Several memorials to the 11 “language martyrs” commemorate Silchar, the center of the Bengali-dominated Barak Valley in southern Assam. Massacre on May 19, 1961. There is much more beyond the valley. The primary monument, the Shaheed Minar or Martyrs’ Tomb, is in Gandhibagh, a popular park in the center of Silchar. Eleven pillars stand in memory of the martyrs at the cremation ground in the city, where they were cremated.
But the memorial that most affects the city dwellers is the brown statue at the Silchar railway station, where state police personnel shot dead 11 people, including 16-year-old Kamala Bhattacharya, who had gathered to protest the Assam government’s decision to implement Assamese as the sole official language.
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On Kalimohan Road, about 200 meters from the railway station memorial, is the spacious house of former Union minister Santosh Mohan Dev, one of the most influential politicians to emerge from India’s eight-state northeast. The Congress leader’s house was the power center of the valley – bordering Tripura – for three decades before it was shifted to Kabindra Purkayastha’s house in Nutanapatti, about 1.5 km from the memorial.
Purkayastha, one of the founding members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the northeast in the 1980s, did not become as influential as Deo, but heralded the saffron wave in Assam by wresting the Silchar Lok Sabha seat from Deo in 1991 and ensuring 10 assembly seats, including nine from the Barak Valley, that year.
united by a language
Divided by ideology, both the Houses have come together to demand renaming of Silchar Railway Station as Bhasha Shaheed (Language Martyr) Railway Station. Dev and Purkayastha also supported this demand in the Parliament. His son, Rajya Sabha member Kanad Purkayastha, refreshed the demand in Delhi in December 2025. Leaders of the Left Front, who had briefly fired in the Barak Valley in the 1970s, were also on the same side.
“The Barak Valley was untouched by the violence that broke out in other parts of Assam after the Babri Masjid demolition in December 1992. This was because Hindus and Muslims first identified themselves as Bengalis. Unfortunately, the polarization of the BJP brand is weakening the ties over language,” says Pradip Dutta Roy, lawyer and chief convenor of the regional Barak Democratic Front party. He says the BJP can no longer produce strong leaders in the Barak Valley who can withstand the “bulldozer decisions” from Dispur (Assam’s seat of power in the Assamese-dominated Brahmaputra Valley).
“After the 1961 incident, the Assam government withdrew its controversial circular to make Bengali the official language in the Barak Valley, which now includes Cachar, Hailakandi and Sribhoomi districts. But it tried to push through similar circulars in 1972, 1986 and 2013. In 1986, a year after the Assam agitation, which mainly targeted Bengalis, ended, two more were killed in police firing. Protesters were killed,” he says. Be it Congress (1961, 1972, and 2013), Assam Gana Parishad (AGP, 1986) or now BJP, they feel that the attitude of the Assam government towards Barak Valley and its people has not changed. He points to the “reluctance” of the BJP-led state government to give shape to the ₹8 crore Bhasha Shaheed Memorial Museum announced in 2017.
trust in words
The sentiments associated with the 1961 murder are evident in a flex signboard put up by locals at Silchar railway station. The signboard reads “Bhasha Shaheed Railway Station Silchar” in Bengali, Hindi and English. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had sparked a debate in 2025 by saying that the No Objection Certificate (NOC) sent to the Center regarding changing the name of the railway station was pending due to alternative proposals and response from other groups.
Bhasha Shaheed Station Shaheed Smaran Samiti, an organization seeking justice for language martyrs, accused him of speaking “half truth” and condemned his attempt to rename the railway station after the Dimasa tribal freedom fighter, which “had no direct connection with the station”. The organization’s general secretary Rajib Kar said the Home Ministry acted on a proposal by the Tarun Gogoi-led Congress government in 2016 and issued an NOC in November 2017 directing the Assam government to process the name change through a gazette notification. The organization fails to understand why the BJP-led government, which claims to have the support of Bengali Hindu voters in Assam, is delaying the notification for nine years.
Atanu Bhattacharjee, president of Silchar Town Congress Committee, says the neglect of Barak Valley is not just about a railway station or the Bengali language. “Despite constituting more than 40% of Assam’s population, Bengali Hindus and Muslims remain second-class citizens. At least in Barak Valley, both communities enjoyed harmony until the BJP sowed the seeds of division on religious lines. Still, we hope things will improve when the regime changes.” Elections are to be held in Assam in April.
He says, “Our region gets step-motherly treatment from the mainstream Assam leadership. We have had to struggle for higher education and health care institutions, various developmental projects and even the East-West Corridor project connecting Saurashtra to Silchar is getting delayed.” He says syndicates that control businesses and natural resources are being encouraged. “All this is being done behind the Hindu-Muslim narrative to keep people divided.”
Citing his case as an example, he accused the BJP of resorting to “gutter-level” politics. “I was suspended from the post of general secretary of Cachar District Sports Association and locked out of my office because I had appreciated the elevation of Gaurav Gogoi as Assam Congress president and had expected him to become the chief minister,” he says.
Former MLA Ataur Rahman Mazrabhuiya, representing the All India United Democratic Front led by Badruddin Ajmal, agrees with Bhattacharjee. He says, “There was a time when language, not faith, mattered more in Barak Valley. Under the current regime, the attempt to keep Muslims under control has been a factor behind the delimitation process, which has reduced the number of assembly seats in Barak Valley from 15 to 13.” “Given the population, there should have been three more assembly seats in Barak Valley,” he says. According to the 2011 census, Muslims constitute about 51% of the population of Barak Valley. Hindu numbers are around 47%.
A busy intersection in Silchar city in election atmosphere. | Photo courtesy: Rahul Karmakar
erosion of representation
Barak Valley was forced to lose two assembly seats in the 2023 delimitation exercise, reportedly designed by Chief Minister Sarma. Critics said it was designed to weaken the political influence of Muslims and consolidate Hindu votes. Hailakandi and Sribhoomi (formerly Karimganj) districts, where Muslims constituted 60.31% and 56.36% of the population in 2011, lost one seat each. For example, the Muslim-dominated Algapur and Katlichera seats were merged into one unit, changing the electoral dynamics for minorities in the region.
BJP’s Cachar district president Rupam Saha defends the move. He says, “We believe in the quality of candidates, not numbers. We are confident of winning at least 10 seats in Barak Valley, and the right representatives will have a stronger voice in Dispur than numerically strong MLAs who may not make much difference.” This belief stems from the common belief that a large section of Muslims in the valley is packed into three constituencies: Algapur-Katlicherra, Karimganj South and Sonai.
Bhattacharya says, delimitation did not affect only Muslim dominated areas. He says, “Predominantly Hindu areas have also been randomly transferred from one constituency to another. Take the case of Malogram, one of the oldest four municipal wards of Silchar. The entire ward of about 30,000 people was annexed to the rural Udharbond constituency. This was nothing but an insult to the people of Silchar and Bengalis in general.”
Some in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), whose groundwork in the 1950s helped turn Barak Valley into a saffron stronghold, do not agree with the idea of electing fewer Muslims to the 126-member Assam Assembly. “Our fight is not against Muslims, but against Islamic fundamentalism and everything associated with it. At the end of the day, the region needs more voices to fight for its needs. And when the number of seats goes down, the region is deprived of constituency-based development funds,” says a Maharashtra-based RSS pracharak associated with a top BJP leader.
Datta Roy sees the assembly seat reduction as a long-term plan by the people of the Brahmaputra Valley to take over the Barak Valley linguistically. “The BJP has openly acknowledged the Barak Valley and Bengalis that they gave it room to grow in Assam and the rest of the Northeast, but this is far from Bengali-friendly,” he says. Many Bengalis from our valley got jobs during the Congress rule. They constitute only 8% of government employees, down from 60% during the Hiteshwar Saikia-led Congress government.” He further said that if Bengalis constitute 30% of Assam’s population, 30,000 of them should have got jobs. Out of the 1,00,000 provided by successive BJP governments. He says, “Only 2,100 people from Barak Valley got jobs and most of the posts in our region are being filled by people from Brahmaputra Valley, who do not give the Bengali language the respect it deserves.”
Saha says the BJP-led NDA is on a mission to address regional imbalances, as evidenced by several projects in various stages of implementation, including a flyover to ease traffic congestion in Silchar and an agricultural institute in Sribhoomi. Saha says, “By giving the Padma Shri to Kavindra Purkayastha, the first local from Barak Valley to receive the award posthumously, the BJP has shown that it respects Bengalis. As far as Silchar railway station is concerned, we want it to be renamed too, but some things take time.”
While the BJP wants five more years to fulfill its promises, the opposition – scattered on the surface – believes the time has come for others to do what the saffron brigade could not. “People are revolting in the valley, but quietly. We hope this will be reflected in the results on April 9,” says Majarbhuiya.
rahul.karmakar@thehindu.co.in
