GUWAHATI, July 7 � Tarun Gogoi was the President of the preparatory reception committee that saw the birth of the All Assam Students� Union (AASU) in Jorhat. The first Congress ministry after Independence saw serious infighting for plum portfolios and Md Tyebulla refused the Panchayat portfolio but wanted PWD. Gopinath Bardoloi resigned more than six times due to infighting amongst the top Congress leaders. These are some of findings of the modern history of Assam being published by the Nanda Talukdar Foundation.
Axom, the six-volume set of history written by journalist Mrinal Talukdar and advocate Kishore Kumar Kalita, is the first of its kind and has documented the entire post-Independence history of Assam right up to 2000.
�This has been a never before attempt,� said Talukdar adding that the work started in March 2011 and it has been entirely private funded with no institutional, organizational or individual fund being sought or received for this mammoth project.
Axom has six volumes � each volume dedicating one decade � with the first volume taking care of 1945-50, and the subsequent volumes dealing with the decades up to the year 2000.
The director of the project is Kangkan Dutta and the research team comprises Uddipta Hazarika and Krishna Talukdar.
�This is the first ever comprehensive history of modern Assam, and in fact, this will be the first such attempt in the entire country, as post-Independence India has not been chronicled in this way,� said Talukdar.
The volumes have also documented how the Congress has always been crippled by internal dissension since the beginning and it was much more intense between 1945-1975 than the present dissension.
�The original dissenter, Debeswar Sharma, was banished to Imphal, where his phone was also tapped. Then Moinul Haq Chaudhury and Devkanta Barua continued the tradition of dissent in the Congress, which was later carried forward by Hiranya Bora and now Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma,� said Talukdar.
In fact, the history set has documented how Bishnuram Medhi lost his job as he was a hardliner against the line system that allowed immigration of Muslim farmers into Assam.
It has also documented how the Assam Accord was allegedly pre-decided by Prafulla Kumar Mahanta and the late Bhrigu Kumar Phukan with the SIB officials and there was actually no discussion with the rest of the team.
In fact, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi was the chairman of the reception committee that saw the birth of AASU in October 1 and 2, 1966 at Jorhat. However, Gogoi left the post just before the actual function, as he contested a local body election in Jorhat.
