The Assamese people are a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-linguistic people of Assam.[1] Historically, the definition of the "Assamese people" has remained in flux and this has had strong political repercussions in Assam, especially in the colonial (after 1826) and post-colonial (after 1947) periods. Attempts in the past to define the Assamese people on linguistic, cultural or ethnic basis have failed.
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.[2] The Government of Assam has formed a ministerial committee to finalize the definition of Assamese people in March 2007.[3][4] To address the clause 6 issue AASU had announced a definition on April 10, 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".[5][6]
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In the period before 1826, the eastern part of present-day Assam was called the "Kingdom of Assam",[7] presently known as the Ahom kingdom, and the word "Assamese" was used to refer to the subjects of this kingdom. "Assamese" was also used to refer to the soldiers that fought under the Ahom king's command that included subjects of allied kingdoms. Therefore, in this period, Assamese was a political category, not cultural or linguistic, that was used to define those associated with the Ahom kingdom.