[THIS IS A REJOINDER FROM SRI SANJIB GOSWAMI, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA, who after knowing that I had put his views into Assamnet has asked me to send the remaining part that he had sent to his batch mates. I thought, why not, as the issue generated so much passion and ratiocination: -]
" I do not know of that (definition of the Assamese...Ed.) as you have to define yourselves. Had you been in the tea tribe, you would have qualified for being an adivasi while in Tinsukia, you would be a Hindiwalla and beaten up by AASU thugs. My ancestors (we have a written history of our ancestry) came from Nawadwip, Bengal about 15 generations ago and since each generation is about 25 years, we are in Nalbari at the same spot (Nalbari Satra) for the last 400 years or so. I found an interesting statics on the net .. the data of 1941 census. It states that in 1941, the number of muslims in Assam was 34,42,479 and the number of non-muslims (not Hindus alone) was 67,62,254. So about 50% muslims (mostly Bengali speaking whom we refer to as Bangladeshis these days). These people were all concentrated in and around the river areas (water is their element and they never ever live in hills). Except for Shylet, the geography of Assam since 1941 has not undergone much change as far as Bangladesh in concerned. But, since the other non muslims like Nagas, Khasis and Arunachalis have left us, the number of Assamese Hindus have obviously reduced and by default the muslims have relatively increased. We then divide and subdivide our districts further, and put the muslims in one district (like Goalpara divided into Dhubri / Goalpara / Bongaigaon) and then shout that one more district has become muslim dominated..!! See, look at Dhubri or Hailakandi (carved out of Cachar)!! My argument is not in favour of illegal immigrants or anything like that. There are laws for that ...!! But to club every lungiwalla mussalman as a Bangladeshi is not right. What happened to the 34,42,479 lungiwalla mussalman of 1941 and their off springs ?? Rintu P.S. I shall not write any more on this topic..." Uttam Kumar Borthakur _______________________________________________ assam mailing list [email protected] http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
