IT’S been nearly three months since the cabinet in Assam decided the state’s name be changed to Asom but the protests over it continues. So much so that the state government is going slow themselves, preferring to let the old signboards in government offices display the old spelling.The government decision was interestingly based on a single article written by Chandra Prasad Saikia, a noted litterateur and former president of the Asam Sahitya Sabha, whose plea was that ‘Asom’ stood for ‘the unmatched’ and that using ‘Assam’ instead was against the ethos and spirit of Assamese nationalism.‘‘The British had changed the original names of many places for their convenience and without any regard for history, culture and local sentiments,’’ Saikia had written in Gariyashi, a literary magazine he edits. Saikia had also argued that it was ‘‘perfectly desirable’’ that the name by which a particular people were identified should also be the name of the state for all purposes.But, even as the Asam Sahitya Sabha, the state’s apex literary body (which uses ‘Asam’ and not ‘Assam’ or ‘Asom’) welcomed the state government’s decision based on the suggestion of one of its past presidents, there have been many more voices opposing it.ONE of the first to have openly criticised the decision was The Assam Tribune, the leading and most prestigious newspaper of the region, which called it ‘‘a step backward’’.‘‘Assam has become a brand name and any change might have adverse effect. In the past 200 years or so, the word Assam has gained some global currency. Moreover, other ethnic groups living in the state may not take kindly to the act,’’ the newspaper said.Others who have opposed the name change include Friends of Assam and Seven Sisters, a US-based thinktank of non-resident Assamese, whose president Rajen Barua said the spelling change would among other things do great injustice to the Tai-Ahom community which ruled Assam for over 600 years.‘‘The British did not coin the word Assam overnight for their convenience. It is an indigenous Assamese word which was in vogue for a long time before the British came, and the proposal to change the existing name does not have any merit,’’ says Barua, calling upon the government to revoke its decision.It is interesting to note that while the spelling of the state’s name in English has been Assam since the beginning, the Assamese name and pronunciation is closer to ‘Osom’ with the ‘s’ producing a guttural ‘kh’ sound that very few communities in the world actually use.‘‘Using Asom cannot take us anywhere closer to the pronunciation used by the Assamese for the name of their state,’’ Barua says, adding that changing the spelling would do a great disservice to the Assamese.Arguing in favour of retaining ‘Assam’, Satyakam Phukan, a Guwahati-based surgeon-turned-researcher said several buranjis (historical chronicles maintained by the Ahom clans) including the most well known Tungkhungiya Buranji had always used the word ‘Assam’ even when referring to the country in Assamese. He quotes another historian P Gogoi to confirm that Assam was derived from ‘A-sham’—a word of Bodo origin.But, going by the The Comprehensive History of Assam, edited by the noted historian H K Barpujari, ‘‘Assam is the English form of Asama (meaning peerless) which is apparently a Sanskritised form of the tribal name ‘Ahom’ (also written as Aham), while the Ain-i-Akbari mentions this country as Asham.’’The debate goes on. As one of the several letters published in newspapers in Guwahati asks: ‘‘What do we call ourselves now, Assamese or Asomese? What do we do with our ‘Assam-type’ houses? Who will buy ‘Asom’ tea?’’
