The Assamese people are a socio-ethnic linguistic identity that has been described at various times as nationalistic or micro-nationalistic. This group is often associated with the Assamese language, the easternmost Indo-Aryan language, and Assamese people mostly live in the Brahmaputra Valley region of Assam, where they are native and constitute around 56% of the Valley's population. The use of the term precedes the name of the language or the people. It has also been used retrospectively to the people of Assam before the term "Assamese" came into use. They are an ethnically diverse group formed after centuries of assimilation of Austroasiatic, Tibeto-Burman, Indo-Aryan and Tai populations, and constitute a tribal-caste continuum—though not all Assamese people are Hindus and ethnic Assamese Muslims numbering around 42 lakh constitute a significant part of this identity The total population of Assamese speakers in Assam is nearly 15.09 million which makes up 48.38% of the population of state according to the Language census of 2011.
The name "Assamese" is of British colonial coinage of the 19th and 20th century. Assamese is an English word meaning "of Assam"—though most Assamese people live in Assam, not all the people of Assam today are Assamese people.
The Government of Assam faced difficulties in defining Assamese people for Assam Accord, due to linguistically and culturally heterogeneous population. Though there is a political dispute over the definition of Assamese people, in general; the people belonging to the state of Assam are referred sometimes as Assamese people or more appropriately as People of Assam. The lack of a definition has put stumbling blocks in implementing clause 6 of the Assam Accord, an agreement signed by the activists of the Assam Movement and the Government of India in 1985. Since a legal definition is important to provide "constitutional, legislative and cultural" safeguards to the Assamese people, the Government of Assam had formed a ministerial committee to finalise the definition in March 2007.
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The Garo people are a Tibeto-Burmese ethnic group inhabiting predominantly in Northeast Indian states of Meghalaya, Assam, Tripura and Nagaland, and in some neighbouring areas of Bangladesh. Historically, the name Garo was used for a large number of different peoples living on the southern bank of Brahmaputra river, but now refers primarily to those who call themselves A•chik Mande (literally "hill people," from A•chik "bite soil" + mande "people") or simply A•chik or Mande and the name "Garo" is now being used by outsiders as an exonym.
The Chutia people (Pron: ˈsʊðiːjaː or Sutia) are an ethnic group that are native to Assam and historically associated with the Chutia kingdom. However, after the kingdom was absorbed into the Ahom kingdom in 1523–24, the Chutia population was widely displaced and dispersed in other parts of Upper Assam as well as Central Assam. They constitute one of the core groups that form the Assamese people. Recent genetic studies have found that in the "tribal" and "caste" continuum, the Chutia people occupy an ambiguous position in the middle, along with the Ahoms and the Rajbanshis.
The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non-Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people speak Tibeto-Burman languages. The name derives from the most widely spoken of these languages, Burmese and the Tibetic languages, which also have extensive literary traditions, dating from the 12th and 7th centuries respectively.