A History of Intoxication by Kawal Deep Kour

Author:Kawal Deep Kour [Kour, Kawal Deep]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781000730036
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2019-08-28T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

Opium Reduction Campaign: 1921–1938

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BY 1920, the anti-opium crusade in Assam had acquired national recognition, a new crusader, a new temper and a new dimension. The non-cooperation resolution for Assam, passed at the instance of M.K. Gandhi, had as it’s goal the promotion of temperance among the people of Assam, through voluntary effort and public propaganda. This was a marked departure from one of much interpreted and questioned silence of the Indian National Congress on the opium question during the tour of the Royal Commission on Opium in 1893.1 The changing political contours resulted in a reorientation in the social life of the Assamese middle class. Already a credible force on the social landscape, the Assamese intelligentsia was now besotted with a new fervour.2 This ‘trend of radicalisation within the Assamese middle class’, as Guha remarks, was marked by the ascension of a new breed of Assamese nationalists who believed in action oriented political agitation.3 Most of them were members of the Assam Association. With its inception in 1903, the Assam Association had significantly articulated the political aspirations of ‘Western-educated Assamese elite’. Highly oriented in their initial stages to the moderate line of political thinking, the early leaders of the Assam Association – Gangagovinda Phukan, Ghanshyam Barua, Kamakhyaram Barua, Chandradhar Barua and Taraprasad Chaliha – stood opposed to the idea of a mass movement. They were votaries of Assamese ‘sub-nationalist sentiment’ and held that any such move would dilute that ideal. Such a stand received further momentum with the formation of the Axom Chhatra Sanmilan (Assam Students Conference) in 1916 and the Axom Sahitya Sabha in 1917. Uncertainty and disillusionment, however, prevailed and exacerbated differences amongst two factions within the Assam Association until members of the Assam Association headed by Nabin Chandra Bordoloi (1875–1936)4 met M.K. Gandhi at the Nagpur session of the Indian National Congress (INC). After his second meeting with Gandhi at Calcutta, he turned from a cooperator to a non-cooperator. The Association declared that the movement in Assam would aim at the restriction and limitation of excise articles and promotion of khadi and swadeshi goods. At the insistence of the Assamese Congressmen, at the Nagpur session of the INC in December 1920, Assam was recognized as a separate Congress Province.5 In the very same year, in accordance with the provisions of the Government of India Act of 1919, Assam was given the status of a Governor’s province.

The prominent votaries of the new spirit of action oriented political campaign as Chandranath Sharma (1889–1922), Ambikagiri Raychaudhari (1885–1967), poet and litterateur, Tarun Ram Phookan, Nabin Chandra Bordoloi, Trigunacharan Barua, Kanak Chandra Sharma, Padmanath Jain, K. Chaliha and many others led meetings at various districts as Sibsagar, Jorhat, Dibrugarh and Nowgong, explaining and convincing the masses that ‘Assam must remain in the mainstream of nationalist politics, she could not remain aloof’.6

The Bardoli decision (1922) of Gandhi, following the Chauri-Chaura violence disillusioned nationalist workers. As the fervour of mass upsurge was ‘killed’ and this ‘failure’ resulted in a reorientation of strategies.

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