Assamese people

Assamese people
Total population
c. 15.3 million[1]
Regions with significant populations
India15,311,351[2]
Bangladesh5,000[3]
Languages
Assamese
Religion
Majority:
Hinduism
Minority:
Related ethnic groups
Bodo-Kachari peoples, Indo-Aryan peoples, Assamese Meitei people, Tibeto-Burman and Tai peoples of Assam

The Assamese people are a socio-ethnic linguistic[4] identity that has been described at various times as nationalistic[5] or micro-nationalistic.[6] This group is often associated with the Assamese language,[7] 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.[8] The use of the term precedes the name of the language or the people.[9] It has also been used retrospectively to the people of Assam before the term "Assamese" came into use.[10] They are an ethnically diverse group formed after centuries of assimilation of Austroasiatic, Tibeto-Burman, Indo-Aryan and Tai populations,[11] and constitute a tribal-caste continuum[12]—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.[13] 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"[14]—though most Assamese people live in Assam, not all the people of Assam today are Assamese people.

Definition

Tribal ethnicities from Brahmaputra Valley (depicting from top to down: Ahom, Chutia, Hojai Kachari men)

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.[15][16] The lack of a definition has put stumbling blocks in implementing clause 6[17] of the Assam Accord, an agreement signed by the activists of the Assam Movement and the Government of India in 1985.[18] 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.[19][20] 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.[21][22][23]

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.[12]

Demographics

The population of Assamese-speaking people in India, as per the 2011 Census, is 15,311,351, constituting 1.26% of the country's total population. This places the Assamese language at the 12th position among the 22 scheduled languages spoken in India. Out of this, 15,097,257 people reside in Assam, making up 48.38% of the state's total population, which accounts for 98.6% of the total Assamese-speaking population in India.[24]

History

The Assamese identity developed through a long process of interaction among the tribal and non-tribal populations of the Brahmaputra Valley, rather than originating in a single kingdom or military conflict. The formation of regional states, the expansion of settled agriculture, intermarriage, Hinduization and the growth of a common vernacular gradually connected otherwise diverse communities. Chandan Kumar Sharma describes this social formation as a "tribe–caste continuum" in which tribal and non-tribal groups played equally important roles.[25]

Early roots of the Assamese identity

The linguistic and literary foundations of the identity can be traced back to the early half of the late medieval period. By the 14th century, early Assamese had developed into a literary medium under rulers of several regional polities. The Kamata king Durlabhanarayana patronised Hema Saraswati, Harivara Vipra and other poets, while Madhava Kandali rendered the Ramayana into Assamese under Mahamanikya, a Kachari ruler of central Assam. Satyendranath Sarma observes that the surviving works demonstrate that Assamese had already evolved into a powerful medium of literary expression during the fourteenth century.[26] The courts of Kamata and the Kachari kingdom therefore contributed to a regional literary culture long before Assamese was adopted by the Ahom court.

A parallel process of social and religious integration was taking place in eastern Assam. Hinduization was already visible in the Chutia kingdom before the political ascendancy of the Ahoms in Upper Assam.[27] By the early sixteenth century, this process had produced a differentiated Hindu social order within the kingdom: the caste system had become prevalent in Chutia society, and its caste-Hindu population included Brahmins, Kayasthas, Kalitas and Daivajnas or Ganaks.[28] Vaishnavism was also present in eastern Assam before the rise of the 16th-century Ekasarana movement. Chutia copper-plate grants from 1392 and 1401 record Vaishnava Brahmins and a donee described as a devotee of Vasudeva, indicating the presence of Vaishnava religious networks at the royal court and in rural society.[29] Later Vaishnava traditions likewise preserved memories of Sadiya or Kundil as a centre for Vaishnavism.[a] These developments illustrate the coexistence of Brahmanical, Vaishnava and indigenous traditions within the Chutia state.

In the longer process of assimilation, Sharma identifies the Chutias, Borahis, Morans, Deoris and Kacharis among the communities that became Sanskritized Assamese peasants, although they did not entirely abandon their earlier customs.[36] The pre-Ahom Chutia and Kamata polities thus formed important eastern and western centres of the linguistic, religious and social processes from which the later Assamese society emerged.

Role of Vaishnavite institutions

From the 16th century onwards, Ekasarana Dharma gave this existing cultural and linguistic field a wider institutional basis. The Assamese and Brajavali works of Sankardev, Madhavdev and their followers, together with the networks of satras and namghars, created shared spaces of worship, literary production, performance and community life. The movement brought sections of the Bodo-Kachari, Tiwa, Rabha, Karbi and other communities into the sarania fold and facilitated their incorporation into the wider Assamese society, while many indigenous customs continued to survive.[37]

These institutions, although later patronised by Ahom kings, were not originally creations of the Ahom state. Their social base developed through the activities of the Vaishnavite teachers and their disciples, and only subsequently attracted sustained royal intervention. By the seventeenth century, both the Ahom and Koch states attempted to appropriate the movement's extensive popular base, while the satras increasingly received land, manpower and other endowments from ruling elites.[38]

Consolidation of the nationalistic identity

Assamese as a nationalistic identity was consolidated 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.[39]

This process was strengthened under Pratap Singha (1603–1641) and during the subsequent Ahom–Mughal conflicts, culminating in the Battle of Saraighat in 1671.[40] Muslim soldiers, artisans and professionals who had accompanied invading armies or had migrated peacefully into the valley were incorporated into the kingdom and participated in the resistance to Mughal expansion.[41] During the same period, Assamese progressively replaced the Ahom language at court and in administration.[42] The Ahom state therefore brought many of the already existing linguistic, religious and ethnic components of the valley within a more unified political framework. 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 centuries, and a composite Assamese identity comprising caste Hindus, tribals and Assamese Muslims began to form.[43]

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Assamese society comprised Hinduized ethnic communities, caste-Hindu groups, plains tribal communities and Assamese Muslims. The precolonial developments produced a composite linguistic and cultural society, whereas Assamese nationalism in the modern political sense emerged under colonial conditions during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and remained centred primarily in the Brahmaputra valley.[44]

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[45] beginning in the 5th–8th century during the reign of the Varman dynasty of Kamarupa;[46]—and all Assam's kings were originally non-Indo-Aryan who were gradually Sanskritised.[47] 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.[48]

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.[49] 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.[50] It is this process by which many groups such as Chutia, Borahi, Moran, Deori, Boro peoples turned into sanskritized ‘Assamese’ peasants, especially in Upper Assam and to some extent Central Assam; and it was noted that some kayastha sattradhikars were originally Morans, Kaibartas, Chandalas, Tantis[51] and Sankardev had himself instated gurus from Muslim, Kaibarta, Nagas, and Garo communities.[52]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Mikael Parkvall, "Världens 100 största språk 2007" (The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007), in Nationalencyklopedin
  2. ↑ "Abstract of speakers' strength of languages and the mother tongues - 2011" (PDF). Retrieved 3 November 2019.
  3. ↑ "Assamese rockstar in Bangladesh challenges CAAcophony | Guwahati News - Times of India". The Times of India. 7 February 2020.
  4. ↑ "As an socio-ethnic linguistic community, Assamese culture evolved through many centuries in a melting pot syndrome." (Deka 2005:190)
  5. ↑ "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)
  6. ↑ "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)
  7. ↑ Saikia, Yasmin (2004). Fragmented Memories: Struggling to be Tai-Ahom in India. Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0822386162. 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
  8. ↑ "Battleground Assam a tale of two valleys and the CAA quandary Assam bengal polls 2021 | Opinion News – India TV". 18 February 2021.
  9. ↑ "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)
  10. ↑ "Yet once the community adopted Assamese as its name, even their ancient language started to be referred to as Assamese." (Deka 2005:192)
  11. ↑ Yasmin Saikia (9 November 2004). Fragmented Memories. Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0822333739.
  12. 1 2 (Sharma 2009:355)
  13. ↑ "Assam's Muslims: Why some have been declared 'indigenous' and some left out". 11 July 2022.
  14. ↑ (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.
  15. ↑ "Assamese People" definition rocks Assembly, The Hindu". Special Correspondent. 1 April 2015. Retrieved 15 September 2017.
  16. ↑ "Meet the Axomiya Sikhs". The Tribune. Chandigarh. 24 March 2013.
  17. ↑ 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."
  18. ↑ Assam dithers over Accord, The Telegraph, 15 July 2004.
  19. ↑ 1.40 lakh aliens deported since 1971 Archived 29 May 2007 at the Wayback Machine, The Assam Tribune, 27 March 2007
  20. ↑ Move to define Assamese people Archived 29 May 2007 at the Wayback Machine, The Assam Tribune, 31 March 2007
  21. ↑ Hussain, Wasbir (24 April 2000). "Of natives and aliens". The Hindu.
  22. ↑ AASU joins 'Asomiya' debate, The Sentinel, Guwahati, 1 April 2007
  23. ↑ AASU flays Barman, Prafulla Mahanta, The Assam Tribune, 1 April 2007
  24. ↑ Barooah, Kalyan (15 September 2010). "1.26 per cent of India's population speak Assamese". The Assam Tribune. Retrieved 26 March 2025.
  25. ↑ Sharma argues that the Assamese identity was the product of a historical process in which tribal and non-tribal groups played equally important roles and describes Assamese society as a classic case of a tribe–caste continuum. (Sharma 2009:355–356)
  26. ↑ Sarma discusses the literary patronage of Durlabhanarayana and Mahamanikya and concludes that the surviving fourteenth-century works demonstrate the development of a “powerful medium of literary expression” in Assamese. (Sarma 1976:45–50)
  27. ↑ Sharma notes that Hinduization had begun in the Chutia kingdom before the advent of the Ahoms and had therefore reached Upper Assam despite its distance from the principal centres of Brahmanical influence. (Sharma 2009:357)
  28. ↑ (Gogoi 2002:21); (Baruah 1986:230)
  29. ↑ (Shin 2020:51–56)
  30. ↑ Gogoi, Himadri; Dutta, Tarun (2021). "Gharmora Satra and Its Archive". Turkish Online Journal of Qualitative Inquiry. 12 (8): 8018–8019.
  31. ↑ Neog, Maheswar, ed. (1999). Guru Charit Katha (in Assamese). Lawyers Book Stall. p. 373.
  32. ↑ Dev Goswami, Narayan Chandra (1984). Satriya Sanskritir Swarnarekha: Mahapurush Sri Sri Badula Padma Ata (in Assamese). Lawyers Book Stall. p. 810.
  33. ↑ Barua, Birinchi Kumar; Neog, Maheswar, eds. (1960). Harivara Vipra’s Babrubahnar Yuddha and Tamradhwajar Yuddha. Gauhati University.
  34. ↑ Attributed to Madhavadeva (1928). আদি চৰিত বা লক্ষ্মীপুৰৰ আদিম বুৰঞ্জী [Adi Charit or the Early History of Lakhimpur] (in Assamese). Guwahati: Bharat Chandra Das. p. 91.
  35. ↑ Harinarayan Dvija, Sri Thakur Charit, edited by N. Gogoi, 2nd ed. (Biswanath Chariali, 2001), verses 467–470, cited in Chutia, Manas (May 2019). "Vasudev Than Narowa Satra—in Historical Perspective" (PDF). Review of Research. 8 (8): 2–3.
  36. ↑ “In the process, several tribal groups like the Chutias, Borahis, Morans, Deoris, Kacharis (Bodos) ... turned into sanskritized ‘Assamese’ peasants in course of time (although they did not altogether relinquish their tribal customs).” (Sharma 2009:359)
  37. ↑ Sharma argues that neo-Vaishnavism “rejuvenated and further consolidated” the formation of a wider identity and “laid the very foundation of the Assamese identity”. He identifies people of Bodo-Kachari, Tiwa, Rabha and Karbi origin among those who became saranias and were gradually assimilated into Assamese society. (Sharma 2009:357–359)
  38. ↑ (Sharma 2009:359)
  39. ↑ "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)
  40. ↑ “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.” (Misra 1999:1264)
  41. ↑ “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.” (Misra 1999:1264)
  42. ↑ “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)
  43. ↑ (Misra 1999:1264)
  44. ↑ “[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 ... 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)
  45. ↑ "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)
  46. ↑ (Sharma 2009:356)
  47. ↑ "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)
  48. ↑ (Sharma 2009:355–357)
  49. ↑ (Sharma 2009:358)
  50. ↑ (Sharma 2009:359)
  51. ↑ "In the process, several tribal groups like the Chutias, Borahis, Morans, Deoris, Kacharis (Bodos), especially of the upper Assam and to some extent that of central Assam, turned into sanskritized ‘Assamese’ peasants in course of time (although they did not altogether relinquish their tribal customs)."(Sharma 2009:359)
  52. ↑ (Cantile 1984:177)

Notes

  1. ↑ According to a tradition preserved by Gharmora Satra, two Chutia princes studied at Nabadwip, where they met a Brahmin named Sankarshan—also rendered Sankarisan—of Kannauj. After returning to Sadiya, the elder prince is said to have brought Sankarshan and several occupational families to the capital and established a Vaishnava institution on the bank of the Gharmora River at Sadiya, endowing it with land, attendants and an image of Vishnu. The tradition further holds that Sankarshan's successors remained at Sadiya for five generations and preached among the Chutias, Deoris, Miris and Abors of the surrounding plains and hills before the institution was relocated following the Ahom conquest.[30] Kundila also appears in the genealogical traditions of later Assamese Vaishnava preceptors. Accounts concerning Padma Ata place his ancestors at Kundila or Kundilnagara before a branch of the family migrated downstream to the Narayanpur region,[31][32] while Ramananda Dvija's Sri Sri Bansigopal Devar Charitra describes Harivara, an ancestor of Bansigopal Deva, as being “of the Kundil gusthi”.[33] Sadiya and Kundil continued to occupy an important place in later Assamese Vaishnava traditions. The Adi Charita states that Sankardev visited Kundilnagara and brought back a Vasudeva image,[34] while the Sri Thakur Charit relates that Jayadhwaj Singha later had another Vasudeva image brought from Kundil for Damodar Thakur's Narowa Satra, now known as Basudev Than in Dhakuakhana.[35]

Bibliography

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