Additional information
by Arupjyoti Saikia (Author)
The crucial battles of World War II fought in India's north-east-followed soon after by Independence and Partition-had a critical impact on the making of modern Assam. In the three decades following 1947, the state of Assam underwent massive political turmoil, geographical instability, and social and demographic upheaval, among others. Later, the truncated state suffered widespread unrest as various groups believed their cultural identity and political leverage were under threat. New social energies and political forces were unleashed and came to the fore.
Author Biography
Arupjyoti Saikia is a professor of history at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. He held the Agrarian Studies Programme Fellowship at Yale University and visiting fellow positions at Cambridge University and School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
Saikia is the author of Forests and Ecological History of Assam, 1826-2000 (OUP, 2011), A Century of Protests: Peasant Politics in Assam since 1900 (Rutledge, 2014) and The Unquiet River: A Biography of the Brahmaputra (OUP, 2019). His A Century of Protests won the Srikant Dutt book prize awarded by the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi in 2015. The Unquiet River was short-listed for Kamala Devi Chattopadhayay Book Award in 2020 and long listed for Atta Galatta-Bangalore Literature Festival Book Prize in 2020 and got 'Honorable Mention' for Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize in 2021 given by the Association of Asian Studies.
