RECOVERING THE ‘SILENCED’ VOICES: THE PLIGHT AND TRAUMA OF KAIBARTA PARTITION REFUGEES OF SONBEEL, BARAK VALLEY OF ASSAM

The historiography of the Partition of India, the creative literature andthe films evoked out of the pangs of Partition are primarily concerned withthe Partition of Punjab and Bengal. Assam as the third site of Partition remained under the veil of silence for nearly six decades. In recent years, academic interventions are forthcoming to unveil the human history of the Partition of Assam which triggered a huge forced migration of population in the Brahmaputra Valley, Barak Valley and the hill areas of Assam. Given the discrimination that the Dalits experienced during and after the Partition of India, they are the triply marginalised group due to their caste, class and refugee identities. As the Dalits lacked agency in the Barak Valley, their plight largely remains unattended. In this context, the present paper is an attempt to recover the plight of the Kaibarta Partition refugees who were the victims of forced migration from Sylhet/ East Pakistan to Sonbeel area of Barak Valley of Assam especially, after the communal violence of 1950 in East Pakistan.

The historiography of the Partition of India, the creative literature andthe films evoked out of the pangs of Partition are primarily concerned withthe Partition of Punjab and Bengal. Assam "as the third site of Partition" remained under the veil of silence for nearly six decades. In recent years, academic interventions are forthcoming to unveil the human history of the Partition of Assam which triggered a huge forced migration of population in the Brahmaputra Valley, Barak Valley and the hill areas of Assam. Given the discrimination that the Dalits experienced during and after the Partition of India, they are the triply marginalised group due to their caste, class and refugee identities. As the Dalits lacked agency in the Barak Valley, their plight largely remains unattended. In this context, the present paper is an attempt to recover the plight of the Kaibarta Partition refugees who were the victims of forced migration from Sylhet/ East Pakistan to Sonbeel area of Barak Valley of Assam especially, after the communal violence of 1950 in East Pakistan.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….... Introduction:-
Studies about the Partition of India are chiefly concerned with the Partition of Punjab and Bengal and consequent forced migration, resettlement and rehabilitation of the Partition refugees in the new environment. Interestingly, the Partition experience of Assam was in the backseat for more than six decades perhaps due to fear of renewed violence. In recent years, attempts are forthcoming to unveil the "human history of Partition" of Assam drawn from oral history and memory of the victims of Partition and their progenies. The existing scholarly and literary writings on Partition are concerned with conflicting religious identities as the parameter of Partition (Butalia 1998:297). What needs to be explored are the plights of the linguistic, caste, gender, tribal and lesbian groups with their particularistic trauma triggered off by Partition. In Partition narratives, the voices of the Dalits Partition victims are either completely ignored or their voices remain marginal. As Urvashi Butalia has pointed out, "In its almost exclusive focus on Hindus and Sikhs and Muslims,Partition history has worked to render many others invisible. One such history is that of the scheduled castes or untouchables" (ibid). The present study is an enveavour to supplement the existing study of Partition by unveiling the "silenced" voices of the Kaibarta Partition refugees of Sonbeel area of Barak Valley of Assam.

Sylhet Referendum and Scheduled caste Politics
The Partition of Assam was preceded by a referendum to craft out a homogeneous Asomiya homeland in multicultural Assam by expelling the Sylheti Bengalis. It was therefore, ethno-liguistic divide rather than religious 113 incompatibility and intolerance which was the triggering factor of the Partition of Assam. Sarveswar Baruah in his speech in the Assam Legislative Council,1936 had mentioned, "the line of division in Assam politics" is primarily not between Hindu and Muhameddan or on caste lines, but between the inhabitants of the Assam Valley and those of the Surma Valley (Baruah 2021).
The result of the referendum was pronounced in favour of inclusion of Sylhet into East Pakistan except three and half thanas i.e, Patharkandi, Ratabari, Badarpur and half of Karimganj subdivision that were retained in Cachar district of Barak Valley to establish land corridor with Tripura and Lushai Hills (present Mizoram). The Assam Pradesh Congress leaders and a reasonable section of the Asomiya elites hailed the victory as "a God-sent opportunity" in gratifying their long awaited aspirations to overthrow Sylhet outside Assam.

Invisible Partition Victims: Plight of the Kaibarta Partition Refugees in Sonbeal area of Karimganj
The Kaibarta community was primarily a fishermen community of Bengal, especially Eastern Bengal who were located at the botton of the caste hiearchy. The narratives of the first generation of Kaibarta refugees reflected one or other incident of violence 3 by the ansars and Muslim miscreants, such as burning of paddies, desecration of idols, torching of their houses, threat of conversion, theft, robbery, abduction of women and forced marriage etc. in their villages which forced them to flee their homeland (Personal Interviews). Makhan Das who hailed from Bamai village of Habiganj sub-division of Sylhet district and presently located in Sonbeel shared in an interface about his experience of violence by Muslim ansars into his village and the neighbouring villages of Badighera and Naogaon etc. Intially, they collected "Jinnah Tax" from the Hindu villagers by carrying Jinnah"s photograph with them. Soon, they were involved in gun fire wherein the Muslims fired bullets from the boats of the nearby river and the Hindus retaliated from their houses. This continued for three long days and people from both the communities lost their lives. Surprisingly, the administration did not intervene to quell the situation. Fear gripped the Hindu villagers and his father took the hasty decision to migrate. The family consisting of his parents, three sisters, himself and his younger brother, sailed on their boat through the river route to Sonbeel and took shelter in the rented house of Dinanath Paul and since then, the indescribable struggle for survival began (Narrated in an interface by Makhan Das). Narendra Das whose family migrated from Murakari village of Habiganj sub division of Sylhet district in 1950 presently located in Sonbeel also narrated about the intensity of communal violence in Bamai which drove his family from his native village out of invasive fear and pervasive insecurity. They took shelter in Kalyanpur village of Sonbeel and the family survived amidst chronic struggle by adopting multiple means such as fishing, cultivation, masonry, preparing marriage mandap etc. with slim government support. In the process, they encountered acute physical sufferings and severe mental trauma (Personal Interview with Narendra Das). Those who did not experience violence firsth hand, the looming environment of tension, fear, insecurity, news of violence from nearby villages entrapped them into huge psychological crisis and triggered their forced migration. Most of the Kaibarta refugees migrated through the river Kushiara; some of them migrated with their country boats too (Personal Interviews).
Before Partition,Sonbeel was a jungle terrain, scarcely populated and predominantly inhabited by some Patnis, Maimals and Namasudras. In colonial period, the Patnis were brought from Jaldhup area of East   The policy of the Government towards the refugees initially was to provide relief and eventually to resettle and rehabilitate the refugees in the new environment of Sonbeel. Krishna Prasanna Choudhury had appointed a clerk of the Relief and Rehabilitaion Office of Karimganj to distribute cash dole to the refugees that continued for initial three months after the migration of refugees to Sonbeel in early 1950. As the refugees were sent to the rehabilitaion colonies from the relief camp in 1952, two categories of loans were provided to them by the Government-agricultural loan of Rs.975 and a business loan of Rs.800. In addition, housing plot and 5 bighas of cultivable land were also provided to them (Personal Interviews).
Ironically, both the loans were provided in frinnge instalments and it stretched years together to actually reach the entire amount to them. Apart from this, the Central Government had to encounter a complex problem in their tenure of administering rehabilitation in the Barak Valley as the Assam Government was refrained from giving concurrence to the Centre in rehabilitating the refugees on land.
In Sonbeel, the refugees restored their traditional practice of fishing and Buro paddy cultivation to sustain themselves (Personal Interviews). As the loan was paid in fringe instalments, the refugees encountered extreme difficulties to carry on their occupation as they were unable to buy fishing nets, yarns, boats, agricultural tools, implements and good quality seeds etc. They even lacked proper irrigation facility to boost their cultivation. Eventually, the cost of production became more than the value of production. Consequent to that, a section of the Kaibarta refugees were compelled to switch over from their ancestral occupation of fishing and cultivation to small business such as coarse rice, pulsed rice, puffed rice and jaggery etc. to pull on their families in an unprecedented time (Personal Interviews). Eventually, water holding capacity of the beel has been reduced due to soil erosion, deforestation and land sliding in the hills of Mizoram from where it originates (Das and Bhattacharjee 2015:30-31). Due to shortage of rainfall, water does not remain in entire beel throughout the year. "In winter, water level reaches to the deepest part of the beel and the upper part becomes a vast cultivable land".   Table 3 highlights the quantum of house building loan and business loans provided to 250 Non-agriculturist families by the Government.
In the deepest part of the beel, a number of fisheries do exist which are either manned by the government or by private persons. Hence, in winter, it does not remain as the common property. The Government beel fisheries are under the tutelage of an organisation named as the Sonbeel Fishermen Co-operative Society Limited (SFCSL) wherein the registered members are entitled to carry on fishing activity in the government beel fisheries (ibid: Personal Interviews). The members of the fishermen Cooperative society frequently sold out a huge quantum of fishes before they matured. Consequently, many species of the fishes got extinct in the long run. Intra-caste exploitaion was a constant thing as the "creamy layer" among the schedule castes availed the benefits of "positive discrimination" and the poor ones hardly could garner any benefit out of it (Personal Interviews).
Subal Das who originally hailed from Baruala village of Sylhet and migrated to Sonbeel in 1940 for personal reason, narrated in an interface, "The Kaibarta leaders are responsible for under development of the area. By virtue of economic strength,the rich Kaibartas avail the opportunity to contest election in the Sonbeel Fishermen Co-operative Society Limited.Consequently, the poor Kaibarta Partition refugees and their progenies are the suffering lot. The rich Kaibartas plunder the fishes before thy breed and grow. Sonbeel which was formerly acclaimed as an enriched storehouse of various species of fishes has ended up with extinction of many. The dream of Krishna Prasanna Choudhury to build up a self-sufficient Sonbeel is burnt into ashes" (Narrated in an inter-face by Subol Das).
Debasish Kar, a Professor of Life Science, Assam University, Silchar also expressed his concern about the sad state of affairs of Sobeel including the plight of the poor fishermen families. Sonbeel is popularly known as the Sonar Beel (Golden lake) due to exotic variety of fishes, green and lush surroundings, blessings of Sanda pir (a Sufi spiritual guide), source of idyllic joy of Nepur majhi (bargeman) and the fruit of intense hardwork and dedication of Swami Achinta Maharaj (Kar 2001:33).[translation mine].
Due to lack of income, the refugees were compelled to step outside their village to the town areas in search of work to sustain their families. The female refugees are compelled to work as domestic maids in Malini beel, Kalibarir Char, Chenkhuri areas of Silchar town, which is 79.5km kilometer away from their village. They had to work under situations of perpetual anxiety as their children were left alone at home (Personal Interviews). The male refugees worked as daily wage earners as mistry, mud cutters, masons and rickshaw pullers etc. Given the worst road condition,poor connectivity and perpetual anxiety, they got totally exhausted after returning home in the evening (Personal Interviews). "Sonbeel, Assam"s largest wetland destroyed by rampant encroachment and pollution" (The Telegraph, 10 December 2008). Interestingly, even though Sonbeel has received the status of National wetland but the things did not change substantially.In addition to human errors, seasonal flood added more miseries to the refugees. "Every year from March onwards, the villages got filled up with rain water and became a gigantic lake. As the depth of the lake is very less, it created an enigmatic situation for the refugees". Some of the colony camps were set up in low lying areas such as Sonbeel and Mohaltali etc. which exposed the refugees to devastating flood and compelled them to be the victims of multiple displacement (Choudhury 2021:190). The refugees suffered from various diseases in the inhospitable jungle terrain of Sonbeel such as malaria, jaundice and dysentery etc. Lack of safe drinking water aggravated their plight. The doctors and the nurses were reluctant to step in such a vulnerable terrain as Sonbeel. Given that, one medical assistant was engaged by the Rehabilitaion Office of Karimganj who visited Sonbeel refugee colony once or twice in a week with some medicines (Personal Interviews). Despite holding pristine beauty (Singh 2014) and a potential tourist hub, Sonbeel remains unexplored and re-inforces the apathy of the policy makers.  Table 4 explores expenditure incurred under various heads. Although house building loan was fixed at Rs.500, the amount was given in fringe instalments. The release of the loan money was not uniform. Many of the refugees received the sanctioned amount by more than three instalments. There is a variation in disbursing maintenance loan too that is reflected in the maintenance column of the above table (Table No.4).
The official policy of rehabilitation of refugees in the Barak Valley was not a well-thought plan; what worsened it was the pervasive linguistic discrimination, never-ending conflict between the Central Government and the Assam Government,unplanned management of funds and apathy towards this peripherial region. It is pertinent to mention that colonial Assam and North-East were not integrated with the mainstream colonial administration, hence the people of those areas experienced chronic under developnment during the colonial period. Such modalities of governance remained predominant in the mindset of the policy makers in postcolonial Assam too. In addition, these areas were hardly covered by the National and State level media due to its remote location and did not impact the election result. Therefore, the sufferings of the refugees of Sonbeel remained invisible to the outside world and got silenced in the cold storage of the minds of the refugees for decades.

Silver-lining amidst crisis and chaos: Intervention of the Non-state Actors
Dewan Manik Chand estate of Ram Krishna Nagar extended dedicated service to the refugees since the beginning of their forced migration and provided emergency food and shelter. The zaminder of the Estate was Kumar Bahadur Gopika Raman Roy who exteded all possible assistance to the refugees to rebuild their lives. Nayeb Khagendra Chandra Dutta and Nayeb Umesh Chandra Das were meticulously involved in assisting the refugees in re-buiding lives. Sachindra Mohan Dutta who was popularly known as "Gandhi of Barak" also dedicated himself for the cause of the refugees. He along with Khagendra Chandra Dutta and Subol Das, the then ( . In this endeavour, they were joined by the students of local schools and colleges and also young volunteers. Initially, their primary responsibility was to transport truck loads of refugees from the Indo-Pak border, Sutarkandi to the camps in Karimganj and adjoining areas, then to construct make shift camps in view to their increasing numbers, to cook food for them, to arrange drinking water, to distribute coupons for food and to arrange medical assistant for them. At this hour of grave humanitarian crisis, large vessels were placed in houses of the local inhabitants of Karimganj wherein the women of the households poured handful of rice on each day of the week and at the end of the week those vessels were collected by the volunteers to cook food for the refugees (ibid: Seventy one years of forced migration have elapsed with hoards of promises and election gimmicks to the refugees; but the surviving refugees and their progenies are spending subhuman lives due to lack of proper implementation of the Government schemes. The preponderance of Dalals and corrupt officials since the onset, further obfuscated the situation. This is reflected at the expulsion of Achinta Maharaj from Sonbeel since his sincere involvement and humanitarian assistance handicapped the sinister interests of the corrupt officials and leaders involved in implementing the schemes (Personal Interviews).
The surviving refugees narrated that the fierce tearing apart from their lost native home and homeland continue to triiger intense pain.In addition, fond memories and nostalgia for the lost home are still predominant in their psyche. Needless to say, their memory of trauma heightens due to finacial distress,encompassing discriminations and apathy by the host government and rich Kaibartas, vulnerable diseases,intense fear and pervasive insecurity in the jungle terrain and given the natural calamities such as flood, erosion and landslides. This prevents the refugees to mentally integrate with the new place.

Intruding Past into Present: Perpetual Anxiety and trauma of being ' Stateless'
Sadly, a significant number of refugees in Sonbeel were not enrolled in the National Register of Citizens, the purpose of which is to identify illegal migrants residing in the North eastern city of Assam. Legacy and non-Legacy data are the criterias for proving the valid Indian citizenship. Significantly, a large number of Partition refugees lost their documents either in the process of flow, unsafe camps set up in the dense forest areas or due to successive floods. Many others were not provided refugee registration certificate and borde slip etc. Consequently, they were unable to submit the requisite certification of proof of nativity. It is pertinent to mention that a large number of refugees in Sonbeel migrated through the river route and not through custom stations, hence they were not provided 119 migration or registration certificates (Personal Interviews). In Cachar, 62.2 percent refugee families in urban areas and 57.1 percent families in rural areas were found without proof due to administrative lacuna (Government of Assam, 1952, cited in Choudhury 2021:136). In addition, Sonbeel was a part of Karimganj subdivision (now district) under the Ratabari Constituency. At the upgradation of Hailakandi from sub division to district in 1989, Sonbeel was bifurcated and certain villages were included into Hailakandi. Invariably, a chunk of documents were also transferred there. Therefore, it is difficult to trace the old records to verify the documents of those refugees who submitted requisite papers related to NRC. In addition, the Assam Government has no such office wherein the documents of refugees were preserved. Surprisingly, fire broke out in the Relief and Rehabilitaion Offices of Karimganj, Silchar and Hailkandi on the same day in 1960 under mysterious circumstances (Personal Interviews). Needless to say, valuable documents related to relief and rehabilitation were burnt down. Those who migrated after 1960, their documents were also not preserved due to official apathy. Even though, biometrics information of many refugees were completed and requisite documents were submitted to the concerned authority, they were not provided Adhar cards and ironically their ration cards were also taken away since their names were not enrolled in the NRC (Personal Interviews).Henceforth, their mental agony that set in since the days of the forced migration to Sonbeel till continues.

Conclusion:-
The refugees of Sonbeel are the victims of both religious fundamentalism and linguistic chauvinism on the eve of the Partition of Assam and its aftermath. In fact, they were trapped in the creation of contested "homelands" and suffered fierce uprooting from their "own" homeland. Ironically, they lost their homes, fulfilling rhyme of life and friendly intercommunity exchanges due to political conspiracy hatched by none other than their home Government. Even after seventy one years of their forced migration, Sonbeel suffers from communication bottleneck, health care infrastructure and services,economic prospects and education facilities etc. which speak a volume about the drudgery of the surviving refugees and their children in everyday life. The elected representatives from this area hardly ventilate their plights on the floor of the Assam Legislative Assembly or in the Parliament. The bitterest legacy of the Assam Partition are the violent ethnic conflicts, mostly centering around land and creation of conflicting categories such as migrants/ immigrants/foreigners/locals etc. which created a complex situation in the region. To conclude, the surviving refugees and their progenies need immediate policy intervention to mitigate their constant agony and trauma relating to citizenship and to ensure effective implementation of the government schemes in their favour.

Footnotes
1.According to K.N Bose, many namasudras in east Bengal were boatmen or fishermen, especially in East Bengal, wherever there are rivers and canals, one can find the members of the Namasudra caste whom the Hindu society has always deposed as untouchables and making them live in the fringes of the village (Bose 1994).Many of the Namasudras of Bengal were Vaishnavas who organised regular Nam Sankirtans( Chanting the name of Sri Krishna) in their house-holds and reading of epics such as Ramayana and Mahabharata etc. Given the conspicuous absence of caste discrimination, a significant number of depressed classes chose to adopt vaishavite tradition of the Hindu religion (Bandyopadhyay2018).
2.Sonbeel is one of the largest lakes in South Assam and the largest wetland in Assam. It is located in Karimganj district and it connects both Hailakandi and Karimganj distric t. It is 35 kilometres away from Karimganj and 79.4 km from Silchar. "Lake" means beel in local Bengali language. Both Lotic and Lentic eco system exist in Sonbeel.
3.At a village called Doghurkhal near Gopalganj in East Pakistan, some armed police and local Muslims raided some houses of namasudras and beat men and women, destroyed their properties and took away valuables. They mercilessly beat a pregnant woman that resulted in abortion on the spot (Personal Interviews).On 19 th February, 1950,Sadarpur village under Jakiganj police station in Sylhet was attacked. The house of Suklal Namasudra was looted.When he went to the police staion to lodge a complain, the police stabbed him, then again wounded him with bayonet and finally kicked him out of the police stationAt Pargram,the houses of Akrur Namasudra and Ramesh Namasudra were looted and forcibly occupied by the Muslims (Sinha 2012). Chanchal Kumar Sarma also highlighted about the torture and killings of the lower caste peasants in 1949 and torture of women leaders in jail. The ansars and Muslim fundamentalist forces did not even spare the pregant women and tortured them mercilessly. (Sarma 1999). In Habiganj sub-division of Sylhet, the torture was intense. In addition, torture on lower class people happened in various parts of East Bengal/ East Pakistan after Partition and successive communal violence.