Contacts | FAQs | Feedback

 People | History                            

About Assam. . .

         IN A NUTSHELL

Census Figures

The 1991 Census puts the population of Assam at 2,24,14,322 with a sex ratio of 896 females per 1,000 males and a growth rate of +53.26 per cent in the two decades from 1971 to 1991. There are 16 Scheduled Castes and 23 Scheduled Tribes constituting 7.40 and 12.82 per cent respectively of the State’s population.

The Assamese

What we call the Assamese people of today is in fact the result of assimilation and integration of people of different racial stocks who migrated to Assam down the ages. The Assamese population can be divided into two broad groups: the non-tribal people who constitute the majority and the tribals.

The Non- Tribal: The entire non-tribal population of the State can be said to be concentrated in the Brahmaputra and the Barak Valleys. Constituting the majority in the State and the dominant populace in almost all the urban areas, their lifestyle is considerably modern and closer to what is dubbed the "mainstream" of the nation. They are the people who speak the Assamese language. In terms of religion, the Hindus who are a majority among the non-tribals are divided into castes and sub-castes along the same lines as in the rest of the Country though caste barriers are not as pronounced here. Thus we have the Brahmins and the Khatriyas, and the Vaishyas and the Sudras. We have to however bear in mind that a majority of the non-tribal population of today were tribals of yesterdays who underwent the transformation by adopting Hinduism and its way of life gradually rising in status in the Hindu caste system in a process which is termed by anthropologists as Sanskritization. The Ahoms themselves were absorbed into their Hinduized or Hindu Assamese-speaking subjects towards the end of their long reign.

The non-tribals can again be divided on the basis of religion amongst whom the Muslims constitute the second largest group followed by the Christians, Sikhs and the Buddhists.

Exquisite & Exotic Tribal people: The tribal on their part have been divided into the hills tribes and the plains tribes according to geography of their location. A majority of the tribals practise what has been dubbed tribal religion is very close to animism but with ingredients of Hinduism. A considerable part of the tribal population has also adopted Christianity and on the rare occasion, Islam.

Each of its 23 different tribes exhibit distinct and exquisite ways of life. There are tribes like the Bodo Kacharis, Karbis and Lalungs which are purely patriarchal, and the Khasis, Jaintias and Garos which are strictly matriarchal. Then there are the Dimasas who while having a patriarchal system of family structure also have a system of almost parallel male and female clans which accords exclusive rights to women.

A number of tribes such as the Hmars, Rengma Nagas and Garos have a social institution called the Youth Dormitory in which the young males live away from their families and undergo education and training. Dormitories also serve as centres of social work and are in some cases entrusted with the security of the village. The Zeme Nagas have dormitories both for males and females.

The term Assamese could thus very well be misleading. For when we talk of the Assamese People we do not restrict ourselves to the Assamese-speaking majority but all the tribes, sub-tribes and clans, the various religious groups and the castes and sub-castes which inhabit the land and come together to form a single entity called the Assamese.

Much of the ancient past of Assam still lies buried deep beneath its soil. Lack of proper and systematic archaeological research has resulted in a dearth of archaeological material, and though evidence of human habitation in the land has been traced back to the Early Stone Age, the overall picture remains vague and indistinct. That Assam, by whatever name, was known in other parts of the world as far back as in 100 BC is nevertheless clear from the records of the Chinese explorer Chang Kien who traced his country’s trade with Assam during that period. The Periplus of the Erythrean sea depicts how Chinese silk from Assam reached Egypt and Rome before the advent of Christianity. Ptolemy’s geography also acknowledges the existence of Assam.

The earliest inhabitants of Assam can be safely said to be the Australoids or the pre-Dravidians. It was however the Mongoloids who entered the land through the eastern mountainous passes who were to almost overrun the land long before the time of the compilation of the Hindu religious literature known as the Vedas around the 10th Century BC. The Vedas called the Mongoloids Kiratas, and the present-day tribes of the Northeast are all considered to be the descendants of the Kiratas. Pragjyotishpura --- the City of Eastern Lights --- was deemed to be the capital of the Kiratas, and the epics define a land of the Kiratas stretching from the foothills of the Himalayas in the north to the Bay of Bengal in the south. The Kirata king Narakasura is said to be the founder of Pragjyotishpura. The Kalika Purana and the Vishnu Purana identifies this land as Kamarupa saying that it extended for 450 miles in all directions from the shrine of Kamakhya atop the Nilachal Hills in modern Guwahati. Narakasua’s successor, Bhagadatta finds mention in the epic Mahabharata, leading a huge Kirata army with a large number of elephants in the war between the Pandavas and the Kauruvas against the former.

The records of the Chinese traveller Hiuen Tsang shed light on the area in the Seventh Century. Pragjyotishpura came to be known as Kamarupa in the medieval period. Hiuen Tsang speaks of a powerful and prestigious Kamarupa under King Bhaskaravarman. Kamarupa had perhaps achieved the zenith of its power during the time, for subsequent centuries were witness to repeated onslaughts by aboriginals which reduced the power of the kingdom and led to its fragmentation. 

Between the heydays of the Kamarupa kingdom and the coming of the Ahoms in the Thirteenth Century, the land experienced a spell of turmoil in which no single power could hold sway. Thus, when the Ahoms entered Assam through the eastern hills in 1228, they chanced upon a period in its history when it was at its most susceptible. Among the local tribes, only the Chutias and the Kacharis could offer a semblance of resistance.

 Thereafter, the next six centuries belonged to the Ahoms who founded a powerful dynastic rule with their capital in Sibsagar of Upper Assam. It was after the Ahoms that the land was named Asom or its more anglisized version Assam. The advent of the Ahoms marked the beginning of a new era in the history of Assam.

The centre of power was thus shifted from Kamarupa in Lower Assam to Upper Assam, and the importance of Lower Assam declined sharply save for an intervening short period in the early Sixteenth Century when the western limits of the kingdom of the Koch, one of the Kirata tribes, increased considerably under their illustrious king Naranarayana.

Meanwhile, the unprecedented rise in power of the Ahoms was taken as a challenge by the Mughal emperors in Delhi who sent seventeen military expeditions to shackle the Ahoms --- all in vain. The last of these expeditions resulted in a long-drawn see-saw battle between the Mughals and the Ahoms at Saraighat --- the present site of the first bridge over the Brahmaputra --- near Guwahati, which climaxed in a resounding victory for the Ahom forces under its general Lachit Barphukan.

 Lachit Barphukan achieved immortal fame and his heroism together with the battle and its many annecdotes --- one of which relates the interesting incident of Lachit behaeading his own uncle for slight of duty, as an example of his patriotism --- are now integral parts of the history and folk culture of Assam.                   
        
           The victory at Saraighat was followed by a spell of treacherous court intrigues which threatened the very existence of the Ahom kingdom until Rudra Sinha assumed power and took the Ahom kingdom from strength to strength. From this zenith however it was a plunge straight down, starting with the uprising of the Vaisnavite Moamoria Mahantas in protest against the religious harrassment meted out to them at the instigation of the Sakta Ahom queen Phuleswari, in the eighties of the Eighteenth Century. It was during the troubled times of the uprising and many court intrigues and dissension sapping the strength of the Ahom rulers that the Burmese invaded Assam through its eastern borders.

It was history repeating itself, and just as the Ahoms themselves had overran the land six centuries before, so also were they themselves humiliated by the Burmese who were to be the rulers of the land till the British appeared on the scene in 1826 and forced them to cede Assam by the Treaty of Yandabu.

That their latest acquisition was by no means a land of docile inhabitants was soon realized by the British when within four years of their conquest they had to face a joint resistance by the people of Assam. The bid was abortive but marked the beginning of the confrontation between the nationalists and the imperialist which was to end with the country achieving her independence in 1947.

The years in between, as in rest of the country, witnessed the saga of the Indian Independence Movement marked by ungrudging sacrifices and unbreakable determination. Maniram Dewan, Piyoli Phukan and Piyali Barua were hanged in connection with the Sepoy Mutiny. Martyrs like Kanak Lata, Kushal Konwar and Bhogeswari Phukanani gave their lives for the Mahatma’s cause. Their sacrifices were not in vain.

The Chinese aggression of 1962 was to pose a real enough threat to the independence of this particular part of the country and was thankfully averted by a strong military response and last-minute political understandings. But what was Assam back in 1947 constituted all the states of the present-day Northeast except Manipur and Tripura. However, regional cultural variations were too distinct for the entire land to stay clubbed under a single political administration. Hence we have the phenomenon of new states being carved out from erstwhile Assam one after the other. It started with the creation of Nagaland in 1963, followed by the separation of Meghalaya and Mizoram in 1971, and ended with the formation of Arunachal Pradesh in 1972. The part that remained as a single entity is the Assam of today.

And cultural identity has always featured prominently in the socio-economic and political scenario of the State. Thus we have the unprecedented Assam Movement of the 1980s which is largely deemed to be an endeavour to preserve the culrural identity of the State endengered by large-scale infiltration of illegal immigrants from across the border from Bangladesh. In recent times, the State has also been ranckled by the terrorism propagated by some extremist elements.