Assam, the major North-Eastern state of India has always been in the eyes of storm. Earlier, the violent separatist movement followed by the students’ movement to get the illegal immigrants deported was always in news. Now Assam is being discussed for the National Register of Citizens (NRC) where nearly 4,000,000 (forty lakh) of the residents do not find their names in the final draft of NRC including the local born 81-year former Chief Minister, Anwara Taimur, and one Hindu Member of the Assam Legislative Assembly of the present day ruling party i.e. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The political storm at the national level is making rounds where Assamese verses Bengalis is being debated. During the British regime, the Bengalis from Bengal Province of which Assam was the part were being brought as workers since local Assamese refused to be the coolies. The political awakening after the independence under the influence of the separatist movements, the Assamese started making a distinction between the Muslims and Miyas! In Assam, the locals who follow Islam are called the Muslims and they are Assamese for them. But those Muslims who have migrated from the Bengal or present day Bangladesh are Miyas for them.
The separatists used to blame the East India Company’s annexation of Assam or Ahom to India by unfair means only in 1826 AD vide the Treaty of Yandabo. They tried to spread the misconception that Assam was never the part of even cultural or political India. “The Treaty of Yandabo (1826), which was signed at the end of the first Anglo- Burmese War (1824-6), marked the beginning of British colonial penetration into North-East India. Under the terms of the treaty, the King of Burma renounced his claim on Assam and the contiguous petty states of Cachar and Jayantia. The withdrawal of the Burmese provided the British with the opportunity to create spheres of influence in the region,” records Priyam Goswami, a historian from Guwahati in his book, “The History of Assam: From Yandabo to Partition, 1826-1947”. Under the leadership of Sukapha, a Tai prince, Ahom migrants from Upper Burma had crossed the Patkai Range and established a kingdom in the neighbourhood of modern Shivsagar (earlier called Sibsagar) in the early thirteenth century. By 1536, ten years after arrival of Babur, the first Mughal Emperor in India, the Ahoms were supreme in Assam.
Lt. Gen. S.K. Sinha who was appointed the Governor of Assam in 1997 made special efforts to unveil the real history of Assam or Kamrup as the Princely State of Ahom was known as in pre-British days. Sinha writes in “Mission Assam”: “Assam(Kamrup) was the part of the ancient Gupt Empire. Even on the iron pillar in Allahabad, this is inscribed. ….The historians have ignored Assam. They talk about the Indus valley civilization, Ganges(Ganga) civilization and even Cauvery civilization but are indifferent to the Brahmaputra valley civilization. The empires of the great ruler Bhaskaravarman and his contemporary Harshavardhana ranged up to present day Bangladesh, West Bengal and North Bihar. The Chinese traveler Hiuen Tsang ( Xuanzang, Hsuan Tsang) visited the capitals of both the empires and has written about it. He recorded Bhaskaravarman as the King of Eastern India.”
Assam remained virtually cut off from the rest of the world for a long time partly because of its geographical location, separated as it was by numerous hills and rivers interspersed by deep valleys, and partly because of the deliberate Ahom policy of isolation. Most of the inhabitants settled along the fertile banks of the Brahmaputra or on the banks of its tributaries. The journey to and from Assam was extremely long and tedious. The adverse climatic conditions were an additional problem. The history of seventeenth-century Assam is the history of Ahom- Mughal conflict which led Gaurinath Singha, the reigning monarch, to be deposed. He took shelter in Guwahati making frantic appeals to the British for help in 1788.
Of course, Lt. Gen. Sinha threw new light on the history of the Battle of Saraighat near Guwahati. When none could challenge the mighty Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, his army repeatedly lost the wars he fought with the King of Ahom in 1671 and even the following year. The Mughal army commanded by Raja Ram Singh I tried to capture the Kamarup State but failed miserably. Lachit Borphukan was commanding the army of Ahom Kingdom. Even when the Mughals could capture Guwahati for a brief period, the Ahom wrested control in the Battle of Itakhuli in 1682 and the Mughals could never recapture it. During the battles with the Mughals the capital of Ahom Kingdom was Shivsagar in Upper Assam.
The year 1826 saw the final collapse of the Ahom monarchy which ruled for over six- centuries and marked the entry of the British who stepped in to fill the political void in the region. It was the beginning of the transition from the medieval to the modern age. When the British appeared on the scene, they were heralded by the Assamese as saviours and were welcomed with open arms. Even Maniram Barbahandar Barua, a diehard rival of the British in later years, expressed his loyalty and gratitude to the Company Bahadur in no uncertain terms and prayed to the almighty for its continued glory and greatness, records Priyam Goswamy and adds: “Haliram Dhekial Phukan not only acclaimed the new order, but also prepared, on behalf of David Scott, the Agent to the Governor- General for the whole of the North East frontier of Bengal, seven slokas in Sanskrit interspersed with English words, appealing to the Sants and Mahants of Assam to cooperate with the British.”
The East India Company desperately needed the gold from Tibet to finance its growing China trade. Hence, an alternative route to Tibet became an urgent necessity. They believed that such a route might be possible via Assam. And the fate of Assam was to be decided by them only. Following an uprising during the Durga puja in October 1857, Maniram and Peali Barua were tried for treason and sentenced to death. Assam was governed as a part of Bengal by the British till 1874. In that year they separated it from Bengal, added Sylhet to the province and brought the whole area under a chief commissioner who had his headquarters at Shillong. Following the formation of Meghalaya state in 1971, Shillong become it’s capital. But it continued as the capital of Assam for one more year. In 1972, Dispur was accorded the status of the capital of Assam. The state of Assam would continue to be in limelight even during the next couple of years.
Next Column: The Rajpipla State defeated even Aurangzeb
(The writer is a Socio-political Historian. E-mail: [email protected] )
Photo-lines
1.The Statue of Lachit Borphukan, the Hero of Ahom, in the middle of Brahmaputra river
2.Portrait of Emperor Aurangzeb
3.81year -old Anwara Taimur, former CM and MP who was born in Assam
