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Reordering a Border Space: Relief, rehabilitation, and nation-building in northeastern India after the 1950 Assam earthquake*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2015

BÉRÉNICE GUYOT-RÉCHARD
BÉRÉNICE GUYOT-RÉCHARD*
Affiliation:
Emmanuel College and History Faculty, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

On 15 August 1950, just as India was celebrating its third independence anniversary, an earthquake of 8.6 magnitude struck the remote northeastern state of Assam and its surrounding borderlands. Rivers burst their banks and landslides blocked Himalayan valleys, destroying towns, villages, roads, fields, and tea gardens in their wake. Beyond the disaster's shattering impact on the physical geography of the region, this article explores how it participated in another reconfiguration—that of Assam's place within India's political geography and national imaginary. The Indian public had hitherto known very little about India's remote ‘northeast frontier’; the cataclysm and subsequent relief measures served to carve out a space for it on Indian mental maps. Simultaneously, by forcing a large-scale encounter between Indian authorities and the people of the scarcely controlled eastern Himalayas, post-earthquake relief and rehabilitation led to unprecedented state expansion in this newly strategic borderland. Yet in the same breath, the aftermath of the disaster fuelled stereotypes about Assam and its hinterland that would eventually further their marginality within India and undermine their continued unity. The crystallization of Assam's image as a place irreducibly subject to the whims of nature and, more importantly, incapable of taking care of itself (and hence, of its highland dependencies), would poison centre–state relations for decades to come. Imperfect and contradictory, the reordering of this border space from a colonial frontier to a component of independent India's national space did not end marginality, but instead reinforced it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 4 , July 2015 , pp. 931 - 962
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

This article benefited from the thoughtful comments of audiences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, and the University of Durham. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their comments.

References

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4 This corresponds to earthquakes of a magnitude higher than 7 on the Richter scale: 1906, 1908, 1918, 1923, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1943, 1947, and 1949. (Note that due to technologies available at the time, the stated magnitude of the earlier earthquakes is likely an approximation.) Due to the collision between the Indian and Eurasian plates and subduction in the Patkai range on the border with Burma, northeast India is one of the sixth most active regions in the world for earthquakes. Earthquake zoning maps of India place the entire region today called ‘Northeast India’ under Zone V, the area where the earthquake hazard is greatest. The only other parts of India to fall under that designation are the Rann of Kuch and small parts of Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarkhand, and Himachal Pradesh. See M. P. Tiwari (2002). Status of seismicity in Northeast India and earthquake disaster mitigation, ENVIS Bulletin: Himalayan Ecology and Development, vol. 10: http://www.scribd.com/doc/195500447/Status-of-Seismicity-in-the-Northeast-India-and-Earthquake-Disaster-Mitigation#scribd, [accessed 24 March 2015].

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30 Kar, What's in a Name?, p. 21.

31 The border with West Bengal is approximately 65 kilometres wide, whereas the seven states share 5,087 kilometres of borders with Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, and Burma. For more information on these international borders, see Ministry of Development of North-Eastern Region (n.d.). International Border, Look East Policy vis-à-vis NER: http://www.mdoner.gov.in/node/202, [accessed 24 March 2015].

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33 ‘Road communications in Assam being restored’, Amrita Bazar Patrika, 25 August 1950; Donald F. Thomas, ‘The quake—and after: the task that confronts Assam’, Times of India, 14 September 1950.

34 Lok Sabha statement by Nehru, reported in ‘Indo-Tibetan boundary: “No change to be permitted”’, Times of India, 21 November 1950.

35 ‘90 pc of buildings badly damaged’, Amrita Bazar Patrika, 19 August 1950.

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37 ‘Road communications in Assam being restored’.

38 ‘Assam tea gardens face ruin’, Times of India, 24 August 1950. Provisional estimates indicated a loss of Rs. 20,000,000 for Assam's industries. Donald F. Thomas, ‘The ’quake—and after: the task that confronts Assam’, Times of India, 14 September 1950.

39 ‘Procurement in Assam: “Position critical”’, Times of India, 29 August 1950.

40 ‘Assam ’quake havoc: loss estimated at Rs10 crores’, Times of India, 26 August 1950.

41 Jawaharlal Nehru (1993). ‘Help to victims of the earthquake’ (Broadcast to the Nation over AIR, 9 September 1950), in Gopal, Sarvepalli, Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru—Second Series, vol. XV, Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, New Delhi, pp. 166–70Google Scholar.

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43 See these letters to the Times of India editor: ‘Assam and the Congress’, Times of India, 6 September 1950; ‘To the editor (by B.H. Daroowalla)’, Times of India, 12 September 1950; and ‘Earthquake relief’, Times of India, 15 September 1950.

44 See for instance Barnett, Michael N., Empire of Humanity: a History of Humanitarianism, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 2011Google Scholar; and Cohen, Gerard Daniel, In War's Wake: Europe's Displaced Persons in the Postwar Order, Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York, 2012Google Scholar.

45 Contribution of Rs. 5,000 to the Assam Relief Fund by the Indian Association of Djibouti through the Commission for the Government of India in Aden (1950), 1(13)-AWT, External Affairs Proceedings, National Archives of India [hereafter NAI], New Delhi; Sympathies extended by the Emperor of Ethiopia on his behalf and the people of Ethiopia towards the Assam earthquake sufferers. Contributions by Indian community in Addis Ababa (1950), 22–32-AFR-I, External Affairs Proceedings, NAI, New Delhi.

46 See respectively, Offers of assistance from Burma towards Assam relief (1950), 48–129-BI, External Affairs Proceedings, NAI, New Delhi; Enquiry by the United States of America through Indian Embassy, Washington regarding immediate help in kind needed for the victims of the earthquake in Assam (1950), 154-NEF, External Affairs Proceedings, NAI, New Delhi; Watnumull Foundation of San Francisco. Offer of help for the Assam earthquake victims (1950), 155-NEF, External Affairs Proceedings, NAI, New Delhi; Resolution in the United Nations Organisation regarding sympathy for the victims of earthquake in Assam. Enquiry from Secretary General of UNO regarding requirements which could be met by UN and other specialised agencies (1950), 151-NEF, External Affairs Proceedings, NAI, New Delhi; and Contribution for Assam Relief Fund by Aden (1951), 1(6)-AWT, External Affairs Proceedings, NAI, New Delhi. Almost none of the files regarding the earthquake have been transferred, unfortunately (including those giving a summary of all the relief offered). However, it is known that the American government offered to send six tons of emergency relief supplies and 427,431 tons of foodgrains at concessional prices. Nehru, Letters to Chief Ministers, p. 210.

47 Offer of contribution for relief from the Prime Minister's Relief Fund and 10,000 maunds of rice by Pakistani Prime Minister from East Pakistan, 1950, 142-NEF, External Affairs Proceedings, NAI, New Delhi.

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59 The Times of India thus reviewed Kingdon-Ward's frequent books almost without fail, eagerly published reports of his explorations, and promoted his regular pieces for the Illustrated Weekly of India as a big selling point in its adverts for the magazine. See for instance ‘People with a strange dialect: Assam border of Tibet’, The Times of India, 9 February 1934; ‘Display Ad 7’, The Times of India, 21 July 1933; and ‘Tibetan plants for museum: Rich collection’, The Times of India, 22 April 1936.

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92 E. P. Gee, ‘The Brahmaputra Valley is changing: Nature's mutilation and Man's mistakes’, The Assam Tribune, 7 October 1951.

93 See for example ‘Brahmaputra erosion threatens Dibrugarh Town’, Amrita Bazar Patrika, 17 July 1954; ‘Brahmaputra now a “river of grief”’, Amrita Bazar Patrika, 18 August 1954.

94 Nehru, Jawaharlal, ‘Floods in Assam’ (Statement in Parliament, 13 November 1952), in Gopal, Sarvepalli, Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru—Second Series, vol. XX, Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, New Delhi, 1997, pp. 265–67Google Scholar.

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100 Kingdon-Ward may partly be forgiven for this—his was, after all, an article for a geographical journal, and the highly atomized social structure of Mishmi society, led this tribe to live in hamlets of just a couple of houses often miles apart from one another. Nevertheless, there was still ample proof of human presence on the Indian side of the border, for instance at Walong. Instead, Kingdon-Ward's account only emphasizes human presence and suffering in relation to areas on the other side of the Indo-Tibetan border.

101 ‘Earthquake and flood: Operation rescue’, The Assam Tribune, 14 July 1951.

102 See for instance ‘Agreed decision on certain incidents in Border Areas’, Amrita Bazar Patrika, 13 August 1949; ‘We are sentinel at gates of India and defender of borders: Governor's independence message to people of Assam’, The Assam Tribune, 17 August 1949; and ‘Alleged encroachment of the Indian Territory on the Assam frontier by Pakistan’ (1949), 5(9)-Pak III, External Affairs Proceedings, NAI, New Delhi.

103 S.No.113, Sri Prakasa Papers, NMML.

104 See Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Finance notes of 6 and 11 December 1950, respectively, in 15/87-Public, Home Affairs Proceedings, NAI.

105 ‘Editorial—Refugees’, The Assam Tribune, 8 July 1951.

106 15/87-Public, Home Affairs Proceedings, NAI.

107 ‘Constructive efforts and not mutual accusation’, The Assam Tribune, 19 July 1951.

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109 Allen, Assam District Gazetteers; Rustomji, Nari, Imperilled Frontiers: India's North-eastern Borderlands, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1983, p. 10Google Scholar; Sharma, Jayeeta, ‘“Lazy” natives, coolie labour, and the Assam tea industry’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 43:6, 2009, pp. 1287–1324CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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112 Nehru, Letters to Chief Ministers, pp. 212–13.

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114 ‘Nehru did not bid farewell to Assam in 1962!’, The Assam Tribune, 12 December 2010.

115 See for example Bhaumik, Subir, Troubled Periphery: Crisis of India's North-East, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2009, p. 327CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘Fifty years after partition, India's north-east remains the stepchild of the republic. The kind of attention lavished on Kashmir is nonexistent there, though in terms of resources the North-East is far ahead.’

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118 ‘Relief activity in Abor Hills District’.

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120 Clancey, ‘The Meiji earthquake’.

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122 The best introduction to the subject is Baruah, Sanjib, Durable Disorder: Understanding the Politics of Northeast India, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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