A Glimpse of the Life and Time of Piyali Barua

A hero resurrected

Book title: A Glimpse of the Life and Time of Piyali Barua

Author: Amulya Ch. Sarma

Publisher: Purbanchal Prakash

Pages: 95

Price: 200

Biography is a tricky terrain. Especially, if it happens to be on a much-written-about historical figure. It requires daunting research and dizzying fact-finding trips to libraries and tonnes of references of earlier biographies to go through.

Retired principal of Jorhat College, Amulya Ch. Sarma, did not have any such dilemma while writing his short biography of Assamese freedom fighter, Piyali Barua.

By his own admission, there is not much evidence about the man who gave Assam a place in the freedom struggle.

Plainly, if a bit unimaginatively named, A Glimpse of the Life and Time of Piyali Barua , makes no pretences of reaching the realm of high biographical literature.

The author begins by laying to rest decades of confusion over freedom fighters Piyali Phukan and Piyali Barua.

Barua, the eponymous hero, had probably not even been born when Piyali Phukan was hanged by the British.

While Piyali Phukan was captured and executed in 1830 by the Sivasagar tank for collecting arms and recruiting men to fight against the British, Piyali Barua was hanged in 1858 along with Maniram Dewan in Jorhat, the last metropolis of the Ahom kingdom, a year after the Sepoy Mutiny broke out.

The capital punishment shocked Assam, which had not seen public executions before, not even during the Ahom era.

Sarma begins at the beginning, explaining the waning of the Ahom era following Burmese and later British invasion.

The British helped defeat the Burmese but did not keep their word of handing over power to Assam rulers after the war. Like in the rest of India, the British East India Company Assam swallowed Assam and there began a tale of massive social and economical change, explains Sarma.

While some welcomed the reforms and the foreign goods that added to their comfort, most resented the new administrative and revenue structures. From this resentment, Piyali Phukan’s 1829-30 rebellion and born and soon crushed.

Piyali Barua was born and raised in this dual atmosphere of reverence towards and resentment against the British and their ways of life. But from all the evidence available, the author surmised that Barua was a man of simple disposition, who shunned the Western bent of his times.

The man who goaded him to join 1857 war of Independence and shared the execution plank with him was Maniram Dewan, the charismatic aristocrat with four wives and huge wealth. Sarma takes care to point out the stark difference between Maniram Dewan and Piyali Barua. Maniram Dewan, an elderly man with considerable power, had won the admiration of the British for his knowledge and intellect. He liked the ways of the British but was trying to restore power to an Assam king and petitioned the British rulers in that regard.

His petition rejected, Maniram Dewan began coaxing youths to launch a war against the British, one of them being Piyali Barua.

Sarma ends with a moving account of the execution but the point of this short chronicle is rendition of justice. The author feels historians have been unjust to Piyali Barua, first mistaking him for the earlier freedom fighter and then suppressing his story under the more flamboyant tales of Maniram Dewan.

Sarma achieves that, but little else.

The narration is tedious, and the language dull — one of the reasons why fascinating tales from the past are ignored by students and “history” is regarded a “bore”.

Poor editing makes it an irritating read — “born” becomes “barn” in one place, for instance — an unacceptable glitch for books of such import.

SOMA BANERJEE

Published on January 13, 2012

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120113/jsp/northeast/story_14992505.jsp