Politics of Assamese Language (original) (raw)
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The Politics of Language in Assam
The India Forum, 2021
https://www.theindiaforum.in/article/politics-language-assam Language has been at the heart of political debate in Assam since the formation of the British colonial province of Assam in 1874, then through the turbulent decades leading to Independence, the separation of Sylhet during Partition, and into our times.
Situating English in the Language Politics of Assam
Langlit, 2016
During the colonial period, the English language was used to highlight colonial supremacy and hence the inferiority of the colonized native population in Assam. Later, political events during the independence movement added to the cleavages between English and Assamese language. In the post colonial period, these differences gave rise to an Assamese linguistic sub-national movement which viewed the teaching and learning of English as a colonial imposition and reduced the importance of the language to a subordinate position. This paper looks at the challenges that English teaching and learning face in Assam. It suggests that language policies should be so framed that English acts as a complementary force to the Assamese language and does not create an antagonistic and damaging relationship with it.
Language, Identity and Conflict: Comprehending Everyday Co-existence in Assam
Space and Culture, India, 2024
Assam has long experienced intercommunal tensions stemming from faulty colonial-era administrative policies, which have continued post-independence. Key instances of violence include the Language Movement (1960), the Medium of Instruction Movement (1972), and the Assam Movement (1979-1985). These conflicts, particularly over language, have intensified tensions between Bengali and Assamesespeaking communities. Despite efforts to protect Assam's ethnic and linguistic diversity, political manipulation and poor crisis management have deepened divisions. As affective relation is built up to fuel community sentiments and empower these movements, one may discern that three principal factors have been responsible for intensifying the conflict: misinformation among the communities, misdirection of the Movements, and involvement of political parties. Further, as political rhetoric has kept fuelling and nourishing communal sentiments till the present day, the same factors seem to be at work in varying degrees. Employing qualitative methods, this study draws from primary and secondary data, including interviews with 150 families from various socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds in violence-affected areas of Western Assam. Through semi-structured interviews, leaders, political figures, victims, and witnesses shared their views on Assam's socio-political and economic history. This research is structured on three principal arguments corresponding to three sections, and a set of recommendations is presented in the concluding section. The first section argues that although the genesis of language conflict was triggered by transformation brought about by a new socioeconomic structure introduced by the East India Company (EIC), the rhetorical conflict has been sustained till the present times through the clerk-conspiracy theory. The second section discusses how the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA), as a non-communal association, tried to diffuse communal sentiments during the Language Movement in 1960. The third section looks at the post-1960s era when the conflict intensified due to the failure of the previous governments to tackle the immigration issue, and the concluding section argues that since inter-ethnic relationships worsened in subsequent years, a constitutional safeguard for the Assamese community may transform the socioeconomic conditions responsible for the conflict. However, this can be achieved only when solidaritybuilding measures, mutual respect for all communities, and humility are made the basis of conversation.
"Who is Indigenous in Assam? Politics in the Vernacular"
The India Forum, 2023
The India Forum, January 7, 2023 https://www.theindiaforum.in/politics/politics-vernacular-who-indigenous-assam Claims to Indigenity in Assam are usually treated with sympathy. The exceptions, though, tell their own story
Language and Nationalism: Comprehending the Dynamics in Nineteenth-century Assam
After 10 years of the annexation of most part of the present day Assam into British India, the Missionaries have arrived in Assam in 1836. In April same year Bengali was introduced as the court language in Assam and the service of Bengalis became indispensible in education system which ensured Bengali to be the medium of instruction in Assam. Bengali continued to enjoy court language status until Assamese replaced Bengali in 1873. While nearly four decades of Bengali supremacy over Assamese in courts and schools in Assam worked adversely towards a sustained development of Assamese language, it eventually created a conducive atmosphere to develop linguistic nationalism in Assam, and with the help of missionaries, Assamese Language and literature entered into its Modern Age (1826-Present) during this period. This paper will attempt to trace the emergence of 'little nationalism' in Assamese vernacular history in such a linguistic revivalism. While this paper explores the contribution of informed Assamese youth and also missionaries in reinstating Assamese to its full glory replacing Bengali in 1873, it also opens up the complexities involved in Assamese 'little nationalism' in the context of post colonial Assam.
Tongue Has No Bone': Fixing the Assamese Language, c. 1800-c. 1930
Studies in History, 2008
This article deals with the politics of envisioning a vernacular for Assam proper during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Through a small, connected history of orthographic contests, grammarians’ debates and print-culture, it tries to understand the various ways in and through which the boundaries of a vernacular were drawn, policed and violated during this period. Rather than narrating the complexities of the question in terms of stable and ever-present languages, this article attempts to show how the metropolis-oriented production of linguistic knowledge came to hypostatize an abstract grid of standard languages within which the mutable, heterogeneous and fluctuating speech practices (and the corresponding scribal culture) of a frontier province had to be definitively mobilized. The article explores the debates regarding the alleged dialectal status of the ‘Assamese’ and traces some connections between spatial sequence, linguistic imagination and proprietorial logic.
Indian Journal of Language and Linguistics, 2023
The state of Assam in India is the home to the people who speak Assamese, an Indo-Aryan language. Assamese is the native tongue of the people of Assam and the official language of the state of Assam. Based on linguistic standards and conventions, Assamese is a vital language for writing. However, when we attempt to see the language from the viewpoint of native speakers' attitudes towards the language, we find that the language is steadily deteriorating among the linguistic community. This deterioration is caused by Linguistic Imperialism. Linguistic Imperialism is a phenomenon in which a dominant language attempts to weaken other languages both socially and politically and in a theoretically founded way. The impact of the dominance is increasing day by day due to which a negative attitude has increased significantly among the native speakers of Assamese who considers English as superior to their mother tongue. Negative attitude is one of the reasons of language endangerment and we cannot deny the possibility of endangerment of the Assamese language in the far future if the dominance of English goes on increasing. History is evident that languages with a huge literature and population got extinct because of the reasons like negative attitude, dominance of other languages, decreasing rate of fluent native speakers, examples of such languages are Sanskrit, Hebrew, etc. This paper tries to analyse the negative attitude which is gradually increasing in the Assamese language and ways to strengthen it by reverting the dominance of Linguistic Imperialism by languages like English and Hindi.
Language, power and gender: A critical appraisal of Assamese, an Indo Aryan language
MAI Review, 2008
An attempt has been made in this paper to enquire if women experience linguistic discrimination which reduces them to invisible frail creatures devoid of individual identity in the backdrop of Assamese, an Indo-Aryan language. The methodology of this paper is partly based on a survey conducted at Jawaharlal Nehru University campus and partly based on the critical appraisal of some famous proverbs available in Assamese. The Assamese language, being a cultural mirror and an echo of prejudices and stereotypes prevalent in Assamese society, portrays an explicit canvas of the male dominance and powerlessness of females.