HN DAS
T he geographical entity of Assam consists of two valleys. The Barak valley in the south has three overwhelmingly Bengali-speaking districts with some immigrant labourers in the tea plantations and some scattered tribal population mainly in the foothills. The Brahmaputra valley in the north never had a homogenous population or society. From time immemorial different tribes and ethnic groups have lived in the Brahmaputra valley and the hills surrounding it. Immigrants have come from outside the area throughout the past. They brought their own culture and languages. Some retained these, albeit in modified forms, but others got merged into a nebulous ethnic mainstream. This article is primarily about the Brahmaputra valley.
In my view three major events which took place in the Brahmaputra valley in the past 2,000 years are noteworthy. The first major event was the Hindu Aryan immigration from north India. This brought a highly cultured, educationally advanced and socially active group which, in course of time, came to dominate the Brahmaputra valley. It is they who developed the Assamese language, which is derived from Sanskrit and belongs to the same subgroup as Bengali, Oriya, Maitheli, Bhojpuri and the other Aryan languages of eastern India. It was in this age that the Assamese literature was initiated. Much later, besides poetry, the first Indian prose literature was written in Assamese. In the following centuries the Assamese tried to get most of the other tribes and ethnic groups absorbed into their fold. They partially succeeded in this effort.
The second major event was the conquest of upper Assam by the Tai-Ahoms who came from the China-Myanmar border in the 13th century. They got themselves merged into the Assamese mainstream abandoning their own culture and language. They adopted the Hindu religion. Sukapha, the Ahom conqueror and their first King, is reputed to have adopted this policy of assimilation and thus helped the formation of the Assamese subnationality as it exists today.
Then, in the 15th-16th centuries the greatest Assamese of all times, Sri Sankardeva, who started life as a Sanskrit scholar and writer, composed his Kirtanghosha in Assamese and introduced far-reaching reforms in the Hindu religion. It is Sankardeva who introduced the Vaishnavite cult in Assam. He and his principal disciple, Sri Madhabdeva, who wrote the Naamghosha, developed Assamese literature, music, drama, dance and society into very high standards. Their bargeets are some of the finest nuggets of Indian classical music. The Sattriya dance form they developed is recognized as one of the seven national classical dances of India by the Sangeet Natak Academy.
The Assamese lived a far better, more meaningful and spiritually richer life than most other communities in India till about the 50s of the last century. The per capita income was also higher than the national average. The Assamese naamghars (prayer halls) are the centres of social life in the villages even today. The 914 satras (large monasteries) and the thousands of naamghars are the institutional and structural frameworks of the Assamese society. The liberal reforms of Sankardeva and Madhabdeva attracted many more ethnic groups to adopt the Assamese language, the Hindu religion and the socio-cultural milieu which Sankardeva had initiated. In fact, an innovative Saraniya system was introduced in order to make gradual absorption of tribals into the Assamese mainstream possible and easy.
The third major event was the continuous and unrelenting immigration of Bengali Muslims from East Bengal (present Bangladesh) since the beginning of the twentieth century in the wake of the British Indian Government’s ‘‘grow more food campaign’’. Later, the speed of immigration was stepped up by the Bangladeshi intellectuals in search of a Labensraum.
Muslims now form more than one-third of Assam’s population. Muslims were 16.23 per cent of Assam’s population in 1911. They formed 30.92 per cent in 2001. They have achieved majority in terms of population in six out of 23 districts of Assam. They form the determining factor in 52 out of Assam’s 126 legislative assembly constituencies in terms of vote shares. The vast majority of them are immigrants from East Bengal. Surprisingly the Bangladeshi Muslims declare Assamese as their ‘‘mother tongue’’. They have nominally adopted Assamese as the medium of instruction in schools. Both these subterfuges are perhaps required till such time that Assam is fully taken over by Bangladeshi Muslims probably for ultimate merger with Bangladesh. However, the Bangladeshi Muslims never got culturally absorbed into the Assamese mainstream.
The Muslims of north Indian origin who came to Assam earlier with the Mughal invading armies during the long 600 years of Ahom rule from 1228 to 1826 and remained behind in the Brahmaputra valley, fully adopted the Assamese language and culture, although retaining the Muslim religion. Some of them were conferred Ahom titles which they use in place of surnames even today. They got some indigenous people also converted into Islam. Their religious leader, Azan Phakir, taught them tolerance towards other religions. Their martial hero, Bagh Hazarika, fought side by side with the Ahom warriors. Their freedom fighter, Bahadur Gaonbura, was banished to Kalapani by the British rulers.
Likewise, a small number of Sikhs came to help the Ahoms in their fight against the Burmese invaders in the 1820s. They also remained behind. These Sikhs fully adopted the Assamese language and culture while retaining their religion. They forgot the Punjabi language.
During the British occupation of Assam in the 19th and the 20th centuries, the British brought some highly educated urban Bengali Hindus to work in their offices and in the educational institutions. These Bengalis remained aloof, retained their own identity and looked down upon the natives. However, their attempt at socio-cultural domination of Assam was thwarted by the Assamese Hindus. At the instigation of the Bengali Hindus the British had removed the Assamese language from courts and schools in 1837. After a long struggle, Assamese was ultimately restored in 1873. When the tea industry was started in the 1830s, thousands of indentured labourers were brought from Bengal, Bihar, UP, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa by the British tea planters to work in the plantations. They now form a sizeable proportion of the State’s population. They are politically very active. Small numbers of Rajasthani traders, Nepali milkmen and Bihari labourers also came in the past two centuries.
The demographic pattern of Assam today presents a mosaic which is rich in cultural diversity and in the profusion of languages, music, dance, drama and fine arts. Out of the 130 known languages of Northeast India, the majority are extant in Assam. This amalgam is difficult to comprehend unless the three major historical events I have described above are properly stated and appreciated.
In fact, the process of demographic fusion and cohesion which was brought about by Sukapha and Sankardeva continued unabated till the British occupation of Assam in 1826. The process became slow after that. But the process has been reversed since about the 1960s in the wake of Assamese being declared as the State language which was opposed by the Bengali Hindus. The riots that took place in the 1960s claimed many lives. The peculiarity of these riots was the fact that the Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants took up the cause of Assamese language and fought against the Bengali Hindus.
(The writer was Chief Secretary, Assam, during 1990-95). THE SENTINEL
T he geographical entity of Assam consists of two valleys. The Barak valley in the south has three overwhelmingly Bengali-speaking districts with some immigrant labourers in the tea plantations and some scattered tribal population mainly in the foothills. The Brahmaputra valley in the north never had a homogenous population or society. From time immemorial different tribes and ethnic groups have lived in the Brahmaputra valley and the hills surrounding it. Immigrants have come from outside the area throughout the past. They brought their own culture and languages. Some retained these, albeit in modified forms, but others got merged into a nebulous ethnic mainstream. This article is primarily about the Brahmaputra valley.
In my view three major events which took place in the Brahmaputra valley in the past 2,000 years are noteworthy. The first major event was the Hindu Aryan immigration from north India. This brought a highly cultured, educationally advanced and socially active group which, in course of time, came to dominate the Brahmaputra valley. It is they who developed the Assamese language, which is derived from Sanskrit and belongs to the same subgroup as Bengali, Oriya, Maitheli, Bhojpuri and the other Aryan languages of eastern India. It was in this age that the Assamese literature was initiated. Much later, besides poetry, the first Indian prose literature was written in Assamese. In the following centuries the Assamese tried to get most of the other tribes and ethnic groups absorbed into their fold. They partially succeeded in this effort.
The second major event was the conquest of upper Assam by the Tai-Ahoms who came from the China-Myanmar border in the 13th century. They got themselves merged into the Assamese mainstream abandoning their own culture and language. They adopted the Hindu religion. Sukapha, the Ahom conqueror and their first King, is reputed to have adopted this policy of assimilation and thus helped the formation of the Assamese subnationality as it exists today.
Then, in the 15th-16th centuries the greatest Assamese of all times, Sri Sankardeva, who started life as a Sanskrit scholar and writer, composed his Kirtanghosha in Assamese and introduced far-reaching reforms in the Hindu religion. It is Sankardeva who introduced the Vaishnavite cult in Assam. He and his principal disciple, Sri Madhabdeva, who wrote the Naamghosha, developed Assamese literature, music, drama, dance and society into very high standards. Their bargeets are some of the finest nuggets of Indian classical music. The Sattriya dance form they developed is recognized as one of the seven national classical dances of India by the Sangeet Natak Academy.
The Assamese lived a far better, more meaningful and spiritually richer life than most other communities in India till about the 50s of the last century. The per capita income was also higher than the national average. The Assamese naamghars (prayer halls) are the centres of social life in the villages even today. The 914 satras (large monasteries) and the thousands of naamghars are the institutional and structural frameworks of the Assamese society. The liberal reforms of Sankardeva and Madhabdeva attracted many more ethnic groups to adopt the Assamese language, the Hindu religion and the socio-cultural milieu which Sankardeva had initiated. In fact, an innovative Saraniya system was introduced in order to make gradual absorption of tribals into the Assamese mainstream possible and easy.
The third major event was the continuous and unrelenting immigration of Bengali Muslims from East Bengal (present Bangladesh) since the beginning of the twentieth century in the wake of the British Indian Government’s ‘‘grow more food campaign’’. Later, the speed of immigration was stepped up by the Bangladeshi intellectuals in search of a Labensraum.
Muslims now form more than one-third of Assam’s population. Muslims were 16.23 per cent of Assam’s population in 1911. They formed 30.92 per cent in 2001. They have achieved majority in terms of population in six out of 23 districts of Assam. They form the determining factor in 52 out of Assam’s 126 legislative assembly constituencies in terms of vote shares. The vast majority of them are immigrants from East Bengal. Surprisingly the Bangladeshi Muslims declare Assamese as their ‘‘mother tongue’’. They have nominally adopted Assamese as the medium of instruction in schools. Both these subterfuges are perhaps required till such time that Assam is fully taken over by Bangladeshi Muslims probably for ultimate merger with Bangladesh. However, the Bangladeshi Muslims never got culturally absorbed into the Assamese mainstream.
The Muslims of north Indian origin who came to Assam earlier with the Mughal invading armies during the long 600 years of Ahom rule from 1228 to 1826 and remained behind in the Brahmaputra valley, fully adopted the Assamese language and culture, although retaining the Muslim religion. Some of them were conferred Ahom titles which they use in place of surnames even today. They got some indigenous people also converted into Islam. Their religious leader, Azan Phakir, taught them tolerance towards other religions. Their martial hero, Bagh Hazarika, fought side by side with the Ahom warriors. Their freedom fighter, Bahadur Gaonbura, was banished to Kalapani by the British rulers.
Likewise, a small number of Sikhs came to help the Ahoms in their fight against the Burmese invaders in the 1820s. They also remained behind. These Sikhs fully adopted the Assamese language and culture while retaining their religion. They forgot the Punjabi language.
During the British occupation of Assam in the 19th and the 20th centuries, the British brought some highly educated urban Bengali Hindus to work in their offices and in the educational institutions. These Bengalis remained aloof, retained their own identity and looked down upon the natives. However, their attempt at socio-cultural domination of Assam was thwarted by the Assamese Hindus. At the instigation of the Bengali Hindus the British had removed the Assamese language from courts and schools in 1837. After a long struggle, Assamese was ultimately restored in 1873. When the tea industry was started in the 1830s, thousands of indentured labourers were brought from Bengal, Bihar, UP, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa by the British tea planters to work in the plantations. They now form a sizeable proportion of the State’s population. They are politically very active. Small numbers of Rajasthani traders, Nepali milkmen and Bihari labourers also came in the past two centuries.
The demographic pattern of Assam today presents a mosaic which is rich in cultural diversity and in the profusion of languages, music, dance, drama and fine arts. Out of the 130 known languages of Northeast India, the majority are extant in Assam. This amalgam is difficult to comprehend unless the three major historical events I have described above are properly stated and appreciated.
In fact, the process of demographic fusion and cohesion which was brought about by Sukapha and Sankardeva continued unabated till the British occupation of Assam in 1826. The process became slow after that. But the process has been reversed since about the 1960s in the wake of Assamese being declared as the State language which was opposed by the Bengali Hindus. The riots that took place in the 1960s claimed many lives. The peculiarity of these riots was the fact that the Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants took up the cause of Assamese language and fought against the Bengali Hindus.
(The writer was Chief Secretary, Assam, during 1990-95). THE SENTINEL
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