[Reader-list] Strangers in the City: Lives & Longings of Bangladeshi Immigrants in Guwahati-II

[abdus salam]

The venue: 
the high-sounding "Pink Palace"; in effect a flight of red sandstone
slabs yielding to an open-air platform adjoining the Administrative
Block of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
The occasion:
a 'Freshers Welcome Party' for the Assamese newcomers to the hallowed
institution, circa 2003.
As the searing August heat transmuted into a hallucinatory post-dinner
zephyr, the fledglings were paraded severally for their customary
shearing session. One worthy, in his introductory speech, addressed
the gathering in Hindi, attributing his inability to speak Assamese to
an upbringing primarily away from the state.His apologetical note got
a wag to offer an ready exoneration; the latter's contention being
that since even the Bangladeshis [in Assam] can speak Assamese,
proficiency in the language was no touchstone of authenticity.
What ostensibly was a witty repartee intended to bring the assembled
house down [in its English rendering attempted above, comes across as
half not funny] reveals, as i revisit the incident now, an outward
manifest of a notion, bordering almost on conviction, entrenched in
the Assamese consciousness-the 'ethnic Assamese' consciousness to be
more precise;put in commonspeak, a Bangladeshi is a Bangladeshi is a
Bangladeshi. Of the course the reality of the "Bongal/Mia" [local
derogatory appellations for the category in question] is a far more
layered one....but more on that later.