Assam has been defined as a multi-ethnic society. The narrative that it is the homeland of diverse cultures and civilizations finds place in all the official and non-official writings, songs, stories and folklore Any description of the people of Assam would invariably include the rhetoric of ethnically diverse population. These descriptions not only explicate racial differences but also indicate wide variations in language, religion, differences among the inhabitants of the plains and the hills etc. Together with it, the narrative of the land of Assam being the historic “melting pot” of all these diversities and that, now this “melting pot” has turned into an ethnic cauldron is simultaneously cited.
Assam has been witnessing numerous conflicts since the last century, more so after the independence. These conflicts sometimes have been for the demand for state recognition of a particular language, sometimes stir for greater share in development, at times as upsurges for separate state and in the most extreme cases, secessionist demands. Shared belief in unique and distinct cultural identity has been a recurring driving force in these assertions. The plethora of assertions has been generally clamped into the category of “ethnic assertions”.
The establishment and maintenance of British rule in India depended upon determining, codifying and representing the history, territory and society of the colonized. This was carried out through the selection and exclusion of specific elements from the larger socio-cultural matrix of the colonized population. The reports and investigations of commissions, compilations, storage and publication of statistical data on demography, finance, trade, health, crime, education, transportation, agriculture and industry provided a pool of resources on which the British administration flourished in India. Colonial writers and administrators identified and categorized the people of Assam into tribals and non tribals, assigning them to wide ranging and diverse linguistic families and racial stocks. This official and unofficial categorization gave the people a highlighted identity. Also, after Assam became a part of British India, it was made a part of the (pre-partition) pan-Indian economic space. Colonial policymakers also saw Assam as a land frontier that needed more settlers and actively pursued policies to encourage immigration. The economic transformation that began with the introduction of tea plantations set off economic forces that gave further impetus to immigration. The migration that took place during the British period created competition for new political and economic opportunities, thrown open for the public by colonial rule. The coming of new market and the award of economic opportunities based on ethnicity, the cultural identities overlapped with political identities. Thus the indigenous people became highly apprehensive of the outsiders. Also, under British rule, between 1826-1874, Assam was made a new division of the Bengal Presidency. The British established an administration; the lower rung of which consisted almost wholly of Bengali Hindus imported mainly from Sylhet. The stereotyping of the ethnic groups built around socio-political privileges surfaced around this time.
There have been a number of group assertions and group conflicts in Assam since the last century.Why ethnicity has emerged as the most important category in the question of identity in Assam and why the invocation of “ethnic difference” is the recurring theme in almost all of its political assertions are questions still unravelled. What was the juncture when the cural and political character of ethnicity was overlapped? Our hunch is that that this juncture was when the colonial writings about the people of Assam commenced. This proposition is based on two points: first, this was the time which saw the influence of the non or semi official writings influence and shape up the official understandings, second, this official understanding took the form of policies which was unprecedented in the history of Assam. This not only imparted the people with certain selected identity markers from the large socio-cultural matrix but also made grounds for political mobilization centering around them.
The conditions for occurrence of such assertions in the contemporary times is buttressed by the perpetuation of the colonial legacy of identification and categorization by the postcolonial state and its encouragement for maintenance of symbols and institutions that embarks distinctiveness to the different groups.
