Introduction:

The northeast Indian state of Assam is rippled with a sense of contested identity fueled by a majoritarian ethnocentric discourse and a cry over language and a dictum for puritan Assamese culture. The ensemble of language and cultural symbols like Gamucha provides the basic ground for ethnocentric solidarity among Assamese people, hereby dictating the majoritarian narrative prevailing in the state. By making sure that other cultural discourses remain on the margin, the Axomiya linguistic elites practice their hegemonic hold over all the spheres of identity assertion. Whenever other communities try to assert their identities, they are vigorously criticized and pushed into obscureness. This comes with, borrowing from W. E. B. Du Bois’ theorization of ‘whiteness studies’, a notion of learned ethnic superiority and a range of ethnic discriminatory practices. The Axomiya elites, hitherto, are made to learn and socialize through internalizing various events of xenophobic movements and sentiments. The connotation of Assamese ‘purity’ is so rigid that the cry for it often limits people into schizophrenic obtuseness. The so-called ‘pure’ Assamese sentiments always remain in the mainstream, whereas other communities gradually dissolve in the margin. The question of whose identity becomes dominant here is the question of who speaks the Assamese language as their mother tongue and asserts their identification on the same basis.

Purity Throughout History:

Racial, ethnic, religious and other categorical movements and ideas centred around the notion of ‘purity’ isn’t new and have been there for ages. In India, between different castes, the prohibition of mobility through marriage is a way to conserve the purity of the Brahmanical caste or the Upper Caste in general. Ambedkar (1916) in his paper ‘Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development’ argues that one of the main characteristics of caste is endogamy. It is fundamentally based on the idea of a superior or purer caste and a lesser or impure caste. In Nazi Germany, the Nazis thought that Jews were an inferior race (racial antisemitism) and that they were superior. The German Aryans were, in Hitler’s view, the master race. In an attempt to execute his vision of keeping the race pure, the ‘Nuremberg Race Laws’ were introduced that prevented interracial mixing. There were also attempts at forced sterilization on people whom the Nazis thought to be of a lesser race. The idea of ‘racial hygiene’ was normalized among the people.

The doctrine of Hindutva as an ideology segregates between Hindus and Non-Hindus where Hindus are the pure race/religion and others are treated as impure. It as a movement strives for Hindu supremacy. Under the Hindutva government, the focus has shifted from questions of development to ideas like ‘love jihad’ which simply indicates inter-religious marriage between a Muslim man and a Hindu woman. TV debates and prime-time shows are being allotted to discuss such notions in an attempt to normalize the discourse. The same structures of a superior ethnicity and an inferior ethnicity can be seen in the ethno-nationalist politics and sentiments of Assam. In no way, we are claiming that the magnitude of it is the same but there are similarities in how the idea of ‘purity’ is circulated in the Assamese ethno-nationalist discourse, which we will discuss in the next section.

Ethno-nationalist discourse and the idea of purity:

In the post-independent era, the sceptic lens of the larger Axomiya consensus against other cultural identities can be traced back to Bongal Kheda Andolan (Movement for driving out the Bengalis) in the ‘60s and, in recent times, to the cries over Miya poetry, which is a genre of poems penned down by Bengal-origin Muslims calling attention to their struggles in integrating with the greater Assamese culture. The Miya poets were not only vehemently ostracized for their struggle with self-assertion but also faced legal hurdles. The same anti-Bengali discourse faced continuity when, recently, there was a huge uproar in social media for an attempt was made to unify the two communities – Assamese and Bengali – by merging both the Axomiya and Bongali Gamuchas into one. The attempt was highly criticized and ridiculed by the linguistic-elite Axomiya majority on the censorious grounds of a puritan Assamese culture and protectionist narrative. Gamucha, a traditional cotton plaid, invites ethnocentric solidarity among the Axomiya people, resulting in the mockery and othering of other communities, primarily the Bengali community, who use different versions of Gamucha.

The criticism of tailoring the two gamuchas into one or that of the poets of Bengali-Muslim origin writing in their mother tongue are not isolated events and should not be viewed as such. Gamucha, among the Caste Axomiya population, has grown to become the symbol of ethnic pride and so this is viewed as an attack on the culture itself by destroying the sanctity or purity of the symbol whereas ever since independence, through various social movements, there has been reinforcement around the purity of Assamese language. There is often emphasis given on speaking Assamese correctly (xuddho ke bhaxa kobo xika). The same Assamese phrase can be interpreted on accounts of purity where ‘xuddho’ can also be translated as ‘pure’. These notions of ‘purity’ around culture and language within the ethno-nationalists and the left that act like undercover ethno-nationalist discourse is worrying as it follows the same structure constructions as some of the above-mentioned examples. In doing so, more often than not, it creates a superior self and a lesser other which racializes the interpretation of meaning that is produced through interactions.

Conclusion:

In glorifying and adhering to the ‘root’, ethnonationalism fails to acknowledge and consider other roots. In this regard, the article tries to analyze how the mainstreamization of the Assamese language considers the languages of other communities as unimportant and alien.  The driving force of ethnonationalism is the same everywhere with little variations. The problem of cultural or linguistic purity is not unique to Assamese ethnonationalism but is traceable in many ethno-nationalist discourses. We, however, in this article focused on Assamese ethnonationalism due to two reasons – firstly, the recency of the Gamucha controversy and secondly, because it is our home state. Following this link, the article attempts to point out how what is happening in Assam has happened throughout the world and how creating an ‘impure’ other rigidifies and consolidates social mobility within different structures.

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Niloy Pratim Kashyap is pursuing his postgraduation in Sociology from Cotton University. Rishiraj Sen is pursuing his postgraduation in Human Rights and Politics from The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).