GUWAHATI, March 20 - The nascent Association for Historically Dispersed People of Assam (ASHADIP) will hold a public meeting on March 22 on receiving an eight-member delegation of the people of Assamese origin, who were forced to migrate to Myanmar and Bangladesh by historical factors about 200 years back.
The Association said in a statement here today that a large number of people of Assam were captured and taken as captives by the invading Burmese (Myanmarese) Army in the early part of the 19th century and a good number of their compatriots too were sent to Burma (Myanmar) by the then weak rulers of Assam as a payment in kind to buy peace with the marauding Burmese army.
The descendents of these people are now living in Mandalay, Bhamo, etc., places of Myanmar. In 1860, some people of Assamese origin had to go to the Chittagong area of today�s Bangladesh as soldiers of the Assam Rifles and their descendents are now living in the Rangamati Assam Basti of Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh.
A three-member team from Assam, led by city-based surgeon Dr Satyakam Phukan, visited both Myanmar and Bangladesh in search of these people in 2013 and met some of them.
ASHADIP has undertaken a programme to accelerate the communication between these estranged people of Assamese origin and today�s mainstream Assamese people, and for this purpose, it will hold the above meeting at 4.30 pm of March 22 at Gauri Sadan here, said the press release.
It needs mention here that last year, three delegations of these estranged Assamese people � two from Bangladesh and one from Myanmar � visited Assam, after the visits of the State�s three-member team to Bangladesh and Myanmar.
