Page 88 - Changing Living Spaces

Haruhisa Asada

55 percent of the district’s total population of 2.82 million). In the older
Nagaon district, which includes the present Morigaon district, the num-
ber of Muslims was 12,578 (4.8 percent of the total population) in 1901 and
increased to 359,519 (40.5 percent) by 1951 (Barooah 1978). Previous stud-
ies indicate that Muslims who migrated to Assam initially settled in the
floodplains where no indigenous Hindus had previously lived (Bhagabati
and Das 1992). Therefore, this section identifies the geographical pattern
of Muslim settlements in the district.
Information on the residents of each village in the northern part of
the district (Nagaon, Rupahi, and Dhing Revenue Circle) was obtained
through interviews with residents and from the 2001 Census Village
Directory and Administrative Atlas. Of the 520 revenue villages in the
three revenue districts, information on the predominant resident com-
munity was obtained from 499 villages. One hundred and ninety-two
villages are dominated by Muslims (including both immigrant and
Assamese Muslims), followed by 146 villages with indigenous Hindus
(Assamese Hindus, hereinafter Asamiyas), 12 villages with Karbi, 8 vil-
lages with Bengali Hindus, 8 villages with Ex-Tea tribes, 7 villages with
Larun (Tiwa), 7 villages with Kachari, 4 villages with Bodo, 2 villages with
Nepali, and 2 villages with Sikhs. There were 110 villages with multiple
ethnic groups living together, and the main ethnic group could not be de-
termined during the survey.
From the distribution map summarizing the results of the survey, it
can be seen that the villages dominated by the Asamiyas are distributed
from the national highway near the town of Nagaon to the foothills on
the southern side, while the villages dominated by the Muslims are dis-
tributed between the national highway and the banks of the Brahmaputra
(figure 5a). The distribution pattern also agrees well with the bounda-
ries of the ecological environment (figure 5b). That is, the Muslim immi-
grants settle mainly in the areas affected by the seasonal floods, while the
Asamiyas live in the central lowland zone in the south, which is not affect-
ed by the floods of the main stream. There are villages of Ex-Tea tribes,
Karbi and mixed ethnic groups near the hills in the southern part of the
study area. Villages of other Scheduled Tribes (e.g. Bodo, Lalung, Kachari)
are scattered between the Asamiyas and Muslim residential areas.
The ecological environment of Muslim-dominated areas was original-
ly unsuitable for human settlement. No large embankments were built in
Assam during the British colonial period, but after independence, con-
struction of embankments along major rivers began in 1954, and by 1978

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