The blood and tears witnessed and retold

By Dilshan Boange

A story when told from the heart, retracing the steps of one’s life that may have been obscured with time’s passages that are ripe with both tears of joy and sadness, will surely rekindle that life to be regained of a voice that blends the memory of the past with the reflection from the present and be born a narrative that beguiles the reader with deep seated emotions. Along the Red River by the veteran Assamese journalist in India, Sabita Goswami is a book that flows between the writer’s past and present.

Sabita Goswami with Mark Tully, Delhi Correspondent for BBC

The biographical work charts the course of the tumultuous ‘Assam agitation’ that arose in the 1970s and how it marked a massive blow to India’s political stability as a union of States and contextualises that episode of the Indian political landscape of the latter part of the last century in terms of how a woman journalist faced the immeasurably challenging obstacles that came her way in her drive to persevere at excelling in her profession and her duties as a mother and wife.

It is a story that speaks of the true strengths of a woman’s heart. A must read if you believe true journalism is a cause of the conscience.

Key themes

In this four part series I will discuss some key themes of Along the Red River and what insights it provides to understand facets of Indian socio-cultural and political landscapes. Thanks to the effectiveness of modern information communication technology I have had the good fortune to contact the author and obtain pictorial material to be included in this series of articles, which are incidentally not found in the book.

The author Goswami’s biographical account is a book originally written in Assamese and later translated into English by the writer’s daughter Triveni Goswami Mathur who is today a successful academic in Pune. The biographical account finds its mettle as that of a professional journalist in the Assamese crisis that spiralled into a violent separatist movement that impacted the central government in New Delhi in no small way.

This was of course in the era before the advent of the internet and sophisticated mobile telephony. This was an era where it was much easier to cover up and thwart exposures of government misdeeds, unless those few who were witnesses were steadfast in their resolve to share the truth.

The victimised Assamese

The trials and tribulations faced by the Assamese people who were unjustly treated by both the government ‘controllers’ and the highly fractionalised rebel movements are provided vividly by the author who had-first hand information and observed much of that unfortunate episode of violence where people suffered.

A core contention of the Assamese agitation had been that the oil rich Assam state was being exploited by the centre which was one of the issues related to the adverse economic impacts that the Assamese people had been assailed with, which had greatly compounded with the problem of illegal foreign immigration to Assam from neighbouring Bangladesh.

Resentment

A striking incident is what the author narrates in chapter one with the following words–“Assam simmered with anger and resentment. A fiery slogan written in blood by a young man named Dulal Sarma on Guwahati’s main Gopinath Bordoloi Road fuelled the already inflamed emotions of the Assamese. Tej dim, tel nididu (we will shed blood, but not give oil) he’d written, emotionally charged statement that echoed the sentiments of the Assamese who felt that unless they took violent steps, the Centre would never pay attention to the local demands.”

Sabita Goswami in Guwahati, Assam

A very hard hitting message one may say about the strong sentiments that arose in that context of despising New Delhi, and the lengths the people may be prepared to go to protect the resources of their home state.

In chapter 13 of the book she says, “The pressure on land and economy increased manifold and people’s frustration had peaked within a decade. The birth of Bangladesh in 1971 too had adversely impacted the economy of Assam.

Student led insurgencies

In October 1978, the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) had called for a three-day Satyagraha demanding that all business establishments reserve 80 percent of their jobs for the sons of the soil. Before that in July, 1978, the AASU’s 16 point memorandum demanded, among other things, the deportation of “illegal foreign immigrants” from Assam.”

What may trigger in the mind of a Sri Lankan reader when reading of these episodes of student federation-led movements linked to national level politics would perhaps be the leftist insurrection of the late 1980s in Sri Lanka where the university system became the hot bed for leftist activism that sought to threaten the State. Goswami in her account of the developments in her own home state of Assam holds nothing back and fears not to call a spade a spade.

The numerous betrayals of the people’s causes that various groups took up and made their slogan to come to prominence are delivered insightfully such as how certain student leaders after making trips to have discussions in New Delhi would find themselves becoming indulgent to the comforts there hosted by the centre and then become frauds who focussed on profiteering through politics by taking the people of Assam up the garden path. But Goswami also depicts how the desperations of the people drove them at times to chose between evils and cling to illusions.

She speaks of how the naïveté of youth was exploited crassly by political opportunism and how the price was very severe to those who were duped.

The most compelling episode one finds in this regard is the one where the author’s own nephew gets embroiled in the murderous politics that racked civilian life.

His assassination bid made on the life of the then Chief Minister of Assam Hiteshwar Saikia on November 19, 1983, its failure, and the ramifications that spiralled to the entire extended family are gripping as though from a fast paced novel. But what pricks the mind is that it is narrated by a writer who actually had to live through the troubles and endure the burdens.

The central figures

Goswami gives insights as to how the political hopes at provincial level meet the obstinacy of the centre to the point where a sentiment of estrangement in terms of nationhood is not unimaginable. The vastness of India’s cultural landscape is such that a singular national identity may not be pinpointed.

The contentions that arise based on numerous differences in language and the outlooks of ethno-native rights in respect of territory and administration indicate what seems an enigmatic political construction called ‘India’, the State, composed of states which each speak of their own respective individual identities.

A notable thread in the story is how the role of Indira Ghandi, who may be called India’s own ‘iron lady’, is spoken of in the context of the Assamese agitation.

The author appears to view Mrs. Ghandi, whom she had the opportunity to interview, as a complex figure in terms of how she is perceived in the light of being a figurehead of India and a political tactician who was blamed much for the Assam crisis.

The overall scope of the political sentiments which is reflected by the book isn’t limited to the subjective outlook of the author alone, but captures the pulse of what the people of Assam had felt as natives of the state of Assam who had to deal with issues that raised complexities about their political identities as people who were up against a ‘centre’ which held the overarching right and might of defining what ‘should be’ in the larger picture of nationhood.