Chapter II

Communities, cultures and identities: theoretical possibilities

2.0: Locating the community: exile or freedom?

2.0.1: The beginning of things

As the eastern most outpost of Bengal, Sylhet ceased to remain so following its

incorporation into the newly created Assam province in September 1874. An

excursion into political history of Sylhet undertaken in the previous chapter focusing

in particular on the period between 1874 and 1947, serves as the setting for this

chapter. By moving to and fro in history, by packing and un-packing sociological

concepts and categories, this chapter attempts to trace the trajectory of Sylheti

community identity discourse in contemporary India. Foregrounded in Sylhet's

colonial history since 1874, the identity discourse has not been without complexities

and contestations as the subsequent chapters show. This chapter therefore, in an

interrogative and cross-temporal mode carves out a conceptual schema which among

others, will flesh out the issues and aid in understanding that. Drawing upon

secondary sources this two-part section rather elaborately points to the dynamics of

identity formation of the community in colonial period. The next, also divided into

two discusses theoretical concepts and trajectories at length to situate the case of

Sylheti middle class and its role in preservation and propagation of a culture rooted

"distinct" Sylheti community identity. By drawing upon preceding ones, the

concluding section delves on the context, character and politics of the re-constructed

Sylheti identity in post-colonial India, and it has been kept very brief because that is

the theme of the subsequent chapters.

The task of locating the Sylheti community and its identity in contemporary India

necessitates a quick journey back in time, at least to the time when Bangia speaking

Sylhet district (and also Cachar) was officially declared by the colonial government to

be administered then, and thereafter by Assam. That was 1874, and since then

Bengalis of Sylhet lodged in Assam (except for a brief period between 1905 and

1911) gradually embarked on a process of carving out for their own selves a "distinct"

district based identity. Given the fact that very little work except perhaps for those by

say, Sukalpa Bhattacharjee (2006) and Anindita Dasgupta (2008) exists on the theme

44

of Sylheti identity per se in colonial or post-colonial India, it is indeed difficult to

comprehend the phenomenon in light of available sociological frameworks. The need

to turn back to 1874 to begin an analytical exploration of Sylheti community and

identity formation processes is necessitated by the fact that secondary sources, and

also most respondents as the subsequent chapters show, referred to the year as a

turning point in their 'shuprachin ebong sanskritik boishishthatabahi [ancient and

culturally distinctive]' history. The roots of "distinct" community and identity could

perhaps be traced to years prior to 1874 but modem constructions of those I argue,

followed that 'moment of lasting significance' as Sylhetis, particularly the educated

middle class quite interestingly struggled to reunite with their fellow Bengalis in

Bengal on one hand and remain Bengalis of Sylhet in Assam on the other. Indeed, the

claimed salience of 1874 - a year that saw the first partition of Bengal and which

incidentally is rarely mentioned in the annals of history of Bengal's partitions- shows

that the formation of Sylheti community and its identity squarely rests on that

historical-political context. It is obvious that more than anything else the issue of

colonial territorial location of the community remains central to its identity discourse.

In this discourse Sylhet is projected as the eternal victim of arbitrary territorial policy

(or 'questionable Shatranj ki Khel') designed and imposed by the colonial state, aided

and abetted by non-Sylheti Bengalis and a section of for instance, Assamese and

British tea planters. In fact, for Sylhetis the separation from Bengal was a moment of

decisive break; a moment that had left the community permanently dismembered

from its original ancestral homeland only to 'cry hoarse for reunification' with it

throughout the divorced history; a moment that forced the community to 'exile' in the

'Dandakaranya' named Assam [see for example, Bhattacharjee 2009; Dass 1981;

Neogy 1987]. As Sushanta Krishna Dass writes: 'Thus long before "the partition of

Bengal", in 1905, Bengal was pruned in silence. Even it escaped the notice of the then

emerging Bengal Renaissance intelligentsia. No bell was rung, no funeral sung'

[1981: no pp]. However, the much needed healing balm was provided by none other

than Rabindranath Tagore. In a poem titled Sreebhumi written in 1326 B.S he says:

mamata bihin kaal srote/banglar rashtra shima hotelnirbashita tumi, shundari sreebhumi/... bangalir hridayer sat he/ .. . handhe lobo hiya.lshey bandhone chiradin tore tabo kaache!banglar aashirbad gantha hoye aache' [By the cruel spell of time/from the boundary of sovereign Bengal/exiled thou stand/ 0 fair Sreebhumi/ ... with the heart of Bengal/yours is tied/a tie always

45

close/a tie of blessing of Bengal for you/for all times to come] [cited in Dass 1981: no pp (translation mine)].

Much as Tagore tried to heal the wound, the pain and anxiety of the community as

one that was outside the 'rashtra shima [nation (state) boundary]' of Bengal, and

consequently 'nirbashita [exiled]' as the 'Jews' [sic] remained a living and constant

presence. By late 1920's with all hopes of reunification with Bengal dashed to

ground, Sylhetis reconciled to their fate of being Bengalis of Sylhet in Assam. As

Sujit Choudhury argues:

Communities in some form or the other always existed in India. But modernity inspired conciousness of being one is important and in case of Sylhetis that happened after 1874. That was a watershed because, with the decisive role played by the middle class, community awareness started growing leading to its eventual consolidation. It may not have been a cledrly thought out process but rather, historically and politically determined Sylhetis tried to go back to Bengal but failed and with the Assamese they were distant. So, they took up the responsibility of retaining Bengali culture in Assam and also began asserting their Sylheti identity. Sylhetis held powerful positions in Assam and its administrative set-up and for years they literally "ruled" the province. Surma Valley was almost like a culturally and politically independent region in Assam tied in crucial matters such as education, politics, law and revenue (only Sylhet) to Bengal and not Assam. So, both Bengali and Sylheti idenity could grow in Assam; Sylhetis remained Bengalis but began writing extensively on the district around that time; books, journals, newspapers were produced which discussed history, culture and language of Sylhet which in turn strengthened the community identity. 1 doubt if what we call Sylheti identity would grow if Sylhet remained part of Bengal. The territorial break with Bengal is therefore, very important and also partition in 1947 which again was a territorial alteration that impacted the community [see Appendix I].

Indeed, it is crucial for any understanding of Sylheti community identity discourse

whether sociologically or otherwise, to take into account the role played by changing

contours of political geography of Sylhet. Sylhet's partition and merger (except for

three and a half thanas) with Pakistan in 194 7 dealt another blow to the community. If

1874 separated Sylhetis from Bengal, 1947 split them- territorially, culturally and

communally - right through the middle. While their Pakistani counterparts eventually

(perhaps) became Bangladeshis, Sylhetis in India continued to negotiate their identity

in and outside Assam. Though at no point in history Sylhetis considered themselves

anything but Bengalis, yet due to their political location outside Bengal a long and

dark shadow remained cast on that claim by other fellow Bengalis and to some extent

the Assamese. The absence of territorial affinity with Bengal and presence in Assam

46

was compensated on one hand by assertion of historical and cultural affinity

(endorsed by none other than Tagore) with the former and cultivated (critical)

distance with the latter, and articulation of a culture rooted "distinct" Sylheti identity

on the other. The identity that emerged as a result, and which I have termed Sylheti

identity consisted of two components namely, Bengali and (in addition) Sylheti, with

the latter predictably supporting its claim of being "distinct", and eventually giving it

a predominantly Sylheti character. Taking cue from Partha Chatterjee's works I argue

that the two components rested in co-existing and mutually transformative

inner/Sylheti and outer/Bengali domains. Indeed, Sylheti identity grew and thrived as

an identity with a distinctly fused character, contextual deployment of either of its two

components (termed generally as identities by respondents) vis-a-vis "others"

notwithstanding. It did, and does thrive, but not without the anxiety that accompanies

all such identities created by modernity and its state-centric political and cultural

discourses; identities sans "legitimate" territorial moorings more often than not

acquire ambiguous and fluid characters which in tum stand perpetually confronted

and contested.

Therefore, by problematizing the two temporal moments - 187 4 and 194 7 - it is

possible to delineate the pattern of community and identity articulation of Sylhetis in

colonial and consequently, post-colonial India. Though elements of continuity inform

the movement, yet as the subsequent sections show, Sylheti identity underwent

substantial alteration during the latter. However, in order to make sense of that it is

imperative to take note of the historical (colonial) context of identity making. Though

a section of sociologists have been wary of conscious engagement with historical

dimensions of social phenomena, yet a large number of others have consistently

argued otherwise. The nature of relationship between sociology/social anthropology

(used interchangeably in the text) and history has been widely debated and what

emerged among others, was the academic recognition of historical sociology as a

viable theoretical orientation for understanding social phenomena. As Isaac M. Lewis

writes: 'More generally, historical data are not merely relevant, but are quite decisive

in evaluating a given society's own view of its past. Peoples' views oftime, and their

own ... "history" are very much part of the picture which even the most particularistic

anthropologist seeks to delineate. Here the elucidation ... of what actually happened

in the past is obviously crucial' [1968:xvii]. The fact that both sociologists and

47

historians ought to collaborate has been attested by the latter - say for instance,

Edward H. Carr- too. However, the 'reciprocal illumination of past and present' or

collaborative tie between sociology and history has not been without mutual

contentions. Contestations notwithstanding, it is more or less widely believed that

both forms of enquiry stand more to gain and certainly less to lose from each other.

For sociologists/social anthropologists all what is required says Saurabh Dube is the

'critical rethinking of history as concept and entity' and such an engagement he adds,

has been at the 'heart of historical anthropology' [2007:38]. Indeed, what is important

for sociologists is this critical engagement with history; rather than being ignorant or

dismissive either deliberately or otherwise of historical location of the social

phenomenon under investigation it is more than worthwhile for sociologists to

'enlarge time', read the present in a historical longue duree and hence, initiate a

critical dialogue with the past. Today, sociology in general and historical sociology in

particular 'is indeed better equipped to ... scan the large [diachronic] time-frame

required to understand, interpret and assess macro-phenomena such as nation and

nationalism' or say community and identity formation [Aloysius 1997:4; also see

Cohn 1992]. Indeed, diachronic time frame remains crucial for understanding the

complex theme of this work. Beginning with cartographic alterations to the creation

of English educated middle class, the impact of' colonial encounter' left lasting marks

on the Sylhtei community and the ways in which it perceived itself including

beginning of the process of construction of a collective self. As Carol Upadhya writes:

' [ c ]ommunity identities were in a sense "invented" under colonialism by the operation

of certain political and discursive processes, and . . . the colonial state [was] the

primary source of such identities' [2001 :39; also see for example, Cohn 1996; Inden

1990; Kaviraj 201 0; Nandy 1993]. Indeed so, and the process of construction entailed

certain forms in which communites articulated their identities vis-a-vis "others".

Hence, a reading of colonial Sylheti community would do well to examine what

Benedict Anderson (1991) has called albeit in the context of fully fledged nation­

states, the styles in which its members 'imagined' themselves as well as "others",

particularly non-Sylheti Bengalis and the Assamese. What is interesting is that the

colonial policy of territorial reorganization of Bengal Presidency in 187 4 created near

permanent schisms within and outside (with the Assamese) the Bengali community,

and those being visible even today.

48

Dismembered from Bengal and unwillingly tagged to Assam, the nature of activities

that engaged the Sylheti middle class- both Hindus and Muslims- between 1874 and

1947 is something that requires attention for, that throws light on the processual

transformation of a group of people to a community bearing a rather clearly defined

identity. Sylhet, by the time it stood incorporated in Assam, already had as in Bengal

a middle class whose members were educated in English as well as classical

languages and employed in the colonial bureaucracy. It was this class, its Calcutta

educated members in particular which played a vital role in the making of Sylheti

community identity. Writing about the role of Calcutta based Bengali middle class

which also applies to Sylheti one, Partha Chatterjee says:

Like middle classes elsewhere ... the Calcutta middle class too has been generally acknowledged as having played a pre-eminent role in the last century and a half in creating the dominant forms of nationalist culture and social institutions in Bengal. It was this class that constructed through a modem vernacular the new forms of public discourse, laid down new criteria of social respectability, set new aesthetic and moral standards of judgment, and suffused with its spirit of nationalism, fashioned the new forms of political mobilization that were to have such a decisive impact on the political history of the province in the twentieth century [1993:35-36].

Lodged either in Calcutta or Sylhet, Sylheti middle class no doubt remained part and

parcel of the larger Bengali (Calcutta) one which adopted among others, the role of

the nationalist elite and 'claimed the mantle of Indian anticolonial nationalism', but it

also after 1874 took upon itself the additional responsibility of representing Sylhet,

Sylhetis, and their culture. The fast growing Sylheti middle class much like its

counterpart in Bengal as Gautam Ghosh writes:

[m]arked their respectability by cultivating refinement (in manners, language, clothing, dining) and by eschewing manual labor and commerce, though they often had some land holdings from which they collected revenue. They aspired to become professionals (teachers, lawyers, doctors) within the colonial system; achievement in education was exceptionally important to their self­conception, and they looked down upon those whom they saw as uneducated (the poor) or uncultivated (industrialists and decadent aristocrats). In these ways the bhadralok were more what might be called a govemmentality group (following Michel Foucault) than the bourgeois class they are often made out to be .... The group was, in many ways, a product of the imperial administrative system [2007:60]

49

In fact, the middle class modeled its set of representations of Sylhet after that of

Bengal which among others, included: a) Sylhet as the 'golden' land of beauty and

prosperity, as Shundari, Srimayi, Srimandita Sribhumi/Srihatta (beautiful and

graceful Sylhet) b) Sylheti folk culture (music, dance and so on) as rich and vibrant c)

Sylheti dialect (and script) as an integral but 'distinctive' form of Bangia speech and

script d) Sylhet as a 'chronotope' of 'harmonious and proper social relations within

and between families and other social groups, including between Hindus and

Muslims' e) Sylhet as inheritor of the unique syncretic heritage of Sri Chaitanya and

Hazrat Shah Jalal, and f) 'the Bengali language (especially the Sanskritised

sadhubhasha as standardized and canonized during the "Bengal Renaissance") as an

ideal language for the production of great literature (to match the West's)' [lhid.:61;

also see Ahmed 1999; Bhattacharjee 1936; Bhattacharjee 1988; Deb 1983; Gupta

Choudhury 1368 B.S; Purkayastha et al 2002; Rahman 1991; Sen 1378 B.S;

Tattwanidhi 2002, 2004, 2005; Vidyabinod 1930]. These representations were

intertwined to project Sylhet by its Hindu and Muslim middle class members alike, as

a 'golden' land marked by happiness and social harmony. As poet and editor of

Srihatta Prakash Peary Charan Das writes: 'Srihatta Lakhhir haat aanonder

dham/Swargyapeksha priyatara aey bhumir naam [Sylhet is Goddess Lakshmi's

market/it is an abode of happiness and dearer than heaven' [cited in Tattwanidhi

2004:32 (translation mine)]. While the middle class continued to project the image of

a 'glorious and eternal Sylhet', yet that more often than not was toned by a sense of

lamentation and despair arising out of the district's separation from Bengal. Till

1920's this class through various associations led movements for reunification of

Sylhet (and Cachar) (Surma Valley) with Bengal, though the significant but small

number of its Muslim members gradually began as Chapter I shows, to fall out.

Notwithstanding religion based divided opinions on broad political issues, this class

so far as 'Sylhet' was concerned rarely sounded discordant notes. As Kamaluddin

Ahmed explains:

Colonial Sylheti Muslim middle class was closely tied like its Hindu counterpart with Calcutta and Bangia language and literature though it was not as large as the latter. Muslims, like Hindus, were educated in Calcutta and usually came back like the latter to work for development of Sylhet. Things began to change in twentieth century on the political front but love for Bengal and Sylhet was undiminished. Maybe love for Sylhet was slightly more and the middle class became intensely Sylheti, often calling non­Sylhetis as "Bengalis" and themselves as just Sylhetis (though not

50

officially). Sylheti Muslims also claimed to be a distinctive group within Muslims educated and enlightened as they thought themselves to be. Actually, relationship of Sy/hetis, both Hindus and Muslims, is very complex when it comes to Bengal. With Assamese things were simpler in early years but got complicated since 1930's and culminated finally in 1947. In post-independent period things got further complicated between Assamese and Sy/hetis (Bengalis) [see Appendix 1].

Lodged in Assam, the Sylheti middle class comprising of both Hindus and Muslims, a

section of the former drawn from upper castes of kulin (aristocratic) Kayasthas and

Brahmans and influenced by Brahmo ideas and values engaged with first, educational

advancement of Sylhetis including women, second, political mobilization for

reunification with Bengal and also freedom of India from colonial rule, third,

introduction of newspapers and journals, fourth, formation of civic associations to

promote one, Bangia language and literature and two, general welfare of Sylhetis and

fifth, writing and recording the history and culture of Sylhet. 1 Given the relatively

prosperous economic condition of Sylhet, this class neither lacked spirit nor time to

direct attention to its history and culture. Consider what Anindita Dasgupta writes

about the class:

The Sylheti bhodrolok was a dynamic and mobile class of British­educated people . . . . In the district headquarters of the colonial government of Assam, the Sylheti was the quintessential baboo, disproportionately employed in various provincial government offices and in the emerging professions of law, teaching .... Bengali clerks, doctors and lawyers, most of them Sylhetis, with the advantage of their early initiation to English education and the British-Indian administrative system, monopolized government jobs and professions. Several factors helped the Sylhetis to find employment in Assam: first, their efficiency in serving the British had already been proven in Bengal; second, Sylhet was now part of the province of Assam; third, by the time the emerging Assamese middle-class began to put forward their claims to these jobs, many Sylhetis were already in superior cadres of service and in a position to resist and regulate their entry. Also, the need for an expanding, imperial administration had to be met and the government could not wait until the Assamese achieved the required standard of English education. In 1901, the total number of population supported by "professions" in Sylhet alone was 44, 573, while the figure for Brahmaputra Valley added up to only 22, 517. When the province was re-constituted into a Chief Commissioner-ship in 1912, the number of literate persons in Sylhet alone was 132, 495 against 144, 584 in the whole of the Brahmaputra Valley. Again, English literates of that valley numbered 18, 214 whereas Sylhet alone had I 0, 980. Posts were not yet clearly earmarked on a valley basis and Sylhet obtained the lion's share of services under the government ... clearly [reveal] a pattern of Sylheti dominance in the professions and government jobs in early and mid-twentieth

2 century Assam [2001 :346-347].

51

Fragmentations within the middle class along bases of caste, profession, educational

status and gender notwithstanding, its pre-eminent role in the cultural production of

Sylhet and Sylhetitta cannot be discounted. Role of colonial middle class as the

agency of social transformation in Sylhet was best exemplified in the domain of

education which in tum contributed to the growth and spread of what Anderson would

call print culture. Also, a variety of associations devoted to political (nationalist and

"regionalist"), educational, cultural and literary causes grew. Indeed, by late

nineteenth century such activities came to have noticeable presence in the larger

public sphere of Assam as well as Bengal, particularly Calcutta. Before I take up the

production of Sylhet through print including history writing, a brief discussion on the

role of associations is in order. Sylheti middle class activities in colonial period

centered on establishment of schools and colleges for men and women alike in which

Christian missionaries, (particularly of Welsh Presbyterian Church) the colonial

government and more importantly, Srihatta Sammilani (Sylhet Union), Calcutta led

by Bipin Chandra Pal and others had substantive roles. As Santanu Dutta writes:

The vanguards of modernism in the valley were Joygobinda Shome, Bipinchandra Pal, Sundarimohan Das, Tarakishore Choudhury, Sitanath Dutta, Saradacharan Shyam, Radhanath Choudhury, Kaminikumar Chanda and Srishchandra Dutta. They also acted as the liaison between Calcutta and the valley, and carried the ideals of patriotism, liberalism, nationalism, women education and social reforms to the remotest comers of the valley. So, it can be safely concluded that, by the end of nineteenth century, an environment capable of sustaining new ideas and programmes of social, economic and political development had been created in the valley [2000:125; also see Chapter IV].

While some associations worked with clearly defined national-political agenda which

also included the Sylhet reunion issue, others focused on non-political ones such as

social welfare, language and literature and culture in general. Most socio-cultural

associations bearing the name of Sylhet/Srihatta and suffixed variously by terms such

as sabha, sammi/ani, parishad, samiti, samaj (forms of social association/collectivity)

functioned with the objectives of overall uplift of Sylhetis. At the same time these

also sought to preserve and propagate the 'rich and vibrant' cultural heritage of the

district in particular and Surma Valley in general. Cachar, considered the twin of

Sylhet was also included in such associational scheme of things and in fact, the latter

took upon itself the task of if I may say, "civilizing and disciplining" the former. Of

all such, the ones concerned with cultural activities, literary in particular are

52

important. Those either functioned as general "Bengali associations" say for instance,

Bangiya Sahitya Parishat·Sylhet town and Shillong branches established in 1920 and

1937 respectively, or both Bengali and Sylheti ones. Among the latter, Srihatta

Sahitya Parishat (hereafter SSP) is a case in point. Established in 1935 (1342 B.S) by

eminent Sylheti public personalities including government officials, teachers and

intellectuals such as Rai Bahadur Pramod Chandra Dutta, Pandit Padmanath

Bhattacharya Vidyabinod, Achyut Charan Choudhury, Satish Chandra Roy, Khan

Bahadur Dewan Eklimur Raza Choudhury, Jatindra Mohan Bhattacharjee, Syed

Murtaza Ali and others, SSP owed its birth to two associations namely, Srihatta­

Cachar Anushandhan Samiti and Sylhet Cultural Association established in 1914 and

1934 respectively, the latter eventually merging with it. With the support and

blessings of eminent Bengalis like Jadunath Sarkar, Dinesh Chandra Sen,

Abanindranath Tagore, Amulyacharan Vidyabhushan and others, SSP began its

journey in its first conference held in Sylhet town the same year. Writing about the

broad objectives of SSP, one of its founders Satish Chandra Roy opines:

I see heavenly intervention in the act of Sylhet's separation from Bengal and link to Assam. Because of that the Bengalis of Sylhet have acquired a shhwatantra [independent] to contribute in God's creation, krishti o sanskritir baishishtho [distinctiveness of culture]. That bishesh [distinct/special] aim or mission will be evident in the Sahitya Parishad. Srihatter bishesh adhikar [Sylhet's special right/duty] is to establish friendship between Bengalis and Assamese and between all jatis [social groups] of India, to make the Sylhetis the best followers of Bengal and to help in education and religious training of the Assamese and the hill tribes. The historians of Kamrup and Tripura, the Assamese of Brahmaputra Valley, the Kacharis of Hidimbarajya and the Khasis and Jaintias of the hills, all may consider Sylhetis as their own and we Sylhetis also will extend our hand of friendship and warmth so that we can establish a Srikshetra like Punyakshetra in Assam. If Srihatta Sahitya Parishad explores and highlights this baichitrer dhara, ei boishishther atma [tradition of difference, this distinctive soul] among Bengali speakers and claim to be shhwatantra [independent], then the Bengalis will progress [ 1936:15 (translation mine); also see Gupta 2009].

The aim of SSP, its 'bishesh kaaj [main task]' as Roy says would include: 'Promotion

of Srihatta-Gaurab book series, publication of new edition of Srihatter Itibritta,

restoration of Sylhet's classical literature and its preservation within the larger

Bengali literary tradition, encouragement to emerging writers and publication of their

essays' [Ibid.:l6; also see Bhattacharya 1993]. In 1936, SSP launched the

journal/magazine Srihatta Sahitya Parishat Patrika (hereafter SSPP), and aimed to

53

include in that writings pertaining certainly to Sylhet's history and culture but also

larger Bengal and interestingly, Assam. With membership open to adult, 'Banga·

sahityanuragi [Bangia literature enthusiasts/lovers]' men and women, SSP held

regular conferences where research oriented essays and writings were presented,

discussed, and subsequently published in SSPP. To achieve the broad goals, SSP in

course of time established four committees/divisions namely: a) research on literature

b) collection of classical books and coins collection c) discussion, and d) art and

aesthetics. By 1941, SSP was housed in its own premises in Sylhet town with a fully

functional library consisting of about two thousand books and manuscripts, and a

museum preserving ancient sculptures, coins and even a canon (found in Khasi Hills).

However, it was the publication of books and SSPP that remained central to SSP.

Until it ceased to function in 1947·48, SSP had already published seven books and

fifty two issues of SSPP.

2.0.2: Producing the community

As an association of literature enthusiasts SSP was a symbol of the "high" culture

practising colonial Sylheti middle class. Essays published in SSPP covered wide

ranging themes which as Shashi Mohan Chakravarty, Secretary of SSP claimed were

'moulik o gabeshonamulok [original and researched]' [cited in Bhattacharya 1993:3 7].

In fact, the journal following the goals of its parent SSP endeavored to remain liberal

and broad based which among others, the noted scholar Amulyacharan Vidyabhushan

aspired it to be. He writes: '[t]here are considerable historical and literary ingredients

to be researched in Sylhet. Inhabitants of Sylhet will find in the Sahitya Parishad

enough space to advance their knowledge. But Sylheti litterateurs must remember that

chitta udar na korile kono kaajii shafalyamandita hoi be na [unless the mind is

widened/liberated no such effort would be successful]' [cited in Ibid.:41 (translation

mine)]. Vidyabhushan's note of caution resonated in what Sundari Mohan Das had to

say. Perhaps both were apprehensive of SSP and SSPP falling victim to exclusivist

(Sylheti) goals and practices. As Das says: '[w]hen I heard from Jatindra Mohan

Bhattacharjee about a swatantra [independent] Srihatta Sahitya Parishad, I was a little

fearful .... Anyway, I am relieved that the Srihatta Sahitya Parishad will not attempt

to translate/alter everything, beginning with the alphabetical script to Geetanjali, into

Sylheti dialect' [cited in Ibid. (translation mine)]. Interestingly, it is the same Sundari

54

Mohan Das who is believed to have composed the immensely popular poem entitled

~sylheti Ramayana'. As a piece of long verse, it narrates the entire epic in Sylheti

form of speech and was, and is often considered by Sylhetis as evidence of the

'richness and beauty' of their upabhasha (dialect); Hindus and Muslims alike view

the composition more as the 'pride of Sylheti dialect', and less an instance of

particularistic religious expression. In an essay entitled 'Sylhoti Bhashar Ramayan'

published in the monthly Pratidhwani in 1953, the writer Hemendra Kumar Das

views it primarily as an instance of love for expression in 'swadeshi bhasha

[national/community language]'. He, in verse writes: 'nanan desher nanan

bhashalbina swadeshi bhashalmite na treesha [different nations have different

languages/without own national language/the thirst refuses to subside]' [cited in

Bhattacharjee 2001:5 (translation mine)]. It is interesting that a composition which is

otherwise based on one of the most important religious epics of Hindus comes to

occupy by sheer "virtue" of the dialect it is composed in, a non-sectarian character;

for that matter, the poem is never read on religious occasions, and other than its wide

linguistic appeal is treated as one of the finest examples of the genre of humour which

is expressed best in Sylhti speech, the 'matribhasha' [mother tongue]' as Hemendra

Kumar Das says, of the community [lbid.:9]. The point is, the proclivity towards

composing (sometimes translating) prose, poetry and the like in Sylheti dialect (but in

standard Bangia script) was not unheard of in colonial period though Sylheti middle

class caught as it was in a double bind, could in no way let that take precedence over

Bangia, the "superior and respectable" parent language. Indeed, that meant a tight

rope walk where love for all things Sylheti, the dialect in particular had to be evened

out with equal if not more commitment and zeal for Bengali, and possibly Indian.

Likewise, SSP as Sundari Mohan Das desired, adopted a universalistic approach

(Bengali/Indian), and at the same time upheld an 'independent spirit' that was

necessary for acquiring "scientific" knowledge about the community and culture of

Sylhet (and Cachar).

Over a period of thirteen years SSP run SSPP published essays on religion and

philosophy, language and script, history, genealogy and community, literature,

pilgrimage narratives, classical manuscripts, books and newspapers and so forth, and

the ones focused primarily on Sylhet, the number far exceeding those on others throw

up interesting insights. The latter reflected the goals of SSP which was committed

55

towards as Shashi Mohan Chakrabarty argues 'clear understanding of the nature of the

jati [community/nation]' [cited in Bhattacharya 1993:16 (translation mine)]. The

argument found support from none less than Dinesh Chandra Sen who writes: 'Those

who have seen the natural beauty and ancient historical contribution and creation of

Sylhet know that this desh [nation/country] was at a point in time at the pinnacle in

Bengal. We will be happy if the newly created Srihatta Sahitya Pari shad attempts to

preserve the glorious past of this desh' [cited in Ibid.:40 (translation mine); also see

Sen 2006]. The attempt to promote quite interestingly, a 'gabeshonabhittik [research

based]' understanding of the past found a fair share of takers among Sylheti middle

class. In order to be published by SSPP it was imperative for contributors to adopt a

modem, scientific technique of arguing and writing so as to ensure authentic

rendering of the subject; history had to be discovered and written by Sylhetis

themselves, but certainly in a scientific temper backed by 'gabeshona ebong

aalochona [research and discussion]'. Sylheti middle class attempted as Sudipta

Kaviraj (2010) in another context says, 'self-reflection' through 'modem devices like

history or academic sociology'. Entrenched in the philosophical discourse of

modernity and rationalism - 'its theories, self-definitions, narratives, delusions, and

strategies'- this class rarely questioned its centrality so far as logic of functioning and

understanding of social institutions and most importantly, history was concerned,

albeit in varying modes and expressions. Indeed, as I shall show later, of

'extraordinary political significance in colonial culture' was the idea of history, its

discovery and writing, the latter finding much needed support from the prevalent

culture of print. In fact, it was the domain of print (and education) through which

colonialism introduced the process of production of Sylhet and consequently, Sylheti

identity since nineteenth century; SSPP (and writings contained therein) only added to

that existing domain in the next century. Along with education and 'chakri [salaried

job]' argues Sumit Sarkar (2006), print culture was that which constituted the identity

of the colonial middle class of Bengal, and certainly of Sylhet too.3 Education and

print culture as Tithi Bhattacharya (2005) following Sarkar shows, were 'practices

that embodied a particular ideology' and served as 'areas of "primitive accumulation"

of class awareness' of the middle class in Bengal, and also Sylhet. The fact that print

and education were of unquestionable significance for this class is more than obvious

from for instance, what the Secretary of Calcutta Literary Society in 1875 observes:

56

Men of literary culture start Journals and magazines, and become leaders of society, in course of time. The true greatness of a Nation consists in the number of its literary men, and the Journals and Newspapers, which the reading public supports and encourages. If you wish to criticize the action on men-in-authority, you should do so either by a speech, or by contributions in the columns of a Newspaper' [cited in Bhattacharya 2005:34 (emphasis original)]

History of print as Robert Damton (1997) shows enables one to 'gain a broader view

of literature and cultural history' and provides a means of understanding the

'articulations of ideologies and the formation of public opinions'. He adds to show

how 'the culture of print can shape "reality itself' and help "determine the course of

events"' [cited in Ibid.:l08; also see Chartier 1984; Chatterjee 1996a]. Arguing that

there are two ways of looking at print, Tithi Bhattacharya writes: 'One tends to see

print primarily as an innovative technology which by its very specificity can become

an agent of change . . . . There are those who argue print to be the handmaiden of

capitalism and hence attach more importance to larger social processes which account

for the rise of print and its reception' [Ibid.; also see Anderson 1991]. Drawing upon

the latter she analyzes the 'basic constituents of the acts of reading and writing', and

demonstrates 'how these primary functions of knowledge production were altered to

fit the new social imperatives' [Ibid.: 11 0]. The technology of print which included

establishment of printing presses, improvement of typescript, and so forth

interestingly found as Bhattacharya pertinently writes, 'the required compatibility

with the idea of print as a devise for civilizing'. Not only technology that produced the

printed word was important, but the latter was also so primarily because it was created

by the former. 'Hence, not only were the ideas within the printed book regarded as

important, the mechanics of the reinscription of those ideas were also considered

equally significant' [Ibid.: 139]. The role that print played in context of Bengal was

also at work in Sylhet. Making deep inroads in middle class Sylheti life, printing as a

medium ensured diffusion of ideas on a wider scale and more importantly, such

"printed" ideas acquired the label of authenticity and hence, proved that the class was

modem and advanced perhaps to the extent that its Calcutta counterpart was. The

terrain of print (supported by culture of literacy) to whose content I shall confine

myself, was marked by proliferation of newspapers, pamphlets, magazines, journals,

books, and so forth often printed and published from Sylhet town and other smaller

ones too.

57

The distance, both administrative and geographical from Calcutta which was the

center of print and publication, far from acting as a deterrent actually encouraged

unlike in other regions growth of print culture in Sylhet. Following Sylhet's

separation from Bengal, its middle class took upon itself the task of what I may call

"furnishing proofs" (Bengal's history not being taught to Sylheti school students in

Assam adding to that) of being Bengalis, and one way that was done was through the

avenue of print. As Jatindra Mohan Bhattacharjee writes: 'Inhabited by Bengalis but

exiled from the rashtra shima [nation (state) boundary] of Bengal, the beautiful

Sribhumi Srihatta and Cachar, these two districts' show such interest in Bangia

literature and running newspapers and magazines which is no less than the best

district of Bengal' [1349 B.S:6 (translation mine)]. In the book entitled Srihattabashi

Sampadita Ebong Srihatta 0 Cachar Hoite Prokashita Sambadpatra (1349 B.S) he

provides a descriptive account of newspapers and magazines edited by Sylhetis and

published (say from Islamia and Sharada Press in Sylhet town) from the region.4

Whether such printed literature focused on broader issues or on Sylhet in particular,

the point is, the availability of print as a technology and medium provided Sylheti

middle class with the scope to "speak" not only to the larger Bengali community but

also to its own. For instance, Usha Ranjan Bhattacharya (2009) suggests drawing

upon Padmanath Bhattacharjee Vidyabinod's article entitled 'Sylhet Nagri' (script)

published in 1908, that the hand written script got 'nabojanma [new life/birth]'

following its translation to print by one Monshi Abdul Karim as early as 1869.

Though the script was restricted to a certain class of Muslims and not widely in use,

yet what is interesting is the value that was attached to its printed form. Indeed,

printed form and its "printability" provided the script with a kind of historical­

scientific significance and authenticity, not to mention its readership and market. As

Anuradha Chanda writes:

Due want of evidence it cannot be established why the script was developed or it was popularized through print in the middle of the nineteenth century .... But undoubtedly it can be said that the script was very much in use and it had a readership and market. That is why books were published in this script from Sylhet and Calcutta .... printed books in this script contributed to its wide use .... One cannot say what the condition of the Nagri script was prior to the intervention by him [Monshi Abdul Karim] [2006: 16-17 (translation mine); also see Chanda 1998).

58

On a similar vem albeit in the context of Bangia language, Tithi Bhattacharya

succinctly puts it thus: 'The dialogue between technology and subject matter was

never clearer. Both demanded the restructuring and complete overhauling of the

language. The new printed script of [Bangia] was thus to bear both the "true effect" of

science and the edification of knowledge' [2005:135]. The value of printed form

extended to its content not just in case of Sylhet Nagri but also to other subjects such

as dialect/speech and history of Sylhet. Printed books and articles on the region,

Sylhet in particular and Surma Valley in general (few on neighbouring areas too, such

as Upendrachandra Guha's Cacharer Jtibritta (originally published in 1911)) began to

be published late nineteenth century onwards, the process gathering momentum

following publication of Srihatter Jtibritta (originally published in 191 0 & 1917) in

two volumes by Achyut Charan Choudhury Tattwanidhi. The accessibility to print

unquestionably had I argue, an empowering effect on the culture of literacy and

learning or in other words on knowledge; in addition, for the middle class it was the

much needed impetus to engage in what Usha Ranjan Bhattacharya (2009) calls

'Srihatta-adhyayan [study of Sylhet]', the finest pupil of that being Padmanath

Bhattacharjee Vidyabinod for whom the exercise was perhaps nothing less than

'jibanbrata [goal of life]'. Of the multiple discursive registers that colonial discourse

threw up, the act of writing history stood out by its appeal of empowerment, both for

indigenous middle class and the colonial power. History as Kaviraj writes, certainly

for the former became a 'peculiarly empowering discourse' bringing a 'sense of

power to its possessor'. Partha Chatterjee citing Ranajit Guha argues how:

[t]he agenda developed in the second half of the nineteenth century for an "Indian historiography of India" ... was an agenda for self­representation, for setting out to claim for the nation a past that was not distorted by foreign interpreters ... how the ca11 sent out by Bankimchandra- "We have no history! We must have a history!"­implied in effect an exhortation to launch the struggle for power, because, in this mode of recalling the past, the power to represent oneself [is] nothing other than political power itself [1996b:2-3; also see Chattopadhyay 1366B.S; Guha 2009].

'Srihatta-adhyayan' I argue, also implied in effect writing of Sylhet's history

including description of its geography, jatis (community/nation), dialect/speech and

culture. Having learnt the lesson of rationalist historiography well - both its

'theoretical apparatus and its narrative configurations' - middle class Sylhetis as

historical writings from colonial period show, adopted history as Kaviraj in another

59

context opines, as 'a central idea- a concept, a trope, a slogan, a metaphor. It came to

be the obsession of a whole generation' [2010:71]. When Kaviraj suggests that

culmination of the idea could be best found in the great narratives of Nehru who in a

'classical rationalist design' constructed 'three interconnected narratives of the world,

the nation, and the self, arranged as circles within circles', what is missed out is that

other forms of collectivities too could be part of the suggested scheme of things. One

such was the district entrenched collective like say Sylhetis who squeezed in with

'new found historical distinction', in the larger narrative. They were an inextricable

part of 'Indian nation', and they were part of 'Bangali jati' too, but they were a

'Srihattiyo jati' at the same time; a 'jati' claimed Tattwanidhi (2004), whose history

went back to antiquity, to a time when even 'Bangia desh' as he called it, did not

exist. Indeed, Sylhet's antiquity established by Tattwanidhi with the support of

Sanskrit, Bangia and English sources served as a legitimizing device not only to recall

the past but also consider that an act of 'jatiya [ communitarian/national]'

responsibility. 5 Being the first comprehensive history of Sylhet preceded by concise

ones such as Srihatta Darpan written by Kazi Mohammad Ahmed in 1886 and

Srihatter ltihash by Mohinimohan Dasgupta in 1903, Tattwanidhi's book heralded

the birth of what may be called the 'discourse of actual history' which deployed 'the

prestige of rationalist historiography in favour of the right kinds of prejudices'. As

Kaviraj writes:

History, thus, did not mean present curiosity about the society's past .... The question was not to find out exactly what happened in the past, but what kind of past to have, how to construct the best possible past, one which could suit most effectively the interests, aspirations, and conceits of the present. It was commonly held that British, or more generally European narratives . . . obstructed the path to the past so elected. The past thus became most political, the nodal point, the terrain, the prize of ideological contest ... Indian authors, using the rationalist apparatus itself, complained increasingly that Western education offered a history ... that was a complex combination of the factual and the imaginary [lhid.:73; also see Chatterjee 1996b].

The best exposition in this discourse was of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyaya's who

famously wrote that while Greenlanders, Maoris and even Oriyas had history, it was

only the Bengalis who did not. He added that 'the Bengalis must have a history; or

else, they would never become human beings' [1366B.S:336]. Clearly, what he meant

was 'Bengalis need history not because they are assailed by the irresistible curiosity

60

about their past .... They require history in order to become human beings in their

present. It is not history in the ontological sense they lack; what they lack is an

account, mortifying and uplifting, of their collective self [Ibid.; also see Kaviraj

1995]. Tattwanidhi as Subir Kar (1991) opines, was heavily influenced by

Bankimchandra, and the history he eventually wrote - a major contribution to that

being of Vidyabinod - was above all an attempt by adoption of a critical stance

towards European writings, to carve out the nature of Sylheti collective self. As Kar

writes:

The inspiration Achyutcharan derived in his boyhood days from Peary Charan Das, Nabakishore Sen and others who had deep love and respect [sic] for Sribhumi, the curiosity and interest of people in swadeshbashir gaurabgatha [legends of glory of countrymen] found full expression later in Srihatter Ittibritta. This creation was the noblest among all. Sylhetis are proud of Tattwanidhi and this glory is shared by all .... Inspired by Bankimchandra, Tattwanidhi also learnt to love and respect [sic] his swadesh and jati. The inspiration to write history was also derived from Bankimchandra .... And Bankim's invitation to all Bengalis to write history did not fail. ... In the annals of regional history writing Achyutcharan and his work remain an ideal [ 1991 :61-62 (translation mine) also see Deb 1983; Ray 2005].

Re-published from Bangladesh, the book is divided into three volumes (including

citation of Bangia and English sources) of which the first contains the history of

Sylhet including family genealogies, and the second and third 'banshabrittanta

[genealogies]' and 'jibonbrittanta [life histories]' respectively. It is not my present

intention to engage in detailed analysis of the text; rather, my attempt is to locate its

writing and reception so far as construction, and eventual re-construction (with

writings of Sujit Choudhury as Sanjib Deb Lashkar (2010) says adding to that) of

Sylheti identity discourse is concerned. Though Tattwanidhi displayed a certain

degree of tentativeness not uncommon with writers of that time, regarding the exact

definition of collective self/community/nation and its site of habitation - 'jati' and

'(swa)desh' respectively - yet it may be inferred that he essentially spoke about

Sylhetis and Sylhet. However, except for Sylhet's history being more ancient than

Bengal, at no point Tattwanidhi clearly stated that he had not referred to the history of

'Banga/Bangla desh' and 'samagra Bangali jati [entire Bengali community/nation]'

too. It was with the aid of such overlapping categories that he wrote about Sylhet and

its people, particularly those whose genealogies were available to him. In the preface

61

to volume two Tattwanidhi, an ardent follower of Vaishnavism states the reason

behind writing the book:

It is not to acquire fame or wealth that I was encouraged to write Sri hatter Ittibritta .... Listening to Peary Charan Das and others discuss the glories of Sylhet I use to think our Sylhet was no less. The desh [nation/country] that was the land of Sri Mahaprabhu's forefathers was certainly glorious .... Then I came to know that it was the birth place of Sri Advaita and a number of other holy men .... Its religious, literary, commercial and artistic traditions reflected its bright potential. It was then that my heart was filled with pride of des h. I was constantly reminded of the poet's [Peary Charan Das] words:- "bidesher barnanay mugdha tanu monlmohobashe deshpane chaine kokhon [so fascinated is the body and mind by description of foreign land that one fails to cast a glance at one's own]". It was then that I pledged to gather information about Sylhet's otit [past] ... My aim is to highlight the glory ofSylhet and Sylhetis [2002:9-14 (translation mine); also see Bhadra 1401 B.S].

The love for desh instilled among others, by Peary Charan Das and Bankimchandra

helped Tattwanidhi "rise from the stupor" and pushed him towards writing a kind of

history that would eventually earn him admiration and praise from historians such as

Jadunath Sarkar and others. Interpreting Sarkar's observations about the book, Subir

Kar opines that Tattwanidhi on one hand succeeded in establishing a connection with

great historical narratives and on the other also captured the 'distinctiveness' of

Sylhet's history. In short, taking cue from Sarkar he adds: 'Sylhet while upholding the

integrative spirit of India also stood distinct with its heritage and glory' [1991 :71

(translation mine)]. Interestingly, the book apart from arming Sylhetis with "their

history" also managed to bestow a sense of"ideological achievement" amongst as Kar

citing Sureshchandra Samajpati's comment in Basumati (1319 B.S) shows, the larger

Bengali middle class who insisted on the insignificance of political boundaries so far

as Bengal's claim on Sylhet (given its shifting administrative status) was concerned.

Sylhetis were Bengalis no doubt and the cultural claim was anything but unjust, yet

the question remains as to why then such an assertion by say, Samajpati (he says:

'Srihatta aamaderyi, Srihatta Banglaryi [Sylhet is our's, Sylhet is Bengal's]') was

required. Was that simply because Sylhet was politically located outside Bengal or

because as Kaviraj (1995) says, Bengalis confidently "appropriated" those histories

that suited the purpose of conceiving a "grand" national community? Interestingly, the

(Bengali) middle class of Sylhet too was not free from what may be called the

"proclivity of suitable (historical and cultural) appropriation" as for instance, Satish

62

Chandra Roy's remarks about the aim of SSP demonstrates. Be that as it may, what

Tattwanidhi wrote was to put it simply the history of a district but more importantly, it

contributed to the articulation of a Sylheti nation without of course aspiring for a

state. Indeed, it is interesting that in spite of being outside the professional­

institutional domain of history writing Tattwanidhi played as Prachi Deshpande

(2007) in another context would argue, a critical role in shaping the nature of modem

Sylheti 'regional' historiography. While Tattwanidhi did compose what is commonly

designated as 'aancholik [regional]' (or 'sub-regional') history, yet to unqualifiedly

treat that at as such, particularly by trained academics points to the ways by which the

region-nation relationship (though with which I have not theoretically engaged here)

has been flatly approached in South Asian historiography in particular and social

sciences in general. Sudeshna Purkayastha's work on Tattwanidhi comes as a

welcome corrective, albeit with certain limitations. Situating the work within the

framework of the 'regional/local-national' historiography she examines, as she writes:

[t]he nature of interaction between the local and national past through history writing in early twentieth century India . . . the major traits of cultural identities in regional historiography and tries to delineate the form of representation of the local past .... the concept of nation in . . . Sreehatter Jtibritta which gained strength from the distinctiveness of the local culture ... [how] Achyutcharan Choudhury ... shaped a form of writing history [with] an indigenous dimension [2008: no pp; also see Baruah 1999; Chatterjee 1993; Gupta 2009].

Though Purkayastha's stress on 'regional' specificity within the broader conception of

nation points to a dialogic and evolving process - in short, the possibility of a

discursive understanding of 'regional/local' imaginings- yet that also runs the risk of

"permanently fixing and labeling" a region or the work on it as "regional/local". 6 Be

that as it may, the seeds of construction of Sylheti nation tended to (or some would

actually say sown) by Tattwanidhi came to harvest in the subsequent years,

particularly after all hopes ofSylhet's reunion with Bengal proved futile. The idea of

Sylheti nation was no doubt a colonial-modernist construction as Benedict Anderson,

Ernest Gellner and closer home, Partha Chatterjee would observe fuelled for instance,

by spread of print and emergence of civil society, but it was not totally disassociated

from its 'pre-modem cultural and indigenous' origins. This is not to suggest that

Sylheti nation bore an un-complicated and un-constructed primordial character;

rather, it was produced as Swarupa Gupta in another context writes, 'through a

63

complex interaction between re-orientations of indigenous ideas of past unities [say in

samaj] and the historical circumstances [for instance, colonialism] of the modem

period' [2006:274; also see Ray 2003]. The emergent Sylheti nation ought to be

viewed thus, both through a political as well as cultural prism though the former had a

decisive role to play particularly after 1874. History writing for Sylheti middle class

was a political as well as cultural act; consequently, the production and projection of

Sylheti nation in the public sphere which was politically influenced was increasingly

done in cultural idioms generously borrowed from Sylheti and larger Bengali

'indigenous-folk cultures'. It was intertwining of the political and cultural in colonial­

historical context that served the aspirations of Sylheti middle class. The set of

representations of Sylhet mentioned earlier mu~t be seen in this light for, such cultural

representations which constituted the "really imagined" Sylheti national community

was rooted as I have argued, in the territorial-political location of Sylhet in Assam;

the text and alphabet of Sylheti identity discourse not sans agency of course, certainly

was, and is inseparable from its political context.

In fact, the acts of colonial state through introduction of say, census created material

grounds for consolidation of community awareness. Indeed, the strategy of

enumeration about which Kaviraj (2010) so pertinently talks about actually

transformed the conception of community. From what he calls 'imagined

communities with fuzzy boundaries', the shift was to enumeration facilitated bounded

ones; pre-colonial social worlds featured by fuzzy/blurred conceptions of space and

time slowly made way towards more fixed and concrete ones. And language (also

caste and religion) best served the 'principle of organization of difference' as

identities based on that gradually shaped up, a point well articulated by Sanghamitra

Misra (2005) in her study on the formation of Goalparia identity in colonial Assam.

Indeed, colonial census as Bernard Cohn (1992) rightly suggests had enormous social

consequences as it classified and codified knowledge (for instance, language) and in

tum objectified communities which bore that. As sub-continental communities got

invented, organized and fixed around axes such as language, caste and religion, the

one of Sylhetis was also drawn to the process. However, the case of Sylhet was more

than interesting. Enumerated since 1881 in Assam and not Bengal - and that is crucial

- Sylhetis despite being Bangia speakers ended up being a community with a clearly

defined, 'distinct' culture whose members most importantly spoke a dialect that was

64

similar to, yet different from regular Bangia. As literary vernaculars like Bangia and

Assamese helped forge the boundaries of their respective territorially rooted

community identities, Sylheti dialect precisely did the same in Surma Valley. Though

the status of dialects was at the bottom of language hierarchy preceded by the literary

(Bangia) vernaculars, Arabic-Persian and Sanskrit (in ascending order), yet Sylheti

because of its location within a fixed a territorial space outside Bengal (with the

middle class not requiring regular Bangia for economic or official purposes in Assam

after 1870's adding to that) acquired a life of its own; in short, location of Sylhet, and

the dialect spoken by its people across classes outside Bengal and in Assam further

contributed towards crystallization of Sylheti identity. Indeed, what standard literary

vernaculars did for the imagination of modem nations as Benedict Anderson observes,

Sylheti dialect did the same for Sylheti nation. However, Sylheti middle class at no

stage abandoned its love and admiration of 'standard high' Bangia as numerous

writings say, in SSPP show; rather, it was the only means available to "stay

connected" with the larger Bengali nation of which it never considered itself anything

but an 'indispensable cultural' part. Also Bangia as the "norm-setting, recognized,

standard" -the 'great tradition' as Milton Singer would have put it- language of a

"prominent, if not superior" collectivity was used to negotiate with the Assamese

whose language a section of Sylheti literati more often than not considered

underdeveloped, if not downright inferior. While someone like Vidyabinod did point

to likeness between Sylheti (dialect) and Assamese (language), it was Bangia that

signified the mark of differentiation. Bangia language thus also turned out to be an

instrument of exercising if I may say cultural hegemony over the Assamese. 7

The linguistic mapping that colonial state initiated saw the creation of 'high-culture

vernacular' languages (modeled on Western languages) of elites which again as

Kaviraj suggests, was consciously adopted by their 'district and sub-regional'

counterparts who became 'gradually ashamed to utter the dialect which would have

been, in an earlier era, the cultural flag of their region' [2010:192]. What Kaviraj says

is only partly true precisely because colonial Sylheti middle class for instance,

patronized and cultivated 'high' Bangia without being 'ashamed' of Sylheti dialect­

its much loved 'little tradition'. It shows among others, how a uniform discourse of

understanding colonialism's impact on linguistic identities stood challenged by acts of

a section of its subjects who refused albeit not without support of material context, to

65

be passive participants in that; in short, how human agency as an active category

invariably comes to rest in every "abstract" social discourse. In fact, Sylheti middle

class not only "spoke" Sylheti, albeit contextually but more importantly, actively

engaged following the publication of George Abraham Grierson's Lingustic Survey of

India (1903-28) in investigation and research on the dialect, and Sylhet Nagri script

which with the popularization of the print gained added impetus. Monsur Musa in an

article entitled 'History ofthe Study ofthe Dialect ofSylhet: Some Problems' (1999)

shows how in the struggle between what he calls 'Prestige and Distant Dialect' the

former being standard Sanskritized Bangia patronized by none other than Sri

Chaitanya and the latter distant dialects of East Bengal including Sylheti, Sylheti

dialect managed to create a space, thanks to Grierson and efforts of Bangiya Sahitya

Parishad, for itself. However, he adds: 'There was an added reason for the dialect of

Sylhet to be the focal point of scholarly attention and that was the discovery of some

manuscripts written in Sylheti Nagri' [1999:586; also see for example, Bhattacharya

2009; Bhuiya 2000; Chapter III; Chanda 2006; Kadir 1986]. The fact that the dialect

acquired a kind of salience in Sylheti lives was due to two if I may say external

factors namely, colonial state's initiative of linguistic survey and political location of

Sylhet outside Bengal. Though restricted primarily to Muslims, the existence of

Sylhet Nagri script reinforced the dialect's claim as articulated by the middle class to

'distinctiveness'. Indeed, Sylheti belonged to the family of eastern Bengali dialects, a

fact affirmed by Grierson, Vidyabinod, and later by Suniti Kumar Chatterjee,

Sukumar Sen, Shiva Prasanna Lahiri and so forth, and like others had both similarity

and difference with regular Bangia. But the script dating from fourteenth century

(appearing in the public sphere in eighteenth century) which it also possessed made a

world of difference. Perhaps that was the reason why it was not so much speech that

drew in colonial period the attention of scholars both Sylheti and non-Sylheti (and

Europeans such as W. W Hunter, E. Gait and B.C Allen), but the script; speech

emerged as the subject of investigation later, and more so in post-colonial period.8 It

is interesting how a script which was restricted to a particular religious group (again

its women in particular) and not widely used was turned into a symbol of Sylheti

linguistic (speech) assertion, more so in post-colonial period. Despite the linguistic

variation as Abul Morshed (1999) opines, noticed in Sylhet 'in intonation, morphemic

formation and syntactic patterns', the dialect was not only integral but not out of sync

with regular, colloquial Bangia. Yet, it was an object of ridicule and laughter for a

66

person no less than Sri Chaitanya whose ancestry incidentally lay in Sylhet. Perhaps,

that was the simultaneous beginning of pre-colonial resistance to Paschimbangiyo

Bangia (language of western Bengal districts) particularly of Calcutta and its

hinterland variety, and assertion of Sylheti speech accentuated eventually by politics

of the state in colonial period; indeed, certain modem phenomena perhaps could be

said to have pre-colonial roots. As Monsur Musa writes: 'Chaitanya as a preacher of

Bhakti ... might have made jocular comments about the deviated Bangia of Sylhet but

the speech community of Sylhet have always been aware of their dialect, wherever

they travelled in the world' [ 1999:589 (emphasis mine); also see Burghart 1993;

Chapters III, IV & V]. What is awareness of dialect for Musa becomes the symptom

of inferiority complex in the analysis of S. S Tunga (1995). Commenting on what he

calls 'Cachar Bengali' which effectively implies Sylheti, he shows how 'all sections'

of the community are responsible for the speech being turned into an object of

ridicule. Being a frontier dialect 'with typical intonation and morphological

behaviour'it is 'ridiculed by the people of western Bengal in general' and he adds:

The Cacharias themselves and for that matter the Sylhetis - or the Sylhetias - ... are responsible. It is a common practice that people speak in their dialects while at home but as soon as they are outdoors they use the chaste, learned, standard form of speech. People of western and northern Bengal do it, the [Cacharias] do not; they use their dialect wherever they go, in villages among their kiths or in cities and towns among the learned people from outside. They love their form of speech so much so that they do not simply feel the necessity of learning the standard Bengali. This is not a case with the illiterate village people only, but with the educated townsfolk also. Even they sometimes use the dialect as a means of instruction in higher education, in secondary schools and colleges; they do not feel shy for it at all. All this may be due to a narrow outlook of the people who suffer from some inferiority complex. Calcutta remains to them a city of an unknown world, where everything goes contrary to their knowledge and expectation [1995:39-40].

The medium of print, both Bangia and English was used by Sy1heti middle class to

discuss not just the speech and script of Sylhet but also religious and folk culture, and

those were done not only by heavily drawing upon existing "recognized" sources but

in addition, tapping on "lesser known", "indigeneous" ones.9 Writings on say, jati

(including caste and other kinds of communities), 'pallisanskriti [folk culture]' and

religion of Sylhet grew out of combination of both "modem" and "traditional" sources

which were eventually circulated through print. Highly stratified though the

community was along caste, class, rural-urban and religious lines, the "well-

67

researched" writings surprisingly did not "consciously" adopt those as "principles of

differentiation" as again for instance, Tattwanidhi's work and SSPP issues show. In

fact, absence of mention of what in academic language are termed as "communal

conflicts", except for those being "historically (and "scientifically") proved as

necessary", came to be translated as presence of harmonious relations among social·

groups. In the construction of Sylheti collective self/nation, the two ideas of 'folk' and

'religious syncretism' were deployed to inculcate a sense of Herderian cultural

compositeness rooted romantic nationalism which came to be firmly pitched vis-a-vis

both Assamese and larger non-Sylheti Bengali middle classes as the sub-continent

neared the end of colonial rule. But by the time the reality of referendum and partition

dawned, Sylheti middle class had not only "external groups" to collectively pitch

itself against but it itself stood divided as its "internal groups" got communally re­

grouped and pitched against each other. The community which had imagined itself

into existence as a nation was forced tore-imagine as the battle of the "hut" and "axe"

(respective poll symbols of Congress and Muslim League in the Referendum) began.

Not only phrases symbolizing religious syncretism such as 'Srihatta Sri Chaitanya 0

Darbesh Shah Jalaler desh, tinsho shat Auliyar muluk [Sylhet is the land of Chaitanya

and Shah Jalal, land of 360 Sufi saints]', 'Srihatta Chaitanyer pitribumi, Shah .Jalaler

punyabhumi' [Sylhet is Chaitanya's fatherland and Shah Jalal's holyland]' but

culture, territory, jati, and desh itself had to be re-thought and re-imagined. And as

always, Sylheti middle class remained at the thick of things.

2.1: Reading the Sylhetis: theoretical explorations

2.1.1: Theorizing community, culture, identity

It is certainly not easy to locate Sylheti community, and its identity within one, single

theoretical framework and I shall therefore, resort to an eclectic mix of available

social science concepts and theories to do that. Beginning with its construction to

subsequent re-construction, Sylheti community identity in contemporary India is

marked by colonial continuities as well as post-colonial discontinuities. Propelled by

forces of Sylheti nationalism the colonial community I argue drawing upon Partha

Chatterjee's work (1986, 1993), came into being by construction of an inner domain

of sovereignty, and if the corresponding nation was an imagined one, that was where

68

it was 'brought into being'. The way Chatterjee deploys the framework of

inner/spiritual and outer/material domains to trace the trajectory of anti-colonial

nationalism in India resonate with the trajectory of colonial Sylheti nationalism.

However, Sylheti nation conceived in, and constituted by the inner domain despite

primarily being the product of political forces unleashed by colonialism never

engaged in a national 'political battle' (in the sense of claiming a national state) either

against the imperial power or larger Bengali and Assamese nations. The outer domain

was where Sylhetis were Bengalis like their counterparts in Bengal, negotiating with

the colonial power for sure but in addition, with the emergent Assamese middle class

and the provincial state. Perhaps what I suggest by stretching Chatterjee's framework

is not fully adequate, but it certainly provides a clue to locate and interpret colonial

Sylheti identity. It ought to be for all purposes seen as an ideal-type and hence, a kind

of heuristic devise. Given that Sylhetis - middle class in particular - never considered

themselves anything but Bengalis, the distinction drawn between inner, Sylheti

domain and outer, Bengali one may appear to be slightly erroneous if not outright

incorrect and risky, yet the discussion above shows that there is certainly some ground

for such an argument. While it is true that frequent overlaps between the two

otherwise autonomous domains were evident, but at the same time Sylhet's

'shhatwantrata [independent/dence]' and 'boishishthata [distinctiveness]' was more

often than not voiced by colonial (and later post-colonial) middle class too. I admit

that the colonizer-colonized dichotomy which hinged upon the inner-outer one, and

informed the construction of nationalist discourse may not be wholly suitable for

doing justice to the Sylheti case, yet the question is how to make sense of an identity

that counterpoises interiority and exteriority, distinctiveness as well as co-existence

with Bengali identity. Though colonial Sylheti identity largely operated within this

framework, but it was only in the post-partition period that the complexity of inner­

outer logic gets more anxiously and in as sense fully played out, locational contexts

and differences notwithstanding. In an article entitled 'Sylheti Narratives' (2006),

Sukalpa Bhattacharjee suggests that post-partition Sylheti identity in Barak Valley

(Assam) actually works through a 'double moment of exile', and she writes:

This experience of being displaced and rooted at the same time has assumed a literary and linguistic dimension in conceptualizing a self-identity that is in exile from the mainland of Bengal. Going by the development and history of this exilic consciousness as it prevails in large part of Bengali speaking world outside the main centre of Bengali language and culture, Sylheti self-identity is

69

simultaneously affected by the larger world of Bengali language as well as distanted and decentered from any such world .... This exilic consciousness is transformative, as it overcomes the distance between Sylheti and Bengali in order to write and speak in Bengali. Authors from Barak Valley are caught in a double moment of exile and becoming part of the center of Bengali language and culture. Often they characterize their position as the third world of Bengali literature and culture. the connection between the third world and the first world is that of belonging, struggle and reverence, a mixed bag of sentiments and emotions that guide an internal graduation to the world of Bengali by often terming itself as !shan or North East of Bengal' [2006: 160].

While Bhattacharjee correctly locates Sylheti-Bengali relationship in the context of

contemporary Bangia language and literature, but what she fails to do is provide a

historical account of contemporary Sylheti self-identity sketching as she does it as one

shaped primarily by partition induced displacement, memory and cultural nostalgia;

also, she tends to conflate Sylheti and Bengali, more so in the context of Assam's

culture and politics. I begin by problematizing the two components of the identity of

Sylhetis - their very relationship - examining along the way their cultural and

political nuances through the two temporal moments of 187 4 and 194 7; in short, I

focus on Sylheti as an analytically independent component of what I call distinctly

fused Sylheti identity without unqualifiedly reaffirming its relation with the Bengali

one. The Sylheti component of colonial Sylheti national identity I propose, rested in

the inner domain bearing as it did the 'essential' marks as Chatterjee says, of cultural

identity. By claiming that domain as a sovereign space, the middle class led Sylheti

nationalism launched Sylheti nation there; a nation despite being modeled and

fashioned after the larger Bengali one was nevertheless not Bengali. The more Sylheti

nationalist middle class turned to high Bengali cultural identity in the outer/material

domain, greater was the need to explore and preserve the 'distinctiveness' of

inner/spiritual one which above all meant "scientific" knowledge of Sylhet's history,

dialect, social practices (and folk culture). Indeed, the world of socio-cultural

institutions and practices in due course came to be divided into two domains,

transformative overlaps between those notwithstanding. Sylheti nationalist

construction of the two domains needless to say, was premised upon an idea of what I

may call "difference"- whether actual or imaginary- vis-a-vis Bengal (and to some

extent Assam) in particular, and brought to the fore only in early twentieth century.

Much like what Chatterjee observes in the context of anti-colonial nationalism, in this

case too Sylheti nationalist middle class embarked on retention of 'cultural difference'

70

in the inner domain - that perhaps being a pointer towards claiming agency - while

trying to erase the same in the outer one. In other words, Sylheti nationalism, rather

Sylheti nation was marked by a sense of "simultaneity" where both preservation and

erasure of the domained 'cultural difference' went hand in hand. The 'loss' of Bengali

self occasioned by 1874 came to be as Ashis Nandy (1993) in another context says,

'recovered' no doubt through cultivation of Bangia language and literature among

others, but not in the inner domain for, that had come to create and nurture what I

have called the Sylheti collective self. Colonial Sylheti identity thus, as mentioned,

came to have two components resting as they did in two co-existing (not either/or)

inner, "distinct", Sylheti and outer, Bengali spheres, the latter extending outside the

immediate identity to invariably include "Assamese" (in the sense of Sylhetis being of

Assam but not Assamese) and Indian. The space represented by the inner domain

stood albeit contextually, in contestation if not opposition against the outer, often

"etherized" one(s) including the Assamese. The relationship between Sylheti and

Bengali components may not have been hierarchical and antagonistic unless

contextually necessitated, but certainly ambiguous and fuzzy, and that came to be re­

worked rather anxiously following partition. The point is, just as there are multiple,

rather alternative trajectories of identity construction, so are there more than one intra­

trajectorial layer- multiple inners as well as outers. Indeed, the spaces signified by

inner and outer domains were neither homogeneous nor uncontested, a point which

Chatterjee does not sufficiently reflect upon, and they never are. Spheres where

communities and nations are imagined and re-imagined are primarily mediated and

conditioned spaces with rules of entry and exit of members informed by their caste,

class, gender, religious and similar locations.

What I have suggested above is: the colonial territorial policy of separating Surma

Valley, Sylhet in particular from Bengal provided the political context for the growth

of Sylheti nationalism primarily amongst the middle class who aided by education,

associations, and print fostered community awareness - through say, history and other

kinds of writings- which in tum made the imagination of a Sylheti nation albeit in the

inner domain, possible. Though influenced by writings of Benedict Anderson and

Partha Chatterjee among others, the attempted formulation unlike theirs and

especially of the former has not addressed the idea of state which more often than not

informs discussions on nation and nationalism, those undertaken by political scientists

71

and historians in particular. Sociologically oriented understanding of the issue

however, as G. Aloysius points out 'is to be analytical and thematic and yet operate

within the historical data at different levels'. He adds:

With the problematization of concepts [such as nation, nationalism, nation-state], shift in emphasis from state, ideology and movement to nation as a distinct social category and particularly in the aspect of its becoming, i.e. the transition from pre-modem to the new cultural/political totality, the new sociological orientation to the study of nationalism seeks to situate the complex phenomena within the overall context of social change in keeping with the tradition of the discipline. The search now is for a new form and formulation of transition of societies [1997: 13; also see for example, Balakrishnan 1996; Bhabha 1990; Gellner 1983; Hobsbawm 2002; Hutchinson & Smith 1994; Smith 1979].

I have argued that the conjuncture of territory (not in terms of an official state but

ancestral homeland) and language (dialect) in colonial Sylhet created conditions for

the emergence of a Sylheti nation which despite resisting its location within the

territory ofthe provincial state of Assam till late 1920's never claimed a separate state

for itself [see for example, Agnew 1987; Taylor 1999]. Indeed, the community

imagined itself into a nation sans what is called a modern fonn of state, least of all a

'modular' Andersonian one. In fact, the Sylheti case if situated sociologically, points

to the un-tenability of 'modular' state-form centric discourses of nation formation

something which for instance, Prasenjit Duara (1996), Manu Goswami (2002) and

closer home T.K Oommen (1997) address; it also shows how in changed political­

territorial contexts say for instance, of post-partition India national communities come

to be re-defined sometimes to the extent of doing away with such categorizations

altogether. While supported by existing theories I find reasons to designate colonial

Sylhetis not as an ethnic but a national community, imagined or even as Terence

Ranger and Eric Hobsbawm (1983) would say, invented without a state but with an

ancestral homeland as Anthony Smith (1979, 1981) would opine, that - the

naming/categorizing - is precisely what I given the complexities thrown up by

partition induced territorial reorganization of Sylhet and Assam, refrain from in post­

colonial context. However, what is certain is that Sylhetis, the middle class in

particular have always perceived - and still do - themselves as belonging to a

community albeit without "consciously" appending to that categories such as national

or ethnic or any such other. The colonial Sylheti national community with a sense of

culture rooted identity took shape or as Ann Hardgrove in the context of the Marwari

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community comments, 'acquired a new visibility under the gaze of the colonial state',

but in order to map what happened during and after its departure is something that

requires not only a critical theoretical reading of colonialism - which I have touched

upon- but also weaving together an eclectically oriented framework which places the

community as an agency at the centre of its cultural identity discourse, and treats it as

a modem community whose identity was, and is not "simply" imagined or invented or

both but is also 'contingent and emergent in particular types of social [and cultural]

practice', and contextually articulated in 'relation to others' [Hardgrove 2004:23-25;

also see Barth 1969; Cohen 1985].

The way I have conceived community is not exactly how general sociological studies

on India treated it, and to a large extent do so even now. Derived from the European

Enlightenment discourse of modernity that pitched pre-modem community vis-a-vis

modem, individualized social associations articulated at its best by Ferdinand

Toennies, sociological works on India with contributions from the likes of Louis

Dumont adopted the concept as a dichotomy premised foundational category to make

sense of sub-continental social and cultural life. This polarity informed framework as

John R. Gusfield (1975) suggests was employed by sociologists to understand first,

pre-modem/traditional social structures, and second, their subsequent transformation

to modem social forms. The concept of community as understood by Toennies

presents a paradox for, it grew out of modernity but the latter's growth at the same

time being inimical to it. The Toennies' and German romanticism influenced return of

the community from its modernity imposed exile as Zygmunt Bauman (2001) says,

was counterpoised to a sense of mourning about the gradual disintegration of

'internal, affective bonds' in the climate of market induced alienation and

disenchantment produced by the very same modernity. So, if modernity necessitated

community's invocation, it also deployed all means to silence that. As Bauman on a

melancholy vein writes: 'In short, "community" stands for the kind of world which is

not, regrettably, available to us - but which we would dearly wish to inhabit and

which we hope to repossess .... "Community" is nowadays another name for paradise

lost ... or a paradise still hoped to be found' [2001 :3]. Community as a repository of

culture, an organically integrated collectivity, and a source of social identity was

certainly posed as a communitarian critique to Western liberal individualism, but it

was also used as a tool to construct orientalist discourses. The loss of community in

73

the West was compensated - aided by colonialism and imperialism in particular - by

the discovery of that in the East not obviously as has been made well known by

Edward Said, without the interplay of power and politics. Predictably, such

dichotomous categories found way in the construction of knowledge about the East,

and not just by the West but by easterners themselves. Social science as Carol

Upadhya (2001) notes, took to that if not as a willing accomplice then certainly as a

non-resistant one. Sociology and social anthropology as it developed in India could

hardly be otherwise engaged as it did with studies on culture and custom of various

forms of 'integrated and enduring' caste, village, linguistic and religious communities

on one hand and 'modernization of traditional' Indian society on the other. Though a

large number of studies used, and continue to use such dichotomies/polarities

critically, contextually and "non-ideologically" to yield highly perceptive sociological

accounts and interpretations, yet adoption of a mechanical and reductionist approach

towards those has been, and is the dominant trend. 10 Following the latter, culture

defined community associated with a fixed territory such as village or marked by

uncontested intense 'we-feeling' or featured by a complete 'cradle to grave' social

arrangement - to recall the evocative phrase of Robert Redfield - has been identified

as the authentic/fundamental unit of social organization in India. Most importantly,

such communities are seen either as "fixed and traditional"or as ones which are on a

long and perilous trek to modernity with an uncertain no doubt, but also unfortunate

future. Consequently, groups other than those which are identified as "Indian

civilization rooted" ones are rarely termed as Partha Chatterjee (1998) observes, as

communities.

Following broadly what is referred as the constructivist position, I conceive

community as a non-monolithic social collectivity with a sense of cultural

compatibility which is not necessarily 'traditional' and 'anachronistic survival' from

pre-modem times - a conceptualization the substantivists would disagree with.

Communities - like nations - may be treated as modem phenomena with deep sense

of historicity and cultural tradition - identity - constructed or imagined in emergent

socio-political contexts not "simply" but through active agency and praxis. Indeed, in

the construction of say, a modem nation nationalism as Sudipta Kaviraj opines, 'must

speak a "traditional" language of communities'. However, without valorizing the

community I argue that it is a resource that has displayed considerable potential to

74

challenge as Veena Das ( 1998) in another context remarks, 'the impersonal,

dehumanizing structures of the modem state'. While communities may be identified

with a physical territory say, a nation-state form or an ancestral or adopted homeland,

these may exist even without that. 11 Now, if communities (including nation or any

other form) are taken to be constructed by and large say, in the colonial period then

does that suggest that those or similar structures did not exist prior to that? Or, is the

boundary between constructivist (instrumentalist) and substantivist (primordialist)

positions to be considered fixed, contained and un-porous? What about the fact that

these two broad positions individually subsume a range of theoretical positions?

Though I have argued within the constructivist tradition, yet as already stated, I

disagree with the idea that social phenomena are inherently and un-critically

"constructed/derived" from dominant discourses whether constructivist or

substantivist ot lately, post-modernist/colonialist. In fact, instead of branding

approaches as constructivist or substantivist or one disguised as the other the aim

ought to be one of critical interrogation and interpretation (much like the concepts) of

those. Carol Upadhya with reference to Partha Chatterjee's (and Dipesh

Chakrabarty's) conceptualization of community drives home the issue in addition to

an elaboration of the two paradigms. She writes:

[t]here is a tendency in the work of both Chatterjee [and Chakrabarty] to retain the substantivist understanding of community within a professed constructivist theoretical framework. While constructivism should have represented an advance over the earlier understanding of Indian communities by historicizing the formation of groups and social identities and demonstrating the ways in which they are politically constituted, it has not fully succeeded in doing so. Instead, in some of this literature an uninterrogated category of community continues to be regarded as the primary site of sociality and agent of political action within civil society. This suggests that the substantivist conceptualization of community has become an enduring element not only of political discourse but also of social science and historical writing, even in work that appears to have moved very far from this framework. While community may not be understood any longer as "natural" or "traditional", there is still a strong tendency to define certain kinds of groups (especially "subaltern" groups) as communities based on shared, exclusive identities that emerge from their common culture and history. These communities are starkly opposed to associations that are formed by individuals cooperating in the rational pursuit of common but specific interests, and there is no allowance for any overlap between the two categories [200 1 :46; Chatterjee 1998).

75

Upadhya's critique of Chatterjee's work entitled 'Community in the East' (1998)

where the latter looks at inhabitants of Calcutta's squatter settlements and their modes

of struggle resulting in the creation of a community is well taken, but to brand it as

substantivist (as among others, he, influenced by Subaltern School uses the term

community in the title) in the garb of constructivist actually lands her in the same trap

she tries to interrogate. 12 Having said this, it is important to note that the tum towards

constructivist understanding of social collectivities reflects a wider shift in social

sciences triggered by social and political developments world wide. More

importantly, theoretical inputs drawn from say, post-modernism/colonialism and

cultural studies have shown how social life reflects a discursive rather than a linear

pattern. Accordingly, community is viewed not only as a historical construct but a

non-homogeneous, non-reified entity that is for instance, constituted through

symbolic processes and boundary making attempts. Anthony Cohen for example,

drawing upon works of Fredrik Barth and Clifford Geertz defines it 'as [it is]

symbolically constructed, as a system of values, norms, and moral codes which

provides a sense of identity within a bounded whole to its members' [Hamilton

1985:9 cited in Cohen I 985]. With culture rather than structure as the point of

departure Cohen pertinently remarks that though public appearance of 'consciousness

hinged' cultural boundary of a community is often symbolically simple, 'but as the

object of internal discourse it is symbolically complex'. Not only that, 'pragmatic

egalitarianism' that is usually held as a feature of community is only a 'rhetorical

expression of the integrity of the community' [1985:74; also see Kaur 2001]. The act

of cultural boundary making in fact, is something that remains pertinent to

construction of community, and to Geertz community is best viewed as constituted by

'webs of significance' or in other words culture. The realm of shared meaning and

communication symbolized by culture comes to life in the process of carving out what

may be termed as the identity of community, and this is where Barth's seminal

contribution lies. Social collectivities such as ethnic groups and communities are

invariably engaged in defining their identities by what he calls process of creating and

maintaining - visible or invisible, real or symbolic - boundaries, not in isolation but

in relational terms. Identity markers or identity as such is not fixed once and for all or

inherently primordial, but contextually negotiated in the process of its becoming - in

relational processes of inclusion and exclusion.

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Indeed, neither are communities' cultural isolates nor natural and logical aprioris for,

they are 'contingent on the circumstances and relative positions of significant others'

[Cohen 2000:3]. As Barth writes: '[c]ategorical ethnic distinctions do not depend on

an absence of mobility, contact and information, but do entail social processes of

exclusion and incorporation whereby discrete categories are maintained despite

changing participation and membership in the course of individual life histories'

[1969:9 (emphasis original)]. The concept of boundary construction thus enables

understanding of not only nature of the community, and its culture and identity but

also how it contextually shifts, changes and evolves. Accordingly, boundaries

symbolizing cultural differences - being fluid - stand either asserted, or suppressed

and denied. While it is difficult to discount the view that boundaries of communities

as Robin Cohen argues, are 'indeterminate, malleable and variable than is commonly

surmised', yet it is also not untrue he adds, that not all collectivities say, nations

construct boundaries of identities, their notions of Self and the Other using similar

modes and means, a point he claims Barth missed. The way 'frontiers of identity' are

drawn no doubt shapes the collectivity by excluding the 'other', but that is done he

opines, not in a uniform mode but across historical space and time. He succinctly

argues for a 'greater historical specificity, a more exacting focus on the different

diacritica used to define the Self and the Other and appreciation of the key role of

major political and social actors in selectively constructing the walls that separate, or

selectively permitting access through the turnstiles and gateways linking the inner and

outer worlds' [2005: 353 (emphasis mine)]. Indeed, instead of viewing communities

as impermeable and possessing a 'collective conscience whose ... roots lie in some

distant past' as Arjun Appadurai (1997) suggests, it is important to see how cultural

differences get consciously mobilized and worked upon by social actors to resist as

well as assert the homogenizing and hegemonizing capacities of modem institutions

and states. The constructivist approach, and the post modernist which does not

disagree that social phenomena are produced/constructed in particular facilitates

recognition/unravelling of that interplay of power, politics and agency that 'actually'

underlie the modernity located substantivist meta-narrative of community, culture and

identity formation of social collectivities. 13

Culture whether viewed in the Tylorian sense of knowledge, belief, morals, art,

customs, law, and any other habit or capacity that an individual acquires by virtue of

77

being a member of society or Boasian, Geertzian or even Foucauldian influenced one

remains a concept that has resisted much like community, every consensual claim.

The substantivist conceptualization of culture as a holistic and reified phenomenon

identifiable with a particular community more often than not territorially bounded has

been challenged by proponents of the liberal individualist view who insist on its

universal aspects, and post-modernists (constructivists) who point to its complex,

fractured and fluid character. Unlike substantivists who 'hold to traditional notions of

culture as an integrated . . . system of and body of beliefs and practices that exists

apart from its carriers, as a "thing" which can be possessed or lost, as the primary

source of self and identity, or as a gestalt which characterizes an entire society or

community and differentiates one from other', constructivists conceive culture 'as

fractured, contested and continually in flux, as a multiplicity of discourses which are

constantly being challenged and negotiated, and as closely intersecting with power ...

as a terrain of contestation and resistance' [Upadhya 2001 :48; also see Clifford &

Marcus 1986; Loomba 2009]. In fact, the greatest attack to substantivist

understanding of culture has been mounted by post-modernist social and cultural

theorists who are not only critical of the former but also the kind of "supposedly non­

substantivist" works of say, Clifford Geertz and Marshal Sahlins. Claiming that

Boasian understanding of culture as an integrated totality was only reinforced albeit in

a different form, by later day substantivists (and also the so called constructivists),

Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson (1997) show how contemporary social

anthropological research has moved away from that 'peoples and cultures' vision of

the world to engage with an inter-connected, 'made rather than found', non-idealized,

and multiplicized meaning of not only the concept but its close associates community

and identity too. They add that post-modern ethnography drawing upon such debates

emphasizes that 'polyphonic' ethnographic accounts grow (are 'constructed') out of

multiple dialogues between ethnographers and subjects - between de-centered

subjects - facilitating in turn 'self-understanding' and 'authenticity'of the involved

actors. As culture stands 're..:conceptualized/visualized' in such theoretical and

methodological renderings, questions regarding its relationship with spatiality and

power become important. On the face of globalization induced migrant and capital

flows, and politics of late capitalist and post-colonial world not only culture but also

identity's links with space/location and power is being re-thought. As concepts like

deterritorialization and creolization come to inform the discourse of cultural hybridity,

78

both 'place-making' and 'people-making' in context of complex cultural politics of

the state assume tremendous importance. Just as culture is no longer viewed as

territorially bound and timeless, so is its linkage with the idea of •order' standing as a

'Hobbesian Leviathan' to fight the 'ever present threat' of societal chaos and anomie.

Post-modem ethnography (and cultural studies) challenges the idea of this

functionalist (also structuralist and interpretationist) 'shared, agreed upon, orderly'

interpretation of culture; rather, the theoretical possibilities thrown open by what may

be loosely termed as post-structuralism is believed to provide a way out of that

framework as it complicates the idea of culture, and in tum expands as James Clifford

and George Marcus (1986) observe, the scope of unconventional ethnographic

practices. The post-modernist critique has no doubt attempted to do "justice" to

conventional, deterministic ethnography embedded culture concept, but the

fundamental point still remains whether anything like "authentic" cultural

ethnography of any variety exists at all. Is post modem ethnography as Sarah Joseph

(1998) asks, 'more a matter of style than substance'? Or how is the concept of

'construction' for instance, exactly deployed in post modem debates pitched as it

generally is vis-a-vis substantivist as well as modernity centric constructivist

formulations? Have holism and communitarian notions of culture finally taken back

seat in contemporary social science? Sarah Joseph thinks otherwise as she argues that

despite constructivist (including liberal individualist and post modernist) forays in

theorization of culture, it has hardly got the much expected fresh lease of life. She

writes:

[i]n spite of innovations in methodology and greater sensitivity to the values of other cultures, the basic assumptions regarding culture remain similar to those of other organic theories of culture ... , communitarian notions of culture and the view that membership of a cultural community represents a primary identity for human beings have dominated social science in the modern period and ... such views are implicitly present even in those theories which have rejected such ideas [ 1998:52].

Inextricably linked to community and culture, identity too despite being a late entrant

has been the subject of heated debate as I shall shortly show, in contemporary social

science. Within a social-psychological framework Mead for instance, argues that an

individual acquires a self - an identity - out of practical and pragmatic social

experience; more importantly, the formation of individual self/identity is contingent

upon presence of 'significant social others'. Indeed, identity with the social attached

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to it hinges upon the process of reflexivity and becoming, on tracing as Simmel would

observe similarities as well as differences. The concept of identity says Richard

Jenkins (1996), yield two meanings namely, similarity and difference; further, it is an

active category that is not 'just there' but 'must always be established ... within the

ebb and flow of practice and process'. In an attempt to define social identity he writes:

Minimally, the expression refers to the ways in which individuals and collectivities are distinguished in their social relations with other individuals and collectivities. It is the systematic establishment and signification, between individuals, between collectivities, of relationships of similarity and difference. Taken -as they can only be - together, similarity and difference are the dynamic principles of identity, the heart of social life .... Social identity is our understanding of who we are and of who other people are, and reciprocally, other people's understanding of themselves and of others (which includes us). Social identity is therefore, no more essential than meaning; it too is the product of agreement and disagreement, it too is negotiable [ 1996:4-5].

Having said this, it is important to note that the distinction drawn between

individual/self and social/collective identity neither signals the absence of an inter­

relationship nor dual temporal location. While individual and social/collective selves

are inextricably linked, so are they found within the same temporal frame; in other

words, unlike Anthony Giddens ( 1991) identity ought not to be located within the

dichotomous framework that associates its collective, shared (similar) character with

pre-modem, and individual, unique (difference) character with modem. 14 Be that as it

may, identity as Jenkins drawing upon Mead, Goffman and most importantly, Barth

persuasively argues, is socially constructed by the process of 'internal-external

dialectic of identification' which is based on an understanding of 'the "self' as an

ongoing and, in practice simultaneous, synthesis of (internal) self-definition and the

(external) definitions of oneself offered by others' [Ibid.:20]. Intertwined by

simultaneous sense of the individual and collective which Bourdieu for instance,

demonstrates in his discussion of habitus, and Goffman in the 'presentation of self,

identity is constructed and characterized by what Barth calls boundary and content,

the latter pointing to he adds, 'cultural stuff. In fact, the Goffmanian idea of

performative aspect of identity may be extended broadly to the one proposed by

Victor Turner to show how identities and communities are as Anne Hardgrove opines,

'constituted by a set of practices, a series of"performances" through which claims are

made about collective and inter-subjective identities' [2004:20]. Going by this,

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identity through performance transforms its "internal" space into an "external", rather

public one, and it is then that identity launches itself in the public sphere. Associations

established for instance, to preserve and propagate a particular community based

cultural identity thus emerge in the public sphere whereby the "internal" gets

articulated in terms of "external". As an institution public sphere, at least a portion of

it gets concretized and comes into being as Habermas would observe, through

participation of identity bearing individuals. However, just as public sphere is not un­

informed by power and politics, dynamics of exclusion and inclusion, domination and

subjugation, so are identities lodged in it. Not only are identities as Foucault would

have observed, 'produced, reproduced and implicated' in each other but those are

'claimed and allocated within power relations'. Identity as Jenkins correctly says, is

never a settled matter, and is 'something over which struggles take place and with

which stratagems are advanced' [1996:25 (emphasis original)].

2.1.2: Extending the theorization story

Identity discourses in social sciences have generally followed two paths. The

substantivist perpective locates cultural identity as Stuart Hall summarises, 'in terms

of one, shared culture, a sort of collective "one true self', hidden inside ·the many

other, more superficial or artificially imposed "selves", which people with a shared

history and ancestry hold in common' [2003:234]. The constructivist argument

though not completely sans "primordialist influence", shows that both identities and

their individual and collective histories are contingent upon as Appadurai observes,

'conscious mobilization of cultural difference'. Locating his arguments within the

latter Hall, in a more open ended vein, argues:

Cultural identity . . . is a matter of "becoming" as well as of "being". It belongs to the future as much as to the past. It is not something that already exists, transcending place, time, history and culture. Cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories. But like everything which is historical, they undergo constant transformation. Far from being eternally fixed in some essentialized past, they are subject to continuous "play" of history, culture and power. Far from being grounded in a mere "recovery" of the past, which is waiting to be found, and which when found, will secure our sense of ourselves into eternity, identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, position ourselves within, the narratives of the past [2003:236].

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Identity in this discourse is not 'essentially rediscovered' but 'produced and texted'

through cultural practices albeit without ruling out the critical possibilities that act of

'imaginative rediscoveries' throw up. It is thus argued that not only individuals and

groups make their own identities, but they do so under conditions not always of their

own choosing. Modem identities are constructed often as Linda Martin Alcoff writes,

'in the crucible of colonialism, racial and sexual subordination, and national conflicts,

but also in the specificity of group histories and structural position', movement and

non-movement of peoples and cultures [2003 :3; also see Loomba 2009]. In fact, the

issue of identity has come to the fore among others, in attempts to make sense of

migrant and diasporic communities and cultures. Also linked to what Satish

Deshpande (2003) calls the 'spatial dynamics of identity formation' is the focus on

how such cultures, transplanted or otherwise construct their past and memory in order

to negotiate with the present. Consequently, substantivist meanings of concepts and

tools hitherto used to interpret social life has undergone a kind of transformative

mutation. As Lisa Malkki writes:

[ s ]ocial settings of displacement invites in a very direct way the further questioning of the anthropological concepts of culture, society, and community as bounded, territorialized units. Similarly, one is Jed to question the notion of identity as a historical essence rooted in particular places, or as a fixed and identifiable position in a universalizing taxonomic order [1995:2].

In globalization expedited reconfigured global cultural map where cultural identities

are seen as less and less linked to 'home' and 'territory', migrancy, memory and

cultural nostalgia, and history are marked by images of disjuncture and rupture. Ian

Chambers shows that unlike travel, migrancy involves:

[a] movement in which neither the points of departure nor those of arrival are immutable or certain. It calls for a dwelling in language, in histories, in identities that are constantly subject to mutation. Always in transit, the promise of homecoming - completing the story, domesticating the detour - becomes an impossibility .... To come from elsewhere, from "there" and not "here", and hence to be simultaneously "inside" and "outside" the situation at hand, is to live at the intersections of histories and memories, experiencing both their preliminary dispersal and their subsequent translation into new, more extensive, arrangements along emerging routes .... In such a rendezvous critical thought is forced to abandon any pretence to a fixed site .... Critical thought rewrites the tables of memory as we attempt to transform our histories, languages and recollections from a point of arrival into a point of departure [ 1994:5-7].

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Migration then critically impacts the construction of history and memory which

contribute to the articulation of migrant identities. The 'memory boom' in

contemporary social science as for instance, David Berliner (2005) citing Johannes

Fabian says has led often to overextension of memory, and its consequent conflation

with culture and identity. Indeed, such theoretical moves by arguing that 'society

itself is a form of memory', and social memory is but culture has as Berliner says,

diffused the 'the problem of memory into the general process of culture' and hence,

contributed to 'abuses of memory' rather than making a matured use of it [2005:6-7].

However, it is not just culture and identity with which memory has an ambiguous

relationship, but history too. Exploring that in context of partition of India, and the

consequential migration Pradip Kumar Bose shows how conditions of displacement

render memory both as a form of torture as well as source of historical knowledge for

the 'victim'. Culturally mediated and constructed memory does provide 'an

alternative self-identity of the displaced community ["that is how we were"]', but it

also equally tends 'to homogenize the community which is otherwise heterogeneous'.

He writes:

Such are the tortures of memory that displacement ascribes on the victims. But at another level we come to know of the partition and its "history" through such memories. Our construction of partition owes much more to memories, tales, anecdotes that we have heard in the family, from friends, neighbours, colleagues than to any written text .... Memory and history have a long but ambiguous relationship. History reduces memory to the status of a source, a means to history's ends .... It is assumed that history begins where memory ends and that with the advance of modernity, memory would have as little future as any other archaic process. However today ... the relationship between memory and history appears to have taken a dramatic tum .... When history ceases to be an art of memory it loses its meaning and purpose, on the other hand, reconciled with memory history can draw on the wellspring of imagination, discover "lost worlds" by a reconnection with the memories of groups excluded from the consciousness of historians [200 I: 14-15, 21; also see Chakrabarty 2006; Connerton 1989; Chapters I, III, IV & V].

The inter-linkage of migration - both voluntary and involuntary - and identity

formation has been one of the central concerns of contemporary sociological

theorizing. Broadly three approaches rooted respectively in modernization, historical­

structuralist, and transnational perspectives have influenced social anthropological

works on migration. As a critique to the first two transnationalist construct hinged

squarely upon the globalization phenomenon insists on viewing as Caroline Brettel

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(2000) does, migration as a process, and migrants as active identity bearing agents

who 'act[s], adapt[s] ... circumvent[s]', and operate in social fields that often move

back and forth between geographic, political and cultural borders. With an emphasis

on what Bourdieu calls 'practice', this perspective by moving away from what Lisa

Malkki calls the 'sedentarist bias' of anthropology has acquired wide currency in

current migration theorizing. By adopting this approach Katy Gardner looks at Sylheti

(Bangladeshi) transnational migration to Britain in particular, and its impact on life in

rural Sylhet. By mapping the 'individual journeys made by thousands of Sylhetis' she

shows how those are 'not simply a movement through space. Like all travel, they have

led to reshaping of boundaries, a reconstruction of culture, community, and

spirituality, as well as an altered territorial distribution .... whilst all journeys are

physical, they are also "acts of imagination"; in which home and destination are

continually reimagined, and thus forever changed' [1995:35]. Indeed, acts of

movement whether across or within state boundaries - from a place, a "home" to

another - reconfigure the world of migrants. Such reconfigurations are often informed

by culturally mediated identity articulations, proliferation of social networks,

emergence of as Manuel Castells would suggest, cultural communes and associations,

and so forth. Social networks in fact, acquire extraordinary relevance in globalized,

cosmopolitan urban settings and among others, act as support systems to 'habits of the

heart' and in addition, provide the individual with a sense of meaning, of a 'future

yet~to-come'. While social networks going by what Andre Beteille and M. N Srinivas

( 1991) suggest in the context of India enable an individual to 'move beyond' his/her

immediate community/group, yet those also may be constructed purposefully to cater

to exclusive group identities. For instance, networks of kinship and friendship result

in the emergence of as Gardner shows, strong migrant networks which in tum impact

the process of settlement and adaptation of migrants in the host society; such

networks as bearers of social capital serve as footholds, anchorages, and resource

structures for both potential as well as far-removed-from~home migrants. In fact, as

containers of what Bourdieu calls social capital, networks constructed by individuals

around axes ranging from religion, caste, kinship, ethnicity to what is broadly called

culture play a critical role in shaping their identities, and particularly in cities. 15

However, what would be interesting is to see how social capital remains foregrounded

in such network constructions? Of the four kinds of capital namely, economtc,

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cultural, social and symbolic that Bourdieu outlines, it is the social (often

interchangeably used with symbolic) that is significant. It is, he writes:

[t]he aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition - or in other words, to membership in a group - which provides each of its members with the backing of the collectively owned capital, a "credential" which entitles them to credit, in the various senses of the word. These relationships may exist only in the practical state, in material and or symbolic exchanges which help to maintain them. They may also be socially instituted and guaranteed by the application of a common name ... and by a whole set of instituting acts designed simultaneously to form and inform those who undergo them; in this case, they are more or less really enacted and so maintained and reinforced, in exchanges. Being basically based on indissolubly material and symbolic exchanges, the establishment and maintenance of which presuppose reacknowledgement of proximity, they are also partially irreducible to objective relations of proximity in physical (geographical) space or even in economic and social space. The volume of social capital possessed by a given agent thus depends on the size of the network of connections he can effectively mobilize and on the volume of the capital (economic, cultural or symbolic) possessed in his own right by each of those to whom he is connected [2004:21].

Social capital then lies at the heart of structure of people's relationships, and it is

realized and maintained collectively through social networks. 'The network of

relationships is' Bourdieu writes, 'the product of investment strategies, individual or

collective, consciously or unconsciously aimed at establishing or reproducing social

relationships that are directly usable in the short or long term' [Ibid.: 22]. It by

negotiation between 'social fields' where social capital (and other forms of capital)

rests and strategies/struggles carried out, and 'habitus' which constitutes a historically

and culturally conditioned set of durable dispositions or propensities for social actions

that the individual domain of 'social practice' is carved out. Social capital observes

Alejandro Portes (1998), has been conceptualized in various ways by drawing

primarily upon works of Bourdieu but also from those by James Coleman and Robert

Putnam. 16 By extending Bourdieu's fundamental argument, and without resorting to

an uninterrogated 'celebration of community' the concept of social capital I argue,

may be effectively used to interpret how people make sense of their lives in urban

settings or how they engage with the 'politics of recognition'. Perhaps taking into

account the two dimensions of bonding and bridging of social capital will add to that.

As Brettel writes:

85

[b]onding capital characterizes a closed circle built on close·knit networks, while bridging social capital connects individuals and groups to which they belong to a wider [network] circle. Clearly both these dimensions of capital are always at play. No circle is totally closed because individuals operate within nested hierarchies of identity that allow them to locate themselves in different communities at different times. Nevertheless, in some institutional contexts the bonds of similarity might be made more salient, while in others the bridges across differences receive greater emphasis [2005:854-855].

While the concept of social capital along with bonding and bridging dimensions have

been widely applied in studies of immigrant (ethnic) groups - supported in addition,

by notions of 'ethnic' ('embedded in ethnic associations') and 'cross-cultural'

('embedded in mixed and mainstream organizations') social capital- but I argue that

it ought not be restricted to those alone for, no matter whether a collectivity is

"rooted" or "displaced" its identity construction as when attempted is always

underscored by the effective deployment of social capital bearing networks, and

rooted in social and cultural practices of individual members. Among others,

fundamental to identity constructions of modem collectivities are associations which

by virtue of bearing social capital act as networks connecting individuals to their

respective groups. The associations that emerge and proliferate in urban public sphere

are as Susan D. Greenbaum says, 'institutional underpinnings of group identity ....

and serve as vessels for husbanding capital' [cited in /bid.:854]. One reason behind

the emergence of modem formal organizations or voluntary associations (hereafter

association/s) was to provide as T. K Oommen (1995) opines, modem 'atomised',

'alienated' individuals with a sense of 'belonging to the primary group' which was

'presumed' to be disappearing in the climate of rapid industrial-urbanization in

nineteenth century Europe and United States. However, it is important to note that

'structure and functions of ... associations ... vary from society to society and at

times within the same society as it undergoes transformation', due to factors such as

'national character', and cultural propensities' of the people concerned [Oommen

1995:77). Essentially viewed as a non-state organization, an association may be

broadly viewed as 'an organized group of persons (1) that is formed in order to further

some common interest of its members; (2) in which membership is voluntary in the

sense that it is neither mandatory nor acquired by birth; and (3) that exists

independently of the state' [Sills 1968:362-363]. Though activities of associations are

usually not related to the 'business of making a living,' and number of 'volunteers'

86

constitute the majority of members, yet empirical evidence often suggests otherwise

including birth influenced membership. Notwithstanding differing indices and socio­

political contexts across space and time that impact associations, those may be

broadly classified as Oommen suggests on the basis of functional variations as 'social

influence' (facilitating dispersal of power) and 'expressive' (catering to emotional

needs) types or as first, 'instrumental' (creating normative change), second,

'expressive' (addressing belonging needs), and third, 'instrumental-expressive'

(catering to political as well as emotional needs) types. Though associations of

'transitional' and modem societies are believed to have 'expressive' and

'instrumental' functions respectively, yet Kenneth Little for instance, shows how

associations of the former perform both functions for, on one hand these 'provide an

immediate outlet for ethnicity and tribalism' and 'facilitate the conversion of country

people to townspeople' but on the other they remain concerned with political and

economic interests too [ 1973:421 ]. The point is: neither advanced, industrial societies

as Anderson and Anderson (1962) suggest, lack 'expressive value oriented'

associations nor do 'transitional' societies as Little shows, 'instrumental value

oriented' ones. In fact, in most societies cutting across space and time associations

performing functions of the three varieties mentioned above may be found, and most

of those again are concerned with combined 'expressive-instrumental' agenda.

Writing on the social role of associations in nineteenth century Bengal Rajat Sanyal

(1980) perceptively shows how those emerged and functioned with 'expressive­

instrumental' agenda based on wide and disparate criteria ranging from occupational

and nationalist interests to art, literature, education, religious affiliation and scientific

interests, and so forth with however, the common thread of exclusively middle class

composition binding them. As active participants in the urban life of colonial Calcutta

many of these associations such as Srihatta Sammilani (Sylhet Union) combined as

Chapter IV shows, both 'expressive and instrumental' interests of forging emotional

bond between community (Sylheti) members as well as furthering the cause of

education and development in Sylhet. While migration in general remained a key

factor in the growth of colonial Calcutta's urban life and associations, at least in the

emergence of the 'regional' ones, yet that (including problems faced by immigrants)

as Sanyal opines, was not the most important factor.

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While associations informed exclusively by dimensions of 'regional affinity' and

'migrant experience' have multiplied over time in urban India, yet hundred others

based on say caste, class, religion, ideology (political groups), profession (trade

unions), socio-economic welfare (cooperatives), age (youth), gender, language, and so

forth have grown simultaneously in both contemporary urban and rural spaces with

members whose memberships are not found in one but usually across such multiple

associations, and the situation being no different in colonial India. Indeed, as bearers

of multiple identities individuals may simultaneously seek memberships of more than

one association depending on intentions and contexts, and it goes without saying that

associations more often than not perform multiple functions ranging from conscious

articulation of exclusive, collective identities to acting as political and cultural

pressure groups, and caste associations in India for instance, are finest examples of

that. Though non-caste associations which were, and are parts of Indian urban pulic

sphere have found considerably less attention from scholars, yet there is a gradual

shift now as studies on for instance, inter-state migration and growth of ethnic

associations in urban spaces are being taken up. Susan Lewandowski for instance,

influenced by Andrea M. Singh's (1976) work on the identity of South Indian

migrants in urban Delhi shows how Malayalam speaking people through network of

associations construct 'Keralite ethnic identity' as well as act as an interest group, and

negotiate with the (forms of) state in Madras city. She writes:

The various Kerala associations in Madras [have used] their power to gain benefits for the Malayalam-speaking people in the city .... The voluntary association is, in effect ... a pressure group that can present its demands to the local government. Finally, associations provide an arena of individual adjustment .... associations provide a powerful emotional bond between members that reinforces their sense of identity ... a sense of pride in the cultural and linguistic heritage of this region .... However, only a small proportion of migrant population participates in voluntary associations, and "those of marginal status" are less involved than dominant groups­such as middle class . . . . Thus class is a determining factor in migrant organizations .... lower income migrants often do not feel comfortable with the ideals and values reflected in middle class associations, and the literary and cultural pursuits of these institutions do not meet their needs . . . . middle class urban associations do not help them to find jobs or housing, nor do they provide mechanisms for their integration with the larger population in the city . ... [Also] regional associations are often caste associations [1991: 298-99; also see Driver & Driver 1982].

Lewandowski's arguments resonate with my findings on SA but I in addition, show

that not only are associations divided broadly along caste and class lines but fissures

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are present even within such "homogeneously" constructed and claimed ones. Urban

associations - in this case those devoted to preservation and propagation of

community and cultural identities - as most studies show are more often than not

composed of members drawn from what is commonly referred to as middle class.

Middle class formation - its composition, character and role - in India is attributed by

scholars such as B. B Misra to the near singular catalytic role of British colonialism

(and bourgeois capitalism). Following the interface with colonialism they argue, the

intelligentsia that emerged in India to primarily aid the state in running the empire

was of a distinctly 'imported variety' shaped as it was by education, ideas and

institutions of the West. While it is not incorrect that colonial political-economic

structure and agenda of governance had decisive roles to play in the formation of

Indian middle class intelligentsia, yet to reason it out with the much beaten bogey of

'colonial impact' alone is certainly about missing the point for, the class was as much

shaped by itself- its "own" values and resources. 17 More importantly, its character

was marked by 'radical heterogeneity', and institutions and cultural practices that

proliferated the public sphere like associations for instance, too came to represent

following its own factional character a disparate range of interests and ideas. The

bhadralok of colonial Bengal for instance, was not a cogent, homogeneous middle

class 'elite/status group' as scholars such as John.H Broomfield and Anil Seal

suggest. It was a broad and multi-segmented class category that included a landed

rentier class as well as the two layered, primarily salaried class (but often with small

land holdings) of petty bourgeoisie. While the upper layer of the latter comprised

predominantly of Hindu College educated men who made it to 'slightly higher rungs'

of the colonial bureaucracy, the lower comprised of educated but small time state

employed 'keranis [clerks]'. It is the upper layer of that original petty bourgeoisie that

Tithi Bhattacharya (2005) for instance, following Sumit Sarkar (2006) identifies as

the new middle class, again internal heterogeneity notwithstanding. By and large it

was the salaried class, its upper layer in particular that came to be referred as the

educational ideology driven middle class intelligentsia of Bengal - the term

intelligentsia essentially pertaining to its social role rather than a distinct class

position. The bhadralok therefore, came to be a category that included the class of

struggling clerks and state employed bureaucrats, and also landed families who

despite differing internal class positions remained in 'an ethic and sentiment' united

[see for instance, Beteille 2001; Broomfield 1968; Chatterjee 1993; McGuire 1983).

89

In Bengal thus, the new middle class formed the largest segment of bhadralok, and

that is why the two categories were more often than not interchangeably used.

Notwithstanding the differences that lay within the bhadralok in Bengal or even its

new middle class or the larger colonial (new) middle class, it did present certain

distinctiveness in terms of features. From being at the helm of affairs in colonial

India, this class in the post-colonial period too continued to play a critical and

multidimensional role, its fluid and stratified character notwithstanding. In fact, Satish

Deshpande (2003) suggests that the influence exercised by middle class in

'ideological matters', and its self-projection as an average class 'that best represents

the whole society' are reasons behind its increasing significance. Indeed, due to the

notion of 'middleness' which has not one but several meanings attached to it, this

class emerges as a much desired site of social location. The meanings suggests he,

that are woven into the idea of middleness of this class show it as one, 'the stable

centre of society and polity impervious to extremes', two, an embodiment of moderate

and popular values, three, an identity that is built upon shared and widespread

commonness, and four, legitimate (moral) representative of society. In fact,

Deshpande goes on to suggest three hypothetical but useful definitions of middle class

with the promise of 'highlighting crucial [and complex] aspects of post-colonial

societies'. They are as follows:

1. The middle class is the class that articulates the hegemony of the ruling bloc; it both (a) expresses this hegemony by translating the relations of domination into the language of legitimation; and (b) mediates the relationship between classes within the ruling bloc, as well as between this bloc and other classes .... 2. The middle class is the class that is most dependent on cultural capital and on the mechanisms for the reproduction of such capital .... 3. As an increasingly differentiated class, the middle class specializes in the production and dissemination of ideologies; its elite fraction specializes in the production of ideologies, and its mass fraction engages in the exemplary consumption of these ideologies, thus investing them with social legitimacy [2003:139-141 (emphasis original)].

While all the three definitions intertwined as they are satisfactorily explain the

character of Sylheti middle class in contemporary India, the third is particularly

pertinent. In fact, every claim of "unity" put forth by Sylheti middle class is informed

by counter-claims of differentiation along various lines (say, ownership of social and

cultural capital (occupations), dialect, religion, gender, rural-urban location and caste

(as it is slightly more heterogeneous now)), and the larger Bengali (and also

90

Assamese) middle class is no different. Therefore, it is important to one, take note of

differentiation, and two, identify the axes of that. Only by locating these which of

course is extremely difficult unless one has the means and ability to dig deep into

conversations and practices, it is possible to sketch a near clear profile of the middle

class and its identity, and means adopted to preserve and propagate that. This study

needless to say, is a preliminary attempt towards that.

While the discussion above does throw light on the conceptual terrain on which

Sylheti identity including its colonial construction and post-colonial as I argue,

reconstruction processes rest, but perhaps what would add to that is a also preliminary

note on how Sylhetis often by deploying "vernacular" terms and concepts such asjati,

samaj, sanskriti/krishti, and so forth "contextually" forged marks and acts of

identification for themselves, and continue to do so even now. The point is as I show

with the help of three examples mentioned above, most of these Sanskrit (Tattsama)

and Sanskrit derived (Tadbhava) italicized Bangia terms used by members of a

collectivity such as Sylhetis contain deeper (and manifold, contextual) meanings and

implications than those which usually appear in glossaries of standard texts (italicized

when embedded in text) written in a language other than Bangia - particularly

English; also certain specific terms which are derived from Sylheti dialect often do

not have a regular Bangia equivalent. This issue, which actually has tremendous

bearing on social science research and its findings has however, hardly found much

attention, this work not being an exception either. Obviously, shelving the issue

involves wider questions regarding the power and politics of production of "authentic

and serious" social knowledge in a pre-dominantly English speaking academic world,

but it also is a pointer towards the nature of "colonial/historical impact" on structures

of "italicized and glossrified" knowledge discourse of/in colonial, and later post­

colonial societies. Partha Chatterjee in his discussion on the 'indigeneous' term jati

helps to bring home this point by pertinently citing the conversation between

Kamalakanta and a lawyer in a novel written by Bankimchandra. He shows how the

term of multiple meanings, ranging from civilization, race, caste, language and

species group to community and nation, and contextual usages comes to acquire a

determinate and fixed character in the dominant 'colonial discourse of reason'. He

writes:

Kamalakanta ... does not dwell very long on the ambiguities that the "modem" forms of social knowledge face when confronted

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with the term such asjati .... One could, obviously and without any contradiction, belong to several jati ... contextually, invoking in each context a collectivity in which membership [is] not a matter of self-interested individual choice or contractual agreement but an immediate inclusion, originary, as it is by birth. We should not be surprised therefore when a political discourse permits the imagining of collective solidarities to slide from one particular form to another, each activated contextually but proclaiming each time a bond of kinship, a natural bond that unites all who share the same origin and who therefore must share the same destiny .... It is the political discourse of the "modem" kind which insists that these collectivities have a fixed, determinate, form, and, if there are several to which an individual can belong, that there be a priority among them . . . in contemporary political discourse in India we must ask what it is that seeks to erase the contextuality of a concept such as jati and give it a fixity [ 1999:220-223; also see Das 1988].

Likejati, the term samaj too could mean a host of collectivities ranging from a 'union

of castes, or people of a region' as Swarupa Gupta (2006, 2009) shows, or association

of co-religionists or co-language speakers or co-regionists or co-poets to the

community and society as a whole; associations thus, could be variously called

sabhas, samitis, and interestingly samajs. To recall what Gupta says:

It was therefore an umbrella like concept .... The notion of samaj was grounded in two main elements. First was the familial nucleus, from which developed feelings of atmiyata, signifying a relationship between blood relatives as well as non-relatives, friends and acquaintances. Samaj implicitly contained the notion of atmiya sajan. Unlike the western counterpart of this term (kith and kin), atmiya sajan literally meant "one's own people". This idea endowed the indigenous notion of family with an open-ended, and continually incorporating character, moving from the immediate blood relatives . . . to atmiya sajan unrelated by blood. Second, samaj had a regulatory role .... samaj existed for the individuals, and the latter were not subordinated to it [2006:276-277].

The expanded notion of 'dharma' and 'atmiyata' rooted samaj could be extended to

construct notions of larger samajs or even the desh which could contextually mean

anything between 'nation', 'region' to 'sub-region' or India, Bengal or say, in this

case Sylhet. 18 However, it is not only jati and samaj whose meanings need to be

contextually problematised but also the term sanskriti which is commonly translated

as culture, more so because of its repeated invocation by middle class as the

distinguishing feature of Bengali (and Sylheti) social life and identity. It is worth

recalling what Andrew Sartori (2008) observes as he traces the roots of 'Bengali

culturalism', and its links with the global framework of evolution of the culture

concept. He writes:

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For most of the twentieth century, a problematic of culture has provided the framework both for the optimistic pride and anxious pessimism of modem Bengali identity, as well as for Bengal's ambivalent relationship to conceptions of national and global modernity .... The history of the culture concept in Bengal can be treated neither as a local deviation from nor as a late reiteration of an essentially Western intellectual form, but ... rather be treated as a spatially and temporally specific moment in the global history of the culture concept. ... my account of Bengali cultural ism will also be an attempt to account for Bengali culturalism - to understand why the logic of culturalism's most fundamental organizing categories were plausible within a particular historical milieu. In other words, I will not root Bengali culturalism in the ethnic particularity of regional culture or in the timeless "nature of things"; I will root it in the complex structure of social practices that, I argue, renders the culturalist imagination meaningful as a lens for thinking about self and society [2008: 4-5; also see Chattopadhyaya 2005].

Indeed, Bengali (and Sylheti) preoccupation with culture courtesy the literati, raised it

to the position of 'sole supremacy' in their identity construction discourse. The

importance of this concept in Bengali middle class weltanschuang was so

extraordinary that one of the ultimate icons of Bengali culture - Rabindranath Tagore

- launched a campaign as Niharranjan Ray (1982) shows, to debate and discuss it.

Tagore and Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, the eminent linguist argued that the Sanskrit

karsha derived term krishti which was conventionally attached to sanskriti ought to be

disentangled from the latter, as '[K]rishti ... was tied ... by its Sanskrit root and usage

to the practice of tilling the soil, a mundane association at profound odds with the

rarified significance of culture in its higher sense' [Ibid.:3; also see Ray 1982].

Sanskriti for Tagore involved as Ray writes, the creation of art and literature in a

space that was outside the instrumental, everyday domain, and in Sartori's words

meant 'something like purification, the extraction of man's spiritual self from the

phenomenal attachments of the grossly material, and as such it better expressed the

spiritual striving for free autonomy that was at the very heart of man's cultural

activity' [Ibid. (emphasis original)]. The English term culture as Ray shows, generally

meant cultivation and therefore, conflated the two otherwise as Tagore argued,

distinct arenas of activity, and Bengalis the latter added had no reason to 'follow suit'.

Therefore, culture for Tagore was not krishti but sanskriti alone. The point is: the way

Tagore conceived the term sanskriti (minus krishti) followed by large sections of

middle class could I argue, at best be a close approximation of culture but certainly

not a full translation of it. While it would be incorrect to suggest that "non-

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indigenous" terms inevitably fail to capture the content and meaning of

"indigenous/vernacular" ones (or vice-versa), yet what is important is certainly not to

embark on an uninterrogated "vemacularization" of concepts but take note of the

multiplicity of contexts and senses in which those are used so as to highlight their

nuanced nature.

2.2: The identity re-construction story: colonialism and after

Temporal moments that appear in forms of dates and years never ceased to remain

extraordinarily salient in Sylheti lives. The two years 1874 and 1947 are therefore, not

just years or any other forms of quantified time but defining historical moments

whose significance the community, its middle class members in particular realize,

feel, live and breathe in contemporary India. The salience of 1874 may be understood

along two dimensions: one, articulation of Bengali (component) identity outside

Bengal, and two, construction of colonial Sylheti (component) identity. Articulation

of Bengali component of the identity was rarely put out of focus by the community in

colonial Assam. Assam till 1874 was part of Bengal, and the latter's "influence"

which is well documented on its society and culture was enormous. In fact, Assam's

official incorporation in Bengal Presidency in 1826 facilitated the otherwise

"hegemonic" process of cultural exchange between Bengalis and the Assamese.

Bangia, the official language of the presidency was also extended to run the affairs of

Assam. Thus, not just through politics and commerce was Assam being tied to Bengal

but in language and culture too and that, the systematic 'culturocide' as T. K Oommen

says was something that the rising Assamese intelligentsia, accounts of which are

found in works of say for example, Hiren Gohain (1985) Rajen Saikia (2000),

Heramba Kumar Barpujari (2004a, 2004b), Sanjib Baruah (1999), Sajal Nag (1990),

and so forth in particular resented, and eventually clashed head on with towards the

closing years of colonial rule. As Tilottama Misra writes:

Following the yoking together of Assam and Bengal into one administrative unit ... momentous change took place in the socio­political atmosphere of Assam. A large number of Bengali clerks poured into Assam to seek employment in the newly established government offices. Since Bengali was the official language adopted by the British ... and since it was the mother tongue of the Bengali clerks ... in Assam, it was considered economically most convenient by the British . . . to enforce Bengali as the official language and the medium of instruction in the so-called vernacular

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schools of Assam. Bengali, therefore, remained the official language and the medium of instruction for a period of thirty-eight years from the year 1836, despite protests from the Assamese intellectuals and from the Baptist missionaries. Thus, together with the loss of political independence, Assam also lost the right to its own language .... [and that] naturally gave rise to the feeling amongst the Assamese of being subjugated not only by the British, but also by the Bengalis. the feeling of being swallowed up silently by the alien Bengali culture under Bristish patronage gave rise to a strong subterranean current of resentment amongst the Assamese people in the nineteenth century [ 1987: 149-150; also see for example, Misra 1999].

Due to efforts ofthe American Baptist missionaries and members of Assamese middle

class like Anandaram Dhekiyal Phukan and others, Assamese language which was

mistakenly assumed to be dialect of Bangia was restored to its independent status and

adopted as a medium of instruction in Assam in 1873. The measure however, did not

change the prevalent linguistic and cultural scenario to the extent it was visualized for,

Bangia speaking Sylhet (and Cachar) was attached to Assam the following year. The

incorporation therefore, only added to the existing pattern of Bengali linguistic

hegemony, and admittedly Sylhetis already had a ready ground to articulate and

consolidate their Bengaliness in Assam. The urge to establish the Bengali component

of identity of course, was necessitated in addition by their 'exiled' and "insecured"

status in Assam, and after a section of the Assamese middle class mistakenly hinted

that Sylheti was an Assamese dialect. Contestations notwithstanding, Sylhet's

territorial and cultural affiliation to Bengal was always a more or less settled issue.

After 1874, the claim of being part of the larger Bengali national culture to which

Sylhetis belonged was carefully articulated and posed vis-a-vis the Assamese,

particularly its emerging middle class which also as writings in the book entitled

Nationality Question in Assam: The EPW 1980-81 Debate (2006) show, was the chief

architect of Assamese nationalism. By constructing the Assamese as 'inferior' and

most distant 'other'- a process facilitated by colonial rulers and Bengalis alike- with

whom they claimed to have nothing in common, the cultural assertion of Sylhetis

being part and parcel of the dominant Bengali nationality was firmly established.

Though officially lodged in Assam and administered by it, yet Surma Valley with

Sylhet and Cachar in its fold ti111947 acquired an 'independent' political and cultural

(Bengali) character that also being facilitated by Sylhet's inclusion not only in

judicial, educational and revenue systems of Bengal but also in its provincial

Congress and finally, the Boundary Commission. Such policy measures, apart from

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linguistic and other cultural affinities reaffirmed the infallible psychological bond that

Sylhet believed it shared with the larger Bengali nation. Sylhetis emerged as a

community whose members as Walker Connor (1984, 1994) would observe, shared

an 'intuitive sense of kindredness or sameness, predicated upon a myth of common

descent', and 'infallible psychological bond' with Bengal. The fact that their territory

rested in Assam, and they were exiled was perennially regretted and lamented but was

never allowed to stand in the way of assertion of belonging to Bengal particularly by

the Calcutta connected Sylheti middle class. It may be argued that the loss of original

ancestral homeland in Bengal translated not into acceptance of Assam as an adopted

homeland but transformation of a part of it - Sylhet - to another Bengali homeland in

Assam. Indeed, on one hand the community imagined itself into a Bengali nation

outside 'legitimate' Bengali territory as for instance, Hugh Seton-Watson (1977) and

Florian Znaniecki (1952) in other contexts would argue, and on the other it also as

Benedict Anderson would say, imagined itself into a Sylheti nation not with an

attached state but certainly rooted in 'legitimate' Sylheti territory.

Construction of Sylheti component of the identity was hinged upon the fact that

alteration of Sylhet's status in 1874 not only "separated" Sylhetis from Bengalis but

also Sylhet from Bengal. Had Sylhetis moved outside Bengal sans the territory of

Sylhet, it would not be incorrect to view them as probashi (people living outside

ancestral, territorial homeland), deterritorialised or diasporic Bengalis or perhaps as

T.K Oommen would say, even an ethnic group. But the transfer of entire Sylhet

district and the people who inhabited it created conditions for emergence of what I

have called Sylheti national identity. While Sylhetis continued to lament the snapping

of territorial ties with Bengal, perhaps little did they realize that roots of their

distinctly fused national identity had come to be planted in that very process.

Constructed and articulated by the middle class - its Hindus and Muslims alike -

composite Sylheti identity firmly entrenched as it was in its ancestral, territorial

homeland Sylhet (and extended to Cachar too) revolved around Sylhet's history and

dialect, and cultivation of what may be termed as Sylhettita/Sylhetiana (Sylhetihood),

the growth of associations and print culture giving those a boost. With its Bengali

component pitched vis-a-vis the Assamese, Sylheti identity began to construct its

territory-culture (history/dialect and Sylhetitta) rooted Sylheti component, the process

gathering momentum in early twentieth century. Its distinctly fused character

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however, was neither monolithic nor uncontested; it was resisted by a section of

Sylheti Muslim middle class (after 1920's), and also a section of Bengalis of non­

Sylheti origin, those based in Calcutta in particular. If, for the former, the Bengali

component essentially symbolized Hindu, for the latter it was a misplaced tag to say

the least. As chapters III & IV shows, the Bengali component of Sylheti identity was

questioned and challenged from time to time by a section of non-Sylheti Bengalis, and

also resisted by Sylhetis among others by say, invocation of the concept of probash.

In fact, the concept of probash (space outside ancestral, territorial homeland) brings

territory squarely into Sylheti identity construction discourse. Unlike other Bengalis,

Sylhetis after 1874 perceived themselves as probashi Srihattabashis/

Bahirsrihattabashis (Sylhetis outside Sylheti ancestral, territorial homeland), and not

probashi Bangalis (Bengalis outside Bengali ancestral, territorial homeland) in

Bengal and elsewhere with for instance, establishment of SS (SU) and Sylhet

Association, Shillong adding to that. The acknowledgement that Bengal indeed was

their original, ancestral homeland did not come in the way of Sylhet being the same.

Sylhet not only was their ancestral and territorial homeland but also one which despite

being outside Bengal was Bengali in culture and spirit, and no doubt, it was Sylheti at

the same time. Indeed, till the referendum and partition in 194 7, Sylhetis neither saw

themselves as probashi Bangalis nor probashi Ashamiyas when lodged outside

Sylhet. Perhaps as Amitabha Choudhury quoting Jawaharlal Nehru says, they

remained Bengalis 'but with a bit of difference', and the difference articulated by its

rootedness in Bangalitta (Bengaliness) and in addition, Sylhetitta [2002a:16; also see

Choudhury 1992]. The distinctly fused Sylheti identity however, was not free from

contestation by the Assamese; assertion of Sylheti component was taken by the latter

as evidence of its non-Bengaliness and hence, disconnection with the larger Bengali

nation, and assertion of Bengali component was viewed as evidence of not only its

non-Sylhetiness but also extra-territorial allegiance to the larger Bengali nation.

Pitched as it remained vis-a-vis the Assamese and larger Bengali nations, Sylheti

identity grappled with homogenizing motives of the former and indifference of the

latter.

Following partition, and another decisive shift of cartographic coordinates of the

district the stage was set for re-construction albeit no less complex as the following

chapters show, of Sylheti identity. With territory playing truant yet again, Sylheti

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identity adopted a contextual trajectory that would suit the political climate of Assam

with its policy of aggressive linguistic nationalism and anti-Bengali wave in particular

and India in general [see for instance, Baruah 1988; Brass 1995; Choudhury 1986a,

2007; Deka 1995; Goswami 1997; Oommen 1990; Weiner 1978]. The identity that

was negotiated and constructed vis-a-vis Assamese and the larger Bengali community

in undivided India not only stood divided in 1947, but had to now engage with its

fragmented part lodged in Pakistan (now Bangladesh). The strength that territorially

undivided Sylhet provided to Sylheti identity suffered an irreversible setback which

for Sylhetis in India signaled a future doomed to a territory less existence, and even

possible oblivion. While Sylhetis in Bangladesh with bulk of Sylhet's territory and the

name as their own have managed to retain their "distinct" historical legacy and

identity, their counterparts in India with only a slice of Sylhet are engaged in re­

casting it. For Sylhetis on the Indian side more than retention of three and a half

thanas, it is loss of other six thanas allotted to Assam, and of course the 'entire'

ancestral homeland that is foregrounded in their identity re-construction discourse.

The re-constructed Sylheti identity continues to bear the distinctly fused character no

doubt, but the relationship between its components, and with "others" stand anxiously

re-worked. It is the Bengali component of that which is asserted with renewed vigor

and gusto with simultaneous attempts to consciously keep (not do away certainly) the

Sylheti component more in the background, now that the identity lacks 'legitimate'

territorial moorings in Sylhet (Assam) and India and consequently, it is the former

which is more aggressively, and consciously asserted in the larger public sphere while

the latter is either more cautiously articulated or even publicly downplayed, locational

contexts and differences notwithstanding. Though it may appear on the face that

Sylheti identity has hardly undergone a process of re-construction for, the tone and

texture of its earlier articulation stand near totally replicated in post-partition India,

yet what strikes for instance, as another note of difference in the transformed political

space is the sense of double 'discrimination/handicap' that informs that process now:

one, meaning separation from Bengal, and two, from (loss of) Sylhet itself. Not

surprisingly, Sylhetis across India including Barak Valley which retains a part of

Sylhet struggle to reconcile with the artificial geography imposed by colonial state

which turned those on the Indian side as they believe, into 'refugees' in some sense

or the other. Indeed, to already existing sense of exilehood is added the burden of

refugeehood though not all Sylhetis were refugees as is understood within legal-

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official parameters; also, not all had a uniform expenence of partition and its

consequences. For Sylheti Muslims who stayed on in India the situation is no

different, though in the communally polarized climate of Assam in particular and

India in general airing such views of 'loss and refugeehood' sometimes runs the risk

of they being labeled as foreigners/non-citizens and consequently, accused of

harbouring extra-territorial/national interests. Differences notwithstanding, what

stands out as supported by field notes in contemporary India are as follows: a) all

Sylhetis are Bengalis whose origin lie in undivided Sylhet district of Assam b) all

Sylhetis are 'udbastus [uprooted]' and 'bastuhara [homeless]' in a certain

"philosophical" sense, whether some of them had legally been refugees or not c) it is

the loss of' desh [nation/country]', the homeland named Sylhet that is significant, not

'desher baari [country home]' or other material assets d) it is the collective (and

'united') position of the community as one 'without name and geography' that defines

its identity now, and e) Sylhetis, irrespective of religious distinctions and territorial

locations ought to be involved in preservation and propagation of the only 'property'

they are left with, and that is history and culture of Sylhet.

It is indeed interesting how despite the "actual" non-existence of a uniform identity or

a "migrant/non-migrant" discourse, Sylheti middle class builds its experience and

identity on the basis of "similarities" or a "common" discourse. In contemporary India

the process of re-constrcution of Sylheti identity then as available literature and

subsequent chapters suggest, is built upon seven temporally, and contextually

intertwined themes: a) political location of Sylhet outside Bengal, and in Assam since

1874 b) role played by Assam, its political leaders and a section of its middle class in

particular in Sylhet referendum and partition c) loss of major portions of the ancestral,

territorial homeland named Sylhet to Pakistan d) claim and retention of only three and

a half thanas of undivided Sylhet by Assam out of the twelve and a half interpreted as

granted to it e) location of Sylhetis in, and outside Barak Valley f) sense of being

Bengali 'exiles' and Sylheti 'refugees' and finally, g) relationship of Sylhetis vis-a-vis

"others" such as the Assamese and non-Sylheti Bengalis. Though the community lives

with the "reality of territorial loss", yet some relief comes as Chapter III shows, from

the "re-emergence" of Barak Valley, a term coined in 1980's to represent Cachar,

Hailakandi and Karimganj districts as a living site and space that nurtures Sylheti

colonial legacy, and consequently provides territorial anchorage to the identity in

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post-colonial Assam and India. The coordinates that shaped the Sylheti community in

colonial India and helped it imagine itself in the style of a nation was altered, but that

only launched the process of re-imagination. Given its considerably dispersed

character now, the styles of re-imagination too vary along (also along "religious­

communal" dimension) locational contexts. However, the point is, with Barak Valley

as the territorial and cultural anchor even for that which is located outside it, the

community despite adopting varied styles has hardly stopped (re-)imagining itself

may be not as a full blown national collectivity anymore given the loss of name,

major portion of territory and a large section of Muslims, but certainly no less than

that either. While relationship with the Assamese is subjected to a process of

perpetual negotiation albeit without being oblivious of the 'treatment that Assam had

meted out to Sylhetis during partition', one with the larger Bengali community too is

not exempted from that. However, negotiation with the former works through the

widely prevalent pre-conception of that community as eternal bete noire, the most

distant "other" of Sylhetis. With the larger Bengali community such negotiations pre­

empt multiple possibilities of inclusion, exclusion and equivalence, and that

relationship with Bengal(is) is a theme that runs through a large number of writings.

Pritam Bhattacharjee for instance, in an article entitled 'Tale of two Communities -

Sylhetis of Sylhet and Scots of Scotland' (2007) draws as is obvious parallels between

Sylhetis and Scots among others, particularly in terms of their respective relationships

with Bengal and England. He writes:

Scots speak a tongue which is not English and is of high Gaelic content and all Scots have a complex about tongue they speak and even today they take lessons to speak pure English. Sylhetis speak a dialect of Bengali( ... Ko/kata Bhasa) and have [a] little complex about their tongue. They also use formal Bengali in writing just as Scots do the formal English.... Scots share a very tenuous relationship with the city of London since 1400's and when the Act of Union came in 1707, they found it practical to be an ally to the growing British power but underneath there was the great sense of loss of an identity .... Sylhetis shared the same relationship with Calcutta and they still do. Their tongue is not understood here but Calcutta was an immediate need to get empowered in terms od education, of job, of going with the times [2007:3-4; also see Bhattacharjee 2006; Cohen 2000; Cohen 2005].

Though the two cases have very little similarity informed as they are by completely

different historical and political trajectories, yet what is interesting in Bhattacharjee's

observation is the reflection of what I call (and Sylhetis attest) an 'existential anxiety'

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of Sylheti community regarding its ambiguous relationship with Bengal(is); a

relationship that extremely anxiously seeks to demostrate the contribution of the

community to larger Bengali culture despite being part of the distant "Sylheti fringe"

or what Michael Hechtor in context of Britain would call the 'Celtic Fringe'. The

urge, in fact, the anxiety about the relationship is perhaps most deary visible in Barak

Valley. Beginning with coinages such as Tritiya Bhuban (Third World), !shan Bangia

(North East Bengal), and Barak Banga (Barak Bengal) to negation of the idea of

probashi Bangali and Bahirbanga, the community of Barak Valley relentlessly tries

to "examine" and "explain" its relationship with larger Bengal(is). The urgency is

reflected in everyday articulations as well as literature that are published from the

region. Inclusion of Barak Valley in the construction of Bahirbanga in India (Inner

Indian Bengali Diaspora) by the New Delhi based Bahirbanga Foundation Trust is

resented by a section of its middle class community, and linked to that also is negation

of the probashi Bangali tag which more often than not is how Bengalis of Barak

Valley are identified outside that region. Bijit Bhattacharya argues that Barak Valley

is not part of Bahirbanga or a fragment of Bengal, but Bengal itself given its long

history of engagement with Bangia language and literature. In other words, he

suggests that what is generally conceptualized as 'Bengal and Bengali culture' ought

to be re-thought so that cultures are not necessarily viewed as tied to 'fixed territorial

regions'. In an eloquently argued editorial in the Hailakandi based journal Sahitya he

writes:

The British in order to weaken the Bengali community broke up Bengal into numerous parts. The two main ones, Bangladesh and West Bengal, are the most important pilgrimages of Bengalis. But outside these, the small fragments of Bengal are also the swasthan [own territory], pithasthan [pilgrimage] of Bengalis - not Bahirbanga [Bengal ouside territorial Bengal/Bengali diaspora] .... We only refer to the numerous small Bengals [like Barak Valley] as Bahirbanga when we assume that West Bengal is the only Bengal. We forget that prefixed by the word west it too becomes part of the original Bengal. To designate the Bengali speaking regions outside West Bengal as Bahirbanga is unjust and is the handiwork of state and a section of the West Bengal based intelligentsia [2010a: 11-12 (translation mine); also see Bhattacharya 2010b].

Clearly, Bhattacharya forwards an argument that interwines the concepts of territory

and culture which delineates the identity of Barak Valley as one that is not a 'Bengali

diaspora but Bengali' located in its 'legitimate' territory in Assam and therefore,

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inhabitants of the region are not probashi Bangalis but sans any prefix or suffix, just

Bangalis. Amitabha Deb Choudhury too makes a somewhat similar point as he

debates whether Barak Valley should be called Bahirbanga or • Bhangabanga

[fragmented Bengal]'. He opines:

Bengalis outside Barak Valley, particularly those in West Bengal assume that the Bengalis of this region are Probashi Bang a/is and the Valley is Bahirbanga. All inhabitants of Barak Valley know that this is misleading .... Barak Valley's Bengalis are not like ones who live in Madhya Pradesh, Hyderabad or New Delhi for these were never part of Bengal. But Sylhet and Cachar were . . . . So, when Bengalis of Bahirbanga and those from West Bengal ask, how do we know Bangia having lived in Assam. Or think that Bengalis of Barak Valley are Probashi Banga/is or it is Bahirbanga, a similie comes to mind. It is like the fragmented/dismembered parts of a body with tremendous suspicion asking each other: bhai, tui aammiiy toh [brother, are you/you must be me] [2006:29-30 (translation mine); also see Bulbul 1995].

While Bhattacharya and Deb Choudhury unanimously reject the Bahirbanga and

probashi Bangali identification for Barak Valley and its inhabitants, yet distinction

between their argument lies in the fact that the former's rejection is not restricted to

Barak Valley while the latter draws a distinction between Bengalis of the valley and

those in other parts of India though both are located outside West Bengal. However,

to reiterate, the point is that a spatially fragmented culture is not to be theorized as a

sub-culture but culture itself or the fragment is to be treated as nothing but the whole.

So, following such arguments it may be argued that a section of Sylhetis of Barak

Valley given their location in post-colonial Assam identify themselves neither as

probashi Srihattabashis nor probashi Bangalis but either Bangalis or if insisted upon

for the need of a prefix, 'Aashambashi Bangalis' (but certainly not • Bangabhashi

Ashamiya'). The Sylheti community of Barak Valley therefore, negotiates its identity

in Assam by asserting one, its historically 'owned', 'unfragmented' Bengali

(component) culture, and two, its legitimate claim on the territory that houses it;

Sylheti component of the identity meanwhile continues to occupy its inner domain.

Assertion of the 'territory rooted Bengali' (component) 'cultural identity' with a life

and history of its own came to be only more aggressively asserted after the Language

Movement of 1961 wherein eleven men and women laid down their lives to uphold

the cause of Bangia language in Assam. So, as a section of Barak Valley middle class

argues, Bangia Bhasha Saheeds (Bengali language martyrs) came not from West

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Bengal but from a region outside that (also Bangladesh), and to "live or die" for

Bangia is not the prerogative of West Bengal alone; like Bangladesh, Barak Valley

also expressed its undying love for Bangia language not by "living, speaking and

writing" the language as is done in West Bengal but dying for it, by "producing"

martyrs who would reconcile to nothing but bullet, blood and death. Indeed, a section

of the middle class believes that if a Bangia speaking Bangladesh could be carved out

of Pakistan, a Bangia speaking Purbachal state as Chapter III notes could be carved

out of Assam too.

Located in the inner sphere, Sylheti component of the identity in Barak Valley gets

extremely consciously, and contextually articulated in the political space provided by

the post-colonial Assam(ese) state. But it also has another space, and that is far

removed from - albeit not uninfluenced - the complex Sylheti-Bengali-Assamese

dimensions. That space is the cyberworld where young Sylhetis of Barak Valley

construct a virtual Sylheti homeland, and consequently an identity, a self that is free

of immediate political, and cultural (including linguistic) pressures. No doubt, the

dynamics of 'presentation of self as Goffman in another context would say, in the

world of virtual images and practices are entailed by the idea of performance. But in

case of young Sylhetis it is only through "real" performance that "real" identity gets

articulated, and interestingly in a "virtual" idiom; indeed, in the Sylheti case "virtual"

transforms into the "real" as is evident from the ever proliferating websites.

Cyberspace therefore, not only helps identities travel across cultures and geographies

but also provides avenues through exclusive sites among others say, Facebook or

Orkut, and chat rooms to forge and consolidate those along lines of "particularistic"

communal (community), cultural and linguistic values. Whether in virtual world or

ever growing number of cultural associations, Sylheti identity in post-colonial India

stands re-constructed within the general framework of partitioned identities in South

Asia, albeit with its specific historical and cultural trajectories. And such specificities

make the Sylheti post-partition story not just extremely complex but perhaps without

a match in the sub-continent in particular and world in general. No wonder it is

preferable as I would like to argue, to work within a broad conceptual and agency

sensitive schema rather than subject that to a single theoretical framework. Coupled

with contextually (and anxiously) changing relationship with "others" as well as of its

own boundaries, Sylheti identity as a distinct fusion of Bengali and Sylheti

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components attracts attention across the larger Bangia speaking world in India (and

also Bangladesh). As a community fiercely 'proud of its tongue' and what it calls

'distinct' social practices (in short, culture), its members in contemporary India are

engaged with a discourse that is informed by both political and cultural concerns.

Indeed, I argue that not only is Sylheti identity not fixed in time and therefore,

processual and contextual but it also perhaps is not amenable to "cultural resolution".

The anxiety that features post-colonial Sylheti identity in India, and which comes

from its ambiguous relationship with larger Bengali identity and more or less clearly

defined one with the Assamese throws light not only on its "own" character but that

of Bengal and Bengali identity in general. This work apart from its stated objectives

therefore, points to the relationship that Bengal shared (and shares) with its

'fragments', its numerous small and big cultural groups, its alternative histories.

Though Partha Chatterjee rightly suggests that alternative histories of 'fragments' not

only interrogate the centrality of a 'dominant nationalist discourse' but also re-work

the relationship between the 'nation and its fragments', yet by restricting that to the

relationship between Bengal (region) and India (nation) he fails to see how the former

as a nation stands vis-a-vis its "regions", or how intra-Bengali alternative histories are

as much important as that of Bengal. Therefore, an analytical reading of Sylheti

identity construction and re-construction discourse in addition, invariably extends to a

discursive understanding of the idea of (West) Bengal and Bengali self-identity, its

context, character and politics in colonial and contemporary India as it does of the

idea of as Yasmin Saikia in another context points out, Assam(ese) self-identity. This

work needless to say, has attempted to shed light on such concerns.

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Notes:

4

6

Equal participants in such engagements were Muslims like Ali Amjad Khan (Zamindar of Prithimpasha), Maulavi Abdul Karim, Syed Abdul Majid, Gaznafar Ali Khan, Abdul Matin Choudhury and others. While Maulavi Abdul Karim, trained in English literature at Presidency College, Calcutta contributed enormously to the spread of education, Gaznafar Ali Khan, trained at University of Cambridge in England became the first Bengali Muslim member of Indian Civil Service in 1897, and who eventually settled down in his native village to work for the welfare of people [see for example, Ahmed 1999; Rahman 1991].

In course of time thick Sylheti settlements grew outside Sylhet, particularly in Shillong, Silchar, Gauhati, and other urban areas of Assam. Shillong based middle class Sylhetis Jived and worked as they did in the capital of imperial Assam, had access to modem English education coupled with exposure to progressive ideas and values drawn from their encounter with the ruling Western elite, and also Christian missionaries and other (Brahmo) social groups. In fact, Shillong in addition to others emerged as one of the cultural nerve centres of Sylheti inteJligentsia in colonial Assam [see for example, Bhattacharjee 1381 B.S; Bhattacharya 2006].

Citing lshwar Chandra Vidyasagar's example Sarkar writes: 'Despite total absence of inherited wealth and landed property ... he was able to achieve and maintain personal independence through skillful utilization of the three basic determinants of nineteenth-century colonial middle-class life in Bengal: education, chakri, print culture' [2006:232].

Outlining the contribution of Sylhetis to print and journalism Jatindra Mohan Bhattacharjee records his appreciation for pioneers such as Gaurishankar Tarkabagish (editor, Sambad Bhaskar, published from Calcutta since 1839), Peary Charan Das (editor, Srihatta Prakash, published from Sylhet since 1875), Bipin Chandra Pal (editor, Paridarshak, published from Sylhet since 1880), and so forth. From the time of Srihatta Prakash, the first printed newspaper from Sylhet to 1940's says he, Sylhet had about eighty Bangia, English, Urdu, Hindi and Manipuri newspapers and magazines (and in addition, another fifteen) edited not only by Hindus but Muslims (for example, Maqbool Hossain and Abdul Matin Choudhury) and Christians (for example, Reverends' Jayagovinda Shome and Penguin Jones) too, and those covered wide ranging themes, and catered to an equally wide audience including women, children, caste and occupational groups [see for example, Ahmed 1999; Bhattacharjee 1349 B.S; Fatah 2006].

Writing of district histories as for instance Swarupa Gupta's (2009) books shows was not unheard of in nineteenth and early twentieth colonial India whether in the form of chronicles and ballads or "rational-scientific" prose; in fact, the latter in printed form sustained the 'contemporary notions of "original" writing well into the third decade of twentieth century'. However, the act of writing "scientific and original history" of Sylhet sustained beyond colonial period. Not surprisingly, the district's history (and books written on it) refuses to be confined to the "age-old past" or dusty bookshelves in libraries; it generates as writings and field work show, among present day Sylhetis to quote Partha Chatterjee, an 'intense awareness of the place of history in the present' [2002: 19; also see for instance, Ahmed 1999; Aziz et a! 1997, 2006; Bhattacharya I 993; Deb 1983; Deb Lashkar 20 I 0).

Therefore, what is needed I argue, is care and caution in the deployment of such terms and concepts so as to ensure that 'regional' communities are as Prachi Deshpande notes, 'considered as contingent communities that emerged alongside, and in negotiation with, [larger] national imaginations in South Asia .... [W]e have to take into account their diverse outcomes across the subcontinent to achieve a more nuanced understanding of the complexity of South Asian nationalisms' [2007:209; also see Bhattacharjee 2009; Pandey 2003].

Bangia became as Pierre Bourdieu in another context would say, a form symbolic power- 'a power of constituting the given through utterances, of making people see and believe, of conforming or transforming the vision of the world, and thereby, action on the world and thus the world itself, an almost magical power which enables one to obtain the equivalent of what is obtained through force' [cited in Pariola 2005].

The first researched article on Sylhet Nagri was by Vidyabinod ( 1908) followed by ten others as Usha Ranjan Bhattacharya (1993, 2009) and Anuradha Chanda (2006) shows, published in SSPP by

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scholars such as Mohammad Ashraf Hossain, Abdul Bari, Abdul Jabbar, and so forth, the number multiplying tremendously in post-colonial period in Bangladesh in particular. In Barak Valley, and elsewhere in India too research on the script is carried out, though for a section of middle class of the former the response towards the script is guarded due to the apprehension that Sylheti dialect supported by a script may lead the Assamese to render that a separate language (that is not Bangia).

Jatindra Mohan Bhattacharjee, the well known scholar who wrote extensively on Sylhet perhaps preceded only by Vidyabinod and Tattwanidhi was also an expert in classification and cataloguing of manuscripts and printed ·literature; not surprisingly, he as the book Jatindra Mohan Bhattacharjee (1996) shows, compiled lists, both during and after the colonial period of not only books written by Sylhetis but also those in which Sylhet was mentioned or discussed. Indeed, colonial Sylheti middle class wrote about Sylhet no doubt, but not without exploring what was already written on it by "others".

10 I too have made use of one such notably, the inner-outer but not necessarily to draw betweem them a hard and unbreakable line or hierarchize and temporally "fix" those or dismiss the inherent dialogic spirit and greyness that involves all such dichotomies. My invocation of the two separate, yet porous and mutually trans formative domains to make sense of culture rooted Sylheti community identity is hinged upon the idea that freedom from the "dichotomy trap" does not foreclose the possible incorporation into another "automatically" "homogenizing trap/paradigm"; indeed, if dichotomies are products of"ideological discourses", so are dichotomy or category free theoretical constructs whether of eastern or western origin.

11 In the Sylheti case territory remains the crucial problematique; while colonial Sylheti community construction derived among others, from that, the post-partition one came to be re-constructed along similar axis. For Sylhetis in India, loss of the territory/homeland named Sylhet was re-gained albeit in an altered form, when a portion of Sylhet was retained by India, and Barak Valley turned into a "Sylheti homeland". Though "dispersed" now, the Sylheti community as subsequent chapters show carries a deep "sense of territoriality"and for that matter, it always did. If that claim to physical territory remains contested and anxiety-ridden, solace comes in the form of creation of "Sylheti homeland(s)" in the virtual world, in cyber-territory, at least by a section of younger members of the community.

12 In fact, neither should communities be viewed as unchanging relics of the past nor should associations be treated as "rationally" constituted modem, civil society forms alone. Only then for instance, the Sylheti case would make sense for, not only the community emerged as a cultural entity through a modem political process, but the numerous Sylhet Associations (generically termed as SA) which resemble "communities" were formed not through "rational action" as is commonly understood in social science but because of the urge to preserve and propagate the 'undying' community spirit.

13 However, post-modernist approach also associated with what is called deconstructionist claims salience on the ground that it is not only a critique of substantivist but also the broad constructivist approach for, both in one way or other are it argues, squarely located within the larger discourse of modernity.

14 Indeed, modernity as Zygmunt Bauman (200 1) suggests, had paradoxical consequences for identity; on one hand it unleashed forces of erosion of particularistic identities and on the other forces of their resurgence both in individual as well as collective terms. More importantly, it is increasingly argued in the light of globalization (and post-colonial) theory that social phenomena ought to be discursively analyzed not however in the light of a singular but multiple, distinctive modernities.

15 The link between as Simmel would say, 'metropolis and mental life', between urban structures and growth of niche identity networks is only too obvious and therefore, does not call for repetition.

16 While Bourdieu, and also Coleman use it to discuss personal connections or networks that individual and small groups' access in order to achieve certain ends, Putnam associates it with community building. Though Putnam has been critiqued for the 'unmitigated celebration of community', yet his views have some merit given the fact that social capital bearing networks often are closely related to community and identity construction processes.

17 Also, the process of middle class formation as for instance, Basudeb Datta Ray (1983) shows was not uniform in space and time across groups and communities of the sub-continental empire.

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Indeed, neither was Indian middle class an "unadulterated, imported western entity" nor was it a "homogenized, indigenous eastern" one.

18 In fact, Swarupa Gupta perceptively shows the important role played by (caste and) 'sub-regional samajs' (both in social and associational terms) of Bengal in forging a notion of pan-regional Banga samaj and finally, the larger Bahratiya samaj- notions that could be roughly translated to formation of deshs' or nations. Sub-regional 'samajik' values she explains, without being diluted were carefully reworked 'within a wider contextual grid of Bengali samajik origins and interconnections'. Construction of the larger Bang a samaj thus included such sub-regional samajs, and interestingly at times "other" neighbouring samajs say, of the Oriya and Assamese. While Gupta cites the spirit of inclusion that characterized samaj as reason behind the incorporation of "others", I argue that such "inclusionary acts" were more often than not informed by notions, and relationships of hierarchy and hegemony.

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