The Week India – August 04, 2019

AUGUST 4, 2019 • THE WEEK 19

oulavi Muhammad Amiruddin played a pivotal role in

putting Assam on the map of independent India. In 1946, the

legislative assembly of Assam gathered to discuss whether

Assam should be part of India or merge with East Pakistan.

Most legislators—34 of 108 legislators were Muslim—wanted

to join Pakistan. A few non-Muslim MLAs, too, supported

the demand. Sir Syed Muhammad Saadulla, Muslim League

leader and the first prime minister of Assam in British India,

wanted Assam’s Muslim-dominated regions to be merged

with East Pakistan, if a complete merger was not possible.

As the first deputy speaker of the assembly, Muhammad

Amiruddin played a key role in foiling Saadulla’s project. A

member of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, which opposed the

partition of India, Amiruddin was a fiery critic of Muhammad

Ali Jinnah, the Muslim League leader who led the Pakistan

movement. Amiruddin and Gopinath Bordoloi, Congress

leader and chief minister, reached out to all legislators, Mus-

lim and non-Muslims alike, and convinced them to vote for

staying in India in a referendum in 1947. Assam became part

of the Indian Union after the historic referendum.

Seventy-three years since, Amiruddin’s relatives have been

branded as Bangladeshis. Many members of his brother’s

family did not figure in last year’s draft of the National Reg-

ister of Citizens, from which the names of 40 lakh residents

were missing. As the foreigners’ tribunal considers their cas-

es, Amiruddin’s relatives are having sleepless nights, fearing

that they would be driven out of India after August 31, when

the final draft of the NRC is published.

“It is the result day of our lifetime,” said Fakrul Islam

Khan of Kalikajari village in Assam’s Morigaon district.

“If we pass, we would stay in India. Else, we would

be sent to Bangladesh, bag and baggage. What

Muslim leaders like Amiruddin did was a mis-

take. Had they merged us with East Pakistan,

we would have been respected citizens of

a free, Bengali-speaking nation.”

Fakrul teaches at a school that

borders Nagaon district, and

he was talking to THE WEEK

standing in front of Amirud-

din’s house—a tin-roofed

hut whose walls were

beginning to crum-

ble. Living next

UNCERTAIN FUTURE

Rahima Khatun, 60, of

Borchapori village is facing

deportation

On August 31, Assam

will publish the final draft of its

National Register of Citizens. The

NRC will render more than 40 lakh

residents—mostly Bengali-speaking

Muslims—officially stateless,

including families that have been in

India for generations. As anger and

apprehensions grow, THE WEEK

reports on the fault lines that are

growing wider

BY RABI BANERJEE/Guwahati, Morigaon and Kamrup

PHOTOS SALIL BERA