by J J Singh
The hills surrounding the Brahmaputra Valley were very sparsely populated and were inhabited by fierce tribes who enjoyed a fairly autonomous existence. Living by their own rules, they had evolved their own identity. Since ancient times, these tribes have been mostly hunter-gatherers and believe in an indigenous form of worship of the sun and the moon, nature and animals. Extremely suspicious of outsiders—including Tibetans, the British and the plainsmen of Assam—they were fiercely possessive of their land and its resources.
Most of the cis-Himalayan rivers, and even those that originate in Tibet, flow from north to south and have, over the centuries, sliced the entire tribal belt into deep, longitudinal valleys. Densely vegetated with almost impenetrable forests, this area had almost no roads until recently. There existed very difficult tracks along the ridges or valleys, but none that laterally connected one valley with another. This secluded belt of hill territory is home to twenty-six major tribes and over 100 sub-tribes speaking different dialects. Only two have a script. The British classified these tribes into broad groups—Monpa, Aka, Miri, Dafla, Abor and Mishmi—primarily because they had little detailed knowledge of these indigenous peoples of the hills (see Figure 13 for a graphic depiction of the tribal areas in Arunachal Pradesh). Traditionally, the tribes used to interact and conduct trade with the people in the Assam plains. There were occasional raids by these tribes to settle disputes over land, forest produce and cattle with the plainsmen of Assam. They very rarely had any dealings with the Tibetans across the Himalayas, except with some northern tribes like the Monpas and Membas. Generally speaking, they zealously guarded their territory and were suspicious of outsiders. Entry either from Tibet in the north or from Assam in the south was strongly discouraged, if not forbidden.
Figure 13: Demographic representation of the tribal areas of Arunachal Pradesh (NEFA)
According to Dalton, at the Udalguri fair in Assam in 1876, there were 3,600 tribesmen who came down from the hills, having trekked a number of days to reach the fair. The Sadiya fair attracted an equal number or more of tribal people comprising Abors, Miris, Mishmis, Singphos and Hkamtis.2 In areas bordering Tibet, these tribals are called Lopa or Lao Kha by the Tibetans. They had some interaction and barter trade with the Tibetans. Also, there was some monastic and cultural influence of Lhasa over the Buddhist tribes like the Monpa, Sherdupken and Memba in the Tawang, Mechuka and Tuting areas. The Lopas were identified with the Aka, Nyishi (Dafla), Miri, Adi (Abor), Mishmi and other tribes. Historically, these semi-independent tribes were never under the influence or control of either the Tibetans or the Chinese.
Verrier Elwin’s authoritative account of the north-eastern peoples makes a mention of the specific description of the tribes by the Mughal historian Shihabuddin Talish, who had accompanied the invading Mughal army led by Mir Jumla during its Assam campaign in 1662. Shihabuddin observed that the hills people greatly feared firearms and would say, ‘The matchlock is a bad thing; it utters a cry and does not stir from its place, but a child comes out of its womb and kills men.’ He also remarked that ‘the Miri-Mishmi women surpassed in beauty and grace the women of Assam’.3 This may not necessarily be factually correct, as the people of the entire north-east are simple, warm-hearted and good-looking.
The British administration had not reached out in a meaningful manner to the interior parts of this tribal territory till the first decade of the twentieth century, as they were content to have this buffer between India and Tibet. Yet the British were clear that the Assam Himalayas—although undefined—were the natural geopolitical divide between their Indian Empire and Tibet. However, before the British the Ahoms had been able to establish their sovereignty by a ‘well organised system … to control the tribal population’.4 Shihabuddin noted, ‘Although most of the inhabitants of the neighbouring hills paid no taxes to the Raja of Assam, they accepted his sovereignty and obeyed some of his commands.’5 As it happens in every empire’s sunset phase, the Ahom rulers had feeble control over the tribal peoples by the 1820s. In his account of the north-east frontier of India in 1883, the army officer-cum-historian Mitchell said: ‘In 1820, before we took possession of Assam, the Mishmis were obedient to the orders of the Assam government, and paid tribute to the Sadiya Khowa Gohains.’6 Remarking on the daredevil and ferocious spirit of the ‘tribal legion of the Ahom army’, the Assamese ambassador Madhabcharan Kataki, in an interaction with the Mughal commander Raja Ram Singh, had said: ‘Their participation in this campaign has been directly sanctioned by His Majesty and they rush furiously against the enemy without waiting for the orders of the general. They are quick and sudden in their attacks, and their movements and actions cannot be presaged.’7 These Gohains were chieftains of the northern Brahmaputra Valley under the vassalage of the raja of Assam.
The British had soon realized the immense potential of cultivating tea in the Dooars—the Terai region south of the Himalayas (the undulating and low hilly tracts of Assam lying between the flood plains of the Brahmaputra, the lower Himalayas and the Patkai range). Hundreds of acres were denuded of their lush vegetation and magnificent rainforests for plantation of tea. Commercial production of tea commenced in the upper Assam valley around 1840, with indentured labour brought in from the remote tribal areas in central India rather than from the tribal areas in the surrounding hills. As more and more areas came under tea, the British entrepreneurs’ eyes fell on the high-quality timber in the region of the foothills here. The administration now felt the need to prevent the uncontrolled and reckless denudation of forests, both for expansion of the tea gardens or for timber and other forest produce, as also for hunting of wild elephants for ivory, as it was fraught with the risk of engendering conflicts with the tribal population.
Accordingly, in order to control man movement in the foothills, a law was framed. Known as the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation I of 1873, this recognized an inner line, drawn by the provincial government, beyond which entry was restricted and controlled by a system of permits. Sir E. Gait, in his book A History of Assam (1926), says: ‘The Inner Line was not the international boundary of the Indian Empire.’ Alastair Lamb goes on to elaborate that ‘it was a device to create a buffer zone, as it were, between the international boundary and regularly administered territory, a tract which marked the transition between the tribal hills and the Assamese plains’.8 This line generally followed a west–east configuration along the foothills. Beyond it the pale of normal administration did not extend, no taxes were levied, and no proprietary rights could be acquired by outsiders.
Verrier Elwin, who had a deep knowledge of the north-eastern tribes, wrote about the ‘patronising or scornful’ attitude towards these tribal societies among many Europeans who interacted with them. An article by him, quoted in the Pioneer in 1965, has described the situation: ‘The only idea which most men had, with reference to the hills and forests (of Assam), was that they were the habitat of savage tribes, whose bloody raids and thieving forays posed serious danger to the cause of tea.’9
Governance of the Tribal Belt
The British policy for governance of the tribal areas extending from the foothills to the Himalayan watershed took shape gradually over ninety years, from 1826 to 1916. The first phase of this policy evolution was from 1826 to 1873, during which the British found it neither expedient nor profitable to venture into the extremely difficult and densely forested hill areas rising up to the high Himalayas, and left the tribes alone. However, to ensure the safety of their subjects and the security of their assets and investments, they entered into a number of agreements, kuboolyuts (undertakings) and treaties with the chiefs of the tribes and with the petty rulers, commencing in 1826. During this phase, while the British hold over the Assam valley was being consolidated, British officials did not venture much into the tribal belt.
The exceptions to this hands-off policy, also referred to as Lord Minto’s policy of ‘non-interference’, were a few punitive expeditions. These were launched to seek retribution for violent a
nd barbarous acts such as raids, abduction, extortion and murders in the Assam plains, which the tribes had been indulging in from time to time since the Ahom rule of the region. These tribal depredations, at times for minor disputes, were more frequent during periods when the administration was ineffective. To preserve the peace in the region, the British officials found it expedient to compensate the tribal communities in cash and kind after taking a commitment and guarantee from them for ensuring peace. They were encouraged to carry out policing in areas of their jurisdiction, as per the agreements signed by the two sides. This compensation became locally known as posa, and would be withheld if any infringement took place. This action, coupled with blockades of tribal territory denying the tribals the opportunity to carry on their barter trade in the haats or markets, proved an effective punishment.
The next phase of the extension of British administration into the tribal areas commenced once the inner line was promulgated in 1873. It had emerged clearly that regulations and acts in force in the plains of Assam could not be applied to the ‘unsophisticated tribes’ of the hills, and at the same time exploitation of the forest resources by non-tribal peoples could not be arrested without delimiting the boundary between the tribal areas and the plains. Slightly to the north of the inner line came up the outer line that lay down the ‘limits of loose administrative control. Yet to confuse it with the “international boundary of British India” or the “frontier of India” would be straining both the facts as well as imagination,’10 as described in Parshotam Mehra’s authoritative account, The McMahon Line and After.
Thus, rough rules were enacted under the Scheduled Districts Act of 1874, specifically for governance of these tribal areas. A rudimentary framework for administration of the inner line and the bordering tribal areas of Darrang and Lakhimpur districts came up under the authority of this Act, and became known as the Assam Frontier Tract Regulation of 1880. By the end of 1882, the post of assistant political officer at Sadiya was created under the deputy commissioner of Dibrugarh to look into all matters concerning the Abor, Mishmi and Singhpho frontiers. It was headed by Jack Francis Needham. Sadiya, once the capital of a small principality called Sutiya on the northern bank of the Brahmaputra, was the north-eastern-most administrative headquarters of the British administration in upper Assam.11
The frontier tracts and the tribes in the Siang (Dihang) or Tsangpo in Tibet, Dibang and Lohit Valleys thereby came under Needham’s watch. During this period, ‘the North-East Frontier as distinct from Assam began to emerge’, as noted by Manilal Bose, a well-known historian. A good illustration of this development was the chief commissioner of Assam giving more teeth to the administrators entrusted with the governance of these unruly tribes by enacting rules for the administration of justice in the Lakhimpur Frontier Tract in 1886. These rules provided the fundamental framework of governance for the frontier tracts of Assam and were promulgated in all three sectors—Lakhimpur, Sadiya and Darrang (with its headquarters at Balipara) in 1914.12 In these districts, the deputy commissioners or their assistants exercised both administrative and judicial powers within their areas of responsibility confined to the outer line. Beyond that line the policy of non-interference applied.
The third phase of British governance in the north-east frontier region began at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, when the British decided to give effect to the ‘forward policy’, as recommended by Lord Minto prior to his departure from India at the end of 1910. The scare caused by Chinese presence on Tibet’s south-eastern frontier spurred the British into activity. Consequently, at the General Headquarters (GHQ) in Simla, the military General Staff’s appreciation was apparently sought. The Governor General was advised to authorize a systematic reconnaissance and survey of the entire tribal territory along the Assam Himalayas between Bhutan and Burma. In a private letter, Sir Arthur Hirtzl, secretary to the political and secret department at the India Office, commenting on the situation, wrote to Sir Richmond Ritchie, permanent undersecretary of state for India, on 12 January 1911:
… If anything goes wrong in Assam, there will be very voiceful public opinion against us … in Lakhimpur District there are 70,000 acres of tea gardens turning out 30,000,000 pounds of tea annually, and employing over 200 Europeans and 100,000 Indians. The European capital risk in tea must be enormous, and there are other industries as well (e.g. coal, over ¼ million tons a year …) Think of the howl the planters would let out, and the rise in the price of tea!13
Punitive Expeditions, Reconnaissance and Surveys in Tribal Territories of Assam Himalayas
The enhanced activities of the Chinese in the Zayul and Pomed regions, and the physical presence of their officials and military force at Chikung, Rima (both places located well on the Tibetan side of the frontier) and the Pomed region of the Tsangpo Valley (also on the Tibetan side), led to the launch of exploratory missions by the British. Their aim was to survey the tribal territories along the eastern Himalayas and to ascertain the presence and influence of the Tibetans or Chinese along this frontier. As a matter of fact, the area familiarization, exploratory and reconnaissance missions carried out till the end of the nineteenth century were mostly along the Lohit Valley, whereas the other tribal areas to its west up to Bhutan were ‘terra incognito’. Therefore, the need arose to ascertain and establish not only the natural frontier between Tibet and India but also the de facto southern limits of Tibet. These reconnaissance missions were expected to submit their recommendations for a viable and strategically sound boundary line extending from Bhutan to Burma, keeping in mind the imperial interests of the British Indian Empire. As with the Younghusband expedition, the unstated aim of these politico-military ventures was to demonstrate imperial Britain’s power and reach. In the case of the cis-Himalayan areas, the British were determined to keep the presence or influence of both Chinese and Tibetans out of the tribal territories.
Almost ninety years after Assam had been annexed, British India formalized its de facto policy of ‘loose political control’ over the entire tribal belt along the southern side of the Himalayan watershed and created the North-East Frontier Tracts region—what has been known as the state of Arunachal Pradesh since 1987. Spurred by the aggressive forward policy adopted by the Chinese in the Marches of south-eastern Tibet from 1904 to 1910, and their unexpected presence in some strength in the northern Zayul and Pomed regions in 1910–12, not to mention some probing intrusions or forays by them into tribal territories south of the Himalayan watershed, the British were compelled to review their policy of governance of the Assam Himalayan region.
For the first time since the eighteenth century, the Chinese army had ventured to make their presence felt, or establish their writ, in the frontier regions of south-eastern Tibet. Their probes were made primarily into the upper Lohit or Zayul Valley, the Delei Valley to its west, and in the fringes of the Dibang Valley, where they did not transgress into Lopa territory. There was similar activity in the Siang Valley, where too they did not venture beyond a place called Rinchenpung, which is situated about two marches short of the frontier. Also, Chinese troops were neither seen in the valleys of the Char, Nye or Chayul (upper Subansiri) nor in Tawang or Monyul; but some visited Tsona (Dzong).14 There was an uncorroborated report of four Chinese-looking strangers who reached the Aka territory through the Tawang tract in the summer of 1911. They were armed only with small knives and possibly were surveyors or explorers.15
Since the Chinese could not find any Tibetan administrative structures of even the most rudimentary level in the tribal areas during these missions, their intrusions lasted only for a day or two or, as in the case of the Delei Valley, for about a week, before their troops fell back to the Tibetan side of the frontier. On occasions, they coerced the Tibetans to convey their orders to the tribesmen, who were not readily amenable to such directives. Charles Bell, quoting from the report on Assam by the Indian General Staff about the ‘serious implications’ of Chinese forays in these ‘undefended’ tribal
territories, said: ‘That Assam would ever stand the slightest chance of being invaded by a civilized military power has never been contemplated, and consequently no strategic plan, no defences, no organisation whatsoever exists to repel a serious invasion.’16
Accordingly, Lord Hardinge forwarded a comprehensive assessment of the situation in the north-eastern frontier of India to the Marquess of Crewe, the Secretary of State for India, on 21 September 1911, effectively recommending a virtual turnabout of the existing policy of dealing with the tribal belt that lay south of the Tibetan frontier. Highlighting its justification for this, the assessment said:
Circumstances have thus forced us to revert practically to the original proposal of Lord Minto’s government that endeavours should be made to secure, as soon as possible, a sound strategical boundary between China and Tibet and the tribal territory from Bhutan up to and including the Mishmi country … 17
Summing up the rationale for adoption of the new policy, the dispatch said:
As long as such tribal territory lay between us and our peacefully dormant neighbour Tibet, an undefined mutual frontier presented neither inconvenience nor danger. With the recent change in conditions, the question of a boundary well-defined and at a safer distance from our administrative border admits of no delay. 18
As was typical of the British, even in the face of China’s brazenly assertive forward policy, Hardinge conveyed that once a reasonable boundary had been identified, China could be formally informed of the same.