How Britain made Assam

Books, or indeed any writing, on India published in the West these days tend to be one-sided. It is either about the country’s booming economy or its role in history as one of the major political, military and spiritual powers of Asia. William Dalrymple’s The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World is typical of such volumes. The implication is usually that the subcontinent was an extraordinary power in medieval times and the time is now ripe for it to reclaim its rightful status in the present international order. Jingoism reigns supreme (if Indian) as does adulation (if Western). What is seldom seen in action is humility, self-criticism and an honest reckoning of history. The role Britain played in inventing this mammoth of a country is often overlooked. 

Amidst tomes that offer a halcyon view of the past or a rosy prediction of the future, Caroline Keen’s writing is a breath of fresh air. She specialises in the colonial era and adeptly portrays the lives of individuals who loyally served the Raj. Her previous work A Judge in Madras dealt with Sir Sidney Wadsworth, a civil servant who served in the Madras province between the 1920s and the 1940s. It was a scintillating book for it not only gave you rare insight into the day-to-day administration of British India, but also revealed fascinating details about the peoples and their relation to the Raj. The empire in India “essentially rested on consent” and people were “acutely conscious of the benefits which had flowed from British rule”.

So it was with vast interest and anticipation that I awaited the release of Keen’s next work The British Takeover of Assam. Regrettably, she delivers less than what the quality of her previous work would seem to promise. The problem arises with the title itself which strikes one as rather misleading. The book is not a chronological telling of the events that led to Britain’s conquest of Assam, subsequent integration into India and the development of the sprawling tea plantations. Rather, it is a farrago of facts about various features of the province in the 19th century sprinkled with contemporary observations from British and other sources.

The entire history of Assam since it came under British control after the signing of the Treaty of Yandabo in 1826 upon the defeat of the Burmese all the way up to the granting of self-rule in 1946 is covered in a mere 20 pages. Tantalising bits do appear when Keen mentions the resentment many Assamese feel at the colonisation of their homeland by outsiders, but these episodes are not discussed in much detail leaving the reader none the wiser. A damp and disease-prone province in the back of beyond turns into India’s fastest-growing region, thanks to the development of its tea plantations and fossil fuels. The relative backwardness of the local population leaves the growing economy in need of financiers, labourers, brokers and transport agents, nearly all of whom come from other Indian provinces.

If you skip the less interesting passages on lac and mustard cultivation, there are some readable bits on the tea plantations

While Keen is right to point out that Britain’s cultivation of the tea industry failed to benefit the local Assamese population and colonial policy generally enthroned lucre over local welfare, she does not credit the Raj adequately for some of its more honourable deeds. Firstly, it is important to remember that Britain entered Assam at the behest of the local Ahom ruler who was menaced by Burmese invasions. The East India Company was not initially keen to stray into that wilderness of jungles inhabited by fierce tribes. But as they banished the Burmese and their collaborators from the province, the British rescued thousands of Assamese slaves held by the aggressors. After taking control of the province, they abolished some ancient barbaric practices still observed by the hill tribes such as cutting off an innocent passerby’s head to enhance one’s prestige in the clan (literally, headhunting). Although security concerns in the northeast towered above all other considerations, it is undeniable that the Raj cared about bringing civilisation to the populace. The civil servants posted to different parts of Assam learned the local languages, which belonged variably from the Burmese to Tibetan families, in an effort to understand the people they governed, an effort current Indian rulers are too lazy to make. 

The most tedious section appears when Keen expatiates on 15 different hill tribes across the province, detailing their customs, mores, appearance, clothing, temperament and suchlike. The longueur is all the more stultifying as inevitably each tribe is composed of smaller sub-tribes with their own names and distinctions. The reader would’ve been vastly better off if in place of a loquacious description of the myriad tribes, he had received a slicker account of the most important ones, such as those who rebelled against India when Britain decided to leave the subcontinent.

Sir Robert Reid, a governor of Assam, says of the hill tribes that they are “not Indians in any sense of the word, neither in origin, nor in language, nor in appearance, nor in habits, not in outlook and it is by historical accident that they have been tacked on to an Indian Province”. An incisive comment and, in this reviewer’s opinion, quite an accurate one. Whether the northeastern hill tribes are Indian in character is a central question and must be addressed in any work that looks at the integration of their territory into the country. But much to the reader’s chagrin, it has no place in Keen’s disquisition. Nor do we get much by way of discussions on inter-ethnic animosities which is disappointing especially in light of the Meitei-Kuki troubles in 2023 that gave the Narendra Modi government much cause for headache.

A similarly stodgy chapter on the trade and business of 19th century Assam ensues. If you skip the less interesting passages on lac and mustard cultivation in the province, there are some readable bits on the tea plantations. In fact, it is perhaps the section on the ghastly predicament of the tea estate labourers that is the book’s most interesting segment. Indigent peasants from other Indian provinces are promised a life of prosperity and lured into travelling up the Brahmaputra river to work the tea plantations. Little do they realise that they have entered purgatory where they are treated as little better than slaves. Makeshift prisons exist within the estates as planters can’t afford the loss of their labour if they were jailed far away in the town. Punishment for attempts to escape, as many inevitably did, included flogging. Sexual harassment of female workers was not uncommon. Worse still, the British Indian government did little to ameliorate these savage conditions. 

In a skimpy epilogue discussing post-independence developments, Keen talks about security imperatives driving Indian policies in the northeast after the “Chinese aggression” of 1962. She takes the phrase for granted even though several historians have argued that it was India’s forward-policy in the Aksai Chin disputed area that precipitated the Indo-Chinese war of 1962. The book could also do with more rigorous editing with place names such as Rangpur spelled and misspelled alternatively as Rungpur and Ranpur. 

Overall, if you are interested in an academic survey of Assam in the 19th century, you might find this book somewhat useful. But if you are after the history of how the British takeover shaped the course of the province’s history, the tribes’ stance towards rule from Delhi and what it means in the present day, then you have to look elsewhere.