People of Assam

The first three waves/streams immigrated in prehistoric times and are estimates: the Austroasiatic estimate is the expected period from genetic studies;[9] the Tibeto-Burman is the lower limit from linguistic and other estimates;[10] and the Indo-Aryan is the upper limit from paleographic estimates.[11] The rest of the immigration took place in the medieval, and Colonial and post-Colonial times in Assam.

The archaeological sites of Sarutaru in Kamrup and Daojali Hading in Dima Hasao district display neolithic cultures.[12] 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.[13]

The earliest known inhabitants of Assam were late neolithic Austroasiatic peoples who came from Southeast Asia.[14] Linguistic studies indicate that the Austroasiatic peoples likely moved upstream along the Mekong river to reach the region bringing with it an aquatic culture.[15] Genetic studies on O2a1‐M95 Y-chromosomal haplogroup, associated with Austroasiatic speakers in India,[9] show that they reached northeast India about five thousand years ago.[16]

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.[17] They are today represented by the Khasi and Pnar peoples in neighboring Meghalaya; and who are also present in Assam's Karbi Anglong and Dima Hasao districts that adjoin Meghalaya.[18] 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%–39%) of south/east asian mtDNA as opposed to the Munda people (the Austroasiatic speakers in eastern India) who have predominantly south Asian mtDNA (75%–0%).[19]

The Austroasiatic people in Assam brought with them the technology of dry rice.[20] There is also a growing body of opinion that the Brahmaputra valley may have been a center of dispersal of the Austroasiatic languages.[21]

The second group of people to reach Assam were speakers of Tibeto-Burman languages, especially those speaking the proto- Boro-Garo, Tani and Kuki-Chin-Naga languages starting some time before three thousand years ago[10] and which continued till present times and who came from the north and the east.[22][23] There is widespread agreement among linguists and ethnographers that the Tibeto-Burmans migrated into an already settled region,[24][25] which is consistent with genetics studies.[26] They are today represented by the Bodo-Kachari, the Karbi, the Misings and Deoris; the Monpas and Sherdukpens; and Naga peoples.[27] 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,[28] and (2) plains where there are fewer but fairly homogenized Tibeto-Burman languages spread over a much larger area and in contact with Indo-Aryan and other language families.[29]

Linguists suggest 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[30] which indicates that proto-Boro-Garo must have emerged from a creolized lingua franca like Nagamese,[31] during a time when it was being used by non-native speakers.[32] A section of these Tibeto-Burman speakers could have originally been native Austroasiatic speakers, as suggested by some genetic studies on present-day Tibeto-Burman peoples of northeast India.[33] It is expected that the Tibeto-Burman immigrants were not as numerous as the indigenous Austroasiatic population, and the replacement was of languages and not peoples.[34] The arrival of the Indo-Aryans and the expansion of the Kamarupa kingdom over the entire Brahmaputra valley created the conditions for the creolization and development of proto-Boro-Garo lingua franca.[35]

Medieval historical sources suggest that the Bodo-Kacharis were adept at gravitational irrigation,[36] 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.[37] These irrigation systems continued to be used by Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman groups in modern times.[38] In this context, it is significant that most river names in Assam start with Di-, which means water in many Boro-Garo languages.

The Indo-Aryan migration to Assam that began in the first millennium BCE is the third stream that continues till today.[39] Based on paleographic evidence Indo-Aryans spread into Assam early[40] but it cannot be pushed beyond the 6th century BCE.[11] The early Indo-Aryans were cultivators who brought with them the technology of wet rice (sali) cultivation, the plough, and cattle.[41] The earliest direct epigraphic evidence of Indo-Aryans in Assam come from the 5th-century CE Umachal and Nagajari-Khanikargaon rock inscriptions, written in the Indo-Aryan Sanskrit language. The Tibeto-Burman languages did not replace all Austroasiatic languages in the Brahmaputra valley, and the Austroasiatic substratum of the later-day Indo-Aryan Assamese language indicates that Austroasiatic languages were present at least till the 4th- and 5th centuries CE.[42]

The appearance of Indo-Aryan in the Brahmaputra valley triggered its historical period.[43] In the Kamarupa kingdom that emerged the kings were of originally non-Indo-Aryan stock, who were Sanskritized and legitimized,[44] 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 and Tibeto-Burman words and formations in these grants indicated the presence of these languages.[45] 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.[46] Some of these centers were in Goalpara, Guwahati, Tezpur, Nagaon and Doyang-Dhansiri regions, where sanskritization of the non-Indo-Aryan communities occurred.[47] Sanskritization was a process that occurred simultaneously with "deshification" (or localization) of the Indo-Aryan communities in Assam.[48]

The fourth stream of new arrivals were Muslim personnel of the army of Muhammad-i-Bakhtiyar left back after his disastrous Tibet expeditions.[49] Subsequently called Goria (from Gaur), they married local women, adopted local customs, but maintained their religion. One of Khalji's chroniclers noted that they came across Koch and Mech peoples, who had Turkic countenances; and who were to later become important in subsequent periods. This army was able to convert a Mech chief, called Ali the 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.

The fifth wave of immigrants were Tai Shan People, who entered Assam under the leadership of Sukaphaa from Hukawng Valley in Myanmar[50] via Pangsau Pass in 1228 and settled between Buridihing and Dikhou rivers.[51] Ahoms, as they came to be called, were primarily responsible for surface leveling the extensive undulating plains of eastern Assam, extending the human base of sali wet-rice culture to the peoples they encountered in the region,[52] 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.[53]

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.[54] 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.[55] 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.[56]

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 and Dima Hasao.[57]

Following the establishment of the tea industry in Assam, and after the companies failed in harnessing the labour of the local Bodo-Kachari peoples, 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.[58] 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.[59] This group of immigrants originally spoke Austroasiatic languages, but today speak an Indo-Aryan Sadani and many have adopted Assamese language and ways.[60]

British colonialism opened the borders of Assam, hitherto controlled tightly by the Ahom and Dimasa kingdoms, and established a new order[61] causing a significant influx from Bengal, Rajasthan, North India and Nepal.[62] Hindu Bengalis filled most of the colonial administrative positions open to "natives", besides monopolizing modern professional positions in the medical, legal, and teaching areas and middle-class positions in the railways and post-office,[63] that colonialism opened up.

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 traders (locally called keya) from Rajasthan, though there were Sindhis, Punjabi-sikhs and others in small numbers with no competition from the local population.[64] 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; and though in numbers they were a small group—by 1906, the entire trade of the Assam valley was the monopoly of this highly visible population.[65]

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 occupation) began in 1830s[66]—and from a few thousand in 1879 their population increased to more than twenty one thousand in 1901 in the Brahmaputra valley.[67] In the first two decades of the 20th century the colonial government encouraged Newar and other ethnic non-Bahun Nepali communities to settle in Assam's excluded areas mostly as "professional" cattle grazers for an expanding revenue,[68] 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.[69]

To increase land productivity, the British encouraged Bengali Muslims cultivators from Mymensingh in present-day Bangladesh (Wave 10) to settle in Assam that began in 1901. These Muslims are now known as the Miya people and speak the Assamese language.

The last major group to immigrate are the Bengali Hindu refugees, especially from the Sylhet district of Bangladesh following the Partition of India (Wave 11).

Inputs from these and other smaller groups have gone towards the building of a unique multi-ethnic socio-cultural situation.