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GUWAHATI: Neighbourhood mosque committees across Assam could be officially tasked with verifying the "ethnicity" of Assamese-speaking Muslims during the state's first census to distinguish “native” Muslim communities from “immigrant” ones.

The Assam Minorities Development Board's proposal to make mosques the official verification authority comes on the heels of a campaign by the Janagosthiya Samannay Parishad to get the state's 40 lakh Assamese-speaking Muslims to file affidavits to add an ancestral or ethnic surname to their Muslim names.

Board chairman Mominul Awal has already filed an affidavit to change his name to Mominul Awal Goria, the surname representing the ethnic community he belongs to. While adopting a new surname is a personal choice that many Assamese-speaking Muslims might not want to exercise, there is no escaping the census to establish their ethnicity.

Most native Muslims trace their ancestry to the 15th century, but don't have any legacy documents stretching so far back. "The government has yet to finalise the modalities for the census. We know there will be challenges, which is why the practical option is identification and verification by the local mosque jamats in the presence of enumerators from the revenue department," Awal said. "If an immigrant Muslim tries to pass off as a native just by adding an ethnic surname, the local mosque committee will surely be able to call that bluff."

Once the census exercise is notified, Assamese-speaking Muslims wanting to be enumerated would be required to apply online. These applications would be verified by the jamats and officials of the revenue department, Awal said.

The minorities development board has proposed categorising native Muslims into four groups —Goria, Moria, Desi and the Jolha tea tribe. This recommendation has been submitted to the high-powered committee set up by ministry of home affairs to recommend measures to implement Clause 6 of the Assam Accord of 1985.

"Constitutional, legislative and administrative safeguards, as may be appropriate, shall be provided to protect, preserve and promote the cultural, social, linguistic identity and heritage of the Assamese people," the clause states.

The committee's brief is to also define who is an "indigenous Assamese", a nomenclature that has been the bone of contention in a state inhabited by a large number of disparate ethnic communities.

The proposed census for now will be limited to the Brahmaputra Valley, which is where the Goria, Moria, Desi and Jolha communities are concentrated. The Barak Valley in south Assam has other Muslim communities that claim to be "native" but speak Bengali and other languages.

