The use of labels such as ‘isolation’ or ‘assimilation’ to characterise tribal communities dwelling in the plains region of British Assam had a discursive history that took no notice of the region’s prolonged tradition of vibrant interfaith transmissions and cultural exchanges. This essay flags a disjuncture between early ethnographic literature on the ‘tribes’ of the plains region of Assam, and their later enumeration in census data from the middle of the 19^th century. While census makers in Assam attributed an ‘unusual’ surge in the number of Hindus to proselytisation by Vaishnavite and Brahman priests, and to the erosion of tribal modes of worship, this article argues that colonial enumerative practices were directly imbricated in producing the ‘Hindu’ in a way that was transformative of quotidian relations and processes of exchange characterising the region. The political pressure to possess fixed and singular identities and the growing rhetoric of a muscular Hinduism symbolised by renewed interest in Indological studies, combined to enhance Hinduism’s prestige and symbolic value. Becoming a Hindu was easier now that the definition of Hinduism as a loosely bound corpus of ritually coded behaviour enabled a wide array of practices to be labelled as ‘Hindu’.

使用诸如“隔离”或“同化”之类的标签来描述居住在不列颠阿萨姆邦平原地区的部落社区的特点是一段漫长的历史，没有注意到该地区长期以来充满活力的宗教传播和文化交流的传统。本文标志着阿萨姆邦平原地区“部落”的早期民族志文献与后来的19世纪中期人口普查数据列举之间的^区别世纪。尽管阿萨姆邦的普查人员将印度教徒人数的“不寻常”增加归因于Vaishnavite和婆罗门教士进行了礼拜仪式，以及部落礼拜方式的侵蚀，但本文认为，殖民枚举的做法直接影响了“印度教”的产生以这种方式改变了人与人之间的关系和代表该地区的交流过程。拥有固定和单一身份的政治压力以及对印度研究的重新兴趣象征着肌肉发达的印度教的言论日渐增多，这些都加在一起增强了印度教的声望和象征价值。如今，成为印度教徒变得更加容易，因为印度教主义是一种由仪式编码的行为构成的松散语料库，因此可以将各种各样的习俗都标记为“印度教”。