Assam
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Origin of name
The origin of the name is uncertain.
Some 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
T-shaped, the state consists of the northern Brahmaputra valley, the middle
Karbi and Cachar hills and the southern Barak Valley. It experiences heavy rainfall
between March and September, with very high humidity in the summer months. The temperatures
are mild and never extreme during any season.
Assam is very rich in vegetation, forests and wildlife. Timber felling used to be a lucrative business, till it was declared illegal by the Supreme Court of India. The region also has a number of reserved forests, and one of them, Kaziranga is the home of the rare one horned rhinoceros. The state produces a lot of Bamboo, though the bamboo industry is still nascent.
The high rainfall, deforestation etc have resulted in annual floods that cause widespread loss of life, 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 are providing the right ingredients for a nascent tourism industry.
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-Burman_languages|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.
History
Ancient Assam
The 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
Medieval 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.British Conquest
Ahom palace intrigue (and political turmoil resulting from the Moamoria rebellion) aided
the 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 province. 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
After the independence from British rule in 1947, Assam spawned four more states
to become one of the seven sister states in the 1960's and 1970's. The new states were
Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya. The capital of Assam, which was in Shillong,
had 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 Hmar-Dimasa conflict).
Languages
Assamese and Bodo are the official languages of the state. Linguistically
modern Assamese traces its roots to eastern Magahi Prakrit, with strong influences from
the Tibeto-Burman and Mon-Khmer languages which are spoken by ethnic groups in the region. Bodo is a Tibeto-Burman language.
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.
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.
Culture
Bihu
Chief among the cultural artefacts is the Bihu festival celebrated by most ethnic groups in
the state.Economic Activity
Assam Tea
Assam'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.Assam Oil
Assam also produces crude oil and natural gas. Assam is the second place in the world (after Titusville in the United States) where petrolium 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.
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.
Different Perceptions
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The 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:External links