Ever since the Union government announced that Assamese will be counted among the languages of India last week, former Director General of Police Assam Kuladhar Saikia has been inundated with calls and messages. “The strange thing is that in addition to congratulatory messages, I had people thanking me. An old man who lives in the village even called and said: ‘I feel like I have gained Independence today.’ That’s really interesting, isn’t it?” Saikia, who is also a Sahitya Akademi Award winning writer in Assamese, told The Indian Express.
On 3 October, the Union Cabinet approved the classical language status of Marathi, Bengali, Pali, Prakrit and Assamese. The languages join six others that are already considered Old Languages: Tamil, Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, and Odia.
While the demand for classical status in some of these languages has been pending since 2013, the push for Assamese was made for the first time in 2021, when Saikia headed the Assam Sahitya Sabha, the state’s supreme secretary and social and cultural non-government body. At that time, there were calls to recognize Assamese as an ancient language but the actual work of its inclusion had not yet begun.
In 2021, a committee comprising archaeologists, linguists like Bishweshwar Hazarika and Narayan Das and artists like Noni Borpuzari was formed under Saikia’s initiative to build a case for Assamese as an ancient language.
Among the conditions for a language to be accepted as an ancient language is a recorded history in the period of 1,500-2,000 years; the body of books and writings that are considered the “heritage of generations of speakers”; and epigraphic and literary evidence. A committee headed by eminent writer and former Rajya Sabha MP Nagen Saikia was tasked with compiling evidence that Assamese meets the requirements.
“The challenge was basically to prove its age… Archeology, history, geography, and anthropological findings determine the age of a language more than morphology, syntax or phonology. That won’t tell you the development of the books. Therefore, we have switched to all these evidences and we want to integrate all aspects of the language,” he said.
The final product was a 391-page report called ‘Memorandum for Giving Classical Status to the Assamese Language’ filled with evidence such as sculptures, inscriptions, and copper plates. committing a crime. That report was sent to the Sahitya Akademi in 2021 and discussed by the central government A Committee of Linguistic Experts examined proposals from various states and institutions for this situation.
Meanwhile, another report was presented by the state government this year by a committee led by Sumanta Chaliha, the deputy chairman of the Publication Board Assam. In both reports, one of the most important archaeological evidences for discovering the early history of the language was a 5th century land grant written in an eastern variant of the Brahmi script and engraved on a stone found in the Assam district of Golaghat.
The 2021 report also refers to verses in Buddhist scriptures Charyapadas, written around the 8th century CE.
The recognition of the five languages was granted earlier this month after the criteria were changed to remove the condition that the writing culture must be original and not borrowed from another language community. This situation opens up the opportunity for support from the Ministry of Education to develop these languages through various businesses – including establishing Centers of Excellence for their study. According to officials, the departments of culture (through higher education institutions) and education, as well as the state governments of West Bengal, Assam and Maharashtra, will come together to share more information and research and digitize manuscripts in these languages. .
But Saikia believes that the greater importance of this tag of the Assamese language is related to the concern in a situation where language and identity are complex issues.
“It is the mindset of the Assamese people because of their historical experience that there have been questions about the antiquity and independence of the language… and that we have been developing independently like the old language of Kamrup and Pragjyotishpura, which has spread to other places beyond Assam and the Northeast,” he said.
After present-day Assam was made part of the Bengal Presidency by the British East India Company, Bengali was made the official language of the state in 1836. This marked the beginning of unrest – first the recognition of Assamese as an official language, and later, the opposition of other linguistic communities to the government against it being the only official language.
According to Saikia, the “shock” of the 1836 development “is still going on.”
“That fear of questions about whether it has an independent root and development, there is relief from that,” he said. “Now, our deep roots in the past are now widely accepted and recognized. But we have many things to do. Good books should appear. Our middle schools should be improved so that people can come to them. If a language is not connected to your daily life and your life, it slowly dies.”