Dharam Sing Teron and Linso Timungpi

Date of Publish: 2019-10-28

The Politics of Space, Map-Making and Traditional Karbi Territory

Maps are neither neutral nor do they portray the truth. Map is a ‘manipulated form of knowledge’ which is intimately linked with power. Maps are social constructs which have specific purposes and agenda. Colonial powers have used maps as tools to disposes the colonized and establish control over territories. The colonial state fully utilised this ‘mother of all sciences’ and gave shape to modern India.

The British occupied the Ahom kingdom and gradually annexed the surrounding tribal territories and claimed the Northeastern borderland through wars and map-making exercises. Cartographic representation of the colonised ethnic spaces has therefore been arbitrary and whimsical with crucial implications on modern identity and history of the region. Cartographic boundaries created in colonial interest have local social realities which were bound to resurface subsequently. Colonial administrators collected more taxes from Karbi inhabited areas but denied the people their ‘geo-body’.

Colonial Cartography and Power

For British imperialism, it took more than the “best weapons or the deepest pockets” to conquer and perpetuate its rule over “a land of incomprehensible spectacle” such as India. In the “forefront of this campaign were the geographers who mapped the landscapes and studied the inhabitants, who collected geological and botanical specimens, and who recorded details of economy, society and culture.”[1] For British imperialism, the “empire exists because it can be mapped; meaning of empire is inscribed into each map.”[2] Such was the importance map-making occupied in the colonial project of conquest. The “shape on the map that we associate with the name ‘India’ was a cartographic construct that took a century of imperial mapping to emerge.”[3]

The old Ahom kingdom was outside Indian mainland till the fateful Treaty of Yandabu in 1826. The Assam as we see in the present-day map is “not exactly synonymous with the territorial boundary of Ahom kingdom.”[4] It was the result of British occupation and the whimsical and arbitrary cartographic redrawing of boundaries of the territories of various tribal people which surrounded the Ahom kingdom in the Brahmaputra valley.

The British inherited from the Ahom a kingdom surrounded by various “wild tribes” which “On the east of Goalpara, separated from it by the river Manas... It roughly covered what is now known as the Brahmaputra Valley, one of the three natural divisions of the province of Assam...It is shut in by hills on every side except the west. On the north it is bounded by the eastern section of the great Himalayan Range, the frontier tribes from west to east being the Bhutias, the Akas, the Daflas (now Nyishi), the Miris, the Abors and the Mishmis. On the east it is bounded by the mountains inhabited by the Khamtis, the Singphos and the Nagas. On the south-east lies the Manipur state.

Photo- Mangalsing Rongphar

To the east of the Mishmi Hills, the Patkai Hills, the Naga Hills and the Manipur State lies Burma. On the south the Brahmaputra Valley is bounded by the so-called Assam Range, of which the Garo Hills form the western extremity, and the Barail Range, merging into the Burmese mountain system, forms the eastern extremity. The Mikir Hills, projecting northward from the Assam Range, almost reach the southern bank of the Brahmaputra and disturb the uniform breadth of the Valley.”[5]

It proved to be a blessing for the new colonial masters to have inherited a “blank space” as the “...treaty of Yandabu did not define the boundary of Assam; it simply stipulated that the Burmese would not interfere in Assam and its dependents. The Ahom kings whose place the British stepped in did not possess any map to show the boundary of their kingdom, nor did they possess any documentary records giving descriptions of their frontiers. Therefore, the new rulers of Assam did not know the bounds of their newly acquired territory.”[6]

The absence of maps made the colonial job much easier and in the name of administrative expediency, boundaries were redrawn “regardless of the original geographic make-up of indigenous people and communities.”[7] The Mikirs ‘in virtual serfdom to the Assamese aristocracy’ on the ‘south of the plains of Nowgong’ was brought under colonial control in 1838.[8] The areas with substantial Karbi population, Sibsagar and Lakhimpur districts, were also placed under the English administration in 1839.[9]

Prior to the conquest of the Ahom kingdom in 1826, the British annexed the Garo Hills in 1822, which paved the way for colonial control of the Northeast. The Khasis were defeated in a series of wars between 1829 and 1833. Cachar fell in 1832, followed by the Jaintia kingdom in 1835. Naga Hills district was created in 1866 but the Lotha Nagas were brought under control only in 1875. The Ao region was annexed in 1879. The Sema areas fell in 1904 followed by the Konyak in 1910. Thus, the entire Naga Hills district was made a part of colonial Assam. North Cachar Hills was annexed in phases between 1832 and 1854. Mizo (Lushai) Hills were subjugated between 1871 and 1889. The various hostile tribes of Khamti, Singpho, Miri, Muttock and the ‘peaceably inclined Naga’ were subordinated in phases by 1843.

It was a matter of great concern to the colonial masters to secure Assam from the attacks of these “wild tribes...whenever they choose to annoy us” as they feared that the “practical effect of such a measure would be that in the course of a few years Assam would be divided amongst the Bhutias, Abors, Nagas, Garos, Mishmis and other wild tribes; for exposed as Assam is on every side...”[10]

The undivided Assam thus emerged from the ruins of Ahom kingdom after being only as “an appendage of the province of Bengal”[11] till 1874. Till then “the extent of the territory of Assam and the hills was not known definitely. The hill tribes, whether dependent on Assam or independent of any political master, claimed tributary payment not on the basis of lands the peasants cultivated but on the ground of their living in the certain areas.”[12]

Karbi Cosmology and the Mind-Map

Cosmology is defined simply as “the science of the universe”[13] or “the science of the general laws which govern the physical world”[14] and the “representation of celestial bodies (stars, planets, comets and other extra-terrestrial phenomena) has been an important part of cartography for millennia.”[15] It is asserted that the “...evolution of maps can be traced from cosmological representation of the ‘World of Mortals’ to pictographic depictions of ritual landscapes, to the growth of scientific cartography.”[16]

The relation of society with cosmology is very intimate. This relationship is “even more obvious in primitive cosmology where mythology and society mirror each other.”[17] Karbi ancestors’ cosmic pictures or vision of the universe is described in numerous ritual songs and worships. Surviving versions of creation myths describe a universe built on nine strands of black and nine strands of white yarns which bound together nine pillars across nine lengths and nine breaths. There were divine artists namely ‘Tuksiri’ and ‘Bisiri” who drew lakes, water-falls, rivers, big-waters, and mountains. An important ritual prayer invokes the sun, the moon, other celestial bodies and the four directions at the conclusion of select traditional worships. Karbi ancestors explained the origin of all important phenomena associated with their cultural, spiritual and religious activities. Karbi ancestors also constructed ‘mind maps’ to conceptualise time and space and to make sense of their surroundings. Oral narratives, sacred songs and prayers which dominate traditional Karbi life-world, ‘performance cartography’[18] was therefore like an everyday occurrence.

Photo- Mangalsing Rongphar

In Karbi mortuary practice, the geography of the journey of the soul is elaborately described in the lengthy song of the female dirge singer, known as Charhepi. And the labyrinth design created by the combination of red and black yarns known as “miringrang” used during the traditional funeral festival is, according to scholars of Chinese mortuary practice, a “spatially explicit” and “one of the most common motifs in prehistoric art in Asia as elsewhere,”[19] which represents the “journey between the world of the living and that of the dead, encompasses the idea of a map between the two worlds.” Besides, Karbi ancestors engaged in star gazing, naming the stars and constellations for the purposes of agricultural activities and “wayfinding” and as the case is, “astronomy is closely linked with cosmology”[20]

The ancient capital of Karbi King situated in ‘Rong Arak’, which continues to function as the titular seat of traditional administration, is described in fair details through song (‘...socheng helo erong methang...karlu kek-kek kang-kang...’) At the threshold of independence, people demanding separate Karbi district sang ‘boundary song’ (Ahoi Alun) describing the physical borders of an emerging homeland inscribed in their collective memories of the traditional territories they had lived in through ages.

The Appearing/Disappearing Karbi ‘Geo-body’

The colonial map or maps of Assam or the Northeast started appearing immediately from 1826. The borderland of Northeast that was a “terra-incognita” in the colonial scheme so far had suddenly turned into a crowded space and was therefore no more “blank”. The colonial masters started “scheduling” Assam on the basis of their encounters with these “frontier races” who were either “war-like” or “timid”. Obviously, the “war-like” tribes who troubled the colonial state more were recognized in the colonial cartographic design and those considered “timid” (or “peaceful”) were either ignored or dimmed in the colour mapping pattern. The Karbis did not pose any threat to the colonial interest as the Mikir Hills was not a frontier district “in which armed rebellion or acute internal dissensions are to be feared.”[21] The Karbis were therefore “neglected and exploited” and their territories were “included” in “the Sibsagar and Nowgong districts.”[22] Subsequently however, it was conceded that the Mikir Hills, “populated by a homogenous tribe, the election of a representative as possible” and accordingly an Assembly seat was provided for the Karbis as per the Government of India Act, 1935.

“During the British rule of 122 years (1826-1947) the political map of Assam underwent revolutionary changes. Assam in 1826, that is at the cessation of the first Anglo-Burmese war, meant more or less, the Brahmaputra valley, excluding the district of Goalpara and Eastern Duars. The total area was estimated in 1840 to be 3,500 sq. miles including Goalpara and Eastern Duars and the population was supposed to be 700,000 including the Bengalis of Goalpara...Perusal of the political history of Assam between 1826 and 1947 shows that contiguous territories of Assam, viz. the hills on both sides of the river Brahmaputra and the attachment of the valleys of the Barak and Surma, the Dewani districts of Sylhet and Goalpara and Eastern Duars extended considerably. In 1874-76, the total area of Assam was 55,384 sq. Miles. In 1874-74, the territories annexed to Assam administration were calculated at 14,447 sq. miles of hills between the two valleys of the Brahmaputra and the Barak and Surma, 6,668 sq. miles of plains territories of the districts of Sylhet and Cachar, besides the district of Goalpara sq. 4,434 miles) and Eastern Duars (15,68 sq. miles). This calculation leaves out the entire territory of the North-East Frontier, that is, the modern provinces of Arunachal Pradesh (32,00 miles) and Mizoram (8,142 sq. miles), not to speak of Manipur (8,620 sq. miles in 1941). Thus in 1901 the valley of the Brahmaputra occupied a part only of the total area of the provinces 56,243 sq. miles of a total of 67,834 sq. miles. Thus, the Assam proper which formed the Ahom State before the formation of the British province of Assam lost its physical form.”[23]

The colonial map, which appeared in 1824[24], demonstrated some form of “objectivism” by clearly delineating the “Meekir Hills” region in the map of Assam. Another map appearing a decade later in 1847 featuring in Maj. John Butler’s “Sketch of Assam” too showed the Meekir region in what was called “General Map of Assam” by the author, but the alphabets were dimmed, which suggested diminishing importance of the “un-warlike” tribe. Assam was declared a “Scheduled District” in 1874 by separating it from the Province of Bengal and placing it under a Chief Commissioner. The term “Scheduled Districts” were to mean those “remote or backward tracts or provinces of British India which had never been brought within or from time to time removed from the operation of the general Acts and Regulations...”[25] A map delineating the geographical areas of the new Chief Commissioner of Assam in 1874 removed the “Meekirs” from the colonial scheme. Edward Gait’s “A History of Assam” followed suit, similarly, removing the “Meekir Hills” from the colonial map of 1906. In the post-colonial period, a map of the period from the reign of the Ahom king Gadadhar Singha to the Treaty of Yandabu from 1681 to 1826, appearing in a 1996 textbook named “Assam History”[26], the Mikir region was similarly omitted.

It is therefore doubtless that maps are used as tools to dispossess the colonized to establish sovereign control over territories and help make states.[27] It is commonly assumed that “maps are objective, accurate, and representative of a world ‘out there’. Yet maps always omit as much as they include. They are subject to selection, classification, abstractions, and simplifications.” The disappearing “Meekir Hills” exemplifies the very political nature of colonial cartography which has found takers even in the post-colonial era. In colonial interest, the Meekir region was de-emphasised and “cartographically eradicated” the people who paid “proportionately more in taxes and receive less in amenities than any other area in the Province.”[28]

The author of “The Mikirs” (1908) had noted in their introductory observation that the “Mikirs are one of the most numerous and homogenous of the many Tibeto-Burman races inhabiting the Province of Assam.”2[29] And the colonial authorities did not fail to notice them as potential tax-payers and in fact they were the first to be taxed under the colonial rule from whom a “small tribute in kind was exacted... a hill tribe inhabiting the jungle areas of Central Assam. In 1837-38 the system of taking tribute was done away with, and the entire tribe was constituted into three imaginary grades or classes and a house-tax varying in rates was levied on each of these classes.”[30]

Reclaiming the ‘Geo-body’

The first colonial visitors into the interiors of the tribal “countries” made abundant use of the local guides to navigate through the dense rain forests on many crucial occasions. Major John Butler, for instance, the Principal Assistant Agent to the Governor General, visiting the North East towards the end of the 19th Century had depended on tribal guides taking his entourage across the unknown territories –

“It is perfectly wonderful to observe the hardy little hill Kookie and Meekir porters, with their loads, wend their way over these steep hills and precipices; each porter carries a spear, the handle of which being pointed with iron, he places on the ground, and advances steadily and safely over the most fearful places, with greater facility than people of the plains can without load or incumbrance.”[31]

The tale of the “hardy little Kookie and Meekir porters”, endangering their lives through “the most fearful places”, sounds somewhat similar to the kidnapped Native American guides who provided crucial information to Jacques-Cartier or Columbus who later claimed the “discovery” of Canada and the New Wold.[32] Colonial officers used the natives and their knowledge system to map their lands, only to colonise and disposes them of their ‘geo-body’.

Karbis once populated the districts of ‘Nowgong, Sibsagar and Kamrup and at the base of Jayantia and Cachar Hills…being most numerous in Nowgong…Dabaka one of their principal habitats’[33], and because they were ‘docile and unwarlike’ and gave ‘little trouble to the Ahoms’ they were ignored and treated as ‘nobody’s child’[34] even by the colonial state. The traditional Karbi territories were divided between Nowgong and Sibsagar. The colonial state drew and redrew the Karbi areas on multiple occasions and the ‘Mikir Hills Tract in the district of Nowgong’ was originally constituted by a notification under the Assam Frontier Tracts Regulation of 1884. In 1898, part of this area was transferred to Sibsagar, while part of the Naga Hills district was transferred partly to Nowgong and partly to Sibsagar. The amended boundaries of the Nowgong and Sibsagar Mikir Hills Tracts were notified in 1907. A slight modification was made in 1913-14 when the area round Dimapur was re-transferred to the Naga Hills. The Mikir Hills therefore as now constituted fall within the districts of Nowgong and Sibsagar.[35] Under British rule, Nagaon district also included a considerable portion of the Naga, Mikir and North Cachar Hills till 1853. Portions of Naga Hills and Mikir Hills were separated and formed into a separate district in 1867. But again in 1898, a large part of Mikir Hills was re-transferred to Nagaon and was thus clubbed together with Nagaon until 1951. Yet again in 1951 Mikir Hills within Nagaon was separated and combined with North Cachar Subdivision to constitute a new district of United Mikir and North Cachar Hills.[36]

The ‘nobody’s child’ theme continues to dominate the Karbi search for a ‘geo-body’ since the 40s even after the constitution of ‘autonomous council’ coming as a partial fulfilment. Historical and archival documents, obviously from the colonial days, are contested and often falsified, both in official and non-official discourses, to even deny and denounce the Karbi claim to their traditional territories. Colonial injustice is being played out in more subtle ways than one as Karbis in modern day Assam find themselves cartographically dispossessed too.

Dharam Sing Teron and Linso Timungpi.

Dharam Sing Teron is an Independent Researcher and writer based in Diphu. He is actively associated with the Karbi Autonomy movement and was a former member of the Assam Legislative Assembly (2001-2005) and Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council (1989-1996). Teron has been engaged in documenting Karbi oral tradition. He can be reached at [email protected].

Linso Timungpi holds a Post Graduate in Geography from Gauhati University (2014), who worked as Guest Faculty in Assam University Diphu Campus for some time, and is currently an Assistant Professor in Dudhnoi College. She writes about cartography and culture. She can be reached at [email protected].

Views expressed in this article are the Authors' own.