The History and the Methods of The Ideas of Identity Formation in Assam: A Reflexive Phenomenon in Political- Discursive Space

Abstract

The history of Assam so far had been consciously delimited with a distinction which was recognized as the forceful incursion into the history and present of the evolution of the identity of the Assamese people and that distinctive category had been revolved since the 1940s only through a separate nationality which was nothing other than the East Bengalis or the Bangladeshis. It is to be meaningful to reiterate the point that the identity of the Bangladeshi as the hegemonic force of intervention has been reified as the supreme element of giving obstruction to the realization of a strong background of the Assamese nationality that has been struggling to form itself as the absolute point of reference in interpretation against all other existing points of reference. Since the anti-grouping agitation during the late phase of the British Raj in Assam ,the forms of protests has been led by the middle class intelligentsia and the subgroups under the umbrella of that group of intellectual class through which a sense of crisis has been analyzed as the most inescapable reality of the derivatives of the hegemonic force as the Bangladeshis which has been regarded as organized force of displacing the indigenous groups from their own home .In general, three features of that force has been identified as the most exclusive denomination of the Bangladeshi in its intervening political space and those three features are ,the consideration of the mobility of those immigrants in the potential act of labouring more disciplined and integrated with the productive base of the economy that could decrease the share of the indigenous , the second is the demographic potentiality where the language , culture and other features of their socialization of that particular force has been considered as quite dissimilar with the indigenous elements ,the third is the fear of a crisis lest their increasing presence in the programme of democratic ideals particularly in the moment of elections to form government would become more difficult to handle against the interests of the indigenous .The crux of that point of analysis is that the history and the methods of those of identity formation has been given a shape where the organized and conscious presence of the ideology in its practices by the peasants and the workers have not been seen and a comparatively rich peasant group as well as the comfortably living workers and government officials have been giving voice to the space of crisis as imagined narrative of constituted phenomenon of an identity which is going beyond the reality itself .That reflexive presence of the influential class of people in the process of formation of identity as the distinct powerful nationality has been a great deviation from the actual practices of democratic ideals .The paper would analyze the trajectories of the history of the metanarrative of the Assamese identity as exclusive identity beyond the supremacy of the ‘non-indigenous’ in its political-discursive space of the present.