The assamese ? Who are they ?

The Assamese? Who are they?Srutimala Duara
"We are from Assam" — tell that to a person from another State of India, and don’t be surprised if you hear them asking, "Where is Assam?" The first time I heard this I thought they didn’t have geography as their subject in the class, for from our school days we are aware of the location of every State in India. Perhaps even if they did study geography, the State of Assam is excluded from the map given to them. Even to this day majority of the people think that Assam means just Shillong!
When we were in one of the hill stations, and asked where we hailed from, some folks, educated ones mind you, gave very knowledgeable exclamations when we told them that we were from Assam, "Oh, Shillong!" Even a national paper like The Times of India proved that they know nothing about Assam and the Assamese. In an advertisement regarding matrimonial under the heading ‘The National Search’ about new rates effective from September 15, 2004, in the column under ‘Nationality’ among the boxes to tick, the first box reads ‘Assamese’ and then European, Japanese, Pakistani, West Asian, British, American, other foreigners, etc. So, even a national paper thinks that ‘Assamese’ is a separate nationality. What do you have to say about this? Once, writer Nirupama Borgohain related a conversation that left me speechless — I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. A woman from another State asked her, "The passage to the North-east is so narrow that I wonder how people can pass through." To humour the lady, Nirupama Borgohain said, "We have to crawl through." And I have no doubt that the lady believed her. Now the question is — why are these folks from outside the North-east so ignorant about us? There was a time when they thought that we were all barbarians, perhaps even cannibals waiting for the people from the other States to taste them! And today, though it took the Assam Agitation and the terrorist activities to put Assam in the India map, yet there is a lot that the people have to know about us and I wonder why this is the case. Is the narrow stretch of land that separates the North-east from the rest of India the cause? Are people scared of the very thought that they would have to crawl through the passage to be linked with us?