Who is an Assamese in Assam? Although, as it has already been discussed, the social space of Assam is multi-ethnic in nature, there is hardly any term available to capture the concept of “people of Assam” or “citizen of Assam”. The etymology of the term Assamese may be traced to Ahom>Asam>Asamiya>Assamese. The term “Assamese” has been and is being used at least in four senses: (i) to mean the residents of Assam, (ii) to mean the Asamiya linguistic group, (iii) to mean the ethnic Assamese, and (iv) indigenous Assamese, the Bhumiputras (sons of the soil). The term “Assamese” is often implicitly used to refer the residents of Assam in political and social discourses in post-colonial pre-reorganized Assam (1947-1972). It may be noted that this has been the time while ethnic Assamese elites were facing the challenges of integration of the ethnically most heterogeneous groups of people placed under the political and administrative leadership of Assam. The political leadership of the Indian state sought integration of the hills of north east and people therein through Assam and not through the Assamese linguistic community. Nehru’s idea of integrating the hills through Assam while read along with his approach towards tribal development in the region makes the issue amply clear (Elwin: 1958). If the term “Assamese” is taken as a territorial identity, then it becomes a generic name for the multitude of identities including the ethnic Assamese, Hindu and Muslim Bengalis, Bodos, Dimasas, Karbis, Koch Rajbongshis, Cacharis and others. However, the term “Assamese” is more popularly used to refer to the linguistic identity of the Asamiyas rather than to the territorial identity of the people of Assam. In the second sense, “Assamese” refers to the group of people who speaks in Asamiya language. In fact the Assamese is the anglicized name of Asamiya. Speakers of Assamese language may broadly be divided into two groups—(i) people whose mother tongue is Assamese, and (ii) people whose mother tongue is different but have acquired Assamese language either formally or informally. Many people belonging to the second category use their mother tongue for private communication but use Assamese for communication in public. Most of the tribal groups, Hindu and Muslim Bengalis of Brahmaputra valley, Bodos, Karbis, Dimasas, Koch Rajbongshis, Adivashi groups in upper Assam and smaller speech groups from other parts of the country belong to this second category. “Assamese”, while taken as a linguistic identity, thus, includes both categories of speakers. In fact, linguistic Assamese nationalism, being open ended, has played a significant role in incorporating people from other cultures and providing them the much needed umbilical cord to be a part of the Assamese society. It is the common Assamese language that acted as the bridge between early and late migrants and galvanized them to form a single speech group. The word “Assamese”, in the third sense, refers to the ethinc Assamese. Besides a shared language, the idea of ethnic Assamese involves some elements of descent and shared culture between the members of the group as well as with their ancestors. Thus, while the civic Assamese nationalism based on territorial identity is inclusive in nature, ethnic Assamese nationalism is exclusive as it can exclude groups of people not conforming to the cultural norms of the Asamiyas including the language, religion and shared history. As the Muslim and Hindu Bengalis, Marwaris and other minority migrant groups, tribals and Adivasis have their separate history, language, religion and culture, they will not be considered as members of ethnic Assamese community in the strict sense of the term. In the fourth sense, the word Assamese is used to mean the bhumiputras (sons of the soil) of Assam. It is only recently, particularly after the Assam Accord (1985) that attempts are being made increasingly to define the term “Assamese” in this sense. The English equivalent of the Assamese word “bhumiputras” may be taken as synonymous to indigenous people. The term “indigenous people” lacks precision. It’s meaning differs from context to context. The term is often used as synonymous to the aborigines, natives or the autochthons. From the anthropological point of view, “indigenous people” are those who rely upon subsistence-based production and live in non-urbanized society. United Nations and International Labour Organization use the term to mean “any ethnic group who inhabit the geographic region with which they have the earliest historical connection” (wikipedia.org). Thus the principle of first occupation is often used to claim the status of indigenous people. In some cases, the term is also used to mean categories of people who “by a variety of historical and environmental circumstances have been placed outside of the dominant state system and whose traditional practices and land claims often come into conflict with the objectives and policies promulgated by governments , companies and surrounding dominant societies” (wikipedia.org). As such, as per the nuances in which the term “indigenous people” is generally used, tribal communities in India largely fit into this category irrespective of the fact whether they have been recognized as scheduled tribe or not by the Indian constitutional-legal framework. If one goes by the strict sense of the term which involves the principle of first occupation, then the Bodos, Cacharis, Chutias, Dimasas, Karbis, Deuris and Koch Rajbongshis better fit for the term than the ethnic Assamese including even the Ahoms. Of course, if the term is interpreted a la Amrica, where it refers to those groups and their descendents who inhabited the region before the arrival of European colonizers and settlers, then ethnic Assamese including the Ahoms as well as the Goria Muslims also fit into the category as far as the Brahmaputra valley is concerned. Although both Muslim and Hindu Bengalis, the Adivasis and other speech groups who have migrated into the Brahmaputra valley during the colonial period would not fit into the category of indigenous people, however, people of both Goalpara and Barak valley (undivided Cachar district) can not be left out.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 19:04:06 +0000
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