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Assam lies between the Indian sub-continent and Burma Myanmar. Some consider the name Assam is a corrupt translation of the sanskrit word of similar pronouncation, meaning a hilly region. The Indo-Burmese corridor consists of a number of mountanious chains of the lower Himalayan region, and a few valleys between them. Others believe the word is related to the Ahoms who ruled Assam for 600 years.
The largest valley in this region is the Brahmaputra valley, the 10th longest river in the world, Brahmaputra (Sangpo) that cuts through it. The region was part of the British Empire in India and achieved it's independence along with the rest of the country on the 15th of August 1947. Today it is called a state in the "north-eastern" part of India. It is bordered by Bhutan, and Bangladesh. In the 1970s the states were reorganised on linguistic line which resulted in the existence of eight states in the north east of the country i.e. Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Meghalaya and Sikkim. Before this the capital of Assam was in Shillong now in Meghalaya. After the reorganisation the capital of Assam was shifted to Dispur, near Guwahati, the largest city in the northeast.
Assam state's administrative capital is Dispur (Guwahati). Assamese is the official language of the state spoken by the ethnic Assamese people, who constitute almost half of this region's population. Linguistically mordern Assamese traces its roots to Oriya language and it is also similar to Bengali. Other than Assamese, the major languages of Assam are Bodo, Karbi and there are over 100 ethnic nationalities living in this region. Each of these tribes have their own distinct language, culture and tradition. Since the turn of the last century (1900s), ethnic Bengalis from Bengal region on the west and south of Assam have been migrating to this region, and the British were sponsoring this migration because they needed laborers to work in their plantations and factories. Like indigenous people in other parts of the world, the 100 plus ethnic tribes of these region are in a struggle to maintain their culutural heritage inspite of the brutal dominance and state propagation of the Assamese culture in the region. Some are managing this struggle better than the others.
Assam's biggest contribution to the world is its tea. Assam produces some of the finest teas in the world. Other than the Chinese tea variety camellia sinenses, Assam is the only region in the world that has its own variety of tea called camellia assamica. Assam tea is grown at elevations near sea level, giving it a malty sweetness and an earthy flavor, as opposed to the more floral aroma of highland (e.g. Darjeeling, Taiwanese) teas.
Assam also produces crude oil and natural gas. Assam is the second place in the world (after Titusville in the United States) where petrolium was discovered. The second oldest oil well in the world still produces crude oil. Most of the oilfields of Assam are located in the Upper Assam region of the Brahmaputra Valley.
External links
(supports Indian version of assam's history)