ABSTRACT
The State of Assam is in the lowlands of north-eastern India. The old realm of the Ahom kings probably gave their name to the area, although it is also claimed that Assam derives its name from asom, the Sanskrit for ‘peerless’ or for ‘undulating’. On 27 February 2006 the state government announced that Assam would be renamed Asom, dependent on approval by the central Government; however, by mid-2023 the proposed renaming had not yet been formally adopted. The state stretches nearly 800 km (500 miles) up the valley of the great Brahmaputra river, from the west to the north-east, with, midway, the Barak valley giving it a southern extension. As Assam is largely surrounded by states hewn from its original territory, this gives it international borders only in the west, with Bhutan to the north and Bangladesh to the south-west. The state touches Bangladesh in two places, in the south, with that country’s north-eastern border, and in the west, with its northern border, where the Brahmaputra leaves the state and begins to turn south towards the sea. Between lies another Indian state, Meghalaya, on the Shillong plateau, which rears to the south of the Brahmaputra and to the west of the Cachar (Kachari) hill country. The rest of Assam’s western border is an inter-state one with West Bengal, giving the north-eastern region access to the narrow corridor of national territory connecting it to the rest of India. The remaining north-eastern states also border Assam, with Tripura to the south-west and then, separating the state from China and Myanmar (Burma), Arunachal Pradesh (mainly to the north, but wrapping itself around the end of Assam’s north-eastern arm), Nagaland (to the south-east), Manipur (east of Assam’s southern arm) and Mizoram (to the south). These states, together with Assam itself and Meghalaya, are sometimes referred to as the ‘Seven Sisters’ of the north-east. The formation of these ‘sisters’ meant that the territory of Assam was steadily truncated during the 20th century—from 1972, however, its area remained constant at 78,438 sq km (30,297 sq miles).
