What is Unicode recognition?

=> Every character that we type on a keyboard has a unique code number.

=> For example, the letter ‘A’ has the code number U+0041.

=> First vowel of the Assamese alphabet is U+0985.

=> These numbers are encoded under a standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium(The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization).

Current issue:

=> Bengali and Assamese scripts share a large number of characters, some pronounced the same way,

=> In Unicode’s charts, these shared forms are defined as Bengali characters.

=> Only a few characters exclusive to Assamese are listed as “additions for Assamese” — in the chart for Bengali.

=> For years, prominent Assamese individuals have been campaigning for recognition of the Assamese script as separate.

=> But so far Assamese has not got separate Unicode recognition by ISO.

=> Unicode characters are defined by the international standard ISO 10646.

=> ISO recommends renaming of Bengali script as ‘Bengali-Assamese’; a look at what led to that move and why campaigners aren’t satisfied.