People of Assam

The People of Assam inhabit a multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic and multi-religious society. They speak languages that belong to four main language groups: Tibeto-Burman, Indo-Aryan, Tai-Kadai, and Austroasiatic. The large number of ethnic and linguistic groups, the population composition, and the peopling process in the state has led to it being called an "India in miniature".

The peopling of Assam was understood in terms of racial types based on physical features, types that were drawn by colonial administrator Risley. These classifications are now considered to have little validity, and they yield inconsistent results; the current understanding is based on ethnolinguistic groups and in consonance with genetic studies.

Peopling of Assam

Geographically Assam, in the middle of Northeast India, contains fertile river valleys surrounded and interspersed by mountains and hills. It is accessible from Tibet in the north (via Bum La, Se La, Tunga), across the Patkai in the Southeast (via Diphu, Kumjawng, Hpungan, Chaukam, Pangsau, More-Tamu) and from Burma across the Arakan Yoma (via An, Taungup). These passes have been gateways for migration routes from Tibet, Southeastern China and Myanmar. In the west both the Brahmaputra valley and the Barak valley open widely to the Gangetic plains. Assam has been populated via all these accessible points in the past. It has been estimated that there were eleven major waves and streams of ethnolinguistic migrations across these points over time."An analysis of peopling of Assam on the above ethnolinguistic basis, coupled with the scanty paleolithic, neolithic and historical evidences, reveals that there are as many as eleven waves and streams of migration into Assam. (The terms ‘wave’ and ‘stream’ are used here with specific meanings: while ‘wave’ is used to mean a migration at a particular point of time, ‘stream’ means continuity of migration for a long period, which may continue even now ever since it started, albeit with varying volume)." In recent years, a multidisciplinary approach using archaeological, historical linguistic and genetic data has been used to reconstruct population history.

There is no evidence in Assam and Northeast India of early hominid dispersal. The presence of a paleolithic culture is contested. An early report of the presence of Dravidian is also not supported. The earliest culture in Assam is Neolithic, there is no evidence of chalcolathic culture and first state formation began only from middle of 1st millennium CE.

Pre-historic

The archaeological sites of Sarutaru in Kamrup and Daojali Hading in Dima Hasao district display neolithic cultures. Some other Neolithic sites in Northeast include those in Arunachal Pradesh, Sadiya, Dibrugarh, Lakhimpur, Nagaon, Naga Hills, Karbi Anglong,‌ Kamrup, Garo and Khasi hills of Meghalaya, etc. The neolithic culture discovered in Assam has East and Southeast Asian affinities of the Hoabinhian tradition.

Austroasiatic

The earliest inhabitants of Assam are estimated to be late neolithic Austroasiatic peoples who came from Southeast Asia. Genetic studies on O2a1‐M95 Y-chromosomal haplogroup, associated with Austroasiatic speakers in India,"The origins of Indian Austro Asiatic speakers had earlier been correlated to the origin of O2a1-M95 (Kumar et al., 2007)." show that they reached northeast India after an expansion time five thousand years ago. Some linguistic models indicate that the Austroasiatic peoples likely reach the region bringing with it an aquatic culture. Historians too have noted that dry rice cultivation reached Assam from Southeast Asia. Though some authors have suggested that the Brahmaputra valley may have been a center of dispersal of the Austroasiatic languages, this has been refuted by others.

They are expected to have settled in the foothills bordering the Brahmaputra valley, to be either absorbed or pushed to the hills by subsequent migrants. The Austroasiatic remnant today are represented by the Khasi and Pnar peoples in neighbouring Meghalaya; and who are also present in Assam's Karbi Anglong and Dima Hasao districts that adjoin Meghalaya, and who have traditions placing them in the Brahmaputra valley. It is significant that in the context of the discontinuity in mtDNA in south asian and southeast asian populations the Khasi people have an equal admixture (40% S Asian and 39% SE Asian) of south/east asian mtDNA as opposed to the Munda peoples (the Austroasiatic speakers in eastern India) who have predominantly south Asian mtDNA (75% S Asian and 0% SE Asian).

suggests that the Garo, Rabha, and some Koch peoples carry linguistic and social traces of past Austroasiatic peoples.

Tibeto-Burman

The second group of people to reach Assam are considered to be speakers of Tibeto-Burman languages" However, they may have been preceded by speakers of Austroasiatic languages, as suggested by a number of toponyms and areal loanwords (Kakati 1995; Diffloth 2005; Konnerth 2014)." starting some time before three thousand years ago"Most scholars suggest that the first Tibeto-Burman-speaking peoples began to enter Assam at least 3,000 years ago." and which continued till present times and who came from the north and the east. It is indicated that this population could be associated with the O-M134 y-chromosome haplogroup.Bing Su, Chunjie Xiao, Ranjan Deka, Mark T. Seielstad, Daoroong Kangwanpong, Junhua Xiao, Daru Lu, Peter Underhill, Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Ranajit Chakraborty, Li Jin, "Y chromosome haplotypes reveal prehistorical migrations to the Himalayas." ''Hum. Genet.'' (2000) 107:582-590. DOI 10.1007/s004390000406 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225570045_Y_chromosome_haplotypes_reveal_prehistorical_migrations_to_the_Himalayas There is widespread agreement among linguists and ethnographers that the Tibeto-Burmans migrated into an already settled region, which is consistent with genetics studies. They are today represented by the Bodo-Kacharis, the Karbi and the Mising; the Monpas and Sherdukpens; and Naga peoples. Over time, two distinct Tibeto-Burman linguistic regions emerged in northeast India—(1) ''highlands'' surrounding the Brahmaputra valley that is predominantly Tibeto-Burman with great diversity, and (2) ''plains'' where there are fewer but fairly homogenised Tibeto-Burman languages spread over a much larger area and in contact with Indo-Aryan and other language families.

DeLancey (2012) suggests that the Boro-Garo languages, the most widespread group of Tibeto-Burman languages in the ''plains'', have a comparatively transparent grammar and an innovative morphology which indicates that ''proto-Boro-Garo'' must have emerged from a creolized lingua franca which is comparable to the case of Nagamese, during a time when it was being used by non-native speakers. A section of these Tibeto-Burman speakers could have been native Austroasiatic speakers, as suggested by some genetic studies on present-day Tibeto-Burman peoples of northeast India. It is expected that the Tibeto-Burman peoples were not as numerous as the indigenous Austroasiatic population, and the replacement was of languages and not peoples. The arrival of the Indo-Aryans and the expansion of the Kamarupa kingdom over the entire Brahmaputra valley created the conditions for the creolisation and development of proto-Boro-Garo lingua franca.

Medieval historical sources suggest that the Bodo-Kacharis were adept at gravitational irrigation, and though they were immersed in ''ahu'' rice culture some of them raised a wet rice called ''kharma ahu'' that was irrigated but not necessarily transplanted. These irrigation systems continued to be used by Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman groups in modern times. In this context, it is significant that most river names in Assam such as ''Dibang'', ''Dihang'', ''Doyang'', start with ''Di-'', (water in Tibeto-Burman) and end in ''-ong'' (water in Austroasiatic languages).

Eye witness accounts of the Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman peoples come from the ''Periplus of the Erythraean Sea'' (1st century CE) and Ptolemy's ''Geography'' (2nd century CE) that call the land ''Kirrhadia'' after the Indo-Aryan name for the non-Indo-Aryan Kirata people who were the source of Malabathrum, so priced in the classical world.

Indo-Aryan

The Indo-Aryan migration to Assam that began in the first millennium BCE is the third stream. Based on paleographic evidence Indo-Aryans spread into Assam early but it cannot be pushed beyond the 5th century BCE."...Indo-Aryans had not spread out as far as to Assam before 500 BCE, at least not in mentionable number." The early Indo-Aryans were cultivators who brought with them the technology of wet rice (''sali'') cultivation, the plough, and cattle. The earliest direct epigraphic evidence of Indo-Aryans in Assam comes from the 5th-century CE Umachal and Nagajari-Khanikargaon rock inscriptions, written in the Indo-Aryan Sanskrit language. When Indo-Aryan speakers entered the Brahmaputra valley, Austroasiatic languages had not yet been entirely replaced by the Tibeto-Burman languages, since an Austroasiatic substratum in the later-day Assamese language that emerged from the earlier Indo-Aryan vernacular indicates that Austroasiatic languages were present at least till the 4th- and 5th centuries CE.

The presence of Indo-Aryans in the Brahmaputra valley triggered its historical period with the establishment of the Kamarupa kingdom. The kings of this kingdom were originally non-Indo-Aryan who were sanskritised, and who encouraged immigration and settlements of Indo-Aryans as landlords of already settled cultivators. The land grants were written in Sanskrit, but the presence of Austroasiatic, Tibeto-Burman and vernacular Indo-Aryan words and formations in these grants indicated the presence of these languages. In the period when Indo-Aryan settlements were being created, Kamarupa likely constituted urban centers along the Brahmaputra river in which a precursor of the Assamese language was spoken with Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman communities everywhere else. Some of these centers were in Goalpara, Guwahati, Tezpur, Nagaon and Doyang-Dhansiri regions, where sanskritisation of the non-Indo-Aryan communities occurred. Sanskritization was a process that occurred simultaneously with "deshification" (or localisation) of the Indo-Aryan communities in Assam.

Medieval

Muslim soldier-professionals

The fourth stream of new arrivals were Muslim personnel of the army of Muhammad Bin Bakhtiyar Khalji left back after his disastrous Tibet expeditions. Subsequently called ''Goria'' (from Gaur), they married local women, adopted local customs, but maintained their religion. This army was able to convert a Mech chief, called Ali Mech, which was the beginning of a limited number of local people who converted to the Islamic faith—later converts from the Koch, Mech and other ethnic groups came to be called ''Desi''. In the 16th century yet another army from Bengal had to leave behind their soldiers—they too married local women and came to be called ''Moria''. These populations were joined by religious preceptors, the most famous of who was Azan Faqir, a sufi saint. The descendants of Azan Faqir are known as ''Sayed'' in Assam.

Tai farmer-soldiers

The fifth wave of immigrants were Tai Shan People, who entered Assam under the leadership of Sukaphaa from Hukawng Valley in Myanmar via Pangsau Pass in 1228 and settled between Buridihing and Dikhou rivers. Ahoms, as they came to be called, were primarily responsible for surface levelling the extensive undulating plains of eastern Assam, extending the human base of ''sali'' wet-rice culture to the peoples they encountered in the region, and for establishing the Ahom kingdom. They assimilated some of the Naga, Moran, Borahi, Chutiya and Dimasa peoples in a process of ''Ahomisation'' till they themselves began to be Hinduized from the mid-16th century onwards.

Tai Buddhists and Sikhs

The sixth stream of peoples between the 17th and 19th centuries, were Tai; but unlike the Ahoms who were animists when they arrived, the later-day Tais were Buddhists. Called Khamti, Khamyang, Aiton, Tai Phake and Turung peoples, they came from Upper Burma at different times, and settled is small groups in Upper Assam. This continued well into the colonial times. At the end of the Medieval period, a small contingent of Sikhs soldiers sent by Ranjit Singh arrived in Assam to participate in the Battle of Hadirachokey—the survivors settled in a few villages in Nagaon district, married into local communities and formed a distinct Assamese-Sikh community.

Colonial

Kuki-Chin ethnic groups

The seventh wave of people into Assam occurred soon after the beginning the colonial period in Assam after the First Anglo-Burmese War and the Treaty of Yandaboo in 1826—the political instability led to the immigration of Kachin and Kuki people from Upper Burma into Assam across the Patkai and Arakan Yoma. They constitute the Singphos in Upper Assam, and the Kuki-Chin tribes in Karbi Anglong, Dima Hasao and Barak Valley.

Tea Garden labourers

Following the establishment of the tea industry in Assam, and after the companies failed in harnessing the labour of the local Kachari, people from the Chotanagpur area of Bihar, northern and western Orissa, eastern Madhya Pradesh, and northern Andhra Pradesh belonging to Munda, Ho, Santal, Savara, Oraon, Gond and other ethnic groups were recruited for labour in the newly emerging tea estates. Individual tea planters began bringing in labour starting in 1841, and collectively after 1859 many of them forcibly, in inhuman conditions, to serve as indentured labourers. Even after the practice of recruiting from outside was banned in 1926 recruitment continued till 1960 when labour available in the tea estates became a surplus. This group of immigrants originally spoke many languages belonging to Dravidian, Indo-Aryan and Austroasiatic languages and many have adopted Assamese language and ways.

Colonial Indo-Aryan

British colonialism opened the borders of Assam, hitherto controlled tightly by the Ahom and Dimasa kingdoms, and established a new order causing a significant influx from Bengal, Rajasthan, North India and Nepal. Bengali Hindus filled most of the colonial administrative positions open to "natives"; and monopolised positions that colonialism opened up such as modern professional positions in the medical, legal, and teaching areas and middle-class positions in the railways and post-office. The Hindu Bengali became the model of social change in the 19th century—westernisation as well as sanskritisation became stronger with impacts on dress, hair-do, manners, culinary arts, and other forms of culture; the caste system, which was not too rigid earlier, became more rigid; ''sastric'' rituals presided over by brahmins became more common; etc.

Colonialism also germinated different industries and instituted a market economy in place of the corvee-labour-based non-monetized economy of the kingdoms it replaced. The opportunities for traders were filled mostly by Marwari people, Marwari traders (locally called ''keya'') from Rajasthan, though there were Sindhis, Punjabi Sikhs and others in small numbers with no competition from the local population. In the 19th-century the peasant economy was completely in their grip and Marwari traders also participated as bankers and commercial agents of the nascent Assam Tea industry. Though in numbers they were a small group the entire trade of the Assam valley by 1906 was the monopoly of this highly visible population.

The British East India Company began recruiting Gorkha soldiers after the Anglo-Nepalese War (1814–1816); settlement of Gorkha retirees and their families in the then depopulated areas (following Moamoria rebellion and Burmese invasions of Assam, Burmese occupation) began in the 1830s—and from a few thousand in 1879 their population increased to more than twenty one thousand in 1901 in the Brahmaputra valley. In the first two decades of the 20th century the colonial government encouraged Newar people, Newar and other ethnic non-Bahun Nepalis, Nepali communities to settle in Assam's excluded areas mostly as "professional" cattle grazers for an expanding revenue, feeding into the business of milk supply in the emerging urban markets. This population of Assam was joined by Gorkha security personnel from forces such as the Assam Rifles that stayed back after their retirement. This population became predominant in the lower hills.

Muslim cultivators

Muslim landless cultivators from Mymensingh Division, Mymensingh in present-day Bangladesh, encouraged by the landlords of Goalpara and the British administration, began arriving in the late 19th century seeking land. The initial trickle showed dramatic increases in each succeeding decade after 1901—by 1911, the Mymensingh cultivators were joined by lesser numbers from Pabna, Bogra and Rangpur who settled in the ''Char lands'' of Goalpara and some beyond; by 1921 the immigrants were settled up to the central districts of Assam, mostly along the Brahmaputra though many had ventured further away, with some close to the Bhutan border; and by 1931 the increases have been so dramatic that even British officers began talking about demographic shifts. This group came to be called Miya people, Miya and a large section of them had accepted the Assamese language as their mother tongue.

Post-Colonial

Hindus from East Pakistan

The Partition of India triggered an exodus of Bengali Hindu people mostly from Sylhet Division in East Pakistan to Assam, numbering between 700 to 800 thousands. This wave continued till the 1970s and then slowed down. Unlike the Muslim cultivator who came from Mymensingh and from the west seeking land, this group came in from the south and settled mostly around towns, service centers and railway stations.

Other Indian groups

Immigration of North Indian groups, especially from eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, in the post-Independence period was particularly strong. Collectively called ''desuwali'' (a local corruption of ''deshwali'' referring to their homeland or ''desh''), they came from marginal socioeconomic backgrounds and came as construction workers, handcart-pullers, rickshaw pullers, cobblers, barbers and eventually settled in Assam, usually in interior fallow lands—and many of them found reasonable successes in trade and commerce and have become politically assertive. Other smaller groups include immigrants from Punjab who participated in trade and commerce; and people from Kerala who participated in education, and para-medical services (such as nursing).

Social changes

The process of social formation in Assam has been marked by simultaneous sanskritisation and tribalisation (de-sanskritization) of the different groups of people that have settled in Assam at different times, and this process of social formation is best studied in three periods: (1) Pre-colonial, (2) Colonial and (3) Post-colonial periods.

Ethnic groups

Assam is acknowledged as the settling land for a lot of cultures. A number of tribal grouping have landed in the soils of Assam in the course of diverse directions as the territory was linked to a number of states and many different countries. Austroasiatic languages, Austro-Asiatic, Tibeto-Burmans, and Indo-Aryans had been the most important traditional groups that arrived at the site and lived in the very old Assam. They were well thought-out as the first inhabitants of Assam and yet at the moment they are essential elements of the "Assamese Diaspora".

The greater Bodo-Kachari group forms a major part of Assam encompassing 19 major tribes, both plain and hills were

Historically the dominant group of Assam, later the Ahom people, Tai Ahoms rise as dominant group, the ethnic group along with which the Upper Assam Bodo-Kachari groups like Chutias, Morans and Borahis were associated with the term "Assamese". Along with Tai Ahoms, they were other prominent groups that ruled Assam valley during the medieval period, those belonging to the Chutia, Koch, and Dimasa communities. The first group ruled from 1187 to 1523 in the eastern part of the state, the second group ruled Lower Assam from 1515 to 1949, while the third group ruled southern part of Assam from the 13th century to 1854. Bodo people, Bodo tribe also known as ''Boro'' are the dominant group in BTAD, Bodoland. They speak the Bodo language. Which is one of the 22 constitutional languages of India.

Most of the indigenous Assamese communities today have actually been historically tribal and even the now considered non-tribal population of Assam were actually tribes which have slowly been converted into castes through Sanskritisation. Assam has always been a historically tribal state.

As per latest development indigenous ethnicities like ''Moran'', ''Chutia'', ''Motok'', ''Tai Ahoms'' and ''Koch'' & also non-indigenous ethnic group like the ''Tea tribes'' have realised the above-mentioned points and have applied for ST status . This will make Assam a predominantly tribal state having wider geo-political ramifications.

See also

* Assamese people

References

Bibliography

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* Bhagawati, A C (2002)
Ethnic Identities in North-East India
, N K Bose Memorial Lectures. Vihangama, IGNCA Newsletter, Vol II, March–April 2002
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{{DEFAULTSORT:People Of Assam
People from Assam,
Social groups of Assam