VOICING THE SILENCED: THE MARGINALISED ‘OTHER’ OF THE BRAHMAPUTRA VALLEY
Ms Alakananda Ghatak
Postgraduate Student, Department of English, Cotton University, Guwahati, Assam, India
Abstract:
Assam’s socio-economic retardation and the Assamese peasantry’s aversion to the
British Workforce led to a migration of labourers from the vicinal states to toil in
the commercial tea gardens of Assam. The independence only brought a shift in
hegemony as the socio-economic exploitation of the aborigines of the Brahmaputra
Valley subsisted. Assam’s tea-tribe unlike their counterparts across the nation is
deprived of the status of ‘Scheduled Tribes’ under the federal law on the basis that
they are not the original inhabitants of the land. On 24th November, 2007, Laxmi
Orang, an ‘adivasi’ woman of Assam’s tea-community was chased through the
streets of Guwahati and stripped naked in broad daylight by some male members
of the crowds thronging the state’s state capital, Dispur, for rallying in her tribe’s
protest against their social conditionand the denial of ‘tribal’ privileges. While
contemporary Assam features a multi ethnic and multi caste population, the
adivasis, owing to their ‘non-status’ are still subjected to extractive and economic
exploitations. The marginalisation of ‘indigenous subalterns’ (Byrd and
Rothberg,2011) persists on two levels: the community in general and women in
particular.Despite the ‘Plantation Labour Act, 1951’, there is a lack of proper
housing, education and sanitation among the state’s tea-workers. While the idea of
labour in tea-plantations is feminized as the nimble and tender fingers of women
are considered suitable for the delicate task of plucking leaves (Samar Singh,
1993), the reality is much darker. Even though the women constitute half the
workforce in the tea estates, they are paid lesser wage than their male counterparts.
According to the latest study conducted by Nazdeek (a legal empowerment
Organization), lack of proper nutrition and sanitation affects the health of the
women workers in the tea-estates. Anemia and maternal mortality is
disproportionally high among women in Assam’s tea estates while the tea-tribe
constitutes 69 percent of the state’s total mortality rate. The silenced voices of
Assam’s ‘indigenous subalterns’ however find a representation through the cultural
medium of literature. Arupa Patangia Kalita’s protagonist ‘Durgi Bhoomji’ (Josnar
Jhitas) symbolizes the voice of the women of the state’s tea-gardens and their
struggle with identity and recognition. Through the medium of poetry, tea-garden
poets like Sananta Tanty, Sameer Tanti and Kamal Kumar Tanti uphold the
rebellious angst of the silenced voices of the tea-community of Assam in general
and women of the tribe in particular. I argue that while the ‘adivasis’ cannot be
placed within the ‘Hindu-caste hierarchy’, there, however, exists a parallel in the
casteist exploitation of ‘dalits’ by a caste-inflicted Hindu society of the mainland
peninsula and the ‘anti-casteist caste’ exploitation of the tea-aborigines of the
Brahmaputra Valley by the mainstream Assamese community as there exists an
unresolved conflict between the original inhabitants of the area, primarily
indigenous tribes and the more recent ‘sons-of-the-soil’ settlers (Myron Weiner,
1978). I argue that this gendered life of tea-garden women renders them marginal
and is not separate from the operative postcolonial state of the “other” even as the
suppressed community struggles to find a voice and escape the stranglehold of yet
another ‘caste’ and exclusion.
Key Words: Aborigines, anti-casteism, dalit, marginalisation, post-colonialism,
subaltern, ‘other’.