Working Committee, Plains Garos

A Memorandum regarding redemarcation of the present Garo Hills district in the linguistic basis as to include many Garos on its boarders in the new Constitution of India by the Garo people of Goalpara, Kamrup and Khasi-Hills districts submitted to the President of the Constituent Assembly, the Governor General of India, New Delhi

The undersigned humble representatives of the plains Garos as contradistinguished from their brethren in the Garo Hills. Our ancestors originally lived in the plains viz. in Amjonga, Damra, Derek and other places boardering on Assam and Bengal. Later on after the British occupation the boundaries of the district were demarcated for administrative purpose, as a result of which the plains portion where they lived were incorporated in the permanently settled districts of Goalpara, Kamrup and Khasi Hills and the district of Mymensing in Bengal. So they came to be governed under the new tenancy laws and became tenants of Bijni Raj and Mechpara Zamindar of Goalpara and Khasmehal tenants in Kamrup and Khasi Hills. In Bengal similarly the Garos on the boarders of Mymensing became tenants under the Rajas or Zamindars. The Garos clansmen were virtually autonomous and lived independently under their own Chiefs. The tract of lands in their occupation belonged to the Clans.

Now that the Zamindari system is going to be abolished it is only in the fitness of things that the areas inhabited by the plain Garos numbering well over about 100,000 and distributed in the border lands of Goalpara, Kamrup and the Khasi Hills district be transferred to the Garo Hills district so as to form a compact block on a linguistic basis. This change over it is submitted will not create any insurmountable difficulties.

Additional reasons for transfer.

(a) At present instructions in public schools are imparted through the medium of Assamese or Bengali, which presents a great difficulty to the young learners and handicaps their progress. Those difficulties will be removed if instructions be imparted through the medium of their own vernacular.

(b) The palins Garos as well as the Hills Garos belong to the same racial stock. But the former have lost their fundamental rights and privilages being out off from the brethren in the Hills. So they want to be united.

It is therefore prayed that the plains tracts in Goalpara, Kamrup, Khasi Hills and Mymensing districts be included in the Garo Hills district and with a view to this, such redistribution of boundaries of the districts be effected as to bring the Garos with one pact, homogenous block on a cultural and linguistic basis.

As the other Garos scattered in the districts of Assam and Bengal provinces the same rights and privilages as enjoyed by the Garo Hills people be also extended to them.

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Memo. No.
Dated, Santipur the 12th July, 1947.

Copy forwarded to the President Constituent Assembly Delhi for favour of information and necessary action.

Elison D Shira
President. Working
Committee.

(Notes:
1.Certain content in the document was unclear or incompletely written. The same has been marked as [unclear].
2.Typographical errors in the original document have been retained to ensure authentic reproduction of the original document.)