Monseng Borborua
I am Ahom. I am a practitioner of Phuralung, the religion of my ancestors. I was stupid enough to be Hindu before, but I did my “ghar wapsi”, and I hope my Tai brothers would soon too, do a ghar wapsi, back into their original religion instead of following an imported religion. In our religion, we offer cows as sacrifices to our ancestors, an ancient tradition. But beef is banned in contemporary Assam. Our tradition is forbidden in the land of the Ahoms, from whom Assam has derived its name. And yet, after desecrating our heritage, after imposing Hindu rituals on us, now do you have the temerity to appropriate our leaders? To meddle with history and appropriate Lachit Borphukan as Hindu? Is there no great Hindu hero of your own, or are they all conveniently discovered fighting for the Mughals instead?
It’s almost a joke, really. The Hindutva team enjoys its fabricated history. First, they deprive us of our identity and then pilfer our icons. They reinterpret the Ahom-Mughal conflict as some majestic Hindu-Muslim strife when, in reality, it was one between a local kingdom and an expansionist empire. But that won’t sound right in their narration, will it? So they resolutely identify Lachit Borphukan—a devout Ahom who remained a follower of Phuralung—and re-color him as a Hindu fighter, because his actual history is a bit too heavy with individuals folding their knees before conquerors.
Let’s be real: when the Mughals conquered Assam, Ahoms fought back. Where were the mainland Hindu kings, then? Oh wait, they were signing treaties; marrying their daughters to Mughal emperors, and sending their armies to fight on Aurangzeb’s side. The Rajputs were bowing down in Delhi, but we, the Ahoms, stood our ground in Assam. And now, centuries later, the same individuals who betrayed their kingdoms all those centuries ago think they can have our warrior too? How convenient!
Lachit Borphukan was a Tai-Ahom commander, trained in the military etiquette of the Tai-Ahom people. He was not a Hindu, he did not worship Ram or Shiva, and certainly not for any imaginary ‘dharma yudh.’ His allegiance was to the Ahom kingdom, our nation, citizens, and deities. His deity was the one and only Pha Tu Ching, the great god of Phuralung. And yet, the Hindutva machine, anxious to go to any length to enlarge its base, puts a tilak on him and parades around claiming that he is a Hindu warrior. Do they believe that repeated falsehoods would beget the truth? Ahom-Mughal wars were wars over land and power, not religion. Ahoms possessed Muslim generals, and the Mughals had Hindu generals. But simplicity does not come easy when your school of history is WhatsApp University.
Mainland Indians never gave a hoot about the Northeast. They wish to impose Hinduism on us because we are ‘chinki momo,’ Chinese, uncivilized barbarians to them. We are aware of serving only one thali momo after all, we are inferior Indians. Hindu Indians are superior and they need to rule over us, after all. We are second class, therefore beef is also prohibited. That is why our history, our traditions, and our language are reinterpreted by those who believe we are nothing but a prolongation of their Hindi heartland. They ridicule our features, shrink our culture to ‘exotic cuisine,’ and when it suits them, adopt our heroes as their own. Is it not the utmost hypocrisy?
Kenneth Waltz’s theory of structural realism accounts for how great powers distort history to suit their power bases. Hindutva’s distortion of Northeast history is a textbook example—erasing our religious and linguistic diversity and imposing on us a North Indian, Brahmanical definition of ‘Indian’ culture. It’s a colonialist enterprise in saffron guise. The Indian state never gave a damn about Northeast culture—until it needed us. They wanted Bhupen Hazarika to sing their songs of integration, they wanted Lachit Borphukan as their Hindu warrior, and they wanted Assam’s tea and oil to power their economy. But our Phuralung religion? Our Tai Ahom language? Our customs? These are ‘backward,’ ‘un-Indian,’ and quietly expunged in the name of cultural homogenization. Instead, we are Chinese. How can I, a chinki-faced boy, claim to be Indian after all? How dare I question Hinduism. We chinks must accept everything instead of questioning, as mainland India ‘civilised’ us. However, they might say all this, but let’s not forget who introduced silk and tea to India. Also, Ahom dynasty was called the Jewel of Asia for a reason.
Frantz Fanon elaborated at great length on how colonialism steals the identity of natives and forces upon them the colonizer’s culture. In Assam, we didn’t only experience British colonialism—we experienced Hindu cultural colonialism much before that. It started with the Sanskritization of the Ahoms, which grew stronger during British colonialism, and now is being zealously pushed by Hindutva ideologues. Hinduism arrived in Assam through politics, not religion. There were many Ahoms forcibly converted, whose names were changed, traditions erased. Years went by, and our native Tai-Ahom traditions were battered, and now Hindutva forces have the temerity to tell us that Lachit was always Hindu? It is like breaking into another’s home, pushing them out, and then claiming it was always yours to begin with.
Benedict Anderson’s ‘imagined communities’ theory illustrates how countries create common identities through selective memory. The Hindu nationalist-ruled Indian state wants Assam to be Hindu—not Ahom, not Phuralung, not Tai. And what better than to claim our history and heroes for themselves? It’s a calculated move. The same people who mock us for our ‘tribal’ ways, who eliminate our language from textbooks, and who criminalize our diets now want to shroud Lachit Borphukan in saffron. It’s not a matter of paying him tribute—it’s a matter of hiring him as a political pawn.
Lachit Borphukan was Ahom, not Hindu. The Ahom-Mughal war was not religious but a war of sovereignty. Assam is not the cultural backyard of North India, and we will not allow our icons to be hijacked for your saffron agenda. If Hindutva is so needy of heroes, then they can look to their history—oh wait, because they were too busy plotting with the same Mughals whom they have now come to hate. Stop reinterpreting our past. Stop claiming our leaders. And above all—stop pretending as if we ever were Hindu. We never were. And we never will be.
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Monseng Borborua is an Ahom youth from Assam, passionate about his culture and history. He actively works for unity among Northeastern communities and seeks to challenge the ongoing cultural appropriation of his people’s heritage.
