Assam Oil and Second World War
Yesterday I was at an event at Bangalore International Center, the launch of the Book “10,000 Memories — A Live History of Partition”.
An initiative by the 1947 Partition Archive (https://in.1947partitionarchive.org/) which has collected 11,000 oral histories of partition witnesses is now coming with a series of 20 volumes narrating them with photographs. This book is the first volume.
We all know that partition history, especially human stories has not been covered well. Initiatives like this help, especially when a handful of the witnesses are still alive and second-hand accounts are not that relevant.
There were very interesting nuggets — like one Sikh Gentleman who grew up in Burma but had to come back to India after Burma was occupied by the Japanese, and local Burmese formed Freedom Block to “retake” the country from the outsiders — primarily Bengalis, Tamils, and Punjabis.
In the later part of his life, the same gentleman became an Air Force Pilot. When partition happened, and people were migrating across the borders with convoys as long as 40 km, the air force was deployed to zoom down and clear the roads from looters in wait. But unfortunately, they were diverted to Kashmir when Pakistan intruded.
There was the story of the Bengali gentleman who escorted two revolutionaries to safety in Chittagong around the time Surya Sen was plotting his revolt, and he was just 11 then. Or a gentleman from Kolkata, who recounted the bombing near his home during WW 2, and how their ceiling collapsed.
The narratives are spread across India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. The curious thing is none of the people whose stories are recounted want revenge, they all want to take it in the context of that time and want to move on. So different from the present-day discourses.
One interesting point the authors made was about the other unknowns or little-knowns they came to know in the course of the interviews. Most people in the 40s/ 50s and above under the British were pretty okay with life, but it was young who were restless (well the Uncles and Aunties of today are no different). Or how the people of Kashmir, Swat Valley, Gilgit-Baltistan, and adjoining areas consider themselves as one group of people who have been divided into three countries.
One interesting story was about “The Hump”, the name given to the war efforts of the Allies in East and North East India during World War 2, to supply the forces of Chiang Kai-shek and the US Air Force in China. With the Japanese invasion of French Indo-China, China lost its sea access. Also, the Burma Road (connecting Lashio, Burma, and Kunming, China) and Ledo Road (connecting Ledo, Assam, and Kunming, China) were either heavily bombed by the Japanese or later with Burma overrun it was inaccessible.
The only way left was the air supply, which was called “The Hump”, where the Air Force of primarily the USA traveled across the Himalayas to take supplies and occasionally soldiers. However the flight could not rise enough to go over the Himalayas both because of the avionics and the load, and so flew through the mountains.
Between December 1942 to November 1045, the airlift delivered approximately 685,304 tons of material (including 392,362 tons of gasoline and oil). This was the largest airlift till then before it was superseded by the Berlin airlift.
The oil found in Assam, starting with Digboi was the source of the fuel, and Chabua and Tezpur became a big hub. But the operation with no credible route maps, wind turbulence (at times up to 320 km/hr), lack of navigational equipment, radio beacons, and inadequate training made it a very high-cost affair.
594 aircraft were lost, and 1,314 crewmen were killed. By any account, it was one of the highest casualties in a noncombat operation. But it also helped tilt the war decisively in the Eastern Theatre.
And oil from Assam played a very vital role.
