Guwahati: Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma inaugurated a flyover in Guwahati on May 22. Chief Minister Sarma feels it was far more than a concrete and steel infrastructure as it was named after Dr. Syama Prasad Mookherjee.
The newly built Dr Syama Prasad Mookherjee Flyover — connecting Lokhora, Lalaganesh and Gorchuk at a cost of Rs. 376 crore — was dedicated to the people of Assam by CM Sarma. Inaugurating it, CM Sarma came up with some memories of history that he said every Assamese, especially the younger generation, must know.
CM Sarma said, “Some will ask why a flyover in Guwahati is named after Dr. S.P. Mookherjee?” The answer lies within the history of Bharat’s freedom struggle and specially Assam’s fight to remain as an integral part of Bharat.
“In 1947, when Partition was no longer a question of if — only of where the lines would fall — the Muslim League had a plan to take entire Bengal including Calcutta and the entire Northeast into East Pakistan,” the CM said.
The words landed heavily.
“Had they succeeded, there would be no Assam in India today.”
The man who said no
CM Sarma credited Dr Syama Prasad Mookherjee as the man who refused to let that plan succeed. Alongside Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi and others, Mookherjee led the political and intellectual battle to keep Assam within the Indian Union.
“He understood the nefarious intentions of the Muslim League and its implication on Assam,” CM Sarma said.
The Chief Minister pointed out that Mookherjee’s contribution to Assam went beyond geography. During his tenure as Vice Chancellor, he advocated for Assamese as the medium of school education in the state. He worked alongside Dr. Birinchi Kumar Baruah to strengthen Assamese language studies and higher education.
“Most importantly, he treated Assam as central to India’s idea of itself,” CM Sarma said. “Not as a peripheral frontier or a forgotten corner — but as a region whose people, language and land were inseparable from Maa Bharti.”
A message for the next generation
CM Sarma’s words at the inauguration carried a deliberate political and cultural intent — to restore Mookherjee’s place in the Assamese consciousness.
“Everyone in Assam, especially the next generation, should know that the very fact of being able to call themselves Indian today — to study in their language, practice their faith and be in their motherland — is owed to stalwarts such as SP Mookherjee and Gopinath Bordoloi,” the CM said.
He closed with a line that summed up the spirit of the naming.
“Today, when commuters drive over this flyover, they will be more than just crossing a bridge. They will be travelling over a piece of history that Dr SP Mookherjee, more than most, helped preserve for us. This is not just a flyover. It is a long overdue tribute.”
BJP’s pattern of reclaiming history
The naming of the flyover after Mookherjee — founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the ideological precursor of the BJP — is consistent with the CM Sarma government’s broader approach of recognising and restoring figures from the Hindu nationalist tradition who, the BJP argues, have been systematically sidelined in post-Independence historiography.
For the BJP, the flyover is as much a political statement as an infrastructure milestone — a reminder, set in steel over one of Guwahati’s busiest corridors, that the idea of Assam as an integral part of India was not inevitable. It was fought for.
And according to Himanta Biswa Sarma, it was Dr. Syama Prasad Mookherjee who fought hardest.
