Geographical History of Assam and Its Social Realities, Exams of History

Download Geographical History of Assam and Its Social Realities and more Exams History in PDF only on Docsity! Where is Assam? Using Geographical History to Locate Current Social Realities. David Ludden February 22, 2007 Assam sits in a continent defined by national states, and … In a northeastern region, defined by Indian States. ie Se CQTHIMPHU BHUTAN @BODHGATA MYANMAR BIHAR S| FANGHL 1 : : MADHYA‘. uE 4 PRADESH ..” A s 200 Kid … where Assam is a solid piece of Indian national territory, fixed inside a world of national states. In this national view of social reality, all things acquire their definitive location, identity, and meaning as national entities. Thus, Assam exists inside the gridlines of national geography … But other spatial perspectives exist Despite the universal authority of national geography, the spatial location of social reality is never singular, immutable, or stationary. The fact that Assam is part of India is of course indisputable, but this fact coexists with others that locate Assam and all its constituent elements, including its boundaries, differently. All representations of territory are political projects, not merely empirical facts. The makers and enforcers of today’s mapped boundaries use maps to define human reality essentially as national territory. Thus, the natural world and all its contents acquire essentially national identities. Step One: to appreciate the cultural politics of map knowledge Nationalizing Topography Erases Spaces Peripheral and Exogenous to National Identity Nationalizing Monsoons and Weather Naturalizes National Boundaries ANNUAL RAINFALL 1995 GDI HDI UNICEF STATS $PCGDP litfem litfem/$ lifefem InfMo incfem gdi Above-AVG PCGDP 14818 91.51 0.01 77.96 12.96 31.80 0.83 Top: Switzerland 33674 99.00 0.00 81.58 6.30 32.49 0.89 Bottom: SaudiArabia 5581 50.25 0.01 72.47 24.00 10.01 0.59 Below-AVG PCGDP 1380 65.76 0.05 63.51 61.85 33.04 0.55 Top: Croatia 5358 98.00 0.02 75.98 10.00 36.64 0.74 Bottom: Mozambique 92 23.31 0.25 47.76 148.00 41.91 0.26 Statistics are state-based-data, representing the world as a collection of national territories. We can juggle national statistics, however, to describe world geography in various ways. Ratio of Indian State Human Development Index (HDI) and Per Capita Income (PCI) to All India Figures 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 K erala P un jab T am il N ad M ah ar ash tr H ar yan a G uj ara t K ar nat ak W es t Be ng R aja sth an A nd hr a Pr ad e O ris sa M ad hy a P rad e U tta r Pr ad esh A ss am B iha r Indian States R at io of St at e to In di a (% ) HDI PCI South Asia’s Densest Population/Poverty Region In India, Assam joins Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in a group of states (holding about 42% of India’s population) that falls below the national average in HDI and state PCI. (click below) Assam is also part of the Indian Northeast, physically attached to India by a narrow land corridor… India’s NE region is quite diverse and distinct from India in many respects … for instance, in its development indicators From the South Asia Foundation Website “SUBREGIONAL COOPERATION IN THE EAST SOUTH ASIA SUBREGION (ESAS)” The East South Asia Subregion (ESAS) consisting of the eastern states of India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal has, within its boundaries, a total population of around 420 million and a potential combined GNP of about US$ 142 bn. The ESAS covers a total land area of over one million square kilometres with substantial water courses, arable land, forests and natural resources. Intra-ESAS merchandise trade, however, is low and constitutes only around 2.4 percent of the total trade of the four countries. This low figure, nonetheless, masks the extent of informal trade that already occurs within the subregion. And in India’s Northeast, Assam is also part of another regional setting, composed of state territories in northeastern South Asia. Thus, we can move our spatial perspective around to configure Assam’s geographical location in various ways. However natural, necessary, and comforting it may seem to assign everything in the world an essentially static, fixed, and immobile native location, such activity can never succeed in creating a stationary social order. Virtually everything in social life is constantly on the move, and the mobility of things in social space defines a reality that escapes the epistemology of national geography. Step Three becomes an extensive empirical project: to elaborate geographical perspectives that move along routes of mobility and among changing spatial frames of reference, blending them together : Assam lies in Asian spaces defined by mountains and river routes in valleys and plains … Where rains from Asia’s longest, wettest monsoon seasons pour down annually to feed all the rivers … where rice became the dominant food crop by circa 1500 … Where populations have moved, settled, and concentrated historically in river valleys and adjacent areas of intensive cultivation. This is a graphic map of Asian population densities today. All Assam rivers also occupy Bangladesh, where people depend on the same rivers for survival that local inhabitants in NE India – for example, around the proposed Tipaimukh dam – venerate and depend upon for their livelihoods ... India’s proposed plan to use Assam waters to enrich dry regions inside Indian national territory would drastically reduce the flow of water in the delta. It is little wonder that the plan has aroused deep consternation in Bangladesh, because … Bangladesh gets 80% of its fresh water via 54 rivers crossing international borders from India. Reduced flow in these rivers would cause drought and sea-water influx, killing farms and fisheries as far north as Dhaka. Assam, Northeast India, and the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh, can be understood empirically as the western-most regions of East Asia, the area where East and South Asia overlap. From ancient times, the NE-SE bias of river valleys east of Assam has channeled human mobility inland across the interlaced networks of mountains, valleys, and plains that connect Assam with Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and China. Inland Spaces of Mobility in include: Blue: Ancient Khasi Migration. Green: Medieval Tai-Ahom Migration. Red = opium cultivation/trade zone, circa 1900. Yellow: Burma expansion, circa 1800. Pink: The Ledo (Stillwell) Burma Road Before 1800, Indian Ocean routes seem to have had less direct impact on the inland Brahmaputra Valley than on other regions of South Asia comparatively proximate to the coast. Assam lay distinctively at the intersection of Indian Ocean routes with inland routes into Southeast Asia. Opium and tea, among other commodities, traveled these routes. So did many ethnic groups, for whom these vast spaces of mobility were home. Routes of mobility that dominate the historic definition of Assam positioned Assam geographically beyond the eastern frontiers of Gangetic Basin. Early Gupta Expansion to circa 400s CE iter Purusapurag glaxila (Takeadila) a ms DECCAN i PLATEAU Arabian \ Saa \ Pp ‘teen oe 4 _ Kae | \ rae Q 100200 300 400m = ee oO 200 400 600km 1994 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. ~~ oe VAKATAKA anes Take A Gedavari Sf PLATEAU! OF THRET Brahmaputra GREAT Hiab RANGE X ra Bengal fioipuram Snchipur arn) oe PALLAYA a i ‘ ( _ Reabable pours i . under Candra Gupta SINHALA _—. Southern campaign 7 [7 of Samudra Gupta Mughal Expansion MUGHAL EMPIRE 1526-1707 Extent of Mughal Ernpire in 1530. Expansion of Mughal Empire to 1605 Expansion of Mughal Empire to 1707 Mughal expansion into Babur's Afghan kingdom Boundary of Suri empire Routes of Mughal, expansion campaigns The geographical Pivot of inland empires, 1200 - 1700. Ader 1250 Te Mammboks)) Under (Nowhjnalh Sasersity of Sassi fais | | ARABIAN _ ; eee fy © MON Wioeewear is 4 Cooch Behar and Sylhet were the northeastern frontiers of Mughal and early British India When Assam and its surroundings entered British India, they were incorporated into British Bengal. Thus, after 1830, Assam obtained its first firm imperial identity as a regional part of South Asian political geography. Bengal-Assam integration, circa 1857 For more than a century after 1830, Assam was an eastern borderland of British imperialism Sylhet constituted southern Assam from 1874 to 1947. Describing Assam in 1879 W.W.Hunter. A Statistical Account of Assam (1879) Author’s Preface (1879): p.1 “…the Province of Assam as constituted in 1874 [when it was] withdrawn from … Bengal and formed into a separate Chief Commissionership…. consists of two river valleys with a lofty hill tract in between. On the north, the Brahmaputra Valley covers an area of 20,683 square miles, or one half of the whole Province …. From its southern edge rises the hill country, a wild broken region of 14,447 square miles, inhabited by non-Aryan tribes. To the south of these intervening mountains, again, lies the smaller valley of the Barak and Surma, extending over 6,668 square miles. In 1943, the Stillwell Road, from Ledo in Assam to the China-Burma Road, formed a link with the Bengal-Assam Railway, to support US and UK war against Japan (and later, against Chinese Communists). BBC News 2 March 1999 Recently, approximately 1,500 wartime graves have been found on the India-Burma border along the old Stillwell Road. ° wuss «00 8 muoucrins 700 CEYLON eu SIKKIM Pakistan after Partition Panjab before Partition Bengal before Partition Map 37 Partition of India, 1947 Regions of Partition, 1947 Sylhet/Assam borders acquired their current geographical definition after 1947, when Ratabari, Patherkandi, Badarpur and half of Karimganj thana left the former Karimganj sub-division of the old Sylhet District to join the Cachar District of Assam. In 1983, these territories became Assam’s new Karimganj District. In 1951, the North Cachar sub-division of Cachar District joined the new district of United Mikir and North Cachar Hills. In 1989, Hailakandi sub- division of Cachar became a separate district. New Sylhet/Assam borderlands 1871: Muslim population at 1:1 parity with Hindu population. 1874-1947: Sylhet’s proportion of Muslims increases with each census, as migration slowly transforms the population. 1911-1931: people reportedly born in Mymensingh increase from 31% of the population of southern Assam valleys in 1891 to 63% in 1931. 1931: Assam Census Report called Muslim Bengalis “invaders” and the Assam Congress resolved to move Sylhet out of Assam. 1947-1991: Immigration radically transforms Sylhet population. 1961-1971: population grows almost 60%. A hundred thousand Muslim Bengalis moved out of Assam into Sylhet’s haor basin, where land still lay open for colonization. Notes on Sylhet Demography, 1871-1991 Sylhet Year-Group Decadal Population Growth Averages 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 1881-1921 1921-1941 1941-1951 1951-1974 1974-1991 Year-Groups A ve ra ge % D ec ad al G ro w th Modern Sylhet Region, Gross Population Change “The dominating feature of Assam is the great river Brahmaputra, which lends its name to the whole length of the valley. This river, awe-inspiring even in its quieter moments, is aptly named for the son of Brahma…. “The truncation of Assam began with the inception of political movements in regions inhabited by non-Aryan tribes, both within and on the borders of Assam. As these movements gained momentum and the hill tribes required enough political self- consciousness their demands for statehood or Union Territory status were met one by one. The result is the formation of Meghalaya consisting of the Khasi and Jantia Hills and Garo hills and the Union territories of Mizoram and Arunachal. Nagaland had earlier come into being as a direct result of nationalist agitation current there …. [T]he emergence of these separate unites in the hills has involved much bitterness between Assam and its neighbors mainly over the boundary issue. The Assam-Nagaland boundary question is still fare from settled and is the cause of friction between the two state governments.” --- M.Horam (Delhi School of Economics) Preface to WW Hunter, A Statistical Account of Assam (1879). Spectrum (Guwahati) reprint (1975), p.ii-iv. Describing Assam in 1975 Changing Populations in Old Cultural Frontiers Percent of Assam Brahmaputra Districts, Major "Ethnical Divisions of the Population," in WW Hunter Statistical Account of Assam , 1879 Aboriginal Tribes 24% Muslims 9% Hindus 33% Semi- Hinduized Aboriginals 34% Agricultural Frontiers Regional Comparisons, Net Cultivation to Total Area 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 0.30 0.35 0.40 0.45 0.50 T ri pu ra Si kk im N ag al an d A ss am R aj as th an M iz or am A ru na ch al P ra de sh O ri ss a 13 S & S E A si a st at es Ja m m u an d K as hm ir M ad hy a Pr ad es h G oa , D am an & D iu M an ip ur In di a (s um m ar y ta bl e) H im ac ha l p ra de sh A nd hr a Pr ad es h M eg ha la ya C ha nd ig ar h regions Pe rc en t N et C ul t/T ot al A re a 0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 7.00 8.00 9.00 10.00 Pe rc en t C ha ng e N C /T A 1 88 0- 19 80 1980 1980/1880 Closing off Assam inside NE India Blue – re: Bangladesh -- railway closure, the Brahmaputra Board, anti- immigrant drive, Tipaimukh dam. Pink – re: China -- Ledo Road Closure (1947), border clashes Mizzima News Guwahati, 22 June 2003: Though it is a long pending demand of the North East India for re-opening of the famous Stillwell Road in order to accelerate trade with Burma and the South East Asian countries, The Indian Commerce Ministry appears to be not in a mood to meet the demand of the region. The seven states of the North East India have been demanding for reopening of the road …. The Chief Ministers of the region have already submitted a joint proposal to reopen the road in order to attract the tourists and to boost trade with the South East Asian countries … trade and commerce. But the Government of India has been delaying the matter keeping in view the underground problem in the region. "Several underground groups of the region are now operating from Burma from different hide- outs so how can we open the road," a senior officer of the Home ministry questioned. He however said that though the Indian Government has opened trade routes with Bangladesh, yet the case is different in respect of Burma. Asked whether it had completely abandoned the proposal of the region, he stated that it was under consideration. "We can not ignore the security part after all the region is very sensitive for the militancy problem," the officer added. Inland Mobility and Indian Security Where is Assam? Map $6 ‘Spread ef Hindu and Buxkist Culture to Southeast Asia