Burden of Sylhet referendum

His home never left him. It came back to him when it was time for him to return.

In his delirium, he murmured about the huge expanse of the “haor” (swamps) of Sylhet. He tried to clutch a fistful of imaginary Murta grass as the bouts of sinking feeling took over. Sitting next to him, I felt the slap of the wet breeze on my face. The man was my father.

Like millions of refugees, my father too had finally come to Assam in the aftermath of Partition. But the memories never left him. As they didn’t for millions of others.


Buried in the less highlighted pages of Partition history were those who moved to Assam and Shillong following the Partition of Assam. My family was one of those. They left behind a settled life in Sylhet, walked through Dawki checkpoint into the then Assam. They climbed up the hills and settled in Shillong.

For some others, the story was slightly different, but all the same at the end.

This was a Partition that was celebrated.

Right after the vivisection of India, speaking on behalf of the provincial Congress cabinet on September 5, 1947, Akbar Hydari, the then governor of Assam, had said in the assembly, “The natives of Assam are now masters of their own house. They have a government which is both responsible and responsible to them. The Bengali no longer has the power, even if he had the will, to impose anything on the people of these hills and valleys which constitute Assam.”

But those who had to live through it had a different take. In the 25th Bulletin of Karim Ganj Referendum Committee, an appeal was made to both the Hindu and Muslim voters of Sylhet ahead of the Sylhet referendum.

Apart from underlining the economic disasters that the vivisection would spell over the district, the bulletin had gone on to say, “From four crore Muslims in Bengal, two crore eighty-seven lakh Muslims will be the residents of the proposed East Bengal state. If the huge number of Muslims can stay out of the proposed Muslim federation, then what difference would it make if 18 lakh Bengali Muslims of Sylhet stay out?”

Interestingly, the Referendum Committee was being headed by Khan Bahadur Mahmud Ali, with Maulana Harmuj Ali as one of the General Secretaries and Abdul Azim Chaudhury, Maulvi Abdul Sattar as joint secretaries.

It was not just the Muslim League alone, but the Assam Congress was equally interested in getting rid of Sylhet, even if the Congress High Command at the national level was in no position to endorse the partitioning of Sylhet, which directly meant ceding the district to Pakistan.

As historian Sujit Choudhury noted in his celebrated essay “A “God-sent” Opportunity”, “The Bengali-speaking district was regarded as an ulcer hindering the emergence of a unilingual Assam. Hence, when the decision for the referendum was announced, Gopinath Bordoloi conveyed to all concerned that the Cabinet was not interested in retaining Sylhet.”

‘It was indeed the lifetime opportunity for the Assamese leadership "to get rid of Sylhet" and carve out a linguistically more homogenous province. When the results of the referendum were declared, there was a feeling of relief in the Brahmaputra valley. The Sylhet leaders were discouraged when they tried to salvage a portion of the district through effective representation to the Boundary Commission.’ Wrote Amalendu Guha in his Planter-Raj to Swaraj: Freedom Struggle and Electoral Politics in Assam. On 21 July 1947, The Assam Tribune celebrated the partition, saying ‘The Assamese public seem to feel relieved of a burden.’

In the aftermath of the referendum, the war cry in regions adjoining Barak Valley across the border became “Sylhet niche ganavote-e Assam nimu Lathir Chote” (We took Sylhet by referendum and will take Assam by sheer might of sticks). A sentiment still echoes in present-day Bangladesh as threats to the “Chicken-neck” area are casually made to whip up sentiments.

The Sylhet of my father’s memory doesn’t exist today, nor do the haors of my grandmother’s stories. What, however, stays alive is the pain of losing an anchor that was not solely Radcliffe’s design.