"The Assam Sahitya Sabha has decided to examine the matter seriously and would like to see whether the assimilation process of immigrant Muslims, who migrated to Assam legally, have been successful."
This should have been examined long back. only fools like us (Assamese) will expect a sizeable mass (27.91%) of people of foreign origin who themselves have a more developed Language will assimilate with us. "How can we think of adjusting people who have been pretending to be assimilated in the mainstream for decades - telling their language is Assamese (though most of them doesnt know abc of Assamese!) during the Census and starts to intimidate native peoples as they have become majority in Dhuburi,Gowalpa,Barpeta,Nagaon and Morigaon." i would like to edit my above statement of my earlier mail to assamonline (31/07/07) as follows:- "How can we think of adjusting people who have been pretending to be assimilated in the mainstream for decades - telling their language is Assamese (though most of them doesnt know abc of Assamese!) during the Earlier Censuses and starts to disclose their actual language and stress for it as they have become majority in Dhuburi, Gowalpa, Barpeta, Nagaon and Morigaon." Mrinal Talukdar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Assamese language minority in Assam Guwahati, Jan 08 (UNI): More than half of Assam's inhabitant does not speak Assamese language and it is now official as the Directorate of Census has released the datas regarding the state wise language figures. The shocking figures say that only 49.44 per cent of people living in Assam speak Assamese language while 27.91 people speak Bengali. Next major language is Hindi with 5.97 per cent while 4.93 per cent speak Bodos. "This is because Assamese despite being the official language, the state government neither promote it nor use it in their official communication" alleged Asom Sahitya Sabha President Kanak Sen Deka. The highest and most revered literary body of Assam yesterday took out a protest procession on the streets of Guwahati which was led by some of the most renowned face of Assamese literature but the census figures put the last nail in to the coffin. "If you look at figures, you will see Bengali is spoken by 27.91. It is not the proper Bengali we all know. It is a complex dialect which has its orgin in Bangladesh. A typical Mymensingh dialect and it once again amplifies our long standing stand that Bangladeshis have changed the demographic pattern of Assam" said Dr Samujjal kr Bhattacharya, the All Assam Students Union (AASU) adviser. But despite the rhoeric, the bare figure of Census says that Assamese speaking people have been steadily decreasing over the past three decades causing serious concern over and heart burn. The Assam Sahitya Sabha has decided to examine the matter seriously and would like to see whether the assimilation process of immigrant Muslims, who migrated to Assam legally, have been successful. But the AASU has adopted a tougher line. "We have just two ways to go. Firstly, we can be a second class citizen and accept the political, social and linguistic leadership of immigrants or get united and fight out the infiltrators" said Dr Bhattacharya.
