Assam
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Assam is a northeastern state of
India with its capital at
Dispur. Located just below the eastern Himalayan foothills, it is surrounded by the other northeastern states:
Arunachal Pradesh,
Nagaland,
Manipur,
Mizoram,
Tripura and
Meghalaya. Assam and its commercial capital
Guwahati form the gateway to the northeastern states, together called the
seven sisters. These states are connected to the rest of India via Assam's border with
West Bengal and a narrow strip called the chicken's neck. Assam shares international borders with
Bhutan and
Bangladesh.
Origin of name
\nThe origin of the name is uncertain.\nSome consider it is a corruption of the Sanskrit word asama meaning uneven, that describes the hilly region; since the Indo-Burmese corridor consists of a number of mountainous chains of the lower Himalayan region and valleys between them. Others believe the word is related to the Ahoms who ruled Assam for 600 years, since there is no record of the use of this name before their advent.
Geography
\nT-shaped, the state consists of the northern Brahmaputra valley, the middle\nKarbi and Cachar hills and the southern
Barak Valley. It experiences heavy rainfall\nbetween March and September, with very high humidity in the summer months. The temperatures\nare mild and never extreme during any season.
Assam is very rich in vegetation, forests and wildlife. Timber felling used to be a\nlucrative business, till it was declared illegal by the Supreme Court of India. The region\nalso has a number of reserved forests, and one of them,
Kaziranga is the home of the rare\none horned rhinoceros. The state produces a lot of
Bamboo, though the bamboo industry\nis still nascent.
The high rainfall, deforestation etc have resulted in annual floods that cause widespread loss of\nlife, livelihood and property. An earthquake prone region, Assam experienced two very big earthquakes:
1897 (8.1 on the
Richter scale) and
1950 (8.6).
The wildlife, forests and flora, rivers and waterways, and great natural beauty\nare providing the right ingredients for a nascent tourism industry.
History
Ancient Assam
\nThe region that comprises Assam and the adjoining areas was called Pragjyotisha in ancient times, as mentioned in the Indian epic of Mahabharata. The land was populated by
kiratas and
chinas, generally believed to be people with Asian features.
Medieval Assam
\nMedieval Assam was known as Kamarupa or Kamata, and was ruled by many dynasties. Chief among them was the Varman Dynasty. During the greatest of the Varman kings, Bhaskarvarman, a contemporary of Harshavardhana of Kanauj, the Chinese traveler Xuanzang visited the region, and recorded his travels. The other dynasties that ruled the region were the Kacharis, the Chutias etc. that belonged to the Indo-Tibetan groups.
Two later kingdoms left the biggest impact in the region. The Ahoms, a
Tai group, ruled eastern Assam for 600 years; and the
Koch, a
Tibeto-Burmese/
Dravidian group that ruled western Assam and northern Bengal. The Koch kingdom later split into two. The western kingdom became a vassal of the Moghuls whereas the eastern kingdom became an Ahom satellite state.
Inspite of numerous invasions from the west, mostly by Muslim rulers, no western power could establish its rule in Assam till the advent of the British. The most successful invader was Mir Jhumla, a governor of
Aurangzeb, who briefly occupied Gargaon the then capital of the Ahoms (
1662-
1663). But he found it difficult to control the people who carried on
guerilla attacks on his forces and had to leave the region. The last attempt by the Moghuls under the command of Raja Ram Singh resulted in the victory for the Ahoms at Saraighat (
1671) under the Ahom general Lachit Borphukan.
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British Conquest
\nAhom palace intrigue (and political turmoil resulting from the Moamoria rebellion) aided\nthe expansionist Burmese ruler of Ava to invade Assam and install a puppet king in 1821. With the Burmese having reached the doorsteps of the
East India Company's borders, the
First Anglo-Burmese War ensued, in which Assam was one of the sectors. The war ended with the
Treaty of Yandaboo in
1826, and the East India Company took control of the region.
The British subsequently annexed adjoining areas to the original occupation and called it the Assam\nprovince. At the time of independence of India, it consisted of the original Ahom kingdom, along with the present North East Frontier Agency, Naga Hills, original Kachari kingdom, Lushai Hills, and Garo, Khasi and Jayantia Hills. Of the Assam province on the eve of Independence,
Sylhet choose to join Pakistan after a referendum, and Manipur and Tripura became Group C provinces. The capital was
Shillong.
Post Independence
\nAfter the independence from British rule in 1947, Assam spawned four more states\nto become one of the
seven sister states in the 1960's and 1970's. The new states were\nArunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya. The capital of Assam, which was in Shillong,\nhad to be moved to Dispur, now a part of an expanding
Guwahati.
When the leaders of Assam tried to establish
Assamese as the official language, the Cachar district, which is populated by a predominantly dominant
Bengali speaking people, erupted in rebellion. This resulted is the death of some agitationists, and finally the order was watered down.
In the 1980's the Brahmaputra valley saw a six-year Assam Agitation that began
non-violently but became increasingly violent. The movement tried to force the government to identify and deport foreigners who, the natives maintained, are illegally inundating the land from neighboring Bangladesh and changing the demographics. Critics called it a xenophobic reaction of a chauvinistic people. The agitation ended after an accord between the leaders of the agitation and the Union Government. Most of the accord remains unimplemented today, a cause for a simmering discontent.
This was followed by demands for greater autonomy especially by the Bodos in the later 1980's and 1990's. The period also saw the growth of armed secessionist groups like
United Liberation Front of Asom (
ULFA) and
National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB). The union government responded by deploying the Indian army to control the situation in November 1990, leading to claims of human rights violations. The Indian army deployment has now been institutionalized under a
Unified Command. Worsening inter-ethnic relationships also marked this period.
The 2000's saw inter-ethnic killings, especially in the Karbi and Cachar hills (e.g the\n
Hmar-Dimasa conflict).
Languages
\nAssamese and Bodo are the official languages of the state. Linguistically\nmodern Assamese traces its roots to eastern
Magahi Prakrit, with strong influences from\nthe
Tibeto-Burman and
Mon-Khmer languages which are spoken by ethnic groups in the region. Bodo is a Tibeto-Burman language. \n
Bengali (
Sylheti) has become the dominant language in the Barak valley after the advent of the British and the partition of Bengal in 1947.
Nepali and
Hindi are other important languages spoken in the state.
Culture
Bihu
\nChief among the cultural artefacts is the Bihu festival celebrated by most ethnic groups in\nthe state.
Economic Activity
\nAssam Tea
\nAssam's biggest contribution to the world is its tea. Assam produces some of the finest teas in the world. Other than the Chinese tea variety
Camellia sinensis, Assam is the only region in the world that has its own variety of tea called
Camellia assamica. Assam tea is grown at elevations near sea level, giving it a malty sweetness and an earthy flavor, as opposed to the more floral aroma of highland (e.g. Darjeeling, Taiwanese) teas.
The tea industry developed by the British planters brought in labor from
Bihar and
Orissa and their descendents form a significant demographic group in the state.
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Assam Oil
\nAssam also produces crude oil and
natural gas. Assam is the second place in the world (after Titusville in the
United States) where
petroleum was discovered. The second oldest oil well in the world still produces crude oil. Most of the oilfields of Assam are located in the Upper Assam region of the
Brahmaputra Valley.
Different Perceptions
\nThe above information were written by a person who can be termed as a pro-Indian. Therefore you will notice that the entire effort is to portray a story of Assam, free from the real story of what's happening there. The following is how the entire story actually unfolds:
The region was part of the British Empire and integrated forcefully into India after Indian achieved its independence from the British on the 15th of August 1947. Like most other nationalities that the British governed during its "Raj", the former rulers cared less whether the people of Assam cared to join India or not; they simply "gifted" Assam to the Indians, the same way the Burmese slave-traders in 1826 "gifted" Assam to the British (at the treaty of Yandaboo).
The biggest threat posed by India and Indians (Hindu/Hindi-speaking people who align with Indian way of thinking) is the rapid Indianization of the ethnic races of this region. Most of the nationalities are on the verge of extinction due to population pressure from India and from Bengal, and the so-called democratic government of India has done pathetically little to help these ethnic tribes retain their culture, tradition and spiritual customs.
The capital of Assam was previously in
Shillong now in Meghalaya. After the 1970s reorganisation the capital of Assam was shifted to Dispur, near
Guwahati, the largest city (or one of the largest gatto in India) in the northeast.
Indian historians have burned midnight oil trying to recreate history on how the modern Assamese people actually are from Bihar or Bengal and therefore Indians; however, the truth remains that most Assamese don't care less of where their forefathers came from 1000 years ago; and are more worried where their kids will end up (under the Indianization of their culture).
Since the turn of the last century (1900s), ethnic
Bengalis from
Bengal region on the west and south of Assam have been migrating to this region, and the British were sponsoring this migration because they needed laborers to work in their
plantations and factories. The Indian sponsored governments of this region continues to bring in Bengalis to settle in this region and uses these people to get them "democratically" elected into the Indian-sponsored parliaments.
Like
indigenous people in other parts of the world, the 100 plus ethnic tribes of these region are in a struggle to maintain their cultural heritage. There are active autonomy movements in the
Bodo and Karbi dominated regions. In recent times, ethnicity based militant groups have mushroomed (
ULFA, NDFB, BLT, UPDS, DHD, KLO, HPCD etc.) along with violent inter-ethnic conflicts (e.g the Hmar-Dimasa conflict).
India has won its war as far as the "north east" is concered. Most of the youth of this region are either in the Indian army or in the rebel armies - fighting each other to death. The rest of them are split between those who are sick of the fighting and therefore decides to go to India mainland and never come back to their homeland; and those that decides that they will spice up their sad existance with hard drugs that's being smuggled over from the Burmese side. Within two generations, its most likely that Assam will have lost its ethnic moziac of nationalities, and will end up being another homogenious Bengali and Behari dominated Indian province.
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