Assamese people dispute over the definition of Assamese people, in general; the people belonging to the state of Assam are referred as Assamese people. The lack of a definition has put stumbling blocks in implementing "clause 6" of the Assam Accord, an agreement signed by the activists of the Assam Movement and the Government of India in 1985. Since a legal definition is important to provide "constitutional, legislative and cultural" safeguards to the Assamese people, the Government of Assam had formed a ministerial committee to finalize the definition in March 2007. To address the "clause 6" issue, AASU had announced a definition
Assamese language literary language. In the past, it was the court language of the Ahom kingdom from the 17th century. Along with other Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, Assamese evolved at least before 7th century CE from the middle Indo-Aryan Magadhi Prakrit, which developed from dialects similar to, but in some ways more archaic than Vedic Sanskrit. Its sister languages include Koch Rajbongsi, Mymensinghiya, Sylheti, Hajong, Bishnupriya Manipuri, Nokhailla, Chittagonian, Rohingya, Chakma, Bengali, Maithili and Angika. It is written in the Assamese script, an abugida system, from left to right, with a large number of typographic ligatures. Assamese originated in Old Indo-Aryan dialects, though