A S S A M - B E N G A L B O R D E R S A N D S Y L H E T R E F E R E N D U M 265Table 1

‘Aye’ votes in the Assam Legislative Council on the transfer of Sylhet back to Bengal,August 1924.

Serial Name Identities

1 Rai Bhadur Amarnath Ray Hindu2 Rai Bhadur Bipin Chandra Deb Laskar Hindu3 Rai Sahib Har Kishore Chakrabatti Hindu4 Babu Brajendra Narayan Chaudhury Hindu5 Babu Gopendralal Chaudhury Hindu6 The Hon’ble Rai Bahadur Promode Chandra Dutta Hindu7 Babu Krishna Sundar Dam Hindu8 Babu Kshirod Chandra Deb Hindu9 Babu Biraj Mohan Dutta Hindu

10 Srijut Kamakhyaram Baruah Hindu11 Srijut Kamla Kanta Das Hindu12 Srijut Mahadeva Sarma Hindu13 Srijut Bishnu Charan Borah Hindu14 Mr. Taraprasad Chaliha Hindu15 Srijut Rohini Kanta Barua Hindu16 Srijut Kuladhar Chaliha Hindu17 Srijut Sadananda Dowerah Hindu18 Maulavi Abdul Hamid Muslim19 Maulavi Dewan Abdul Rahim Chaudhury Muslim20 Maulavi Abdul Hannan Chaudhury Muslim21 Maulavi Muhammad Moudabbir Hussain Chaudhury Muslim22 Maulavi Nazmul Isalm Chaudhury Muslim

Source: Proceedings of the Assam Legislative Council, August 1924, AssamGazette, Part IV, Shillong, 1924, pp. 619–20.

in 1920. . . A wise man changes but a fool does not.’51 Tables 1 and 2demonstrate the interesting pattern of votes in the Assam legislature.

These tables show that ten European officials and planters, onenative Christian, six Muslims, and an Assamese leader voted againstthe proposal to transfer Sylhet back to Bengal, while all the Hinduleaders voted in favour. However, the Muslim leaders of Sylhet weredivided on the issue, with five Muslim members voting in favour ofjoining Bengal and six voting against. The five Muslim votes meantthat Chaudhury’s resolution was adopted.

A similar resolution was passed in the Assam Legislature in January1926 with the help of four Muslim members from Sylhet.52 However,soon Sylhet’s Muslim politicians lost interest in the Back to Bengalmovement led by Hindu politicians. The reason was twofold: first,

51 PALC, August 1924, p. 589.52 PALC, January 1926, p. 126.




Table 2‘No’ votes in the Assam Legislative Council on the transfer of Sylhet back to Bengal,

August 1924.

Serial Name Identities

1 The Hon’ble Khan Bahadur Kutubddin Ahmed Muslim2 The Hon’ble Mr. J.E. Webster European3 Mr. A. W. Botham European4 Mr. G. E. Soames European5 Mr. O. H. Desenne European6 Mr. J. R. Cunningham European7 Mr. W. C. M. Dundas European8 Srijut Nilmoni Phukan Assamse9 Maulvi Dewan Muhammad Wasil Chaudhury Muslim/planter

10 Rev. J. C. Evans European/priest11 Khan Bhadur Abul Fazal Ahmed Muslim12 Rev. James Mohan Nicolas Roy Native Christian13 Mualvi Rashid Ali Laskar Muslim14 Khan Bhadur Alauddin Ahmed Chaudhury Muslim15 The Hon’ble Maulavi Syed Mohammad Saadulla Muslim16 Mr. E. S. Roffey European17 Mr. M. H. Clarke European18 Mr. E. A. A. Joseph European

Source: Proceedings of the Assam Legislative Council, August 1924, AssamGazette, Part IV, Shillong, 1924, pp. 619–20.

the emergence of Muhammad Saadulla, an aristocratic Muslim fromAssam who dominated legislature politics with the help of Europeanplanters and British officials. He openly argued that Sylhet shouldremain in Assam. He pointed out, ‘If we allow Sylhet to go, onwhat basis or principle could we stop Cachar and Goalpara also fromgoing?’53 After visiting Sylhet in July 1925 Saadulla saw that ‘opinionin the country is divided’. He opposed ‘the disturbance of the statusquo’. Later that month he wrote, ‘Speaking from the communal pointof view, the transfer of Sylhet will spell disaster for both the ValleyMoslems.’54 So Saadulla’s underlying interest was in safeguarding hispolitical career. In the following years he played the ‘religious card’quite cleverly. Also, many Muslims believed that Sylhet’s integrationinto Assam would lead it to become a Muslim-dominated provincein the future. For example, in opposing the proposal of Sylhet’sseparation from the Assam Legislature in 1926, Maulvi Dewan Wasil

53 PALC, January 1926, p. 41. In the 1920s, Muhammad Saadulla was theeducation minster of Assam. He was later knighted and after 1935 served as Assam’sprime minister for three terms.

54 PALC, January 1926, p. 60.




Chaudhury, himself a planter, suggested that Sylhetis would benefitfrom this new province. He argued that the bench and bar andsubordinate services had been full of Bengalis, but now, ‘Sylhet not onlyelbowed out her Bengali friends from bench and bar. . . but managedto send her gifted children to take part in the administration of theprovince and elsewhere.’55 The notion of Sylhetis as distinct fromBengalis never disappeared and overlapped with the growing Hindu–Muslim division. Wasil Chaudhury continued to argue that all alongSylhet had been politically connected with Assam.56 At that time theterm ‘Sylheti’ was coined by Muslim politicians to mean the Muslimsof Sylhet. Later Mohammed Ali Jinnah included Assam in his plan:to Mahmud Ali, the secretary of the Assam Muslim League, he said,‘I tell you young man; nothing short of Assam shall satisfy me.’57 So,without the backing of Muslim politicians, the resolution regardingthe Back to Bengal campaign in the Assam legislature lost ground.Muslim politicians of Sylhet such as Wasil Chaudhury, Mahmud Ali,and Abdul Matin Chaudhury had been dreaming of Assam provinceas their ‘future free homeland’. In the 1930s and the early 1940s,they served as ministers in the province under the British governors.However, in the early 1940s, the main concern of the Muslim Leaguewas the inclusion of Assam in the Pakistan scheme.58

To complicate matters further, in the 1930s many Assamesepoliticians who wanted to ‘get rid of Sylhet’ took their case to thehighest level. The newly emerged Assamese middle class attemptedto fix their ‘homeland’—to make ‘Assam for Assamese’—free fromthe competition of the Bengali middle class. In his note submitted tothe Indian Round Table Conference in 1931, Chandradhar Barooah,a member from Assam, made a strong argument for the territorialredistribution of Assam on a linguistic basis, with the separation ofSylhet.59 The government of Assam also sent a letter to the ReformOffice on 5 September 1934, relating to the transfer of Sylhet fromAssam to Bengal. It stated:

His Excellency the Governor in Council considers that in view of the continuedagitation over this question of the transfer of Sylhet from Assam to Bengal—a

55 PALC, January 1926, pp. 27–28.56 PALC, January 1926, pp. 26–27.57 Mahmud Ali, Resurgent Assam, National Press, Dhaka, 1967, p. 93.58 Atful Hye Shibly, Abdul Matin Chaudhury: Trusted Lieutenant of Mohammad Ali Jinnah,

Dhaka, Juned A Choudhury, 2011, pp. 161–66.59 IOR/L/PJ/9/59, p. 13.




question which is bound to be an important political issue before the futureGovernment of this province—he should bring the point raised by thedeputation of Assam Valley Associations to the notice of the Governmentof India. The point is, in the opinion of this Government, one of considerableimportance to this province and they trust that some provision on the linesof section 60 of the present Government of India Act will be included in thenew Constitution Act.60

At that time, Richard Austen Butler was the under-secretary of statefor India.61 He was aware of the different views on Sylhet’s reunionwith Bengal, including, of course, those held by the bureaucracy inLondon. On 12 December 1934, Butler interviewed Barooah alongwith an MP, Sir Walter Smiles. The interview and discussion focused onthe question of the amalgamation of Sylhet with Bengal and relevantissues, including the demands of the Assamese elites to exclude Sylhetfrom Assam. Butler noted:

He (Barooah) said. . . that there was a great deal of feeling in Assam thatSylhet held back the wish of the Province for a High Court and a University,since the Sylhetis wanted none of these things, as they found them quitesufficiently in the neighbouring province of Bengal. . . I could hold out nohope to him that the amalgamation of Sylhet to Bengal would be included inthe provisions of the Bill.62

Both Butler and Smiles then explained to Barooah why theBritish administration preferred to keep Sylhet in Assam instead oftransferring it into Bengal. Butler explained:

I was able to refer him to the reference in the Report of the StatutoryCommission to the representations of the Assam Government to thatCommission which seemed to show that there was no unanimity of opinion, and infact the Muslims, who formed the majority of the population in Sylhet, were opposed tothe transfer [emphasis added].63

It appeared that Assam’s boundary, particularly the incorporation ofSylhet into Assam, was based on the considerations of administrativeconvenience and the interest of the planters. On behalf of governmentof Assam, Arthur William Botham, articulated the official position ina confidential letter, as follows:

60 IOR/L/PJ/9/59, p. 23.61 Richard Austen Butler became the under-secretary of state for India in 1932

and after a period at the Ministry of Labour, he became an under-secretary at theForeign Office. He was chancellor of exchequer from 1951 to 1955.

62 IOR/L/P&J/9/59, p. 1.63 IOR/L/P&J/9/59, p. 2.




Even a partial dismemberment of Assam as at present constituted would giverise to many serious difficulties, both administrative and political, and if itsarea and population were materially curtailed, it is doubtful whether it couldretain the status of a Governor’s province.64

Although British authorities in Assam, Calcutta, Delhi, and Londonlistened to diverse views from different quarters on the transfer ofSylhet to Bengal, the official position remained unchanged. The Britishadministrators often belonged to the same families as the plantersand in a few cases they even had their own hidden investments in teagardens as well.65 By the late nineteenth century the planters hademerged as the strongest lobby group in British India. In the closingyears of the century, Sir Henry Cotton, the governor of Assam, seeingthe misery of the labourers, proposed a mild reform plan. However,this gentlemanly initiative was rejected by the planters’ guild. Thepower and influence of the planters can be grasped from Cotton’sautobiography:

The tea industry and the planters as a body had become so intolerantof Government control and interference that they had come to regard aderogatory word as an insult, and the official who uttered it as an enemy.A section of the community had set itself up the attitude of defiance of theadministration.66

Sir Henry said he was treated with ‘malignity’ and even ‘dishonesty’by the planters, although he belonged to a distinguished family whichhad served in India for five generations. The words of Viceroy LordCurzon on the Assam labour issue were even stronger than thoseof Sir Henry, and this came out in their official communications.Nevertheless, Curzon retreated in the face of a rising storm ofopposition from the planters. According to Sir Henry, ‘he (Curzon)saved his own skin but deliberately flung me to the wolves’.67 Sir Henrythus was forced into early retirement instead of being promoted to belieutenant governor of the Bengal Presidency.

64 IOR/V/11/976. Letter from the government of Assam, No. Pol.-1917 -5585, 30October 1924. This letter was included in Appendix A, PALC, January 1926, p. 53.

65 E. G. Foley, The Surma Valley Magazine, 1 (9), 1927, p. 17. Foley wrote that inthe 1920s his father opened Kewacherra garden for H. C. Sutherland, the deputycommissioner in Sylhet. Another example is John Henry Kerr, a noted Indian CivilService officer, who was the son of John Smith Kerr, a tea merchant from Scotland.He joined the Service in 1892, was the chief secretary to the government of Bengalin 1915, and governor of Assam from 1922–27.

66 Cotton, Indian and Home Memories, p. 275.67 Cotton, Indian and Home Memories, p. 276.




The authority also conducted its own surveys to get an idea ofpublic opinion on this burning issue. Directed by the government, inJune 1925, Christopher Gimson, the deputy commissioner of Sylhet,consulted a wide range of people on the ground. He noted that it wasbeyond his power to say what the real wishes of the people of Sylhetwere; he wrote, ‘more than 75 per cent of the people are ordinaryagriculturists, whose views it is almost impossible to obtain’.68 Hepointed out that only ten per cent showed any interest in the issue andthat the larger portion of the Muslims wanted to remain in Assam.He further noted that, not surprisingly, those who worked in the teagardens as managers also ‘prefer to remain in Assam’.69 Thus, on thebasis of the official survey, the British carefully designed the Assamcolonial boundaries so that Sylhet became a key component. In 1928,the Assam Review reported that the planters always voted with thegovernment on this issue.70 Relentless lobbying, protests, and manyresolutions made by the Bengalis of Sylhet, led mostly by Hindus, werein vain as Sylhet did not return to Bengal until 1947.

Paradox of communalism and the Sylhet referendum

Evidently, intercommunal relations were cordial in Sylhet until the1920s. The legacy of Shah Jalal and Sri Chaitanya71 had a long-lastingimpact on the collective psyche of the people, promoting a liberalattitude and outlook. This could be observed in the mystic songsof the region, which were products of the interactions of culturesin this borderland. This harmony began to fade as the Sylhet elitesadopted more contentious positions in the late 1920s, 1930s, and early1940s. At this critical juncture, communal feelings were influenced by

68 Letter from C. Gimson, Esq., I.C.S. Deputy Commissioner, Sylhet to theCommissioner, Surma Valley and Hill Divisions, No. 5451R, dated Sylhet, 24 June1925. The Gimson letter was included in Appendix A, PALC, January 1926, pp. 62–63.

69 PALC, January 1926, p. 62.70 The Assam Review, November 1928, p. 144. G. P. Stewart, district commissioner

of Sylhet in the 1930s, observed, ‘Sylhet town was a large Indian town. The districtof Sylhet was the biggest in Assam. . . throughout the District in almost all of the teagardens the Managers, Assistant Managers and Engineers are Europeans, and thismeant that in Sylhet Town, there was a much frequented Europeans Tea PlantersClub.’ See Stewart, The Rough and the Smooth, p. 35.

71 Shah Jalal, the mystic Sufi of the subcontinent in the fourteenth century, ushereda new era for Sylhet and northeastern India. Sri Chaitanya grew up in Sylhet in hismaternal grandparents’ house and was famous in the Anti-caste Movement.




the attitudes of Hindu and some Muslim businessmen who beganto name their companies along communal lines. For example, in1919 some entrepreneurs named their company the ‘Hindu-MuslimTea Company’ while later, in the late 1920s, both the Hindu andMuslim elites registered their companies with ‘religious’ names suchas ‘Binapani’, ‘Joy-Tara’ or ‘Daru-Salam’.72

Drawing a new map on the borders of East Bengal and Assam as aresult of the Sylhet referendum was a defining moment in the historyof the region. As the majority of the population of Sylhet was Muslim,the Muslim League actively campaigned for the inclusion of Sylhetinto Pakistan. At the same time the Sylhet branch of the Congressactively campaigned on behalf of the Hindu minority who chose tostay in Assam. Furthermore, every stakeholder was involved, whetherit was Congress, the Muslim League, the communists, the ‘pro-Indian’maulvis, the ‘pro-Pakistani’ dalits, and, finally, the British. In the 1940s,the population of Sylhet was distributed as follows: Muslims 60.7 percent, Scheduled Castes (dalits) 11.6 per cent, Caste Hindus 25.1 percent, and Tribal 2.2 per cent.73 However, the voters in the AssamAssembly (1946) for Sylhet district were divided as follows: Muslims311,707 and General 235,808. Although the Muslims formed 60.7per cent of the population of Sylhet, they represented only 54.27 percent of total electoral roll of the district. So on 11 June 1947, inhis letter to Mountbatten, Liaquat Ali Khan argued that the Muslimvotes did not reflect their real strength. To remedy this, he suggestedmultiplying Muslim votes by a factor that would equate with theirvoting strength. On the question of tea labourers he argued, ‘I presumethat the electorates of special constituencies (sic), such as labour, teaplanters, commerce, etc. would not participate in the referendum.’74

On 25 June 1947, Mountbatten wrote back that he could not acceptthe first suggestion and that the referendum in Sylhet would be held‘on the basis of existing electoral rolls’. Mountbatten accepted Ali’ssecond suggestion, so that electorates of special constituencies such aslabour and the tea planters could not participate in the referendum.75

This suddenly brought the issue of tea labour to the table.Interestingly, these were not local labourers; almost all came from theChota Nagpore (Chotanagpur) plateau and Santal Parganas to the

72 Hossain, ‘Historical Globalization and its Impact’, pp. 75–76.73 The Census Report of India, Vol. IX, 1941, Assam, pp. 38–41.74 IOR/R/3/1/158, pp. 4–5. Liaquat Ali Khan’s letter to Lord Mountbatten.75 IOR/R/3/1/158, p 55.




newly created plantation enclaves. This inland labour migration wasa major phenomenon in the second half of the nineteenth century andit continued until the 1940s. In 1876, J. G. Grant, the superintendentof emigration, wrote that the supply of labour for the tea districtswas obtained from western Bengal and Chota Nagpore.76 In thesecond half of the nineteenth century, droughts had caused the failureof food production and several famines occurred in the tea-labourrecruiting areas. Recruitment through contractors and their sub-agents such as the arkatti (native recruiter) was actively pursued inthe 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s. Also, the garden sardars (labour leaders)were freely deployed when large numbers of labourers were requiredin a hurry. In the peak years of the tea plantations, particularlyin the 1890s, big firms like James Finlay, Andrew Yale, OctaviusSteel, and Duncan Brothers opened their own recruiting agencies.They were given licences as the principal employers on whose behalflicensed sub-contractors, such as arkatti and sardar, were active inthe area of recruitment. A report of the emigration department ofBengal shows that James Finlay, the biggest tea company operating inSylhet, held the largest number of licences for recruitment in 1890.Finlay had 16 licences that permitted the recruitment of labour inthe following areas: Singbhoom, Manbhoom, Dumka, Hazaribagh,Giridih, Gya, Patna, Rajmehal, Sahebgnge, Govindpore, Arrah,Buxar, Raneegunge, Mehhijam, Burdwan, Beerbhom, Loharduga,Bankora, Nuddea, Pachamba, 24-Pergunahs, Monghyr, Bhagulpore,and Mozufferpore.77 At the Twelfth Indian National Congress meetingheld at Calcutta in December 1896, Bipin Chandra Pal pointed outthat for some years the Santal Parganas district had been the huntingground of ‘coolie-catchers’.78 For the most part the labour migrationinto the plantations was a permanent move. In the early decades ofthe twentieth century, railways gradually began to play a major rolein transporting these labouring families into the tea plantations.

This historical trajectory misled many postcolonial ‘Hindus’,who later distorted what had actually happened. On the fiftiethanniversary of Indian Independence—21 August 1998—the Southern

76 Government of India, Annual Report on Inland Emigration to the Districts ofAssam, Cachar and Sylhet during the year ended 31 March 1876 (Calcutta, 1877),p. 4.

77 Government of Bengal, Annual Report on Inland Emigration for the Year 1889(Calcutta, 1890), p. 4.

78 Report of the Twelfth Indian National Congress Meeting held at Calcutta, 28 to31 December 1896. See NAB, A Proceedings, Political (Home) 1896, Bundle No. 1.




Assam Bharatiya Itihasa Sankalana Samiti (Indian History CollectionAssociation) organized a seminar at Silchar to explore interpretationsof the referendum. It appears that one of the participants, JanmjitRoy, was not aware of the situation of the tea labourers. Roy argued:

On the pretext of not being sons of the soil, more than one and half a lakhof the Hindu tea garden labourers were disfranchised in the electoral roll of1946 Assembly election. Had they been allowed to vote and had only 40 percent of them turned up for polling, they could have turned the scale. Theso-called Sylhet Referendum was an eye-wash.79

However, all the tea labourers were not ‘Hindus’. Many wereanimists and followers of religions that had few links with ‘Caste-Hindus’. Contemporary documents suggest that in Sylhet therewas one labour constituency and there were 11,449 voters on theelectoral roll in 1946. In this year, Sardar Jibon Santal was electedfrom the Srimongal Labour Constituency as a member of theLegislative Assembly in Assam.80 Clearly the tea labourers werethe privileged among their peer group. A government record revealsthe contemporary situation:

The position in regard to the Srimongal Tea Gardens Labour Constituencyis somehow different. There are 11,449 voters on the electoral roll for thisconstituency, the requisite qualification being that the voter should have beenworking as a permanent employee in one or more qualifying tea gardens onnot less than 180 days. They thus represent a floating population with littleor no stake in the district as such. There is no strong reason why plantation labourshould be given a special voice in the referendum which other labour, agricultural orindustrial, do not get. We have accordingly adopted the general principle that voters inSpecial Constituencies need not be permitted to participate in the referendum [emphasisadded].81

On the one hand, according to law in the 1940s, only those peoplewho had paid 9 annas rent to the government were eligible to vote.82

The poor agriculturists and agricultural labourers such as nankars83 orindustrial labourers at the Assam-Bengal Cement factory at Chatak

79 Janmjit Roy, ‘Notes on Sylhet Referendum’, in Sujit K. Ghosh (ed.), Politics ofSubversion of Sylhet, B. R. Publications, Delhi, 2000, p 23.

80 See <http://assamassembly.gov.in/mla-1946-52.html>, [accessed 15 May2012].

81 IOR/R/3/1/158, p. 24.82 Haji Mohammed Younus, interview, Essex, 2008, and A. M. A. Muhith, interview,

London, 2008.83 Nankars were bonded labourers of the local Zaminders. They were known by

different names in agrarian Sylhet, such as Girdar or Kiran and in some areas MuslimZaminders called their nankars ‘Ete Mandar’ while some Hindu Zaminders called them




did not fulfil this criterion and did not have voting rights. On theother hand, tea labourers had their own constituency and the requisitequalification for a voter was to prove that they were permanentemployees in a tea garden. Accordingly, all permanent tea labourerscast their vote in 1946 election. So the polemics around the tealabourers’ votes is mostly a product of post-partition imagination.Even a communist partly repeated this story of injustice in hisautobiography.84

As part of the partition plan, the British authority called fora referendum in Sylhet to decide whether the district should beamalgamated with Pakistan or remain in Assam. A statement by thegovernment made on 3 June 1947 stated:

There has been a demand that, in the event of the partition of Bengal, Sylhetshould be amalgamated with the Muslim part of Bengal. . . a referendum willbe held in Sylhet. . . If the referendum results in favour of the amalgamationwith Eastern Bengal, a Boundary Commission with terms of reference similarto those for the Punjab and Bengal will be set up to demarcate the Muslimmajority areas of Sylhet district and contiguous Muslim majority areas ofadjoining districts, which will then be transferred to Eastern Bengal.85

Under the leadership of Assamese leaders the Assam ProvincialCongress had little interest in Bengali-speaking Sylhet. AmalenduGuha argues that the reason for the referendum was to enablethe Assamese leadership ‘to get rid of Sylhet’ and carve out amore linguistically homogenous province. When the result of thereferendum was declared, there was a feeling of relief in theBrahmaputra Valley.86 Conversely, the Sylhet District Congressfought hard to keep the Sylhet district in Assam. After losing in thereferendum, they tried to salvage a portion of the district througheffective representations to the Boundary Commission. It appears thatthe Muslim League was also divided due to a spilt between the AssamProvincial League president Maulana Bhasani and ex-premier SirSaadulla. Two Sylheti politicians, Mahmud Ali and Matin Chaudhury,supported Bhasani and they appeared to have been most effective inmobilizing Muslim support. The role of the Muslim National Guardof trained League volunteers was also crucial.

‘Bhander’. Nankars were both Hindu and Muslims. The local communists led the Nankarmovements with major success in the early 1950s.

84 Sharma, Sreehate Biplobbad, p. 221.85 IOR/R/3/1/158, pp. 4–5.86 Guha, Planter Raj to Swaraj, pp. 219–20.




At the same time, the ‘pro-Hindu’ firebrand politician, Syama PrasadMookerjee, sent workers from Hindu Mahasabha to mobilize Hindusin support of Sylhet’s union with Assam. The ‘Frontier Gandhi’,Gaffar Khan, sturdily opposed the idea of Pakistan and he sent many‘Red Shirts’ in Sylhet to work with the Congress.87 Thus, all thecontending forces made the referendum a hotly contested issue. Apicture of the Hindu–Muslim spilt can be seen in the remarkableautobiography of the communist leader, Chanchal Sharma. Hardlyany of the upper castes or middle class Hindus campaigned for theunion of Sylhet with East Bengal/Pakistan, and even a considerablenumber of articulate communists mobilized people, including Muslimnankars, against Sylhet’s inclusion in Pakistan. Azrof wrote that thelocal communists had developed friendly relations with the MuslimLeague but that the bond was broken during the referendum.88 Onemight suspect this contention, since nearly all communists were fromthe Hindu gentry and came from Bejura, Hobigonj, a predominatelyBrahmin village.89 As soon as the Communist Party took the decision toform a ‘Joint Volunteers Core’ with the Congress, its leader, ChanchalSharma, was chosen as ‘commander in chief’. Sharma explained theirstrategy and action:

Our ‘Joint Volunteers Core’ organized a procession in Sylhet, which paradedthrough out city streets. Hindu people joined the procession in great numbers,but almost none from Muslims. We chanted slogan [such] as, ‘don’t breakgolden Sylhet and don’t go broken Bengal’. Our strategy was to get someMuslim votes for India, but we failed so far. . . Hindus voted for India andMuslims voted for Pakistan.90

While the communists rallied behind the Congress, a number ofdalits were in favour of the Muslim League. In particular, JogendranathMondal, a dalit leader from East Bengal, had considerable influenceover the dalits of Sylhet. In his speech in 1944, Jinnah promised thatthe League would protect the rights of the dalits.91 Jogendranath

87 Ghosh, Politics of Subversion, p. 99. Gaffar Khan’s Red Shirts recruited 100,000members and became legendary in the northwest frontier of the subcontinent.

88 Azrof, Attajiboni, p. 110.89 Notable names are Kumudananda Bhatacharjee, Mrinal Das, Sukumar Nandi,

and Joy Kumar Nandi, all hailing from this village.90 Sharma, Sreehate Biplobbad, pp. 218–19.91 Jogendranath Mondal was appointed as the law minister of the governor general’s

interim government as a League nominee and leader of the Constituent Assemblyof Pakistan. This suggests that Jinnah was genuine in his concern for the dalits ofPakistan. However, after the death of Jinnah, Mondal resigned from the cabinet




Mondal, visiting Sylhet as law minister on 2 July 1947, sent a telegramto Mountbatten regarding the activities of the communists and tealabourers that reads as follows:

Reached Sylhet yesterday, excited by Communist and Congress tea gardenlabourers. . . Muslim National Guards, while travelling the train betweenKulaura and Sylhet, were attacked at Dakshinbhag and a number of themwounded with Lathis and arrows by the tea garden labourers. Train wasstopped by them twenty one times within a distance of thirty eight milesbetween Kulaura and Sylhet. Violence by them (tea labourers) and Congressis apprehended (feared) by Muslims. They are requesting a deputing (sic)European military or equal number of Hindu and Muslim military. I thinkthe matter deserves your immediate attention.92

Like Jogendranath Mondal, one might question the role of thecommunists during the Sylhet referendum. However, in their viewit was not a communal issue since they felt class politics would bemore favourable if Sylhet remained in Assam, and Sharma clarifiedthat this was the party line.93 During the referendum, Hemango andNirmalendu, two leading Communist Party singers joined the folksongtradition and composed songs with messages such as ‘Hindu Muslimare brothers, let’s us go to India’ and ‘Oh darling, why are you breakinggolden Sylhet into pieces?’94 Nevertheless, the Muslim League and theNational Guards replied, ‘Hindu Muslim are brothers, let us eat cows.’Some dalits’ leaders favoured Congress. For instance, Birat Mondal,a member of the Bengal Legislature, visited Sylhet and addressed anumber of meetings during which he appealed to the dalits in particularto vote for Sylhet’s amalgamation with India. His visit had little impacton them. The sources of support for separation were rooted in the localsocial structure. As the Gandhian activist, Suhasini Das, pointed out:

We worked among the Scheduled (dalits) caste people to get their support,but we did not get much response. . . The high caste Hindus had kept out thelower caste people for centuries; so these people did not respond to the callsof high caste leaders in the days of referendum in Sylhet.95

and migrated to India. Jagadiscandra Mandal, Mohapran Jgendranath Mondal, Calcutta,Jagadiscandra Mandal, 1975.

92 IOR/R/3/1/158, p. 61.93 As soon as the referendum was over, the local communists were quick to

compromise with the new state. Dewan Mohammad Azrof revealed in his 1996interview that local left-wing activists regarded the Muslim League as a party of‘have-nots’, but they did not recognize its ‘separate nationalism’.

94 Azrof, Attajiboni, p. 124.95 Das, Sekaler Sylhet, p. 51.




At the same time, in a desperate move to gain support, uppercaste Hindus in Sunamgaj arranged a festival for all Hindus,including Untouchables, which necessitated the unheard-of prospectof mass eating of cooked food, irrespective of caste. The vote wasa mighty social leveller and Caste Hindus were compelled to eatwith Untouchables off the same plates. At a critical moment, aScheduled Caste leader, Dwarikanath Barori arrived and called toan Untouchable, ‘This is not food, this is poison, please do not eat.’96

At 60 per cent, Muslims constituted the majority of Sylhet’spopulation, while Hindus and Scheduled Castes jointly constituted38 per cent, so the Congress was looking for some crucial votes fromMuslims. At that defining moment, Maulana Hussein Ahmed Madaniand his party Ulama-e-Hind stood behind the Congress. His followerswere mostly lower middle class maulvis who had considerable influenceover the Muslims of Assam. Since he was against the partition ofIndia, he ordered his disciples to build up opposition to Sylhet’samalgamation with East Bengal.97 Maulana Madani articulated thethesis ‘that modern nationhood is determined by territory and notby religious faith’. He wrote the much-discussed Muttahida Qaumyyataur Islam (Composite Nationalism and Islam) in reply to his ideologicalopponents, in particular Dr Muhammad Iqbal. Madani argued that asa religion, Islam was not opposed to a united nationalism based on acommon motherland, ethnicity or language which brought togetherMuslims and non-Muslims sharing one or more of these attributes.Abdul Majid Qureshi recalled that Madani urged supporters to‘support India and join with us’.98 In the 1946 election (held on thebasis of a separate electorate) of the Assam Assembly, Ulama-e-Hindobtained two seats in Sylhet and secured 46 per cent of the Muslimvotes. Depending on Ulama-e-Hind, the Congress had looked forwardto a favourable verdict for themselves in the referendum. Madaniaddressed a number of well-attended meetings of his followers inSylhet and urged them to vote for the inclusion of Sylhet in India.99

However, Maulana Sahul Osmany stood against Ulama-e-Hind byissuing ‘An Open Letter to Maulana Madani’ in which he argued

96 Azrof, Attajiboni, p. 125.97 Mahmud Ali, Resurgent Assam, pp. 80–81. Also see Azrof, Attajiboni, p. 120.98 Syed Abdul Majid Qureshi, P/ADM/2/11-12-13, p. 21.99 Ali, Resurgent Assam, p. 81. Das, Sekaler Sylhet, p. 50.




that if the people of Sylhet wanted a Muslim country, they should votefor Pakistan.100

The Muslim League put forward the case for a separate homelandand formed a strong organizing committee. They worked hard,spending days in Sylhet’s villages, towns, bazaars, and streets. Meetingafter meeting was held to organize the Muslim polity and supportPakistan on the referendum. On 24 April 1947, the police openedfire on a Muslim League demonstration and a man named AlkasMiah died on the spot. This added strength to the slogan, ‘Assam-e-ar thakbona, goli kheye morbona’ (‘We would not stay in Assam and won’tdie of police firing’). This slogan, according to Mahmud Ali, secretaryof the Assam Muslim League, ‘turned the tide of the entire Muslimmasses in support of Sylhet joining the Province of East Bengal’.101

Even some of the people who had been working as seamen or living asexpatriates in the United Kingdom came back to Sylhet to take partin political activities during the referendum. Some were so involvedthat they undermined their own health by working too hard, as SyedAbdul Majid Quersihi describes:

I left this country (England) in September 1946, and Jinnah came later, justbefore partition. During the partition time I was at home and was undertakingpropaganda work there, working day and night during the Sylhet referendum,I used to have no time even for eating. I had to make speeches here and there,and convince people, why we want Pakistan, and since Pakistan was alreadyestablished, the question was only for Sylhet, whether we join in India orwhether we join Pakistan, that was the point on which I had to speak. AfterSylhet declared for Pakistan, I was unwell for sometime because of all thisactivity. Voting took place in every village, every town, every bazaar; we usedour mikes and everything.102

The referendum was therefore a defining moment for Sylhetis acrossthe globe—they were both physically and emotionally connected. InSylhet, the president of the Referendum Committee was Abdul MatinChaudhury, who had been minister of Assam for several terms. Heinvited leaders such as Prime Minister Suhrawardy of Bengal; theformer prime minister of Bengal, Fazlul Haque; Moulana AkramKhan; and the industrialist, Abol Hasan Ispahani to campaign infavour of Pakistan. The role of Maulana Bhasani, president of the

100 Wahed, Sylhet-e Gono Bhot, pp. 42–43. In his book, Wahed has reproduced aleaflet of a printed fatwa issued by Moulana Sahul Osmany.

101 Ali, Resurgent Assam, pp. 81–82.102 Syed Abdul Majid Qureshi, P/ADM/2/11-12-13, p. 16.




Assam Muslim League, was noteworthy. His leadership was rootedin his relentless struggle to safeguard the rights of the peasantryand the labouring classes. Owing to his Maoist inclinations, hewas nicknamed the ‘Red Maulana’. A young political figure, SheikhMujibur Rahman—later the founding father of Bangladesh—cameto Sylhet to campaign. Thousands of local activists worked at thegrassroots level.103 In the mid 1940s, the League, under the leadershipof Muslim ashrafs (aristocrats), was well entrenched in Sylhet as inmany other districts of East Bengal. Muslim students of the collegesand schools of Bengal and Assam were mobilized to work for thereferendum cause, distributing leaflets in every nook and cranny ofSylhet. They worked jointly with the dalits and argued that Pakistanwould be a state for the ‘have-nots’.104

Although the media was also divided along communal lines, itplayed a leading role in exposing the machinations of both thegovernment and the opposing camp. For instance, the Dawn, a widelycirculated paper published in Delhi, was engaged in counteringHindu ‘propaganda’ against Muslims. Its editor was Altaf Hussain,a Sylheti and a famous journalist, who brought the paper to India-wide attention. Under his editorship, the Dawn relentlessly advocatedthe cause of the Muslims and the policy and programme of the MuslimLeague. An article appeared on 28 June 1947 under the title ‘SylhetReferendum’ in which it was asserted that the whole affair had beenleft in the hands of a Congress Ministry in Assam and to ‘a Governornotorious for his anti Muslim League views and also for his anxiety toplacate the Congress’. It noted:

They have appointed a European I.C.S. officer of Assam as ReferendumCommissioner. This officer is unsuitable for this post because: (1) He isdirectly subordinate to a Hindu Minster from Sylhet and (2) he was a prisonerof war in Turkey during World War I, as a result of which he is understoodto have developed an aversion to the ‘Turkish Cap’ and whoever wears thisheadgear. . . the Muslims of Assam regard him with distrust.105

The Dawn asserted that symbols for ballot boxes had been fixedarbitrarily and without consulting the Muslim League. It argued thatthe ‘Hut’ had been chosen as the symbol for the ballot boxes for votesagainst Sylhet joining eastern Pakistan while an ‘Axe’ had been chosen

103 Ali, Resurgent Assam, pp. 81–82. Azrof, Attajiboni, p. 125. Das, Sekaler Sylhet,pp. 49–51. Wahed, Sylhet-e Gono Bhot, pp. 57–68.

104 Wahed, Sylhet-e Gono Bhot, pp. 45–49.105 IOR/R/3/1/158, p. 48.




as the symbol for votes in favour of joining Pakistan. These symbolshad a popular background, as the Dawn pointed out:

Congress canvassers are already going about playing on popular superstitionsand telling them that if they would want to live happily in their own homes,they should put their votes into the boxes bearing the symbol ‘Hut’ and‘if they want to put the axe to their limbs, i.e. commit an injury to themselves,they will do that by putting their votes into the boxes bearing the symbol ofthe axe.106

In another article, the Dawn alleged that the date fixed for thereferendum was too early and ‘while no British military officer hasbeen sent by the Governor General either to maintain peace orsupervise proceedings, Sardar Baldev Singh’s Sikh Officers are touringthe district extensively’.107 The Dawn also alleged that the Assamgovernment was delaying giving authentic voter lists to theMuslim League while Congress workers could easily obtain copiesclandestinely. It pointed out that:

. . . the Muslim Press are being heavily censored and even telegrams to moredistant League members and to League workers in various parts of Sylhetand the Province of Assam are being withheld. . . League workers are beingindiscriminately arrested.108

Government intelligence in Delhi collected this article and broughtit to Mountbatten’s attention. He immediately telegraphed thegovernor of Assam, asking for an urgent reply. In his telegram inreply to the viceroy on 1 July 1947, the governor said:

Your para. 2 (b) Matin Chaudhuri’s idea was to have crescent for joining EastBengal which would have been resented by nationalist Muslims in Sylhetand would have nourished communal feeling. Am not aware of any localsuperstitions to Axe nor Stewart ICS.109

While watching the voting in Sylhet, Scheduled Caste leaderJogendranath Mondal collected evidence of incidents of bias towardsHindus by the local administration in rural areas, a matter on whichhe sent telegrams to Mountbatten. In one, he put the evidence asfollows:

106 IOR/R/3/1/158, p. 48.107 IOR/R/3/1/158 pp. 48–49.108 IOR/R/3/1/158, p. 49. During the referendum, Basanta Kumar Das, a Congress

leader of Sylhet was the home minister in the Assam cabinet. Several vernacularwritings suggest that he acted in favour of Sylhet District Congress.

109 IOR/R/3/1/158, p. 54.




Secretary, Muslim League Hobigonj, Sylhet by written statement stated tome that seizure of Boats by government. Put the schedule caste and Muslimvoters who mostly belong to rural areas in difficulty. This will deprive them ofexercising their franchise. Authority was moved in the matter but the prayerwas rejected. In my opinion seizure of Boats by government at this time willsurely create great resentment and dissatisfaction – matter should (receive)your attention.110

The Sylhet referendum was held on 6 and 7 July 1947 and theresult went in favour of a merger with Pakistan. It appears thatthe referendum was completed fairly and peacefully but there wereincidents of violence. For example, police opened fire on a riotousMuslim crowd at Amtal in South Sylhet on 7 July, causing one deathand wounding three people. Leaguers attacked Congress workers nearSylhet and 12 people were injured, of whom eight were taken tohospital.111 The Sylhet referendum result was as follows: valid votesfor joining East Bengal were 239,619 and for remaining in Assam were184,041. The overall majority for joining East Bengal was 55,578. Thepercentage of the valid votes to total electorate entitled to vote was77:33.112

Sylhet ‘cut into pieces’

Dewan Azraf wrote in his autobiography—and stated it again inhis interview—that after such a referendum, there was absolutelyno justification to cut Sylhet into pieces. He also argued that thedistrict of Cachar, especially Hailaknadhi, would almost certainlyhave joined Pakistan, but he felt that ‘at the last moment we werebetrayed’. Cachar had two Muslim seats in the Assam Legislature andthe Ulama-e-Hind, which was opposed to the creation of Pakistan,won one.113 It appears that there was some high profile lobbyingto keep the Sylhet tea belt in Assam and some systematic pressurehad influenced Radcliffe’s decision. Just after the publication of the

110 IOR/R/3/1/158, Telegram: Jogendranath Mondal, law member, GovernorGeneral Council, 7 July 1947, p. 64.

111 IOR/R/3/1/158, Telegram: Grade B: From Assam, Shillong, to Delhi andLondon, 8 July 1947, p. 73.

112 IOR/R/3/1/158, Telegram: Confidential 2248-S: From Governor, Assam, toViceroy, 12 July 1947, p. 77.

113 Dewan Mohammad Azrof, interview, 1996. Also see Dewan Mohammad Azrof,Attajiboni, pp. 131–32.




referendum result, Nehru lodged a complaint with Mountbatten onthe referendum:

Today I had a visit from a deputation from Sylhet consisting of Hindus andMoslems. They placed before me a number of allegations supported by variousstatements and data which together were formidable. . . I feel I must drawyour attention to these allegations as they are gravely disturbing and if theyare at all based on facts then the validity of the referendum is doubtful. MayI suggest that some kind of brief enquiry be made and a report from theGovernor be waited (upon) before the figures of the Sylhet referendum thatyou have sent me are published?114

In his reply to Nehru, sent on the same day, Mountbatten mentionedthat Jinnah had made detailed complaints about interference bythe Assam Ministry in the referendum and asked for an enquiry.Mountbatten’s suggestion to Nehru was:

I have no doubt that if an enquiry was held there would be a long andembarrassing contest which at this stage would, in my opinion, do no good. . .In any case I have already telegraphed the results to London and authorisedtheir release tomorrow, which means that they are probably already in theoffices of newspapers, and to withdraw that would cause a sensation. . . Iimagine there are always complaints about the conduct of any election orreferendum and in this case the Governor, who is directly responsible underme, has asked for immediate announcement, which clearly means that he issatisfied.115

Mountbatten simultaneously instructed the governor of Assam, SirAkbar Hyderi (a friend of Nehru’s), to explain the events of thereferendum in detail. Accordingly, Governor Hyderi sent a telegraphicreply to Mountbatten and Nehru in which he argued that the greatmajority of the specific complaints were not based on evidenceaccording to the testimony of military or police officers who were in thelocalities, and complaints of false impersonation were also unfounded.Hyderi also wrote that Mukherji, one of the two Assam ministersfrom Sylhet who had previously supported allegations of widespreadintimidation ‘now agrees that in light of these figures they could nothave been well-founded’.116 Consequently, Nehru accepted the verdictand recognized the result as fair. It appears that Nehru’s next step

114 IOR/R/3/1/158, Nehru’s letter to Mountbatten, 13 July 1947, p. 85.115 IOR/R/3/1/158, Mountbatten’s letter to Nehru, 13 July 1947, p. 88.116 IOR/R/3/1/158, Telegram: From Sir Akbar Hyderi to Nehru, 14 July 1947,

pp. 89–90.




was to bargain on territorial issues in the hope of acquiring some areaof Sylhet. So on 15 July he argued for the division of Sylhet thus:

There is one important matter to which our attention has been drawn byMr. Gopinath Bardoloi, Prime Minister of Assam. . . it is highly probable thatcertain parts of Sylhet district will have to go back to Assam after the reportof the boundary commission. . . The process of transfer must be a single oneafter final determination of the area to be transferred. The easiest way toarrange this is to get the report of the Boundary Commission before 15thAugust.117

In this process Nehru was not alone. The planters, lobby,communists, and labour unions were also involved. BaidyanathMookherjee was the Surma Valley representative of the Indianplanters and a minister in the Assam cabinet. He was one of thoseaccused by Jinnah of ‘naked bias’ during the referendum. Mookherjeelobbied for retaining as many of the tea gardens as possible in Assam.The same was true of the communist leaders (Barrister M. Sen, BrieshMisra, and Achintya Bhattacherjee), who submitted a memorandumon behalf of the Srihatta Cachar Cha Mojdoor Union demanding theincorporation of the whole tea belt into Assam.118 Thus Haideri wasforced to bend to pressure and officially suggested that a slice of Sylhetbe included in Assam:

My personal view is that this road (the road to Cahar and Lushai Hills fromKhasi Hills), so vital to Assam communications if the Government’s requestis granted by the Chairman of Boundary Commission, I would be able topersuade my Ministers to abate their claims to some other parts of SylhetDistrict. Such concession would also I think assist growth of good feelingbetween Assam and East Bengal which it is in the economic interest of bothProvinces to foster.119

This idea was accepted by Mountbatten. On 11 August 1947 hewrote to Hyderi, ‘Radcliffe’s secretary has seen your telegram and ithas been verified that the Commission is fully seized of the point madeby you on behalf of your Government’.120 The result was that the wholedistrict was transferred to East Bengal except for the four thanas ofPatharkandi, Ratabari, Karimgunj, and Badarpur. These four thanas

117 IOR/R/3/1/158, Nehru’s letter to Mountbatten, 15 July 1947, pp. 95–96.118 Sharma, Sreehate Biplobbad, pp. 220–21. Ghosh, Politics of Subversion, p. 99.119 IOR/R/3/1/157, Telegram: From Governor of Assam to Viceroy, New Delhi, No.

175-MSG, 10 August 1947. p. 269.120 IOR/R/3/1/157, Telegram: From Viceroy, New Delhi, to Governor of Assam,

No. 3329-S, 11 August 1947, p. 275.




were vital for access to the road to Cachar and Lushai Hills from KhasiHills to Assam and for communications with Tripura. The division ofSylhet resulted in a large portion of tea gardens, 55 in total, going toIndia. Even one British officer did not like the idea of ‘cutting Sylhet’.He expressed clear doubts and argued for a joint survey of borderlandsto avoid quarrels in the future.121

‘Calcutta also gone’

The partition of the subcontinent thus brought some significantchanges to Sylhet, which were to bring some drastic consequencesfor the Sylheti seamen in Calcutta: a link that had been important tomany people since the late nineteenth century was now permanentlydislocated. At that time, more than 100,000 Sylhetis were located inCalcutta, 50,000 at sea and 50,000 waiting for ships. The whole ofKidderpore was a little Sylhet, as Brick Lane in London is today. Awitness to the events around the referendum said:

So the partition of India had its impact on Sylheti people. It was huge andimmense. Sylheti businessmen had lost an attractive business due to partition.Well, there were riots in Calcutta. People started to think that, ‘it is no longerour country we can not live here’. Bariwallahs (House owners) also started topack up, then passports were introduced and it was not easy just to get intoa train and to go to Calcutta, wait for ships.122

For the seamen, it was a suddenly a different world. A whole networkhad been shattered and the Sylheti seafarers were left stranded. Inaddition, the tea labourers who came from more than 1,000 kilometresaway were permanently cut off from their village homes by thepartition of the subcontinent.

121 An outgoing British officer, H. Creed, wrote, ‘it appears desirable to have theentire boundary (mainly Karimgonj) with East Bengal (Sylhet) thoroughly surveyed,mapped and demarcated to avoid any possibility of misunderstanding in the future’:see IOR/V/24/2601-2602, Government of Assam, Annual Report of the SurveyDepartment for the year ending the 30 September 1947 (Shillong, 1948), p. 3.

122 Islam interviews, 2006, 2007. Also see Yousuf Choudhury, The Roots and Talesof the Bangladeshi Settlers, Sylheti Social History Group, Birmingham, 1993, pp. 36–39. Detailed statistics of Bariwallahs are given in Choudhury’s book. The SylhetiBariwallahs at Calcutta started their business in the late nineteenth century. In1897, Ayan Ullah built a large house at the rear of his tailoring shop and turnedit into a boarding house for seamen. In this makeshift Bari there was just enoughspace to accommodate 35 people. He soon became a central figure, helping his fellowSylhetis to secure jobs on the merchant ships.




The Hindu elites: doubly punished?

The situation in Sylhet itself did not change quickly after thereferendum, although there was much unease. For the Muslims therewas the recent memory of the sporadic incidents of violence duringthe voting, in which two Muslims had been killed by police fire, oneon 24 April and the other on 7 July 1947. There was also a feelingof insecurity among the Hindu community. So the Congress andcommunist and Muslim League leaders met immediately and a jointprocession of workers from all parties paraded in Sylhet town. Afterthe procession, they greeted each other with tea and sweets.123 Despitethis, the situation in Sylhet deteriorated, especially in 1950 after ChiefDistrict Administrator Nomani from West Pakistan caused bitternessbetween Hindu and Muslims. As a result a considerable numberof educated Hindus left Sylhet for good, while Muslim elites fromKarimgonj left Assam for Sylhet. The slow but steady exodus of uppercaste Hindus from Sylhet continued as they were faced with the spectreof ‘communalism’. For the first time, some neighbours suddenlybecame hostile to each other and there was a constant stream of peoplefleeing across the border.124 Veteran Mahmud Ali formed a volunteercorps of 500 college students and a riot was stopped in Sylhet. Ali wasarrested and put behind bars. Liaquat Ali Khan came to Sylhet to stopthe tide and Nomani was transferred elsewhere. Consequently, thesituation improved.125 Brojendra Chaudhury became a member of theMinority Commission in the early 1950s but in 1962 he left Calcuttaforever. Subas Bose had once called Chaudhury the ‘uncrowned kingof the Surma Valley’ but losing his power in a hostile environment,the ‘marginalized king’ gave vent to his sad feelings in the followingverse: ‘Then a deathlike numbness/Creeps over the soul/It cares notfor others’ sorrows/It dares not feel its own.’126 Yet not all of Hinduelites felt uncomfortable in the new setting.127

123 Sharma, Sreehate Biplobbad, p. 219.124 Das, Sekaler Sylhet, p. 52.125 Chaudhury, Smriti and Pratiti, pp. 152, 224–26.126 Chaudhury, Smriti and Pratiti, p. 152.127 For instance, in 1971 C. R. Dutta was a major in the Pakistan Army who revolted

to lead the Bangladesh liberation force in the Sylhet sector. Information provided byGeneral Dutta suggests that the number of personnel and regular army under hiscommand stood at approximately 9,000 and 4,000 respectively in Sylhet. Dutta,interview, Dhaka, 1997. Sushasini Das, popularly known as Masima (Mother), took upPakistani citizenship after the partition and fought against all kinds of discrimination,




Conclusion

The investment in tea in northeastern India ultimately led to thecreation of Assam province in 1874, which became known as the‘Planters’ realm’. This event impacted upon all sectors of society.Sylhet, the frontier Bengali district, was annexed to Assam sinceit appeared vital to maintaining effective economic and intellectuallinks between the delta and mountains. However, the Bengali elitesof Sylhet, particularly the Hindu gentry, strongly protested at thisreshaping of their border. Their early protests were halted by theassurance of Sylhet’s special status. With its education and courtsrun from Bengal, they were able to see some material benefits. By the1920s, however, when professional jobs became contested, and in mostcases were taken up by educated Muslims and the Assamese middleclass, the Bengali Hindu gentry again raised their voices in protest.The British government in London and its colonial officialdom in India,the European planters, and many Muslim aristocrats in Assam wereunwilling to redraw the map of the tea province. Noticeably, from the1870s to 1940s Sylheti identity in Assam was very strong and alsooverlapped with the Hindu–Muslim division.

This micro-level study has shown that there was a deep-rooteddivision between Hindu and Muslim elites. At the same time, there wasdiscord between upper caste and lower caste, and between educated‘pro-Pakistani’ Muslims and madrasa educated ‘pro-Indian’ maulvis.A considerable number of maulvis not only supported the ideologyof a ‘single nation’ but fought for it in the contested referendum.Therefore, it was not a mere binary, rather, a complex phenomenonwhen seen at the field level. The Hindu elites who had originallyfought for Sylhet’s incorporation into Bengal had changed their mindsby 1947, when they fiercely tried to opt for integration with Assam. In1947, the Congress and even the Communist Party formed a union,which organized a vigorous campaign for the retention of Sylhet byAssam. Except for some lower castes, hardly any Caste-Hindus votedfor Pakistan. Conversely, many ‘nationalist’ Muslims at first voted fortheir vision of ‘united’ India.

In 1947, the fate of Sylhet was decided through a referendum. Thesequence of events indicates that, when deciding the boundary ofSylhet, the people’s verdict was not wholly respected. A slice of Sylhet,

undertook social work, and ran a charitable organization in Sylhet. She published herautobiography in 2005 and died in 2009. See Das, Sekaler Sylhet.




even though it was predominantly Muslim, was annexed to Assamfor the convenience of the Indian state. The Hindu elites remainedunsatisfied as well. For example, Rabindranath Chaudhury wrote toMountbatten urging him to hold ‘another referendum’;128 later, someof them claimed that they were ‘doubly punished’. It was an entirelydifferent matter for the marginal peasants and the labourers who werenot enfranchised: at least two groups were directly disadvantaged—the Sylheti seamen who lost their livelihood base in Calcutta and thetea labourers who were cut off from their home villages.

128 IOR/R/3/1/158. On 17 July 1947, in his letter to Mountbatten, Calcutta-basedSylheti lawyer Rabindranath Chaudhury argued, ‘It has not been a free and fairReferendum. Under the circumstances the very dignity of the Viceroy requires thathe should arrange for a free and fair Referendum.’


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