Several memorials to the 11 “language martyrs” commemorate Silchar, the epicenter of the Bengal-dominated Barak Valley in southern Assam, of the May 19, 1961 massacre. Many more dot the valley beyond. The primary memorial, the Shahid Minar or Martyr’s Tomb, is at Gandhibagh, a popular park in the center of Silchar. Eleven columns stand in their memory at the city crematorium, where the last rites of martyrdom were held.
But the memorial that most moves the townspeople is the brownish statue at the Silchar railway station where state police personnel shot dead 11 people, including 16-year-old Kamal Bhattacharya, who had gathered to protest the Assamese government’s decision to make Assamese the only official language.
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On Kalimohan Road, about 200 meters from the railway station memorial, stands the sprawling home of former Union minister Santosh Mohan Dev, one of the most influential politicians from India’s eight-state northeast. The Congress leader’s house was the power center of the valley — also adjoining Tripura — for three decades before he shifted to Kabindra Purkayastha’s house in Nutanpatty, about 1.5 km from the memorial.
Purkayastha, one of the founding members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Northeast in 1980, did not become as influential as Dev, but initiated the saffron wave in Assam by wresting the Silchar Lok Sabha seat from Dev in 1991 and securing 10 assembly seats, including nine from Barak Valley.
Connected by language
The two houses, divided by ideology, were united by a request to rename Silchar railway station as Bhasha Shahid (language martyrs) station. Dev pushed this demand and so did Purkayastha in Parliament. His son, Rajya Sabha member Kanad Purkayastha, renewed this demand in Delhi in December 2025. Leaders of the Left Front, which briefly called the Barak Valley shots in the 1970s, were on the same page.
“Barak Valley was untouched by the violence that gripped other parts of Assam after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992. It was because Hindus and Muslims first identified themselves as Bengalis. Unfortunately, the language bond is loosening due to BJP polarization,” says Pradip Dutta Roy, advocate and chief convener of the regional Barak Demo party. He adds that the BJP is no longer producing strong leaders in the Barak Valley who can take on Dispur (the seat of power in Assam’s Brahmaputra Valley) with a “bulldozing decision”.
“After the 1961 incident, the Assam government withdrew its controversial circular to make Bengali the official language in the Barak Valley, now comprising Cachar, Hailakandi and Sribhumi districts. But it tried to push through similar circulars in 1972, 1986 and 2013. In 1986, a year after the agitations ended, the agitations were mainly aimed at Bengali protests.” killed in police firing,” he says. Whether it was the Congress (1961, 1972 and 2013), the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP, 1986) or the BJP now, he feels the attitude of the Assam government towards the Barak Valley and its people has not changed. He points to the BJP-led state government’s “reluctance” to give shape to the Rs 8 crore Language Martyrs Museum announced in 2017.
Faith through the tongue
The sentiments associated with the 1961 murder are evident from a flex notice board put up by locals at the Silchar railway station. The signboard reads “Bhasha Sahid Railway Station Silchar” in Bengali, Hindi and English. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma stirred the debate when he said in 2025 that the no-objection certificate (NOC) sent to the Center for renaming the railway station was awaiting alternative proposals and feedback from other groups.
The Bhasha Shahid Shahid Smaran Committee, an organization seeking justice for language martyrs, accused him of speaking “half-truths” and slammed the proposal to rename the station after tribal freedom fighter Dimasa “with no direct connection to the station”. The organization’s general secretary Rajib Kar said the home ministry acted on the proposal of the Tarun Gogoi-led Congress government in 2016 and issued an NOC in November 2017, directing the Assam government to process the renaming through a gazette notification. The organization “does not understand” why the BJP-led government, which claims the support of Bengali Hindu voters in Assam, is delaying the announcement for nine years.
The neglect of the Barak Valley is not just about the railway station or the Bengali language, says Atanu Bhattacharjee, president of the Silchar Town Congress Committee. “Bengali Hindus and Muslims continue to be second-class citizens despite constituting more than 40% of Assam’s population. At least in the Barak Valley, the two communities enjoyed camaraderie until the BJP sowed the seeds of division on religious lines. Still, we hope things will change for the better when the regime changes,” he says. Elections to Assam are due in April.
“Our region is getting a stepmother from the mainstream leadership of Assam. We had to fight for institutions of higher education and healthcare, various development projects and even the East-West Corridor project that connects Saurashtra to Silchar,” he says. He adds that syndicates controlling businesses and natural resources are supported. “All this is happening behind the Hindu-Muslim narrative to divide people.”
He accuses the BJP of resorting to “gutter-level” politics, citing his case as an example. “I was suspended as general secretary of the Cachar District Sports Association and locked out of my office just for praising the elevation of Gaurav Gogoi as the Assam Congress president and hoping he would become the chief minister,” he says.
Ataur Rahman Mazarbhuiya, a former MLA who represented the All India United Democratic Front led by Badruddin Ajmal, agrees with Bhattacharjee. “There was a time when language mattered more in Barak Valley than faith. The drive to keep Muslims under control under the current regime seems to have been a factor behind the delimitation exercise that reduced the number of seats in the Barak Valley Assembly from 15 to 13,” he says. “Based on population, Barak Valley should have three more assembly seats,” he adds. According to the 2011 census, Muslims constitute roughly 51% of the population of Barak Valley. The number of Hindus is about 47%.
A busy square in the town of Silchar in election mode. | Photo credit: Rahul Karmakar
Erosion of representation
The 2023 delimitation exercise, reportedly proposed by Chief Minister Sarma, saw Barak Valley lose two assembly seats. Critics said it was designed to weaken the political influence of Muslims and consolidate Hindu votes. Hailakandi and Sribhumi (formerly Karimganj) districts, where Muslims constituted 60.31% and 56.36% of the population in 2011, each lost a seat. For example, Muslim seats in Algapur and Katlicherra were merged into a single entity, changing the electoral dynamics for minorities in the region.
Rupam Saha, Cachar district BJP president, defends the move. “We believe in the quality of candidates, not the quantity. We are confident of winning at least 10 seats in Barak Valley and those administrative representatives will have a stronger voice in Dispur than the numerically stronger MLAs who cannot make much of a difference,” he says. The confidence stems from the general perception that a large section of Muslims in the valley was packed into three constituencies: Algapur-Katlicherra, Karimganj South and Sonai.
The delimitation was not limited to Muslim-dominated areas, says Bhattacharjee. “Majority Hindu areas were also haphazardly transferred from one constituency to another. Take the case of Malogram, one of the four oldest urban constituencies of Silchar. The entire constituency of about 30,000 people was annexed to the Udharbond rural constituency. This was nothing but an insult to the people of Silchar and Bengal in general.”
Some in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), whose foundations have helped turn the Barak Valley into a saffron bastion since the 1950s, are not convinced by the idea of electing fewer Muslims to the 126-member Assam Assembly. “Our fight is not against Muslims, but against Islamic radicalism and everything associated with it. Ultimately, the region needs more votes to fight for its needs. And when the number of seats decreases, the region loses out to constituency-based development funds,” says an RSS pracharak associated with a top BJP leader from Maharashtra.
Dutta Roy sees the reduction in the number of seats in the Assembly as a long-term plan by the people of the Brahmaputra Valley to take over the Barak Valley linguistically. “The BJP has openly acknowledged Barak Valley and Bengalis for giving it room to grow in Assam and the rest of the Northeast, but it is far from Bengali. Many Bengalis from our valley got jobs during the Congress government. They constitute only 8% of government employees, compared to 60% during the Hiteswar Saikia-led Congress government,” he adds, adding that Bengal’s population of 3% is 3% of Bengal’s population. 30,000 of them had to get jobs out of 1,00,000 provided by successive BJP governments.“Only 2,100 from Barak Valley got jobs and most of the seats in our region are filled by people from Brahmaputra Valley who do not give Bengali the respect it deserves,” he says.
Saha says the BJP-led NDA has been on a mission to address regional imbalances, as evidenced by a number of projects, including a flyover to ease traffic congestion in Silchar and an agricultural institution in Sribhumi, both in various stages of implementation. “By awarding Padma Shri to Kabindra Purkayastha, the first local from Barak Valley to receive the award, albeit posthumously, the BJP has shown its respect for Bengalis. As for Silchar railway station, we also want to rename it, but some things take time,” says Saha.
As the BJP bids for another five years to fulfill its promises, the opposition — fractured on the surface — believes it is high time others were given a chance to do what the saffron brigade failed to do. “People in the valley are rioting, but quietly. We hope it will be reflected in the April 9 results,” says Mazarbhuiya.
rahul.karmakar@thehindu.co.in
