Linguistic Identity Embedded in Multilingual Landscape of Assam1

Abstract

The north eastern parts of India which is commonly known as (the seven sisters) are seven hill states on the north-eastern frontiers of India. These states are Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Meghalaya and Assam. Northeast India has approximately over 250 ethnic groups and equal or probably a greater number of languages around 300. Most of these languages are mutually non-intelligible. These hill states host a wide range of diverse tribal societies with layered distinctions within the same tribal groups. Assam as one of these states has many languages spoken in the society. It has got many languages spoken in the North East. Assam has languages from major language families such as Tibeto-Burman, Indo-Aryan, and Austro-Asiatic, which converge out of contact situation and complex ways of maintaining social and linguistic identities. This paper attempts to understand almost 200 years of sustained movements amid various forms of linguistic identity and linguistic tensions in Assam. This paper deals with the linguistic identity of Assamese society and sustained conflicts with other linguistic groups, which finds an origin in the colonial history and multiple geographical reorganization of the present-day Assam. In doing so, this paper closely looks at the Assam Official Language Act 1960, consequent fall out of the Act and the recent questions of linguistic identity of minority groups in the multilingual landscape of Assam with specific reference to the Assamese Language Learning Act 2020.