ABSTRACT
Post-war Assam was witness to intense political activity. On the one hand was the accession of the Congress to power in Assam and on the other was an unprecedented mobilization of the Muslim League to enlist Assam within the Partition scheme. Muslim peasant immigration from East Bengal to Assam which was a recurrence since the second decade of the twentieth century came to be a persistent irritant in Congress–League political struggle with the Muslim League becoming more aggressive to include the province in Pakistan. The Sylhet referendum was the culmination of this intense struggle as it was the ‘first and last struggle.’ Sylhet in 1947 became a conflict zone where the Sylhetis had to balance themselves between ethno-linguistic identity on the one hand and religious identities on the other. The Referendum and the Partition politics in Assam (through Sylhet) can be an interesting case study to locate this situation as this tussle came to cast its shadow on grassroots mobilization reflected in anecdotes, songs, poems and slogans. These sources could be used to construct a history of Partition that could be an alternative technique to understand the history of the event.
