A date to remember

The 24th of February is a very significant day for Assam. It was on this day way back in 1826 that Assam – primarily the Ahom kingdom which had covered most parts of the Brahmaputra Valley – was passed on from the hands of the Burmese to that of the British. That was also the date on which Assam was annexed to British India, which was then under control of the East India Company. Though there is one school which considers this date as the sunset day of the great Ahom kingdom, the reality is that the Ahom monarchy was already on the decline from the middle of the eighteenth century. As has been described in Political History of Assam, edited by HK Barpujari, the Ahom throne was occupied by "a number of weak but unscrupulous rulers whose only ambition was the preservation of their own lives and power regardless of the interests of the State." According to that three-volume well-researched book, the king's court was bogged down by intrigues and controversies, which were followed by political assassinations and insurrections. The Moamaria rebellion which broke out in 1769 as a protest against the religious intolerance of the royal family, soon developed into a scramble for power. Such was the situation that the rebels occupied the capital forcing Swargadeo Gaurinath Simha to flee for his life to Guwahati in 1778. Though British said that the king had sought their help to bring the rebellion under control, the Khamtis and the Singphos virtually dismissed the Sadiya-khowa Gohain from the extreme east. Gaurinath's successors Kamaleswar and Chandrakanta respectively could hardly restore the vitality and strength of the kingdom. The latter's Court was divided into two rival camps, with the king and members of the royal family on one side and Prime Minister Purnananda Buragohain and his supporters on the other. This led to the entry of the Burmese in the scene, having been invited by the royalists themselves, and three successive Burmese invasions totally devastated the country. They unleashed a reign of terror, with plunder, murder, rape and desecration becoming the order of the day. While folklore abounds in ghastly tales of the sufferings of the people in the hands of the Burmese, with one British officer even putting on record that the invaders actually ate raw flesh of "choice portions of the body" of the local people. Maniram Dewan, an eye-witness of the outrages had on his part recorded that while "it was dangerous for a beautiful woman to meet a Burmese even in the public road," Brahmins were made to carry loads of beef, pork and wine, and Gosains were robbed of all their possessions. While the Burmese came in three waves in 1817, 1819 and 1821, the Ahom army headed by fleeing king Chandrakanta Simha was defeated in the historic Battle of Hadirachoki near Jogighopa on June 21, 1822. As the Political History of Assam puts it, "This defeat (21 June, 1822) marked the end of Ahom rule." Yet another well-researched book, the five-volume Comprehensive History of Assam (also edited by Barpujari) on the other hand records this date as follows – "His (Chandrakanta's) defeat and the declaration of (Burmese commander) Mingimaha Tilwa as the Raja of Assam marked the end of Assamese resistance to the Burmese, and Assam became, as David Scott wrote, 'a Province of the Burman Empire.'" While Chandrakanta managed to secure British support to expel the Burmese and free Assam, it was on February 24, 1824, that the British Governor-General Lord Armherst proclaimed war against the Burmese. Though the British pushed the Burmese out and occupied Guwahati on March 28, 1824, it took a little over a year to clear the invaders from Assam Valley, Cachar and Manipur, all of which had come under Burmese occupation around 1822. The British had however shown little inclination to restore Assam to the Ahom king, and instead appointed officers to administer the country which formally changed hands on February 24, 1826, with the signing of the Treaty of Yandaboo between General Archibald Campbell on the British side and Governor Legaing Maha Min Hla Kyaw Htin on the Burmese side. It is a fact that the British did restore portions of upper Assam with Purandar Simha as a tributary ruler in March 1833, but then it sadly ended on September 16, 1838, marking the demise not just of the mighty Ahom kingdom, but also that of the sovereignty of the Assamese. The demise of the Ahom monarchy even after the British had given a second chance in 1833, is largely attributed by historians to the Swargadeo (Purandar) whose status was reduced to that of a 'jagirdar', yet who lived in "noisy pomp and tawdy splendour" with his court "more resembling the parade of a company of strolling players than anything imposing or sovereign." A sad story indeed, to be recalled on the day of the 194th anniversary of the Treaty of Yandaboo.