The Last Battle of Saraighat by Rajat Sethi & Shubhrastha

Author:Rajat Sethi & Shubhrastha
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789387326323
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2017-11-02T04:00:00+00:00

Navigating the Complex Demographic Maze

As discussed in earlier chapters, Upper Assam was the seat of the Ahom kingdom which reigned for almost six centuries uninterrupted. The Ahoms and their politics completely dominated this region, especially the districts of Sibsagar, Jorhat and Dibrugarh. Another big demography that had settled in the region around the middle of the nineteenth century was that of the tea tribes working in the tea estates. The rest of the demography included plain tribal groups, such as Sonowal Kachari, Mishing, Motok and Moran. The Congress believed that it would be able to hold on to the Ahom fortress in Sibsagar and Jorhat because it was the stronghold of Tarun Gogoi, who was himself an Ahom. BJP had its own set of Ahom leaders, but no one was as towering as Tarun Gogoi.

The BJP put up Sarbananda Sonowal as its major contender, who belongs to the socially weaker Sonowal Kachari tribe, against the princely Ahoms led by Gogoi. This move helped several small tribal groups come together in favour of the BJP, and the elections in Upper Assam were left in the hands of the tea tribes.

As an Assamese journalist describes—‘you know you are in upper Assam by merely smelling the air. With roughly 800 tea gardens spread across the seven upper Assam districts of Jorhat, Golaghat, Sibsagar, Dibrugarh, Tinsukia, Lakhimpur and Dhemaji, the robust aroma of freshly plucked tea leaves is difficult to escape’.1

The manual labour required at these tea estates is the main source of employment for the state’s tea tribes. Four generations of these tribes have now been living in the state. Only a few families have been able to emerge from the vicious circle of poverty in the estate and moved to other professions. Others are short on dreams. They have never experienced life out of the estates. Their daily schedules are micromanaged by estate managers, which even includes when they should eat and sleep. Demographically, the tea garden workers, ex-workers and their families account for up to 31 lakh people, or nearly 17 per cent of the state’s population.2

The BJP’s entire strategy of sweeping Upper Assam hinged on the support of tea tribes. Tea workers are in a position to influence the outcome of as many as sixty assembly constituencies and five parliamentary constituencies—Kaliabor, Mangaldoi, Dibrugarh, Lakhimpur and Jorhat. In the run-up to the elections, the BJP invested substantial effort to further consolidate on the electoral progress it had made in the tea estates during the 2014 campaign. For the first time in the history of television in Assam, a TV commercial was broadcasted in the Santhali dialect prominently used by the tea tribes. This advertisement highlighted how for four generations of tea tribes, from the time when they first migrated to Assam till today, their lives have remained virtually unchanged. A century ago, they were plucking tea leaves for ten hours a day, and a century later, they do the very same for a similar number of hours each day. It was

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