Modern Assam-Still in the making?

In review: Empire’s Garden: Assam And The Making Of India •by Jayeeta Sharma • Permanent Black • Rs 695

Renaissance, Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution ushered in the modern era in Europe and ultimately to the entire globe, notably through the institutions of capitalism and colonialism. Colonial and capitalist induced transformations as well as the resistances offered against such changes initiated complex processes whereby many modern nations and nationalities were formed. India is but the result of such processes. Although there is a considerable volume of scholarship on the origin of the idea of India, the respective histories of its numerous divergent constituent nations are often washed out and obliterated in the process of creating a grand assimilative history. Also missed out are the subaltern perspectives of nationhood from lesser known ethnic societies. For Assam and the northeast in general, who have been purportedly over-marginalized in the popular and academic discourses of India, Jayeeta Sharma’s book, Empire’s Garden-Assam and the making of India, is thus a moment of rare reckoning. Through the rich and detailed analysis of archival and colonial documents as well as ‘local’ sources, Sharma traces the nascent origins of the ideas and notions leading to the formation of a modern Assamese identity and nation in the post Ahom-Kingdom period, through the colonial and nationalist assimilation of Assam within India.  

The first part of the book is an arresting narration of the tortuous times that followed the discovery of native tea in the forests of what is now known as ‘upper Assam’.  Soon after, using the arguments of ‘advancement of science’, ‘social improvement’ and ‘economic and industrial development’, the colonial government appropriated, accumulated and reserved vast areas of village common, agricultural, fallow and forest lands. Interestingly, the colonial tea agenda found resonance with the elites and the gentry of the times who, imagining themselves as potential beneficiaries of the improvement program, lent their active support and services. 

Soon, according to the author, the British made another major discovery: that of the ‘lazy natives’ who were deemed unfavorable to the demands of the tea industry due to their food habits, opium addiction and being congenitally undisciplined. That was quickly followed by the invention of the ’tea-coolies’, who comprised of the ‘obedient’, ‘compliant’, ‘primitive’ and ‘hard-working’ natives imported from the Central and East Indian forests as indentured laborers.  Victims of a long process of dispossession from their original lands and livelihoods, lakhs of them were lured in by the promise of better work and earning opportunities. In reality the working conditions of the tea-laborers remained abysmal, punishing and ghastly. Socially, they were ostracized as sub-human class, both by the British planters as well the local inhabitants. Apart from the ‘tea-coolies’, the colonial economic policies created opportune moments for various other migrant groups viz. the ‘Nepali graziers’, the ‘Marwari Traders’ , ‘East Bengali peasants’ and ‘Sylhetti clerks’ to settle in Assam . Such settlements added to the demographic and ethnic complexity of the fertile Assam Valley, lent new communitarian identities and would eventually give rise to the political mobilizations by ethno-linguistic and religious groups. 

'Burha Luit' - An inseparable part of the geography and culture of Assam is also a silent witness of its tortuous history

After a brief interlude of sepia tinted black and white romantic images of the colonial tea era, the second part of the book leads us through the socio-cultural and political changes that the tea-economy led to.  Crucial to bring forth such changes were the ‘secular pilgrimages’, whereby several members of the Assamese elites made cultural and educational journeys to Calcutta, then the epicenter of socio-political reform and cultural and intellectual activity. Those journeys facilitated the creation of a distinct Assamese intelligentsia who ultimately constructed the unique modern identity of an Assamese nation based on the cultural edifices of language, history, folklore, literature, spiritual, cultural and nationalist icons.  The printing press, introduced first by the American Baptist Missionaries, aided greatly in the construction of such an identity. However, as the author maintains, the notions of such identities were knit around the greater Sanskritic and Indic order. This served to place themselves as being distinct and ‘above’ the ‘lowly tea-coolies’ and the ‘head-hunting’, ‘junglee’ tribals with whom they shared common geography. Such an identity gained the legitimacy from the colonial policy makers as well as the powerful Hindu nationalists and the Assamese gentry, through the patronization of the Congress, were assimilated in the national freedom struggle. Thus it was unsurprising that in the post colonial period, political empowerment became the sole entitlement of the Assamese caste Hindus.  Such political hegemony ultimately gave rise to multiple neo-politico-ethnic demands and struggles for separate nationalities beyond Assam but within India and ultimately came to comprise what we currently recognize as the north-eastern region.

The book is let down by poor editing, redundancy of information across chapters and sloppy errors and omissions, particularly in the second part. For example: in page 157 & 158, citing the rise in opium sales and excise revenues, it comments on how “the price almost tripled, from Rs 14 in 1860 to Rs 26 in 1879 and Rs 37 in 1890” but leaves out the unit against which the price is quoted. Additionally, the narrative suffers from a ‘heavy academic’ style which might deter the lay reader. This might be unfortunate because as a book, being very rich and detailed in local histories particularly of less documented personalities, it deserves to be read widely, beyond the mere academia.  

The eternal 'tea-coolies'- Tea plucking during the summer of 2013 at 36 degree celsius.

The fate of Assam in the post colonial period, as well as the current state of the Assam tea industry is dealt briefly within a short conclusion. The very important colonial discovery of the crude oil and its’ possible impact on the current volatile contours of the Assamese identity is left out completely. Also remain understated in the book is the continued socio-political marginalization of the tea-tribes in the contemporary Assam. Economically one of the poorest communities, innumerable members of them continue to be exploited under the terms of servile bondage, while mainstream news media demonizes them as barbarians, uncivilized and even cannibals. They have been the soft targets of many mass killings and barbaric riots, worst among which happened in 2007, in plain daylight, in the very presence of the police and paramilitary forces, in the heart of the Guwahati city close to the Assam State Assembly. The tea-tribes today thus represent the perpetual ‘outsiders’ in Assam, inspite of the blood and sweat which they literally shed in the making of Assam. Without justly assimilating them, can Assam’s tryst with its modernity ever arrive?

An edited version of this review was published in the fortnightly magazine Down to Earth in its print edition dated 15 Jan, 2014.