Book: Northeast India: A Political History

Author: Samrat Choudhury

Publication: HarperCollins

Price: Rs 699

Samrat Choudhury’s book is a well-written historical account of the making of the Northeast, told in the authoritative tone of an omniscient novelist. Enjoyable as it is, the book also leaves some contentious issues unresolved.

The book has nine chapters; the first profiles the motives and the compulsions that brought the East India Company into the region. One chapter each of the rest of the book is devoted to the eight Northeast states, including Sikkim. Each state gets 40 pages on an average, except Sikkim that has 20 pages, half of which is the concluding commentary on the book.

The Northeast is a very diverse canvas for a single book and this space constraint is felt. Choudhury, however, masterly handles the challenge, giving the book a unique narrative flow. The binding thread is the State-making project in the region by the British, slowly but steadily yoking together the diverse land in their own interests.

Many of the stories told are already known, but the author generates fresh interest by authenticating citations from relevant archival documents, particularly from C.U. Aitchison’s ‘Treaties’, a collection of treaties relating to India and its neighbours during the raj. He also places British policies in the Northeast in the context of contemporary developments in the rest of British India, making things clearer.

The Treaty of Yandaboo, 1826, is an epochal turning point in the region’s history. The book uses it as its launching pad. This treaty officially ended the occupation of Assam and Manipur by Burma and determined the status of the liberated region. Only Manipur was to remain an independent kingdom while the rest, by implication, were to come under British rule.

Many refreshing vantages are also given to familiar histories. For instance, historical accounts of Meghalaya and Tripura constructed from records on the Indian side of the border are familiar but when seen from the other side — Sylhet in particular — new angles become visible concerning public and official anxieties that shaped policies.

There are several problematic contentions though. The book says that the East India Company, inhibited by the huge expenses of the war with Burma, annexed only Lower Assam after the 1826 treaty, leaving the rest to be annexed eventually 12 years later in 1838. No explanation is provided for what the major policy decisions of the British administration were in these territories while they were still not annexed. The raising of the Cachar Levy and the Jorhat Militia in 1835 which later became the Assam Rifles in 1919 is one example. Likewise, in 1833, the British demarcated the extent of its eastern boundary by a treaty with Manipur.

Some conclusions on the Inner Line created by the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation, 1873, along the foot of the Assam hills to separate two categories of administrative zones are also fuzzy. The revenue plains were put under regular administration while the ‘wild’ hills beyond this line were kept under the gaze of the Assam governor. The Government of India Act, 1935 further categorised these hills into ‘Excluded Area’ (under the charge of the Assam governor) and ‘Partially Excluded Area’ (with some nominated representations in the Assam legislature). Yet, the book claims a greater part of these hills were never part of British India. Since India inherited only British India’s possession by a ‘transfer of power’ and the merger of princely states had to be negotiated later, does this mean that the territories beyond the Inner Line are technically and legally still not part of India?

These ambiguities probably come from conflating two parallel motives driving the East India Company — commercial and strategic. If Upper Assam or the territory beyond the Inner Line did not fall within its commercial interest, it did not mean that it was outside its map of strategic concerns, much like how operational jurisdictions of the different units of the Indian army today do not align with the political boundaries of the states in the Northeast.

While reopening the debates on the status accorded to Tawang at the Simla Conference, several questions, such as why China was included in this conference, whether there was an official ‘Outer Line’ even though no legislation created one unlike the case of the ‘Inner Line’, are left without definite answers. Despite these, the book is certainly engaging.