‘We are with culture but without geography’: locating Sylheti identity in contemporary India

Abstract

The partition of the Indian subcontinent not only created new state boundaries, but also forged or altered cultural identities. It left a lasting legacy in Sylhet, a Bangla-speaking, Muslim majority district of Assam, which was partitioned in July 1947. Like other partitioned groups in the subcontinent, Sylhetis too are spread across international borders and boundaries, in this case in Bangladesh as well as India. This essay shows how modern state-dictated contours of political geography more often than not create spaces of anxiety and conflict where multiple identities, mostly fluid and contested, emerge, dwell and play politics. Beginning with the colonial history of Sylhet, particularly since 1874 when the district was separated from Bengal Presidency and attached to Assam, the essay moves across 1947 to map the process by which the distinctly fused colonial Sylheti identity stood re-constructed in post-colonial India. Divided into three sections, it begins with the political history of colonial Sylhet until referendum and partition, followed by a contemporary account of the community, its middle class in particular. The third and final part of the essay attempts to map the trajectory of Sylheti identity discourse in colonial and contemporary India.