In 1999, the Government of India announced that it was awarding the Bharat Ratna to two persons, Mother Teresa and Gopinath Bardoloi. While many in India are familiar with the first name, few have heard of the second.

This is tragic for Bardoloi, the statesman who ensured that Assam remained in India in the critical months leading up to Partition. A lawyer, tennis player, diarist (in prison and out of it), angler and patron of music, Bardoloi's ascendancy in the provincial Congress Party in Assam began in the late 1920s and continued, with a brief intermission, until his death in 1950.

Like other loyal Congressmen, Bardoloi was arrested several times for his participation in campaigns against the British. His early years as a political leader were marked by frequent clashes with Sir Syed Mohammed Saadulla of the Muslim League. Bardoloi succeeded Saadulla when the latter's first regime fell in September 1939. The Congress lasted barely a year in office and resigned as part of the anti-war position of the Congress Working Committee. Bardoloi had formed his first government in the teeth of opposition from Maulana Abul Kalam Azad but with the support of Subhas Chandra Bose and Vallabhbhai Patel.

He was to wait for nearly seven years before he could wrest political power from the pro-British Saadulla. During that period, the Muslim League government pushed through a series of measures that continue to devastate Assam and the North-east. Among them was the 1941 Land Settlement Policy that encouraged land-hungry immigrant peasants from East Bengal to pour into Assam and hold as much as 30 bighas or more for each homestead.

The Congress under Bardoloi fiercely opposed the policy which was to transform the demographic profile of the state. Saadulla was to boast in a letter to Liaquat Ali Khan, at the time Mohammad Ali Jinnah's right hand man, that "in the four lower districts of Assam Valley, these Bengali immigrant Muslims have quadrupled the Muslim population".

Bardoloi's greatest test came in 1946: he had just become premier of Assam on an anti-immigrant platform, a position that was reversed by later politicians. The Cabinet Mission had travelled to the subcontinent, mandated to hammer out a compromise formula for Indian independence.

After weeks of stalemated discussions, it announced its plan, advocating that Indian provinces be grouped into three sections. One section clubbed Muslim-majority Bengal with Hindu-dominant Assam. Under the framework of its plan, each section was mandated to draw up the constitution for the provinces in these groups and then assemble them together to draw up the Constitution of India.

This plan would have handed over Assam on a platter to the future East Pakistan (because Bengal had more members). Bardoloi and his team, backed by the Mahatma, stood firm and campaigned even against Jawaharlal Nehru and Patel on the issue. The Mission plan as a result collapsed. Bardoloi administered Assam for four more years. His zeal has not been matched since: Assam's first university at Guwahati as well as its first engineering, medical, agricultural and veterinary colleges were set up during this time. His paternalistic attitude to hill communities drew suspicion from their leaders. While agreeing that the traditions of hill groups needed protection, Bardoloi advocated the opening up of the region to direct political representation.

It would be in the fitness of things if his portrait inaugurated with such pomp years ago in Parliament, but has been gathering dust since, be given a place of honour.

Sanjoy Hazarika is senior fellow, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi. A former reporter with the New York Times, he has authored Strangers of the Mist, Tales of War and Peace from India's North-East.