Definition of ‘Assamese’

With the first meeting of the 13-member high-level committee constituted by the Centre for suggesting measures to implement provisions of the crucial Clause 6 of the Assam Accord scheduled to be held on Wednesday, certain quarters opposed to protecting the identity of the indigenous people of Assam are once again trying to throw spanners on its way. Full text of Clause 6 of the Assam Accord is as follows – “Constitutional, legislative and administrative safeguards, as may be appropriate, shall be provided to protect, preserve and promote the cultural, social, linguistic identity and heritage of the Assamese people.” Certain groups known for their untiring efforts to protect and promote the interests of the illegal migrants having roots in erstwhile East Pakistan and present-day Bangladesh have also stood in the way of implementation of the various provisions of the Assam Accord. Likewise, some others have been pursuing a single-point agenda of challenging the very idea of defining who an “Assamese” is, so that the very spirit and objective of the Accord is defeated. Given the time and context of the Assam Accord, one should not have any doubt whatsoever in finding out what it had exactly meant by “Assamese people” in Clause 6. The very objective of the Assam movement led by the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) during 1979-85 was to protect the Assamese people from the onslaught of large-scale infiltration of people from erstwhile East Pakistan and present-day Bangladesh. What “Assamese people” in the context of the Assam movement meant is simple – people who are indigenous to Assam and belong to the state of Assam. It definitely did not mean people and communities who do not belong to Assam. To be more precise, it did not definitely mean people from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Punjab, Odisha, Jammu and Kashmir or Sikkim – or for that matter from any other state of the country living in Assam. The reason is, these people have their own respective “home states’and can always go back to those “home states’ in the event of Assam facing any kind of foreign aggression. This had happened once during the Chinese aggression of 1962, when even IAS officers hailing from other states and serving in Assam had run away to their respective “home states.” Members of numerous indigenous communities of Assam who have no other “home state” except for Assam thus are those whom the Assam Accord had definitely referred to as “Assamese people” and called for protection. Thus, all indigenous communities belonging to Assam must have been covered by the term “Assamese people”, the simple reason being that leaders of the Assam movement definitely did not call for protecting only those people whose mother tongue happened to be Assamese. Leaders of the Assam movement who had signed the Assam Accord definitely also did not mean that only the Assamese-speaking people be protected and the rest of the indigenous communities of Assam – Bodo, Rabha, Karbi, Dimasa, Tiwa, Mishing, Sonowal, Thengal, Tea tribes and others – should not be protected and should be left at the mercy of the hordes of illegal migrants from erstwhile East Pakistan and present-day Bangladesh. A section of political parties and individuals opposed to detection of illegal migrants and also to the implementation of the Assam Accord have been always opposing the urgency of protecting the interests of the indigenous communities of Assam. These parties and individuals, including a section of self-styled intellectuals of Assam, for example, have never raised the issue of the Bodo community being reduced to a numerical minority in Kokrajhar district by the immigrants. The identity of these parties and individuals opposed to protection of the indigenous communities had become clear way back in March 2015 when then Assam Assembly Speaker Pranab Gogoi had taken a bold step to define what the two words “Assamese People” exactly meant. He had, after consultations with 53 different organisations, recommended that the year 1951 be taken as the cut-off year and the National Register of Citizens of 1951 be taken as the basis for the definition of the “Assamese People” particularly for the purpose of reservation of seats and constitutional safeguards as required by the Assam Accord. Bhupen Hazarika too had, way back in 1968, given a very unambiguous definition of who an “Assamese” exactly was. According to him, “Every Indian who had come from far-away places and accepted the land on the banks of the Luit as his or her mother is the modern-day Assamese.” Remember, one has to be an “Indian” – wherever one may be from – to be accepted as a modern-day “Assamese.” Full stop.