Majuli: Between the river and the island
December 1995

We reached Neemati Ghat from Jorhat well in time to catch the 10.30 ferry to Majuli. At the island we got off, and rushed to the waiting bus, which took us to the next ferry, across a trickle of water, but too large to ford on foot. Then it was a long walk to the next bus, which finally deposited us in Kamlabari, the largest town on the island. There is only one hotel, the Madhumita Hotel. Its electricity connection (has been) disconnected for the last two months. It is owned by the Hazarika family, well-known local politicians, with a finger in every pie, including the local transport system —— a bus and a truck —— and some side business, especially 'contracting', which seems to be a favourite vocation all over the North East. The younger brother, Manas, is always friendly and smiling, always ready to help out.

About five kilometers and a half-hour bus ride (gives you a relative idea of what the roads are like) takes you to Garamur, the 'capital' of Majuli, housing the few government departments that are present there —— the SDO (Civil), the ubiquitous Flood Control Department, and of course the PWD. Attracted by a large sign that said “Information and Publicity Department”, we walked up a flight of stairs to a newly constructed office, where we met the affable information officer.

No, we have no maps. No, we have no information.No, we have no booklets. Why do you want all this information anyway? But we managed to get a few names from him, and walked back to Kamlabari, after waiting unsuccessfully for the bus for an hour.

Majuli is home to the Vaishnava cult of Sankardeb and Madhabdeb, reformers of the orthodoxy of Hinduism. They have a wide following all over Assam, but in Majuli it is still preserved, as if the island has been sheltered from the moral and spiritual ravages of the world that passes by the river banks. Even the Mishing community have taken to the religion, observing the same festivals and symbols. The core of the practice is the naamghar, a community centre for worship, meetings and even festivities and Majuli still has five of these centres. Each sub-group, called 'satra', is supported by contributions from the local people.

Walking is really the way to discover the magic of the island. There are fields drenched with the golden yellow of mustard in full bloom, the storks standing placidly as you walk past, scarcely turning their heads to look. In the distance you can see the Mishing houses, perched on stilts. The silence is broken with the rhythmic thwack of the looms and the thud-thud pounding of the grain. In the morning the island is shrouded in mist, and as the orb of the sun ascends the tree tops, the mist lifts, shyly like a veil being raised. In the evening standing at the ghat you can hear the wake of canoes lilting on the shore.

But there is another, more poignant side to this near ethereal beauty and silence. You can feel it in the people, catch a hint of the tension in their conversation. Anando Hazarika, professor of geography at the college in Kamlabari, says that the island has shrunk by over five hundred square kilometers in the last twenty years, as the Brahmaputra breaks against the shores and inexorably, but quickly swallows the land.

We visited Kanyajan, the worst-affected area in recent times. Ranian Payeng, the son of the headmaster of the primary school at Kanyajan, took us on a trip to the embankment away where some of those whose houses were washed away were rebuilding their lives. Forty families from Nam Sonwal, an equal number from upper Botiya Mari, the numbers are in excess of two hundred. Many of these are living on the embankment itself, taking a chance with farming the land that is free for the next few months before the rains start again.

I asked some of them whether they had received any compensation from the government: alternative land, or cash. They all said they had received nothing. Later I spoke with the deputy commissioner of Jorhat, a young administrative officer called Anil Sachan. He was surprised. We've rehabilitated many of the families from there, in Lakhimpur, Jorhat, Dibrugarh, Tinsukia.... but few stay, wanting instead to return to the river banks where though the life is more difficult, the farming is easier. In fact the frequent flooding and compensation have done more damage to the psyche than to the land, he argued. Now people expect the State to do everything, and are simply unprepared to act on their own. It is almost as if society has abdicated all responsibility to the State, which is unhealthy in the long run.

Payeng's house is one of the three surviving in one stretch of the village, and he is sure that it's going to be the last year for them as well. 'Floods we've learned to live with', he explained to me, 'but the loss of the land which nurtured us has made survival difficult'. This seemed contrary to what we had read, and understood, with the word 'floods' conjuring up pictures of hapless victims being airdropped supplies as swirling waters destroyed homes and property. He explained patiently. 'Yes', he said, 'the waters do come up to our houses, but we have lofts, where we can live safely —— and once the waters recede, the land is fertile with silt, and anything sprinkled as an offering takes root, and grows. But when the river swallows the land, and regurgitates it in the form of a sandbank on the other side, the soil is useless. Even grass doesn't grow'.

'What we need,' he said, 'is erosion control, not flood control. The people of Majuli know how to live with floods. What we can't deal with is the insecurity of not knowing whether there will be any Majuli left at all at this rate.'

Tankeswar Kakoty, a government official who has been born and brought up on the island, and was in charge of the ambitious Total Literacy Campaign, echoes his sentiments. 'Everybody here knows how to swim,' he said. 'In fact the floods are good for us, we require them for the paddy crop. But now we're scared to build, scared to invest in the land, because everything is so uncertain. Here today, gone tomorrow.'

One of the local boys said that there was a method in the (government's efforts of) building embankments. They would start long before the rainy season, but would be unable to finish in time. One flood would wash it all away, and the damage would mean a net profit for the engineers and the contractors involved in the project, because there would be nothing to show afterwards, and the money could be distributed around.

But this palpable feeling of imminent apocalypse isn't felt everywhere on the island. A two-hour bus ride will take you to the northern tip, the town of Jengari-mukh, a settlement predominantly of Mishing tribes people. There the shops in the Naya-bazar, and the iron rods sticking out of the RCC structures speak of a sense of security, and permanence, but on looking below the surface, things are not quite tranquil as they seem. There is very little by way of health infrastructure, and productivity of the land is low, the easy-going people relying on the richness of the land to take a simple crop. The agriculture is truly natural, relying on nothing artificial —— no fertiliser, no pesticide —— and the rice is sweet. But what would fetch a fortune as 'naturally grown' in the west only manages to keep these farmers at the edge of survival, getting less than five hundred rupees per quintal. As you walk through the settlements, you can see many women on the loom, weaving their colourful dress. The traditional designs and colours are a complex weave, but the skills are in the blood. It is essential for every girl to learn. Without that essential qualification, getting married would be difficult.

Anando Hazarika felt that the way to tackle the erosion problem was to build 'spurs' (formation of rock-breakers) on Majuli; Payeng felt that dredging the river would be a more sustainable, long-term solution —— but both are expensive, and without the political clout or numbers, the fate of Majuli is uncertain. As the river breaks its banks with regularity every year, the people of Jorhat are getting better organised, and there is now a popular move to build a spur on the Jorhat side of the river, opposite Majuli. That course of action would be dangerous, even catastrophic for Majuli. As the river is pushed back from the spur at Jorhat, it will seek its natural flow and flood  the mid-river island. One example of this is already there in recent memory —— the spur built at Kokilamukh, in Jorhat, resulted in Ahatguri mouza (village) in Majuli being washed away.

The erosion of Majuli will mean even more than the loss of land, or of livelihoods; it will mark the extinction of a way of life.

Majuli, the second time round
February 1996

Getting to Majuli was the same. They say it will be different once the river swells, and the ferry can come all the way up to the police thana, at the edge of Kamlabari —— but now it is a long, dusty,
bumpy ride, crowded by sweaty bodies and the flavour of fermented tambul, the supari that seems to be the staple diet everywhere in the North East.

The mustard has ripened in the fields, and will be ready for harvest by ali ay ligang, the spring festival of the Mishing tribe. In the first week of Phalgun, the festival is also the event around which the traditional paddy is sown —— both the short maturing ahu variety and the longer maturing bao. The seeds will be broadcast together, and the only intervention of man after that is the bindha, or weeding —— everything else is left to nature. No fertiliser, no pesticide. Just the natural warmth of the river, land, earth and the sun. The ahu will be harvested in May-June at the height of the monsoon. It will be interesting to watch how they manage. Even now, at the tail end of winter, clothes don't dry in a day. During those rain-filled days, how will the paddy be dried, and threshed? Uma Takoe and his wife treated the question with equanimity. 'The women thresh the grain with their feet,' he informed us. In one day they can do as much as seventy kilograms. Of course, now there are bullocks as well (for threshing).

Both the ahu and the bao are for home consumption —— few families sell the rice. The rice for sale is the sali paddy, transplanted in June.

One evening we dropped in to see Mrs. Anjailie Thakur, the secretary of the Federation of Mahila Samitis in Majuli. They have 165 village-level primary societies, each with twenty to fifty members, some involved in weaving or sericulture on a part-time basis. The district Samiti had got a grant from Oxfam to distribute seeds to people affected by the floods last year. Now as a follow-up they are attempting a 'joint farming' project involving twenty landless women farming on leased land.

Her husband Premananda Thakur dropped in at this point, and took over. Picture him: late fifties, thick glasses, belly protruding from carelessly stitched trousers, muffler round his face, plastic bag dangling from the cycle handlebars as he makes his way back from the school, where he has been teaching all his working life. Could be like any other middle-class small town school teacher. When you start conversation, there is a sincerity and warmth that surprises you. He comes from a land-owning family, but a lot of that land is eroded now, lost to the Brahmaputra. He mentioned in a matter of fact way that where we were meeting was their third home, the other two lost in the waters. He has given land for the local girls' school in Kamlabari, and to set up a Hindi school in the town. His latest project is to 'liberate' thirty-six families in a village called Bariteka. All of them are from the tea-garden labour community, an amalgam of races and tribes from Bihar, Orissa and Bengal. They have all lost their land by mortgaging it for money to buy bullocks, or to pay for weddings, or deal with the expenses of sickness. Now landless, they work as daily wage labourers on land that was once theirs. Premnanda and his wife weren't sure about how they were going to rehabilitate them, but it has become an important priority. We were humbled as well. Professional social workers, paid to make a living from helping others deal with their poverty and deprivation — yet here were a couple, struggling to keep their land, and fully dedicated to the cause of others.

And it wasn't just an isolated case. One day we travelled to Jengrai-mukh, and encountered Prabhabati Doley, a Mishing tribal lady who is a teacher in the local high school. Prabha Doley took us around her house. It seemed quite ordinary: cattle, fish pond, small shed for silk worms, spinning wheel and loom —— but when she recounted the story of her struggle, it became transformed into a battlefield. Mishing women have no right to inherit property, she said, or to participate in the council, or kebang meeting of the village. They are treated like property, left, and brought and sold. Yet no mishing woman had ever spoken up against this. When she did, there began a time of ostracism. She became the reference point for others to say why they would not educate their daughters, turning them into women who would rebel against traditional norms and order. Yet she persisted, and was recognised. She became the president of the state-level federation of women's associations, and today she is invited to sit on committees, and discuss the general development of the village.

On our way out of Majuli, we stopped at the Garamur satra. Custodian of the spiritual values of seventy thousand people, the satradhikar (chief priest) of the Garamur satra is only thirty-two, and has already been satradhikar for the last eleven years. Earlier, the state used to provide patronage, and the public used to provide contributions that managed all the activities —— the cultural programmes, and the community works. But in the last twenty years, much has changed.

Lands have been taken back, and people have stopped supporting the satra the way they used to earlier. But people still have faith, and it is this faith that seems to drive this young, austere man. We asked him if there was any special 'value' education for children, and he said that we could think of some kind of regular dialogue with children in the future. On insurgency, and exploitation of the people: if the need comes, we will join in the struggle. Our earlier gurus have been jailed for the role in the freedom struggle, and we do not draw such clear lines between the spiritual and the temporal.

Excerpted with permission from Sanjoy's Assam, edited by Sumita Ghosh and Published by Penguin Books India