Assam
State of northeast India; area 78,523 sq km/30,318 sq mi; population (2001 est) 26,638,400. The state includes 12 million Assamese (Hindus), 5 million Bengalis (chiefly Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh), Nepalis, and 2 million indigenous people (Christian and traditional religions). Assamese is the official language. Half of India's oil is produced here, while coal, petrochemicals, paper, and cement are the other main industries. Two-thirds of the population, however, depend on agriculture for their living. Half of India's tea is grown here, but most of the land is devoted to rice cultivation, with jute, sugar, and cotton also being popular crops. Its main towns and cities are Guwahati, Dibrugarh, Silchar, while the capital is Dispur, a suburb of Guwahati.
History
Assam was thriving region from 1000
BC, with migrants coming from China and Myanmar (Burma). After the Burmese invasion in 1826, Britain took control and made Assam a separate province in 1874; it was included in the Dominion of India, except for most of the Muslim district of Silhet, which went to Pakistan in 1947. Ethnic unrest started in the 1960s when Assamese was declared the official language. After protests, the Garo, Khasi, and Jaintia tribal hill districts became the state of Meghalaya in 1971; the Mizo hill district became the Union Territory of Mizoram in 1972. There were massacres of Muslim Bengalis by Hindus in 1983. In 1987 members of the Bodo ethnic group began fighting for a separate homeland. In the early 1990s the Marxist-militant United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), which had extorted payments from tea-exporting companies, spearheaded a campaign of separatist terrorist violence.
