The Assamese people are a socio-ethnic linguistic[5] identity that has been described at various times as nationalistic[6] or micro-nationalistic.[7] This group is often associated with the Assamese language,[8] the easternmost Indo-Aryan language, and Assamese people mostly live in the Brahmaputra Valley region of Assam, where they are native and constitute around 56% of the Valley's population.[9] The use of the term precedes the name of the language or the people.[10] It has also been used retrospectively to the people of Assam before the term "Assamese" came into use.[11] They are an ethnically diverse group formed after centuries of assimilation of Austroasiatic, Tibeto-Burman, Indo-Aryan and Tai populations,[12] and constitute a tribal-caste continuum[13]—though not all Assamese people are Hindus and ethnic Assamese Muslims numbering around 42 lakh (4,200,000) constitute a significant part of this identity.[14] The total population of Assamese speakers in Assam is nearly 15.09 million which makes up 48.38% of the population of state according to the Language census of 2011.
Etymology
The name "Assamese" is of British colonial coinage of the 19th and 20th century. Assamese is an English word meaning "of Assam"[15]—though most Assamese people live in Assam, not all the people of Assam today are Assamese people.
The Government of Assam faced difficulties in defining Assamese people for Assam Accord due to a linguistically and culturally heterogeneous population. Though there is a political dispute over the definition of Assamese people, in general; the people belonging to the state of Assam are referred sometimes as Assamese people or more appropriately as People of Assam.[16][17] The lack of a definition has put stumbling blocks in implementing clause 6[18] of the Assam Accord, an agreement signed by the activists of the Assam Movement and the Government of India in 1985.[19] Since a legal definition is important to provide "constitutional, legislative and cultural" safeguards to the Assamese people, the Government of Assam had formed a ministerial committee to finalise the definition in March 2007.[20][21] To address the clause 6 issue, AASU had announced a definition on 10 April 2000 which was based on residency with a temporal limit: All those whose names appeared in the 1951 National Register of Citizens and their progenies should be considered as Assamese.[22][23][24]
Despite the lack of a legal definition, social scientists consider the Assamese identity to constitute a tribal-caste continuum that has been the result of a historical process.[13]
History
Origins of the nationalistic identity
Assamese as a nationalistic identity was seeded when the Ahom kingdom came under repeated attacks from the Bengal Sultanate in the early 16th century and the people banded together under Suhungmung (1497–1539) to resist a common enemy. The kingdom not only succeeded in resisting the invasion, but a general pursued the invaders to the Karatoya river and freed most of the Kamrup and Kamata regions.[25]
The process of identity formation sped up during the rule of Pratap Singha (1603–41) when the Mughals began repeated incursions from 1615 and the Battle of Saraighat in 1671; and finally the Battle of Itakhuli (1682 CE) when the Ahoms took direct control over western Brahmaputra valley.[26] Many Muslim soldiers and professionals who had accompanied invading armies or immigrated peacefully since the 13th century, including those from the 16th century, were given power and eminence by the Ahom kings, and they in turn helped the Ahoms in repelling the Mughals.[27] This was also the time when the Assamese language progressively replaced the Ahom language in the court and outside.[28] As a result of the Ahom kings increasingly patronising Hinduism alongside the proselytising activities of Ekasarana Dharma since the 16th-century—a large section of the Bodo-Kachari peoples converted to different forms of Hinduism in the 17th-18th century and a composite Assamese identity comprising caste-Hindus, tribals and Assamese Muslims began to form.[29]
On the eve of British colonialism in the early 19th century the Assamese society consisted of the hinduised ethnic groups, the caste Hindu groups, the plain tribal groups, and the Assamese Muslims; and the expression of Assamese nationalism in the 19th/20th-century was confined to the Brahmaputra valley.[30]
Tribe-Caste continuum
Social movement due to state formations
Scholars believe that with the arrival of Indo-Aryans in Assam, there was a simultaneous Sanskritisation and deshification processes[31] beginning in the 5th–8th century during the reign of the Varman dynasty of Kamarupa;[32]—and all Assam's kings were originally non-Indo-Aryan who were gradually Sanskritised.[33] This enabled many of the common folks to follow the ruling classes into Sanskritisation and also bring along with them elements of their own local customs and religions.[34]
Social movement due to Ekasarana religion
The Ekasarana dharma that emerged in the 16th century and the proselytising activities of the Sattra institutions created a path for individuals of tribal origins to traverse the tribal-caste continuum. Tribal people could take initiation at a Sattra—and a neophyte would be called a modahi if he still took liquor. A modahi successively advanced to the Sarania group (also called saru-koch), Koch, Bor-Koch, Saru-Keot, Bor-Keot and then a Kalita.[35] At the end of this tribal-caste continuum were the Brahmins and often the pontiffs of Sattra's were Brahmins called Goswamis. Some of these Goswamis were a few generations earlier Kayasthas, and some Kayastha pontiffs were earlier tribal and low caste.[36] It is this process by which many groups such as Chutia, Borahi, Moran, Deori, Boro peoples to become Assamese peasants, especially in Upper and Central Assam; and it was noted that some kayastha sattradhikars were originally Morans, Kaibartas, Chandalas, Tantis[37] and Sankardev had himself instated gurus from Muslim, Kaibarta, Nagas, and Garo communities.[38]
^"As an socio-ethnic linguistic community, Assamese culture evolved through many centuries in a melting pot syndrome." (Deka 2005:190)
^"All this suggests that Assamese nationalism was a post-British phenomenon. As an ideology and movement it took shape only during the second half of the 19th century, when such questions as the preservation and promotion of the mother-tongue, jobs for the sons of the soil and concern over colonial constraints on development, began to stir Assamese minds." (Guha 1984:54)
^"Assamese micro-nationalism began in the middle of the nineteenth century as an assertion of the autonomy and distinctiveness of Assamese language and culture against the British colonial view of Assam as a periphery of Bengal." (Baruah 1994:654)
^Saikia, Yasmin (2004). Fragmented Memories: Struggling to be Tai-Ahom in India. Duke University Press. ISBN978-0822386162. the group that now identifies as Tai–Ahom were historically seen as Assamese people. However, the term ethnic Assamese is now associated by the Indian government at Delhi with the Assamese speaking Indo-Aryan group (comprising both Hindus and Muslims) of Assam. The latter group is the majority people of Assam, while the Tai-Ahom people were a dominant minority during the Ahom Rule
^"Assamese language and literature played a major role in forming the Assamese cultural mind even before they came to be known as Assamese." (Deka 2005:192)
^"Yet once the community adopted Assamese as its name, even their ancient language started to be referred to as Assamese." (Deka 2005:192)
^(Grierson 1903:393). Also, -ese is the English suffix with etymological roots in the Latin -ensis—"[u]sed to form adjectives and nouns describing things and characteristics of a city, region, or country, such as the people and the language spoken by these people." wikt:-ese.
^Clause 6 of Assam Accord: "Constitutional, legislative and administrative safeguards, as may be appropriate, shall be provided to protect, preserve and promote the cultural, social and linguistic identity and heritage of the Assamese people."
^"The idea of a composite Assamese or Asomiya 'jati' or nationality took shape during the later part of the Ahom rule. This process had started during the first Muslim invasion from neighbouring Bengal in the 16th century when the people were brought under an Ahom or Assamese banner against the common enemy. Not only were the Ahom successful in repelling the Muslim invasions, but by the 1530s the Ahoms had freed the greater part of Kamrup and Kamata from Muslim occupation and "extended their dominion right up to the Karatoya in Murshidabad in the west and almost to close proximity of Dacc". (Misra 1999:1264)
^"During the rule of the Ahom monarch, Pratap Singha (1603-41) consolidation of the Assamese community was further sped up because of the common fight against Mughal incursions and encroachment on Assam territory. The Ahom victory over the Mughals in early 1616 was followed by the defeat of the Mughal army led by Ram Singh in the Battle of Saraighat in March 1671" (Misra 1999:1264)
^"The Ahom rulers gave positions of power and eminence to the Assamese Muslims and the latter took active part in resisting successive Mughal attempts to overrun the region. The assimilation of this segment of Muslims into Assamese society was so complete that the historians who accompanied the Mughal expeditions into Assam noted that they were more Assamese than Muslim." (Misra 1999:1264)
^"Incidentally, literate Ahoms retained the Tai language and script well until the end of the 17th century. In that century of Ahom-Mughal conflicts, this language first coexisted with and then was progressively replaced by Assamese (Asamiya) at and outside the Court." (Guha 1983:9)
^"[T]he demographic break-up of the Assamese society on the eve of British entry into the province may be said to have included the different ethnic groups brought within the Hindu fold, the caste Hindus, the plains tribal communities and the relatively small number of Assamese Muslims...It is, however, interesting to note that common 19th and early 20th century perceptions about the Assamese nationality were limited almost exclusively to only those people who lived in the Brahmaputra valley." (Misra 1999:1264–1265)
^"Here I will follow the lead of Wendy Doniger, who suggests that the development of Hinduism as a whole in South Asia was not simply a process of Sanskritisation, that is, the absorption of non-Hindu traditions into the brahminic system; rather, it also involved a process of ‘Deshification’, that is, the influence of local (deshi) and indigenous cultures on brahmaic religion and the mutual interaction between Sanskritic and deshi traditions." (Urban 2011:233)
^"Virtually all of Assam's kings, from the fourth-century Varmans down to the eighteenth-century Ahoms, came from non-Aryan tribes that were only gradually Sanskritised."(Urban 2011, p. 234)
Baruah, Sanjib (1994). "'Ethnic' Conflict as State—Society Struggle: The Poetics and Politics of Assamese Micro-Nationalism". Modern Asian Studies. 28 (3): 649–671. doi:10.1017/S0026749X00011896. JSTOR313047. S2CID144065698.
Cantile, Audrey (1984). The Assamese. Curzon Press.
Deka, Harekrishna (2005). "The Assamese Mind: contours of a landscape". India International Centre Quarterly. 32 (2/3): 189–202. JSTOR23006027.
Guha, Amalendu (1984). "Nationalism: Pan-Indian and Regional in a Historical Perspective". Social Scientist. 12 (2): 42–65. doi:10.2307/3517093. JSTOR3517093.
Misra, Udayon (1999). "Immigration and Identity Transformation in Assam". Economic and Political Weekly. 34 (21): 1264–1271. JSTOR4407987.
Sharma, Chandan Kumar (2009). "Tribe Caste Continuum and the Formation of Assamese Identity". In Medhi, B.K (ed.). Tribes of North-East India: Issues and Challenges. Delhi: Omsons Publications. pp. 354–366.
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