Rupshi Airport: A Forgotten History

Rupshi, the capital of Rupshi Zamindar, was established by Jagadindra Narayan Choudhury in honor of his beautiful wife, Rupshi Devi, between 1915 and 1920. Since then, the place has been known as Rupshi. During colonial India, the British took more than five thousand bighas of land from the Zamindar and handed it over to an American company to build an airstrip on the eve of World War II. This airstrip has since been known as Rupshi Airport. Recently, the Assam Cabinet approved the renaming of Rupshi Airport after the Bodo social reformer Gurudev Kalicharan Brahma. This paper aims to explore the history of Rupshi and the significance of constructing Rupshi Airport for military purposes. It analyzes why people have reclaimed the name Rupshi Airport and how the renaming has erased the glorious past of the place, leading to an identity crisis.