Language, Identity and Conflict: Comprehending Everyday Co-existence in Assam

Assam has long experienced intercommunal tensions stemming from faulty colonial-era administrative policies, which have continued post-independence. Key instances of violence include the Language Movement (1960), the Medium of Instruction Movement (1972), and the Assam Movement (1979-1985). These conflicts, particularly over language, have intensified tensions between Bengali and Assamese-speaking communities. Despite efforts to protect Assam’s ethnic and linguistic diversity, political manipulation and poor crisis management have deepened divisions. As affective relation is built up to fuel community sentiments and empower these movements, one may discern that three principal factors have been responsible for intensifying the conflict: misinformation among the communities, misdirection of the Movements, and involvement of political parties. Further, as political rhetoric has kept fuelling and nourishing communal sentiments till the present day, the same factors seem to be at work in varying degrees. Employing qualitative methods, this study draws from primary and secondary data, including interviews with 150 families from various socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds in violence-affected areas of Western Assam. Through semi-structured interviews, leaders, political figures, victims, and witnesses shared their views on Assam’s socio-political and economic history. This research is structured on three principal arguments corresponding to three sections, and a set of recommendations is presented in the concluding section. The first section argues that although the genesis of language conflict was triggered by transformation brought about by a new socio-economic structure introduced by the East India Company (EIC), the rhetorical conflict has been sustained till the present times through the clerk-conspiracy theory. The second section discusses how the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA), as a non-communal association, tried to diffuse communal sentiments during the Language Movement in 1960. The third section looks at the post-1960s era when the conflict intensified due to the failure of the previous governments to tackle the immigration issue, and the concluding section argues that since inter-ethnic relationships worsened in subsequent years, a constitutional safeguard for the Assamese community may transform the socio-economic conditions responsible for the conflict. However, this can be achieved only when solidarity-building measures, mutual respect for all communities, and humility are made the basis of conversation.