Tura: The Hajong Students’ Union (HSU) has submitted a memorandum to the Director of Census Operations, Meghalaya, through South West Garo Hills Deputy Commissioner Hema Nayak, urging a separate language-wise enumeration of the Hajong community in the 2027 population census.
The union stated that the Hajong language, which belongs to the Indo-Aryan family with a unique Tibeto-Burman substratum, had long been misrepresented as Bengali in previous census records.
Leaders argued that this practice undermined the distinct linguistic and cultural identity of the Hajong people, who constitute the fourth largest tribal group in Meghalaya.
According to the memorandum, the union stressed that Hajong is not a dialect of Bengali but an independent language with its own phonology, grammar, and vocabulary. It further noted that classifying the Hajong under Bengali has eroded the community’s cultural identity and adversely affected policy planning and development programmes intended for the Hajong people.
The union requested census authorities to create a separate mother tongue code for “Hajong” in the 2027 census and instruct enumerators to record Hajong speakers distinctly, rather than categorizing them under Bengali.
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General Secretary Pankaj Hajong and President Bapu Hajong signed the memorandum on behalf of the Central Executive Committee of the Hajong Students’ Union.
