Assam was constituted into a province by the British rulers of India to meet the colonial needs of a viable province in the Northeastern part of their Indian empire. It was accomplished in stages by subjugating the erstwhile Ahom kingdom or Assam proper and its neighbouring hitherto independent hill tribal areas in several instalments and annexing those to the Bengal presidency and thereafter by separating the Assam division from Bengal (in 1874) and transferring to it not only the adjoining hill districts but also three traditionally Bengal districts (namely, Goalpara, Sylhet and Cachar) from the Cooch Behar and Dacca divisions. In the province of Assam, so created by the British, the Assam proper or the traditional Assamese heartland formed only a small part and the Assamese people a minority. The Assamese, the Bengali and a large number of tribal groups were indigenous in their respective areas, but each one was a minority in the total population of the province and thereby the condition was created for each group to suffer threats to ethnic and linguistic identity. The problem was complicated further by naming it 'Assam', despite the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural character of the province. The name carried the impression of the legitimacy of an Assamese predomination in the entire province, including the traditionally non-Assamese areas. The seeds of discord were thus planted, and the quest for identity and the ethnic and linguistic assertions culminating in the movements for administrative reorganization and creation of new states in the post-independence period were the historical consequences of the artificial constitution of a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural province by denying the people the right to linguistic states. The book delves into this history of making and unmaking of the British Assam.
Author of ten major works (in English and Assamese) and more than two hundred research papers and editor of fifteen collections, Professor JB Bhattacharjee is one of the pioneers in Northeast India Studies. The founder General Secretary of the North East India History Association (NEIHA) and a former President of the North East India Council for Social Science Research (NEICSSR), the foundation of the Institute of Northeast India Studies in Kolkata is his latest initiative in bringing Northeast India Studies into national and global focus. His Presidential Addresses to the Modern India Section of the Indian History Congress (Gorakhpur, 1989); History and Culture Section of the Indian Social Science Congress (Bangalore, 1993); 14th Annual Session of the North East India History Association (Jorhat, 1993); and 3rd Annual Session of the Indian Congress for Asian and Pacific Studies (Jammu, 2000); and Keynote Address to Paschim Banga Itihas Samsad (Calcutta, 1994) are specimens of his scholarship. He delivered the Chandrakanta Memorias Lectures at NEIHA (Kohima, 1998); Η Κ Barpujari Endowment Lectures at NEIHA (Guwahati, 2003) at Dibrugarh University (Dibrugarh, 2007) and at Institute of Historical Studies (Kolkata, 2008). Beginning his career in Assam Education Service (AES), he taught History at Government College, Jowai and thereafter joined the newly founded North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU). He served NEHU as Head, Department of History; Dean, School of Social Sciences; Director, NEHU Publications; Editor, NEHU Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities; officiating Vice-Chancellor, and in many other capacities from time to time till his retirement as the Seniormost Professor of the University. He also served ICSSR-NERC as its Hony. Director. Professor Bhattacharjee was founder Vice-Chancellor of Assam University, Silchar, where he served for a full term (1994-99). He visited UK, USA, Canada and Malta on academic assignments in various Universities.
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