The Assamese people are a socio-ethnolinguistic identity that has been described at various times as nationalistic or micro-nationalistic. This group is often associated with the Assamese language, though the use of the term precedes the name of the language. It has also been used retrospectively to the people of Assam before the term "Assamese" came into use. They are a physically diverse group formed after centuries of assimilation of Austroasiatic, Tibeto-Burman, Indo-Aryan and Tai populations. The total population of Assamese speakers in Assam is nearly 15 million which makes up 48.38% of the population of state according to the Language census of 2011. According to a 2011 census, out of Assamese people, a majority of 10,013,013 or 75.52% Assamese people are Hindus, the largest minority of 2,830,072 or 21.34% are Muslims, and 414,187 or 3.14% are Christians and Sikhs by religion.
Definition
The Government of Assam faced difficulties in defining Assamese people, due to linguistically and culturally heterogeneous population. Though there is a political dispute over the definition of Assamese people, in general; the people belonging to the state of Assam are referred sometimes as Assamese people or more appropriately as People of Assam. The lack of a definition has put stumbling blocks in implementing clause 6 of the Assam Accord, an agreement signed by the activists of the Assam Movement and the Government of India in 1985. Since a legal definition is important to provide "constitutional, legislative and cultural" safeguards to the Assamese people, the Government of Assam had formed a ministerial committee to finalise the definition in March 2007. To address the clause 6 issue, AASU had announced a definition on 10 April 2000 which was based on residency with a temporal limit: All those whose names appeared in the 1951 National Register of Citizens and their progenies should be considered as Assamese.
History
Assamese as a nationalistic identity emerged in the pre-colonial times during the later part of the Ahom rule, especially during the 17-th century when the Ahoms repelled the Mughal empire and consolidated its rule in western Brahmaputra valley. The first usage of the English word "Assamese" is noted in colonial times; based on same principle as Sinhalese, Nepalese and Canarese, derived from the Anglicised word "Assam" with the suffix, meaning "." In contrast, Western Assam from early to pre-colonial times was known as "'Kamarupa" and considered a politically, socially and culturally separate unit from the rest of the state. In the 17th century, the Ahom kingdom was known as the "Kingdom of Acham" to the Mughals; and later, to the British. In 1682, the eastern Kamrup was annexed by Ahom kingdom and the expanded kingdom continued to be called as the "Kingdom of Assam" by Europeans till 1821, when the Ahom kingdom became part of the Burmese Empire. After Assam became part of British India, the newly constituted province came to be known by its new anglicised name Assam after its largest constituent, and the name Assamese / Asamiya came to be associated with the Assamese language which was erstwhile known as Kamrupi. In colonial era, Immigrants were accepted as Assamese whose cultural determinants were largely Hindu. and Assamese language and Vaishnava faith used to determine true Assamese.
Demographic changes
The issue of illegal influx has a 40-year history, starting with the anti-foreigner agitation that began in 1979 under the leadership of the All Assam Students’ Union. In 1985, after hundreds of people died in course of independent India’s biggest mass uprising, the AASU, and other agitation groups signed an agreement with the Centre called the Assam Accord. It fixed 25 March 1971 as the cut-off date for detection and expulsion of illegal migrants, meaning anyone found entering India after this date were to be detected and sent back. In the four decades that have followed, a few thousand illegal Bangladeshi migrants have been expelled by successive state governments, and many of these ‘expelled’ people are believed to have come back. According to an Assam government white paper, between 1985 and 2012, 2,442 illegal immigrants from Bangladesh had been expelled from the state.
