[Assam] Axom, Akhom - what's in a name?

[Rajen Barua]

In my opinion the Comgress Govt is doing two big disservices to the people of Assam.

First it is trying to revise the Foreigners Tribunal Order for Assam that would make it difficult for the identification and deportation of illegal migrants. This hits the Assamese people directly.

Now the Congress govt in Assam is trying to impose the Sanskrit spelling ASOM and thereby trying to kill the ethnic Assamese sound XO.

We all need to ask the question to Congress Govt at Center and in State: 
Why, Why, Why.?
It seems the media in Assam is still sleeping.
They are waiting for the Center to voice somethimng.
Well here is one voice:

The following is Editorial from Sanjoy Hazarika in the Statesman's North East Page:
I am glad that Sanjoy Hazarika is addressing the X issue with right priority.

Rajen Barua

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>From the Statesman: 8 March, 2006


Axom, Akhom - what's in a name?

The battle of the ballot is joined. It's official now: in just over a month, Assam will go to the polls to elect a new government and a new legislature. And just before the announcement by the Election Commission of India, the state government made its own declaration, obviously to reach out to the middle class and nationalist stream within the state and garner some brownie points and, hopefully, some votes. It renamed the state Asom. This was an effort to offset the anger caused by the Centre's decision to insert a special clause in the Foreigners Tribunal Order for Assam that would make it difficult for the identification and deportation of illegal migrants. But if it thought the decision on the state's new name was going to be received with the kind of joy that marked Debojit Saha's victory in the music field, it was sadly mistaken. Within days, language purists and others, in Assam, other parts of India and abroad were engaged in furious arguments through public statements, messages over the internet and in conversations over which was the right spelling - Asom, Axom or Akhom. There are few issues which divide Assam as cleanly as this X factor: the others are those of illegal migration, land alienation, identity and ethnicity. And it's time after decades of discussion to develop a formula that is acceptable if not to everyone then at least to a broad cross-section in the state, reducing areas of difference and confrontation. 
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