Assam’s Tai Ahom community stages massive rally for ST recognition

Determination and strength of numbers were on full display asa the Tai Ahom community staged a massive rally in Sadia on Saturday, 27 September, pressing for recognition as a Scheduled Tribe (ST) — with the attendant rights reserved for Adivasis.

The streets resonated with slogans and banners demanding ‘equality’ and constitutional acknowledgment. Protesters carried placards with messages such as “Give tribal status to Ahom, it’s our right” and “We Want ST – No ST, No Rest”, calling for access to rights and benefits enshrined under India’s constitutional provisions for Scheduled Tribes.

Organised by the United Tai Ahom Forces (UTAF), the rally brought together thousands of members from across the region from a community which has sought inclusion in the list of Scheduled Tribes — a demand that had been long simmering, but came to a boil in 2014 with the BJP coming to power, the same BJP led locally by chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma who promised this during the election campaigns.

Speaking at the event, leaders of the UTAF reiterated that the Tai Ahoms, given their contributions to Assam’s cultural and historical heritage, deserve ‘equal opportunities’ and protections under the law. They appealed to the central and state governments to address the decades-old demand without further delay. The Tai Ahoms were one of the six communities the BJP had earmarked for ST status in its campaign promises.

The gathering was marked by a spirit of peaceful assertion and solidarity, as participants chanted slogans, held aloft banners and marched through Sadia.

The Tai Ahom's occupy one of the more contentious spaces among Assam’s diverse ethnicities, however. Tracing their ancestry to the Tai people who migrated from what is now the Yunnan province in China and  also Upper Thailand, the 9,000-strong group of immigrants is recorded as having come into the Brahmaputra Valley in 1228, led by Prince Sukaphaa to establish the Ahom kingdom. 

As such, despite their steadfast and vociferous campaign, their claim to Adivasi status is refuted by other groups who actually hold Schedule Tribe status — and fear the dilution and deprivation of their own rights, a knotty social justice problem the BJP has thus far fed to swell its vote bank and then quietly ignored.

That promise, though, might be coming home to roost soon with fresh elections ahead next year.