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Assamese people
The Assamese people are a socio-ethnic linguistic identity that has been described at various times as nationalistic or micro-nationalistic. This group is often associated with the Assamese language, 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. The use of the term precedes the name of the language or the people. It has also been used retrospectively to the people of Assam before the term "Assamese" came into use. They are an ethnically diverse group formed after centuries of assimilation of Austroasiatic, Tibeto-Burman, Indo-Aryan and Tai populations, and constitute a tribal-caste continuum—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. 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.
The name "Assamese" is of British colonial coinage of the 19th and 20th century. Assamese is an English word meaning "of Assam"—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. The lack of a definition has put stumbling blocks in implementing clause 6 of the Assam Accord, an agreement signed by the activists of the Assam Movement and the Government of India in 1985. 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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 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. 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. 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. Later Vaishnava traditions likewise preserved memories of Sadiya or Kundil as a centre for Vaishnavism. These developments illustrate the coexistence of Brahmanical, Vaishnava and indigenous traditions within the Chutia state.
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Assamese people
The Assamese people are a socio-ethnic linguistic identity that has been described at various times as nationalistic or micro-nationalistic. This group is often associated with the Assamese language, 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. The use of the term precedes the name of the language or the people. It has also been used retrospectively to the people of Assam before the term "Assamese" came into use. They are an ethnically diverse group formed after centuries of assimilation of Austroasiatic, Tibeto-Burman, Indo-Aryan and Tai populations, and constitute a tribal-caste continuum—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. 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.
The name "Assamese" is of British colonial coinage of the 19th and 20th century. Assamese is an English word meaning "of Assam"—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. The lack of a definition has put stumbling blocks in implementing clause 6 of the Assam Accord, an agreement signed by the activists of the Assam Movement and the Government of India in 1985. 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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 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. 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. 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. Later Vaishnava traditions likewise preserved memories of Sadiya or Kundil as a centre for Vaishnavism. These developments illustrate the coexistence of Brahmanical, Vaishnava and indigenous traditions within the Chutia state.