Raids,annexation and plough: Transformation through territorialisation in nineteenth-century Chittagong Hill Tracts

Introduction

The concept of territorialisation is critical for understanding both how the British conceived of the Tracts and the kinds of methods they employed to bring it under their control. In understanding the period of Company’s informal control of the Tracts, this article draws upon the groundbreaking work by Philip Stern on The Company–State, ¹ and suggests that territorialisation was the overriding policy, and that it defined British expansion in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Ideas of territorialisation not only reinforced the Company’s impulses to impose control over the frontier, but also kept a strong military presence there to protect it from ‘raids’. The expansion of agriculture, along with the introduction of the plough, was key means by which the Raj sought to harness its rule over the territory and its people, and was a part of this wider thrust. Territorialisation in the Hill Tracts by the Company revealed itself not just in occupation of the physical space of the Tracts, but also in how an economic, agricultural, as well as political expansion of the Company state in the region had resulted. Although raids were not the sole reason for British expansion into the Tracts, this article argues that their frequency did galvanise British officials to resort to extensive and various drives towards territorialisation.

David Ludden’s work on ‘geographical history’ also provides the conceptual framework for some of the arguments pursued in this article. Ludden argues that there are limitations to ‘thinking about geography in the rigidly territorial terms that constitute national systems of spatial order’ ² as if ‘Assam is a solid piece of Indian national territory, fixed inside a world of national states’. With its annexation in 1830 by the British colonial state, Ludden argues that Assam obtained its first ‘firm imperial identity as a regional part of South Asian political geography’ and was positioned as the eastern borderland of British imperialism. Ludden contends that geographically based national identities are a political construct and for that reason, ‘[h]uman identity everywhere is now attached to national sites, where some people are always native, and others, necessarily foreign’. Despite this, he argues, ‘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’.

Ludden further argues that the territorialisation of identity is grossly problematic, not only because identity is always shifting with changes in society, and hence is malleable, but also because territory itself is also a construct, which has been historically variable and shifting, and did not necessarily embody a particular ‘culture’, ‘people’ or ‘community’. Hence, he writes, ‘[i]t is now impossible to imagine or describe any place, people, culture, or facet of social life without reference to national maps, which lock every place into immobile gridlines of national geography, static and immutable’. ³ This article will follow Ludden in understanding the Chittagong Hill Tracts not as a fixed and bounded space, despite its annexation as a non-regulated area, but as a multidimensional space shaped by society, history and politics, which was gradually reconstructed as a bounded territory during the long period of British rule. This article is an attempt to show how various ideas and processes of rule emerged from this concept of territory and its ‘isation’, respectively, in colonial Hill Tracts.

The understanding of this process of territorialisation in the Chittagong Hill Tracts is particularly important for charting the history of indigenous claims that emerged from the region in the late 1920s and after the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. As the article primarily focuses on the early processes of colonisation in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, by analysing key policies of the colonial administration and how its elites responded to them, its aim is to provide insight into the origin of the concepts of ‘territory’, and how of a ‘people indigenous to it’ came to be forged and politicised. In essence, it hopes to provide some historical context to the claims to indigeneity that surfaced in the twentieth century from the frontier region.

A visitor navigating through Kapas Mahal, that is, Chittagong Hill Tracts as known prior to its formal annexation in 1860, in the late 1700s would witness, not indigenous rule, but burgeoning of a British reign. After the death of the Chakma raja, Sher Daulat Khan, in 1782, his territory fell under the Company’s control. The Company set up military posts to head off further raids in Chakma territory. Soon the Company declared the Chakma throne vacant, despite its inheritance by Sher Daulat Khan’s son, Jaun Baux Khan. According to J. P. Mills, the Deputy Commissioner of Naga Hills in the 1930s, Jaun Baux was dethroned for his involvement in the raids against the British, and ‘had to be punished’. ⁴ Mills wrote that Khan made his submission to Mr Irvin, the ‘Chief of Chittagong’, around 1787, and, as a punishment for partaking in the raids, his allotted tribute to the Company was raised. ⁵ It is apparent that Jaun Baux’s line had not only lost his sovereignty over Chakma territory, but also that the office of the Chakma raja had become subservient to the Company.

It was not unusual, of course, for the Company, to diminish the authority of the likes of Jaun Baux Khan. As in parts of Africa, colonial powers regarded the chiefs as custodians of the land (although not necessarily as its proprietors). ⁶ In many parts of India, rajas were simply seen as sons of revenue collectors. ⁷ Either way, Company officials did not take the office of the Chakma raja very seriously and soon began to curtail its powers. In the 1780s, they imposed an increased tribute demand on the raja as a punishment for his collusion with raiders: a telling sign of the extent to which the Company had begun to dictate the terms of governance in the Kapas Mahal well before the end of the eighteenth century. As elsewhere in India, in the mahal, the Company was clearly driven by the view that ‘the appropriation of revenue, forests, or natural resources was not…[an] arbitrary unjustified exaction but…the legal right of the state’. ⁸

The sidelining of Jaun Baux Khan marked the beginning of a period of British rule on the Chittagong frontier. By 1784, the Company was already discussing how best to bring the mahal under its control. An official of the Bengal Government wrote to the ‘Chief of Chittagong’, Mr Irwin, asking for his opinion on ‘whether, by lenient measures, the inhabitants of the hills might not be induced to become peaceable subjects and cultivators of the low lands’. ⁹ In his reply, Irwin argued that since the people of the mahal were not subjects but paid tribute, the government should ‘recognise no right on our part to interfere with their internal arrangements’. ¹⁰ But this policy of self-restraint was not in tune with the mood at higher levels, and by the end of the eighteenth century, every leading chief paid to the Chittagong Collector a certain tribute or yearly gift to purchase the privilege of free trade between the inhabitants of the hills and the men of the plains. These sums were at first fluctuating in amount, but gradually were brought to specified and fixed limits taking the shape of revenue paid to the State. ¹¹

It is important to note that for the Company, the extraction of this payment implied both fiscal gain and the loss of sovereignty of the rajas. ¹²

Although this should have meant greater control over the frontier, it was the Company’s goal, and in reality, the raids persisted. C. A. Bayly has suggested that elsewhere in India, ‘[t]he persistent revolts that the British encountered in the period of conquest were, in part, a consequence of their refusal to accept that Indians did not, in general, conceive rights in terms of simple proprietary dominion’. ¹³ In the mahal too, despite the Company’s conquest of the trade routes, the perception of monopolistic rights and the refusal by Company officials to recognise the rights of locals to access these resources seem to have been factors in the persisting raids against the British. But for the latter, raids not only threatened their rule, but they also symbolised the backwardness of Tracts’ societies, which in turn enhanced their commitment to bring civilisation to them. ¹⁴

From 1787–1860, the mahal had the status of a ‘tributary state’, as a part of greater Bengal, under the informal rule of the Company. However, as Philip Stern has shown, the Company was already heavily involved in the governance of the Bay of Bengal region by 1787. ¹⁵ Therefore, there are good reasons to assume that its intentions in the Tracts were not confined to a small military presence. It sought, rather, to expand its presence through policies of territorialisation. This policy manifested itself not only through expeditions and counter raids and the imposition of indirect rule through weakened chiefs, but also through the process of occupying the frontier with British troops and maintaining a military presence in the area.

Sujit Sivasundaram’s Islanded portrays a similar process of British colonisation in Kandy. After the acquisition of the Kandyan kingdom in 1815, the Company sought to bring the unruly hill territory under its control. In addition to producing maps and surveys, an ambitious project of road construction was undertaken that made the mountains accessible, over which both Kandyan inhabitants and Company claimed sovereignty. Just as raids were cited as the justification for the British military presence in the Hill Tracts, the construction of the road was seen as a military affair in Kandy; in essence, the ambitious project was designed to secure British military position, and territorial sovereignty, in the interior. ¹⁶

Meanwhile, in the Tracts, territorial expansion to explore the economic potential of the hitherto unexplored land was also gaining pace. On the greater Bengal side of the demarcation, officials were distinguishing between the viability of the Permanent Settlement in the plains and the Tracts. From the 1830s onwards, the Company increasingly began to pay attention to ‘wastelands’ such as forests and chars, riverine sandbanks, as potential sources of revenue. As for forests, British officials found their traditional uses to be inconsistent with their own logic of conservation and the general ‘principle of property’, and complained about the utter ruin of valuable forests over which the state had ‘rightful dues’. ¹⁷ Previously, as is well known, the Permanent Settlement had been deployed as a means of ensuring fixed revenues by ‘settling’ the population and holding its Indian subjects in defined spaces and within defined categories and roles, mainly in already cultivated spaces. ¹⁸ However, by the middle of the nineteenth century, colonial rule had started to tighten its grip over plains, hills and forests alike.

The agricultural policies the Company pursued in the plains were not considered suitable for the mahal areas, as this was seen as a wilderness. Ajay Skaria has usefully argued that the two most common perceptions of wilderness were ‘wild spaces’ inhabited by ‘wild people’. ¹⁹ In addition, the view of ‘wilderness’ in terms of an opposition to civilisation—that is, what came before, or lies outside, civilisation—drove British officials to seek ‘to extinguish wildness and to replace it with civilization: by halting raids, forcibly extinguishing mobility, imposing settled agriculture, and refashioning kingship to make it civilized’. ²⁰

In the Tracts, however, colonial rule did not involve the extinction of wilderness. Here, ‘wilderness’ was partly preserved, and ‘tribalism’ was used as a reference point in order to convert the region into a ‘non-regulated’ area. It was thought that ‘“non-regulation” [would]…very considerably lessen the impact of alien cultures’. ²¹ Expressing his scepticism about the wisdom of applying the Permanent Settlement to all of Bengal, Richard Temple, future Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, wrote in a private letter that

[E]ven in the best districts it could be introduced only partially: that I was not…to say that it could be introduced entirely into any district…that it might be conceded to particular villages, on estates in which the assessment had been successfully tried…I could not recommend it being introduced into any tract of course. ²²

Yet, despite Temple’s reservations about implementing the Permanent Settle-ment there, the ‘tributary’ mahal had been on the receiving end of significant economic penetration of land and new agrarian policies. In 1838, the conditions under which the mahal Tracts could be let out for cultivation were further specified. A rather formal mechanism was adapted, through which a much systematised form of governance was put into place in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. The following points show the schemes undertaken to bring paharis, or hill people, to plough, and how land was made cultivatable and taxed:

To be free of rent for 21 years, but subject to following conditions as to clearing and bringing the land into a culturable state.

The hill region was identified as a ‘distinct revenue area’, and ‘the advantage to the State was anticipated, not in direct land Revenue, but in an improved and more valuable produce, calculated to bring valuable returns by increased trade and duties’.

The administrators of the region also quickly concluded that the prevalent practice of shifting cultivation was not conducive to a secure source of revenue and so sought to stimulate sedentarisation in conjunction with the plains, arguing that

[W]hile as the Tracts in the plains will mostly be brought into rice cultivation—a reduced rate of land Revenue compared with good arable land, is a necessary stimulus…parties to enter upon the heavy expenses incident to clearing the lands, and the risk of not finding the whole area of the grant equally productive. ²⁴

To grasp colonial agrarian policy in the mahal, it is important to understand the ideas that influenced them. The significance that these ideas acquired here and the forms in which they were implemented tell us a great deal about the particular circumstances of this region. These policies, as Bhattacharya has noted, were either derived from alien concepts or doctrines, with modifications, imposed on Indian society, or were the product of a process of ‘adaptation’ and ‘accommodation’ to the traditional structure of local society. ²⁵ But, as Bhattacharya has also pointed out, such ‘adaptation’ was never straightforward, and the policies inevitably introduced changes to the areas where they were put into place. ²⁶

Company officials drew a clear distinction between their policies of land distribution in the plains vis-à-vis the hills. They decided that the inhabitants of the hills ‘would not be treated as Noabad Talookdars [i.e. landlords of newly cultivated land], but as ryots [subjects] of the Kupas Mehal’. ²⁷ This was because ‘tribal’ notions of property, which were invariably described as simply an inversion of British bourgeois property rights, ²⁸ were seen as inferior and not capable of adapting to modern practices of governance. This meant that since the government did not offer the same incentives to the inhabitants of the hilly areas to clear and cultivate the hills as it had offered in the plains to the landlords of noabad (newly cultivated) areas, ²⁹ the mahal would not be governed in the talukdari system, wherein zamindars, talukdars and suchlike would enjoy status and privileges above ryots. Instead, in the frontier Tracts, its pahari inhabitants were only granted the status and entitlements of ryots. In order to gain these entitlements, paharis or hill inhabitants, in their tribal orders, had no choice but to become sedentary cultivators if they were to be recognised as ryots. By having to give up jhumming in order to be recognised as ryots, the inhabitants were offered an inducement to give up their way of life. As sedentary farmers, therefore, their sovereignty merely existed as an imagined experience, rather than a definite entitlement. ³⁰

The introduction of the plough had other purposes beyond the territorialisation of the frontier. It was also intended to develop distinct tribal villages and to set up competing power structures amongst native collaborators. Official policies stipulated that ‘[s]hould a party of Mughs now occupy unappropriated level land and till it with plough, Government would claim the proprietary right of the land as a new Mugh “village” of the ordinary kind…if ploughed’. ‘If not ploughed, it would form a part of the Kupas Mahal’. ³¹ In doing so, the colonial government essentially gave an incentive to each ‘tribal’ group to form its own ‘tribal’ villages.

As a corollary, these agricultural policies not only heightened the ‘tribal identities’ of each group, but also encouraged competition amongst the inhabitants of the Tracts to form as many villages as possible ‘of their own’, which could only be achieved through sedentarisation. Moreover, there was a stick as well as a carrot in this policy. If ‘communities’ did not settle and form ‘their own’ villages, they would lose the opportunity of ever doing so, as the government would then reappropriate the land and debar all the ‘tribes’ to the right to its product thereafter. The very stringency of these policies suggests that the introduction of the plough was designed to achieve something more than simply the conventional revenue goals of the colonial state. It also served as a means of reordering the shifting social world of the Tracts so as to generate a settled population of a particular kind.

Raids as ‘Indiscipline’ and Threat to British Expansion

Despite these efforts by the Company to bring order by settling the mahal, raids persisted. With their intensity becoming a cause of growing concern, in 1847, the Chittagong Commissioner wrote to the Secretary to the Government of Bengal, asking for his opinion on ‘the best mode of defending the Southern parts of the District of Chittagong from the aggression of the Frontier Tribes’. ³²

Company officials feared raids for a number of reasons. Not only did they disrupt the agricultural activities that were hoping to encourage, but they also prevented the further expansion of Company control. They also affected the revenue collected by the Company and, at the same time, undermined prospects of enhancing it in the future. The frequency of the raids was also seen as an indication of indiscipline in the frontier. Given that the Tracts by this time were perceived as British territory, this indiscipline was interpreted as a direct challenge to British rule. Hence, a great deal of discussion focused on how the raids could be prevented, and various theories were floated about the raiders (about whom the British knew very little) and their possible motives.

Initially, officials saw raids as a by-product of intertribal wars over slavery. On 16 August 1847, the commissioner of Arakan wrote to his counterpart in Chittagong arguing that slavery was the root cause of the raids:

[T]he origin of all the attacks perpetrated in Arracan is attributed to the facility with which the people captured are disposed of as slaves among the Hill Rajas of Chittagong, and until slavery amongst those Chiefs is wholly suppressed, the evil is likely to continue. ³³

The correspondence between the two commissioners reveals that the British, at least at this point, did not believe that the raids were a direct attack on themselves. Instead, they saw raids, which were followed by loot and plunder, as an expression of a ‘tribal’ form of warfare. The drive for control over manpower was, in their view, what drove the raiders into warfare. According to the Arakan commissioner, the raids epitomised the ‘uncivil’ nature of the tribes, and hence, he argued, if the raiders were to be defeated, the prevalent culture of taking slaves by invading tribes had to be checked. This would not only deny the raiders’ access to manpower and strength, but also attack the very root cause of the ‘evil’ raids.

Company officials believed that local commerce fuelled the raids as well. The activities of the contractors and middlemen involved in the cotton trade between the plains and the hills were viewed with deep distrust. The officials were suspicious that the traders were aware of the raiding routes and actively facilitated the raiders. They argued that a more regulated trade would prove most effective in bringing the raids to an end. So in 1847, in his report on ‘the best mode of defending the Southern parts of the District of Chittagong from the aggression of the Frontier Tribes’, ³⁴ the Chittagong commissioner recommended that the monopoly of hill cotton in the hands of the contractors be abolished. He believed that by doing away with the middlemen, ‘settlement should be made direct with the jooms’. ³⁵

Disunity amongst the local elites was also blamed for the frequency of raids. In this same report of 1847, the Chittagong commissioner drew a clear connection between the ‘squabbling’ Phroos and the raids in the region. The Phroo family, which held the chieftainship of the Bohmong territory situated in the south and headquartered in Bandarban, came under intense scrutiny in this period. Company officials argued that the family, which traditionally governed the Bohmomg circle, had become weak and unstable because of a feud between its members. They argued that the raiders were taking advantage of their internal rivalries to commit attacks. It was not unusual for the British to blame the Phroos for the raids, particularly because they found it difficult to imagine the problem of raids extending beyond the actions of the chiefs. They harboured a preconceived notion of customary authority, which they presumed the Phroos had enjoyed but could not adequately exercise because of the internal rift. The British imagined this authority to be ‘monarchical, patriarchal, and authoritarian…that presumed a king at the centre of every polity, a chief on every piece of administrative ground, and a patriarch in every homestead or kraal’. ³⁶ As Benton has argued, the administration of empire depended on the exercise of delegated legal authority, ³⁷ so the Company needed the ‘chiefs’ who could exercise that authority on its behalf. So, when the Phroos failed to prevent the raiders, officials were dismayed by their inability to keep peace within the family, and the circle in general.

Company officials did not take these feuds lightly. Now that the Company had become their de facto sovereign, the chiefs were only permitted to exercise their powers to the extent that they could prevent raids. So, when the Phroos failed to impose discipline upon the Bohmong circle, Company officials threatened to remove the family from the chieftainship. In his letter to the Bengal Government in 1847, the Chittagong commissioner wrote that he had ‘informed’ the Phroos that ‘it is expected that they will defend and protect the frontier against all marauders, and, above all, agree among themselves’. ³⁸ He described the ultimatum he had given the Phroos,

[S]hould forays again take place, or family feuds, such as to disturb tranquillity, occur, the Government will make such arrangements…as may be considered necessary, even to bringing them and their families into the plains, and establishing other authorities in the hills…provided there be no disputes and forays, and the revenue as now reduced be paid, they will be allowed to hold undisturbed…the chieftainship… ³⁹

This vignette reveals how serious the Company was about bringing the raids to an end. Its willingness to depose a friendly chief to meet that end suggests that the chiefs were put under immense pressure to deliver their end of the bargain. The Phroo chief’s office was made conditional on his success in staving off raids, to the extent that the future of the hereditary office of the Bohmong chief now hung in the balance. Then again, a ‘reward’ awaited them if they successfully ended the family feud and the ‘external’ raids, ‘provided there be no disputes and forays, and the revenue as now reduced be paid, they will be allowed to hold, undisturbed,…the chieftainship’. ⁴⁰

This case reveals that by the 1840s, the Company already wielded considerable power over the Tracts and its local rulers. It is also clear that the chiefs no longer enjoyed any form of sovereignty in their respective territories, and that their authority was recognised as a concession rather than as a right. ⁴¹ As a consequence of this combination of incentives and threats, the chiefs were forced to realise that their very existence depended on British goodwill.

As British involvement in the region deepened, the powers of the chiefs eroded. With the transfer of governance from the Company to the Crown, Queen Victoria’s proclamation in 1858 famously reassured native rulers

[T]hat all treaties and engagements made with them by or under the authority of the Honourable East India Company are by us accepted; and will be scrupulously maintained, and we look for the like observance on their part. We desire no extension of our present territorial possessions. ⁴²

However, just as with the Company’s previous policy of non-interference, the assurances of the Crown did not reflect the reality on the ground. In fact, from the 1860s onwards, many older rights came to be subjected to exceptionally harsh scrutiny, and were either curbed or extinguished. ⁴³ The raids still persisted and the colonial government intensified its grip over the Tracts, particularly through the reordering of its agrarian and land administration. It is clear that after 1857, the proclamation notwithstanding, sovereign treaties were broken, and the role of local rulers was further undermined. Had Jaun Baux Khan survived, he would have witnessed profound changes in the region and its relationship to its new British ‘sovereign’ overlord, the Raj, so as to render that his ‘treaty’ with Hastings was barely worth the paper on which it was written.

The Call for the Tracts’ Annexation as a Non-regulated Territory

After the rebellion of 1857, the British government was more anxious than ever to gain secure control over the frontier Tracts. But the raids were a constant reminder of how little control it actually had on the ground. Constantly carried out by some ‘independent tribes’ further east of the region, the raids took their toll. The British were particularly jittery after an attack on the fort near Kaptai in 1859—in January 1860, Kookies raided the district of Tippera, killing 186 British soldiers and taking 100 as prisoners. A year later, in 1861, a military force took position in Barkal (in the Chittagong Hill Tracts) ‘to punish offenders’. Throughout the 1860s, the Lushai and Shendoo clans raided villages in the Tracts, plundered, took ‘British subjects’ as captives and ‘violated territories’. ⁴⁴ As a consequence of the raids, moreover, many paharis began to emigrate to Arakan, and this emigration in turn threatened the government’s plans for the extension of jhum cultivation. ⁴⁵

In this context of growing difficulties in governing the frontier, a case began to be made to remove the region from the status of a ‘regulated area’. Increasingly, officials insisted that the ‘Regulation law is altogether unsuited to the state of things existing in the “Kapas” Mahal’. ⁴⁶ After successive attacks throughout the 1850s, finally in 1859, the Chittagong commissioner recommended the excision of the Kapas Mahal from the regulation district of Chittagong, and that it be annexed outright and placed under control of a superintendent.

Other factors also contributed towards the growing pressure for the Tracts’ annexation. Hitherto, economic expansion had preoccupied British policy-makers in the frontier. But from the late 1850s onwards, in the face of incessant raids, the government began to focus more centrally on the region’s political institutions. The call for the formal appropriation of the Chittagong hill forests was reinforced by officials’ increasing frustration with the institution of chieftainships, which in themselves were deemed to be holding back both economic progress and political security. Displeasure at the rajas’ supposed incompetence and their failure to rid the mahal of raids only added to this pressure, and led to their frequent replacement. Against the backdrop of constant raids by Kumis and Shendoos, ⁴⁷ government eventually recognised Kong Hla Ngao as the seventh Bohmong (raja) in 1847, but he (too) was powerless to prevent raids, and the Hill Tracts were definitely taken over in 1860. In 1866, Kong Hla Ngao, whose conduct had been most unsatisfactory, was made to resign in favour of his cousin Mom Phru, on whose death in 1875, quarrels broke out anew, and Lieutenant Gordon was ordered to enquire as to the real custom regarding the succession. ⁴⁸

Conflict within the Bohmong family was also identified as an obstacle to successfully address the problem of raids, which in turn strengthened the case for annexation. Referring to the feud within the Bohmong chief’s family of 1847, the Commissioner of Chittagong wrote to the Secretary to the Government of Bengal that ‘it will be most difficult to stop the forays so long as the disagreements shall continue’. ⁴⁹ Yet the government was acutely aware of its vulnerability and dependence on the very same family. The commissioner argued that ‘[t]he country is so unhealthy, so difficult, and so remote, we really have no hold on it except through the Phroos’. Arguing that the administration could only be effective with rule through the chiefs, he wrote, ‘[i]t appears to me we must manage through the Phroos or not manage at all’. ⁵⁰

By the mid-nineteenth century, therefore, officials had developed a more or less settled view as to how best to contain the raids and what role the chiefs were expected to play in this. But the existential threat remained palpable and the commissioner made it clear that should the chiefs fail in ‘their duties to defend’ the frontier, their chieftainships would be brought to an end. Elsewhere in India, legislative mechanisms such as the Murderous Outrages Act of 1867 and the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 ⁵¹ had begun to be deployed to control turbulent populations in the inaccessible ‘lawless’ zones. By contrast, in the Chittagong frontier, ‘raiders’ rather than ‘tribes’ were treated as the key ‘lawless’ or ‘criminal’ actors on British soil. ⁵² Clueless about the identity or whereabouts of the raiders and their motivation, however, colonial officials increasingly charged the chiefs with the responsibility of dealing with the disorders while growing ever more uncertain about their ability (or indeed their will) to do so.

But it is important to recognise that the manner in which the British sought to bring order to the frontier helped to influence the creation of ‘tribal’ identities. The incidence of raids was an important factor, as ‘raiders’ were seen as the ‘other’ against the ‘regular’ inhabitants of the hills. Radhika Singha has astutely argued that under strain from frontier attacks, the British struggled to find a balance between the traditional and ‘enlightened formulations’ of how best to govern these territories. Conscious of their complex relationship with the Indian elite, they ‘persisted with the effort to place the rule of law in a dominant position among the symbols of sovereignty, but in a piecemeal way and with a more authoritarian visage’. ⁵³ This ‘effort to put public authority on a footing of “true neutrality”, and to move towards a more authoritative exposition of rule of law, actually introduced’, Singha argues, ‘a greater rigidity to the terms on which the government categorized caste, rank and community’. ⁵⁴ This was certainly apparent on the Chittagong frontier, where a diffused, unknown but menacing category of ‘raiders’ was the focus of tribal imperial moral panic, and elites were seen as separate groups with the capacity to resist them. The administrators imagined the identity of the lay hill person as being jhumias, that is, shifting cultivators, with only some ‘deviant’ hill inhabitants joining the raiders. We can see how, as Singha contends, identities began to emerge when laws were tightened, or a tighter control was imposed, by the colonial state to establish its sovereignty over the fringes.

In the Tracts, the absence of overtly authoritarian laws was compensated by the proposal, for which the clamour was now growing, to annex it as a ‘nonregulated’ territory. It was thought that this would enable the British to bring the undisciplined frontier under control. But with annexation, the British did not intend to take full control of the Tracts and its existing institutions. Rather, an indirect form of rule was envisaged, with the chiefs serving as the face of the British administration.

The decision to impose indirect rule was thus taken at a time when the role of the chiefs, albeit diminished, was still deemed to be relevant. When Chittagong (consisting of Chittagong and the Chittagong Tracts) was first ceded to the British East India Company in 1760, the focus of the Company had remained mainly firmly on the plains. In the Tracts, where the British presence and influence were limited to the cotton trade with the plains, the headmen were ‘allowed to retain their authority, and our [Company] jurisdiction practically extended only to the collection of revenue from the hills in the shape of a tax on cotton’. ⁵⁵ This tribute ‘was not collected from the hill tribes by Government officers, but was farmed out to a third party, who was neither the ruler of the tribe he represented nor had any control over its members’. ⁵⁶ Annexation would bring an end to this period of revenue collection, and in the system of rule that would follow, the chiefs would increasingly act as political proxies of the Raj, albeit with limited powers to extract revenue.

In 1859, the Bengal government told the central government that ‘[w]hen Chittagong was first taken possession of, the Tax formerly paid by the Hill Chiefs, in the shape of Cotton, was commuted to an Annual Revenue in money, then amounting to Rupees 5,703’. ⁵⁷ But ‘with increased population, from whom the Mugh Chiefs draw a Capitation Tax…in 1846–47 it had reached Rupees 11,805’. ⁵⁸ With annexation, it was hoped that closer economic links would be established both within the hills and between the plains and the hills, with the chiefs playing an important role in streamlining these transactions.

But the chiefs’ ‘rights’ to extract revenue for ‘themselves’ was already significantly curtailed. According to Young,

[T]he Phroos [were told] that while they were allowed as heretofore to collect Tax from the Joomeas or Forest Mughs, no right to the land on their part was recognized or any right to demand rent from any persons who may settle in or clear any portion of the forest or cultivate on any other system than that followed by the Joomeas. ⁵⁹

It soon became clear, however, that annexation alone would not bring about the changes the British hoped for in the frontier territory. What was needed was to remove ‘the Hill tract of Chittagong from the jurisdiction of the Regular Courts’. ⁶⁰ It was decided that the region, given its frontier and tribal characteristics, was not suitable for conventional rule as exercised in the Chittagong plains, and that it should, therefore, be excised from the regulation district altogether. Annexation as an ‘unregulated’ area was believed to be the best way, not only of bringing the raids to an end, but also of intervening more efficiently in the economy of the region.

The call to declare the Tracts a ‘non-regulated’ area (later to be designated ‘excluded’, and then ‘totally excluded’) was to ensure that the conventional laws and rules of governance implemented in the regulated areas of Bengal did not apply in this territory. It was proposed that the Tracts should not be brought under the Bengal regulations on the grounds that a simpler system resting on local usage was more appropriate for the territory, although officers were supposed to observe the ‘spirit’ of the regulations. ⁶¹ A. R. Young, Secretary to the Bengal government, justified this move by arguing that the best way of dealing with the ‘semi-barbarians’ was not by means of regulations, as was the case in the plains, but by an absence thereof:

[W]hatever is resolved upon, the first step must be the taking of the Hill Tracts of the Chittagong District from the operation of the General Regulations, which are intended only for people in a high state of civilization. Such discordance between theory and practice as appears when a Country inhabited by semi-barbarians, ignorant of all laws, and without a semblance of Courts of Justice among them, is represented as subject to and influenced by a refined system of Judicial administration, is hardly creditable to the Government of the Country. ⁶²

Furthermore, for H. Ricketts, the Chittagong commissioner, the protected hill region needed to be separated from the regulation district of Chittagong because

[T]hese wild Tracts were considered to be under the jurisdiction of the Regular Civil and Criminal Courts, and that…Regulation Law was altogether unsuited to the state of things, existing there and that if any interference should again become necessary, an Act ought to be passed excluding these forests from the regular jurisdiction of the Chittagong District. ⁶³

But how the Tracts should actually be governed after annexation remained unresolved. The Lieutenant-Governor took the view that annexation as a non-regulated area alone would not serve any purpose, but that an indirect form of rule would be needed to administer the hills. With the classic mid-Victorian predilection for informal means of extending imperial influence, ⁶⁴ he argued that

[A]t present it is out of the question to attempt really to administer the government of these Hills. The administration should be left wholly to the Hill Chiefs, the only object of the measures now proposed being to prevent such raids as the Commissioner complains of, and to do so through the Chiefs. ⁶⁵

The colonial state had, of course, engaged in various experiments in indirect rule throughout India. Almost by definition, no form of indirect rule in one part was identical to any indirect rule in another part. Fisher’s definition that indirect rule is a form of control that was ‘recognised by both sides’ ⁶⁶ needs rethinking, however, in the Chittagong Tracts. Although the category of the ‘ruled’ included both the general hill population and the local elites, including the chiefs, it was only some among the hill elites who collaborated with British rule, ⁶⁷ albeit often reluctantly, as the cases of Jaun Baux Khan and the Phroos showed. As the phenomenon of raids demonstrates, and as the struggle over jhumming would show, hill communities were far less accepting of British over-lordship.

The proposal of the Lieutenant-Governor to formalise indirect rule in the Tracts through annexation is very significant. This was because the purpose of an indirect rule ‘was to create a dependent but autonomous system of rule, one that combined accountability to superiors with a flexible response to the subject population, a capacity to implement central directives with one to absorb local shocks’. ⁶⁸ But before the government could impose such a system, the role of the chiefs in it had to be clarified. The British found themselves in a dilemma in imagining and assigning a well-defined status to the chiefs, who were clearly superior to ordinary subjects, yet could not be allowed anything like real sovereignty. ⁶⁹ In a nutshell, they were profoundly uncertain as to how much power should be delegated to the chiefs, designed to be their proxies in the hills and yet in whom they had limited faith.

For their part, as in many parts of India, local rulers sought to cling on to as many ‘traditional roles’ as the Europeans would permit. ⁷⁰ But this is not to suggest that the relationship between the state (the patron) and the rajas (the client) was always harmonious, or indeed, always one of hostility. This relationship had its own complex dynamics, as Robert Stern has illustrated in the case of Jaipur, where ‘the patron does not simply command and the client does not simply obey’. ⁷¹ The colonial officials were unsure if resistance lurked beneath the social layers that remained unknown or ill understood, and whether their engagement with local collaborators would help them gain the information needed to defeat their enemies.

The imposition of indirect rule also prompted the British administrators to create a wholly new chiefdom in the Tracts. With the Chakma and Bohmong rajas already under some degree of control, the government had set about searching for a third chief who could govern the northern territory on its behalf. When the British had first entered the Hill Tracts, they discovered two established chiefdoms, which Young described as ‘two principal families, one whose Seat is North of the Chittagong River at Runga Mattee (now the Kalindee Ranee); and the other and more important family (the Phroos otherwise called Poangs,) South of that River at Brindabun’. ⁷² A new chieftainship was now created based in Khagrachari. Like the other two chiefs, the new Mong chief would serve as a proxy for the government in that region. Soon after the annexation, these three territories were parcelled out between the three chiefs and referred to as ‘circles’. They essentially took the form of revenue circles, and it was hoped that they would bring a measure of order to revenue collection. The circles were also designed to bring social discipline to the Tracts region by settling people, particularly defeated raiders and shifting cultivators, in an attempt to further the government’s drive to achieve territorialisation.

The second key development that came with non-regulation was the creation of a new office, the ‘Superintendent’ of the Hill Tracts. Before this point in its history, the chiefs in the Tracts were assisted by a number of subordinate village officials. ⁷³ But heretofore, the chiefs were obliged to follow direct instructions from the superintendent, upon whom their title to chieftainships also depended.

For the British, the founding of this office in 1860 had a more particular purpose: ‘chiefly the acquisition of information regarding the Hill Tribes and country generally, and especially regarding the murderous raid in Khundul, and the making of preparations for the late Expedition to punish that raid’. ⁷⁴ The superintendent’s role was seen as indispensable and his appointment ‘an absolute necessity’. ⁷⁵ Given that the Tracts were going be designated as an unregulated area, the superintendent was made answerable to the Commissioner of Chittagong in ‘all’ matters of administration.

Over time, the superintendent’s jurisdiction expanded in a late nineteenth century version of ‘mission creep’. By the time T. H. Lewin was made superintendent in 1866, ⁷⁶ he was ‘vested with full powers as a Magistrate’, and with the power to settle, ‘civil suits and actions for debt, damages etc. [also as the] sole ruler over some 60,000 men, with a military force of 500 at [his] command’. ⁷⁷ Lewin was also tasked with putting together a ‘scheme for the reorganization of the land tenure in the Hill Tracts’ to ‘Report on the Tribes of the South East frontier for the Ethnological Congress’ and to make proposals ‘for the remodel[l]ing of the Frontier Force’. ⁷⁸ The superintendent’s job description had thus grown rapidly, after that, the Act of XXII, which came into force on 1 August 1860, officially annexed the Kapas Mahal as the ‘Chittagong Hill Tracts’, and separated it from the larger regulation district of Chittagong.

There was a consensus amongst the government officials that the annexation as a non-regulated area was a fitting administrative measure for the Chittagong Tracts, primarily because this would allow the colonial state to create a zone of legal exception. Officials hoped that once the status was attained, there was no turning back to the old regime:

[I]t was a disgrace to the British Government that no such appointment existed from the beginning of our rule in Chittagong, for to assume a Territory; and to make all your Laws applicable to it; and to take revenue from it; and to pretend to govern it; and yet to leave it absolutely without any Government at all, and without any attempt, in any way, to establish one, was nothing less than disgraceful. The Lieutenant-Governor considers a return to such a position impossible. ⁷⁹

For the British, this ‘exceptional’ status gave them the flexibility to experiment with policies that had not been tried, or could not be tried, in regulated areas. With the Tracts categorised as a zone of ‘anomaly’, the state could deal with the raiders with full frontal force.

In 1867, the official designation of the officer in charge of the Tracts was changed from superintendent to deputy commissioner along with a new modus operandi for the office. The ‘powers, which had previously been directed mainly to the preservation of the peace of the frontier…[was now] extended so as to give him full control over all matters pertaining to revenue and justice throughout the District’. ⁸⁰ Despite these efforts, the hills still remained vulnerable to raids, and a great deal of anxiety persisted amongst the administration.

After attacks in January 1864 and January 1866 ⁸¹ by bands of Shendoos ⁸² , the focus turned to reforming the police force. The force was made to perform judicial roles. With the Police Act of 1861, the police forces were provincialised and were delegated under the authority of the local governments. Although the Hill Tracts police was defined ‘essentially [as] a military force trained and expensively armed, so as to serve as a protection to the District against raids from the tribes further east’, ⁸³ the few European officers were also authorised to resolve disputes at a community level, a role previously exercised by village headmen or chiefs. The British police officers stationed at Demagiri, for example, had the authority to resolve ‘various kinds of disputes and offences…among shopkeepers, Kookies…and by sepoys themselves’. ⁸⁴ Mr Rattray, who had been posted to Ruma to oversee the frontier and frontier police, was given full authority ‘to dispose of all the offences and disputes committed by the frontier force or tribes in a legitimate way’. ⁸⁵

But the force was not only expected to perform duties to secure internal order and external security, but the troops were also expected to facilitate the expansion of the economy by settling plough cultivators and collecting government revenue. As the Chittagong commissioner informed the Bengal government, their participation in ‘the service of civil and criminal processes’ included

[B]ringing in of plough cultivators; settling them in their proper villages; recovering Government advances from plough cultivators, Tipperah settlers, and jhoom cultivators; inquiring into criminal and civil disputes as ordered from head-quarters; watching over trade and Government property; and otherwise assisting generally in the criminal and civil administration. ⁸⁶

The Introduction of the Plough

As the previous section has shown, the British struggled to impose control over the frontier. It appears that this led them to seek permanency in the form of a settled and functioning economy. However, these processes of ‘settling’ the region through the reconstruction of an economy were not linear but haphazard, as the administrators were unsure about what to do to achieve this and changed their minds frequently.

By the late 1860s, the British had started to pursue an aggressive policy of introducing plough cultivation in the Tracts. ⁸⁷ However, jhum still dominated as the preferred form of cultivation ‘with the exception of a few plough-cultivators’, and attempts were made now to make jhumming less attractive. So, ‘great advances [were] held out to persons willing to clear land and hold it on lease for the purpose of plough-cultivation’. ⁸⁸ Land tenures were given to sedentary cultivators only. ⁸⁹ A government document setting out the policies reads, ‘as soon as applications were made by hill-men for leases of land, for the establishment of villages, and for plough-cultivation, sanction was obtained to leases being granted on very favorable terms’, and according to a government policy of 1872, an advance of eight pounds was granted without interest to each family, and this only needed to be repaid after five years. ⁹⁰ Amongst other things, in addition, all plough cultivators were exempted from capitation tax and were given leases of 30 years.

Yet despite the easy terms, these initiatives had very little success. Paharis seemed to share an aversion to plough cultivation, as they sought ‘to earn a precarious subsistence by the cutting and selling of bamboos and the hewing out of boats…some of them took up the profession of itinerant traders’. ⁹¹ By the turn of the decade, the numbers resorting to plough cultivation were picking up, albeit slowly, ‘in consequence of the introduction of the Forest Conservancy rules into the District’. ⁹²

The expansion of the land under plough through the settlement of ‘outsiders’ was also viewed as a mechanism to help curb the raids from the east. The deputy commissioner encouraged the immigration of about 2,500 Tipperas, who had fled their own country in 1872–73, and they were given land in the Chittagong Hill Tracts to settle. Their resettlement was encouraged because of ‘the advantage presented by an increase in the number of cultivators’, ⁹³ who, it was assumed, would also be in communication with the Kookies in the east. That same year, a colony of 78 Gurkhas was established in Khagoria, near the Tiperra immigrants, who were brought down from Nepal to clear the jungle and start cultivating the land with the plough ⁹⁴ and to participate in the expeditions. In essence, the colonial government sought to combine its security concerns in the region with its revenue-enhancing objectives, and ultimately had some success in accomplishing both goals.

The use of the plough was seen as the quintessential tool for settling swidden cultivators and embedding British rule over the Tracts. In 1875, Herman Kisch, an official in the Bengal Civil Service with expertise in ‘asset management and settlement law’, paid several visits to the Tracts. He observed that ‘[m]ost of these people have not yet reached the stage of plough cultivation, but they merely clear a small patch of ground, sow it as thickly as they can and with as many crops as possible, they thus exhaust the soil in a single gra[i]n’. He then stated the purpose of his visit, ‘[T]he government is making great efforts to induce the people to give up this nomadic style of life and plough cultivation is being…introduced. The people are, I believe, simple in character and more often hard working than Bengalis…they are utterly removed from civilization’. ⁹⁵

The account of famous John ‘Cross’ Beames also provides crucial insights into how sedentary cultivation was brought to the Tracts. Beames was in charge of organising the noabad (newly settled) areas in and around the Chittagong district, and his responsibilities included ‘measurement, classification of kinds of soil, rat[ing] of rent rights [of] certain tenants, and assessment of the rents which they were to pay’. He describes the Hill Tracts at the time as ‘[r]oughly and briefly it was a vast mass of petty estates covering the greater part of the Chittagong district which owing to certain circumstances were the property of government’. ⁹⁶

Beames disclosed, in a revealing and hands-on account, how the use of plough was ‘ordered’ and imposed upon the residents of the Tracts. He writes that his superior, Sir Ashley Eden, had agreed that the Mughs be made to plough and ‘we were ordered to induce or compel the Mughs to give up their jhums and take to ploughed fields instead’. He continues,

[W]ith his [Sir Eden] usual bullying injustice he intimated that if we did not succeed he should consider that it was because we did not try, or because were incompetent idiots. So of course we had to try to do what we knew beforehand [or it] would be utterly impossible. ⁹⁷

The Mughs rejected the new system. They ‘declared that it was a well-known fact that if they took to ploughing their race would die out. Their women were particularly vehement on this…more so than the men’. The extent of their disapproval was evident to Beames, who wrote, ‘[t]hey are by nature and extremely cheerful race, very idle, careless and merry, but on this point they grew stern, sulky and melancholy. There seems to be something…to their lighthearted easy going nature in their method of cultivation’. ⁹⁸

The Creation of Ethnic ‘Differences’ and Hierarchies

The plough also helped to shape concepts of ethnicity and hierarchy among the British. According to Beames, the Chakmas were more open to the plough and ‘not so averse to the plough as the Maghs’. So colonial administrators embarked on a hands-on exercise of ‘teaching’ the Mughs how to use the plough. A flattish piece of land in the Chakma territory was hired by the government, and then let out to some Mughs ‘who sacrificed themselves for the good of their race (being also handsomely paid for so doing), and undertook to plough it and raise a crop of rice from it’. To make sure that the Mughs gained a proper grasp of the technique, officials brought Bengalis to teach them: ‘But we represented to government that ploughing like all other arts requires to be learnt, so we got permission to engage a few Bengalis to teach the Maghs’. The reluctance of the Mughs to learn and the difficulties government faced in imposing plough-cultivation were so evident that ‘even when the Bengalis are toiling over the land, the Mughs were sitting happily with the backs to them’. ⁹⁹ Hence, in British eyes, Bengalis and even Chakmas were seen as ‘superior’ to the plough-resistant Mughs, and in this instance, at least, the encounter between Mughs and Bengalis was not a happy one.

Like Lewin, Beames also harboured different perceptions of the ‘paharis’ and ‘Bengalis’. He saw the two as almost opposites and in a perpetual state of disharmony and disunity. ¹⁰⁰ Referring to the inhabitants of the Tracts, he wrote, ‘[a] very large proportion of the population are Mughs[,] a race akin to the Burmese. Another, and perhaps larger section consists of Bengali Musulmans the most quarrelsome, litigious, vindictive race in India’. ¹⁰¹ He endorsed the manner in which Lewin and his successor Evans Gordon governed over the paharis ‘treating them with a mixture of firmness and good nature, like the big children that they were…’. His dislike for, and distrust of, Bengalis and his categorisation of paharis as ‘raiders’, are also revealed in his endorsement of the hill regiments, who patrolled the boundary and were ordered ‘very strictly to prevent the Bengali traders of Chittagong selling guns and ammunition to them [paharis]. They amused themselves by raiding in other directions—for raid somewhere they must’. ¹⁰²

The non-sedentary culture of the Mughs also made them susceptible to being viewed as ‘lazy’ ¹⁰³ and backward, by both the British and some ‘Bengalis’. In an attempt to illustrate how lazy the ‘paharis’ were as a type, even beyond the Hill Tracts, Beames wrote,

[E]very year the steamers of the British India company carry from Bengal to Chittagong, Akyab, and Rangoon thousands of Bengali labourers who go to earn good wages for two or three months by cutting and gathering the crops while the lazy Mugh proprietors sit in their verandahs smoking their long…cheroots and cutting jokes at the hardworking Bengalis.

Indeed, Beames vented his frustration at the situation: ‘[a]nd how we were ordered to turn the Mughs into ploughers and reapers’. ¹⁰⁴ In essence, then, for the colonial state, ‘ethnicity and tribe began…where sovereignty and taxes ended’. ¹⁰⁵

Throughout this period and well into the 1870s, the British administrators continually compared the ‘paharis’ to the ‘Bengalis’. In a sense, the archetypical notions of what the ‘Bengalis are like’ and the ‘paharis are like’ were being constructed as they did so, and as administrative tools kept being adjusted and refined in accordance to these perceptions. For instance, Lewin explicitly connected the ‘backwardness’ of paharis with their being helpless victims of ‘despicable’ Bengalis:

These poor honest kindly Hill men, my heart is moved to them and if I can only deal justly to them and make them better my end will not have been missed. They have not learned yet to lie and cheat and forge and play the meanest of devilry in which despicable school the Bengallees I have lately been amongst are the aptest of graduates…how the remembrance of them stinks in my nostrils—Here too I find them cheating and cozening—lending the poor Hill bodies money at 100 per cent and then getting a decree in the civil court and beneath the shadow of that refusing to accept repayment but under the threat of selling goods and chattels year by year sucking out the lives of their victims and leaving but a poor hardened labour ground husk behind. ¹⁰⁶

To prevent Bengali moneylenders from cheating paharis, Lewin appealed to Calcutta. The government allowed him to implement rules in the Tracts that did not permit ‘middlemen’ or attorneys (who were mostly Bengalis) to act in hill cases. Stamp duties were no longer required in certain cases, and a maximum of 12 per cent rate was set up for interest that could be charged on debts. These initiatives not only served to ‘protect’ paharis against the ‘vile’ Bengalis, but, by Lewin’s own admission, they also advanced the larger agenda he was there to execute: ‘I felt this was great progress, making the English court of justice not only attainable but attractive…no longer regarded…as a great engine of oppression but rather as a shield and bulwark between them and injustice and extortion’. ¹⁰⁷ Thus, not only was a dichotomy thus constructed between Bengalis and paharis, but British rule was also presented paternalistically as the ‘shield and bulwark’ between the so-called Bengali ‘alien’ oppressor and the pahari oppressed. ¹⁰⁸

The ‘Bengalis’ were also not free from their own prejudices about ‘paharis’. When the Noakhali district was brought under the Chittagong commissionership, Dacca Prakash, a local Bengali-language newspaper, protested against the move, declaring, ‘to make it now a non-regulation province, and to class the inhabitants with the hill tribes, is only placing serious obstacles in the way of their advancement’. ¹⁰⁹ In the minds of some of the educated inhabitants of the plains who were governed separately from the Tracts, to be ‘classed’ with ‘hill tribes’ meant defying the laws of evolution, as the latter were imagined as social fossils stuck in a primitive state. The sentiment expressed by the newspaper is indicative of the intellectual, political and social gap that had begun to be expressed, even as early as the late nineteenth century, between the paharis and their educated compatriots in the plains. This may have drawn on older tensions between plains agriculturalists and hill-dwelling nomads, but it was certainly exacerbated by western education and tight British policies of controlling entry and exit in the Tracts.

The Drive to Abolish Jhum

Surveys played an important role in the expansion of the sedentarisation scheme. First developed in 1872, the task of conducting the survey was outsourced to the chiefs and their subordinates—dewans (sub-chiefs) and roajas (headmen)—for their respective circles, with the deputy commissioner’s office covering the khas mahal areas. Given the nature of the survey, the administration had serious reservations regarding the credibility of the data collected by the chiefs, and ‘in one instance when tested were found notably incorrect’. ¹¹⁰ The deputy commissioner explained the discrepancy as that the ‘chiefs’ principal source of revenue is a capitation tax, out of which they pay to government a certain proportion as tribute. They undoubtedly possess the information necessary to the compilation of a most accurate return of the population…’.

Arguing that there was no point in pursuing the matter of manipulated population numbers with the chiefs, who themselves would engineer the numbers, the deputy commissioner reported

[B]ut regarding our motives in requiring such a statement from them to be simply to obtain data whereon hereafter we shall build a claim for more tribute, they systematically endeavour to make the numbers of their people, and consequently their own incomes, appear less than is actually the case. ¹¹¹

The colonial officials were not too keen on the system of chieftainship in the Tracts and viewed it as an obstacle to their rule there. When it came to administering through the chiefs, they were highly suspicious of the traditional rulers and treated them with utmost caution.

The colonial state saw jhumming not only as an inefficient and uneconomic practice, but also as a hindrance to imposing control over the Tracts. Hence, many initiatives were taken for the development of a plough culture throughout the 1870s, against a background notion that hill inhabitants historically have ‘a great distaste for drudgery’. ¹¹² The task proved difficult because the hill men disliked ‘cultivation by plough alone, because they cannot under that system grow cotton and the vegetables and fruits produced in jhooms’. ¹¹³ The little plough cultivation that did exist was controlled by the chiefs in small patches and was tilled by Bengali servants brought in from the plains. ¹¹⁴ There were also some Bengali plough cultivators settled in the district, mostly located along the border abutting Chittagong district. ¹¹⁵

Thus, in order to promote settled cultivation, a system of land tenures was introduced. However, the scheme did not take off immediately and only prevailed ‘among the hill people in those cases where the British authorities have succeeded in inducing them to abandon the indigenous system of cultivation’. ¹¹⁶ But land tenures and under tenures of a varied and complicated nature were introduced in the Hill Tracts, which were essentially extensions of those in the regulation district. Only the forest land settlement and grass kholas ¹¹⁷ were exempted from them, and in the Hill Tracts, these tenures were beyond the limits of the collectors’ jurisdiction. According to Hunter, the ‘only land-tenures with which the hill people are now concerned, or which are likely to be of much importance in their future history, are those which have arisen from the plough-cultivation movement’. But given that ‘the hill-man has so strong an aversion to the irksome labour of the plough-cultivator, and so great a love for his own free and wandering life’, the administration was always going to be faced with a difficult task in converting the jhumias to plough cultivators.

To encourage people to take up land tenures, subsidised leases were offered by the government, much to the delight of the local administrators. Hunter wrote that

[I]t had long been the wish of the local officers that the people might be induced to give up their nomadic form of cultivation and adopt a more settled life; and as soon as applications were made by hill-men for leases of land, for the establishment of villages, and for plough-cultivation, sanction was obtained to leases being granted on very favourable terms.

To take the scheme forward, arrangements were made for granting loans, and ‘[g]overnment further sanctioned an advance of £3 to each family, the advances to be repaid within five years with interest at 5 per cent per annum’. Interestingly enough, these terms were soon deemed inadequate and not ‘sufficiently favourable to induce very large numbers of hill-men to abandon their jums and settle in villages’; hence, in June 1872, the government ‘sanctioned an advance of £8 without interest for each hill family’. ¹¹⁸ For those who did plough and had taken leases for 30 years, the terms of settlement were lax, and they paid no rent for their land for the first five years. ¹¹⁹ Settlement of forest was allowed and lessees were also granted the right to the oil of the valuable garjan tree and all other forest produce extracted within the area covered by the lease. It is evident that the scheme designed to establish plough cultivation in the hills was very liberal and was initiated with utmost seriousness. But, perhaps most importantly, unlike in its other schemes, the state was willing to give its full support and the financial means to assure its success.

And for a while, plough cultivation seemed to be on the rise. According to the deputy commissioner, it was ‘in consequence of the introduction of the Forest Conservatory rules into the District, by which juming operations were hampered and circumscribed’. However, Hunter argued that it was mainly due to the hill men being discontented with their chief, and as a protest against the restrictions on jhumming thought to have been imposed by the chief, that they had taken up plough cultivation. According to colonial officials, hill inhabitants only resorted to jhumming ‘as a remedy both for the restrictions on his jhuming operations and for the exactions and oppressions of his chief’.

However, the chiefs were faced with disgruntled subjects who were unhappy about being made to take up the plough, which was essentially the government’s policy. Under indirect system of rule, it appeared to be the chiefs’ policy to the public when, ironically, it was the chiefs who were most disadvantaged by it, with both their revenue and power being reduced. The colonial officials were informed of the chiefs’ sentiments and acknowledged that

[a]ll the interests of the chiefs are opposed to the change, for not only do they lose the capitation tax payable by the hill cultivator, but they lose also in position: every hill-man who forsakes his jum, transfers the allegiance of himself and his family from the chief to the Deputy Commissioner.

Consequently, it is not surprising that the chiefs and their headmen ‘energetically opposed the change’ ¹²⁰ when the plough was first introduced.

The collection of tribute from various tribes, raiding and otherwise, was theorised by Lewin to be the best mechanism to bring order to the frontier. Lewin saw a direct correlation between the raiders’ behaviour when they paid the government revenue and how they identified with the government. He claimed that the Tipperahs, Mrungs, Kumis, Mros and Khyengs paid tribute to the government, and were under British control. The Bangis and Pankhos paid no revenue yet, but were subject to government influence, as opposed to the Lushais or Kookies and Shendoos—the raiding tribes—who were entirely independent. ¹²¹ Hence, for Lewin, the behaviour of those who paid was drastically different from those who did not or were unwilling to do so.

Consequently, the administrators used every opportunity to settle the so-called raiders and brought them into the tax net. A taxpaying tribe was seen as a peaceful one who was disciplined and under the authority of the state. As the case of Bunjoogis reveals, the administration saw settlement of the tribe as a transition from being a tribe to ryot and so

[I]t was proposed that opportunity should be taken to strengthen our frontier by giving the Bunjoogi tribe of Kukis the option of moving on to the sites selected for them by Government officers in the frontier, they thus becoming Government khas ryots, or, in the event of their declining, of being made over to the Bohmong…. ¹²²

The revenue collected by the chiefs was under close scrutiny of the state. Historically, the chiefs’ collection was derived ‘from families of their own clan only, irrespective of the place where they might reside; gradually, however, as their power increased, they collected from other weaker tribes’. ¹²³ However, the government was keen on limiting the boundaries within which each chief could collect his revenue, and thereby exert his authority, and in 1873, a proposal to define the boundaries of each chief was approved. The principal source of the chiefs’ revenue came from a house tax levied on jhum cultivators, called the capitation tax, living within the chiefs’ designated boundary. ¹²⁴ But many were reported to have fled to escape paying tax, and according to colonial accounts, the chiefs had requested that the government take measures to force these deserters to return or to make them pay the tax.

The government did not entertain the chiefs’ request. Officials argued that ‘in this and other ways the tendency of our administration has been to localise their authority’. The administration feared that by allowing the chiefs to tax beyond their permissible boundaries, their influence would expand beyond the watchful eye of the state. Another motive behind the decision was to create distance between the chiefs and their constituents, and in doing so, to convert people to ploughing. This proved fruitful for the government; at least officials believed that it was ‘the constantly widening breach between the chief and the people [which], has not only increased the authority and influence of the local Government officers, but has materially aided the progress of the plough-cultivation movement’.

With the authority of the chiefs gradually being constrained, the British officials sought alternative modes of control to bring order to the still raids-beset frontier. They started a register by the name of Jum Book to record information on any person of any influence in the Hill Tracts. The purpose of the book was to specify the ‘rights’ and responsibilities of these individuals and thereafter provide them with certificates of ‘powers, privileges, and duties’. The idea was to bring the people of the Tracts within as tight a structure of control and discipline as possible. As Hunter described it, the book specified in great detail how information about individuals should be extracted and recorded for governmental purposes:

Every head of a village, every person claiming rights over people, or existing power in a clan, is required to appear, declare, and register such rights. All objectors are also required to file their objections, or lose all future claim to consideration. By this system each village community is registered in turn, and in the course of registration the rights and powers of individual head-men and their relatives are finally determined. At the close of the registration each village community will be collected together, the country will be divided into circles, and the clans as far as possible localised. To each head of a village, or other person having authority, a certificate will be delivered in his own vernacular, defining his powers, privileges, and duties; the chiefs of tribes will, as heretofore, exercise their right of appointing the village head-men, but the appointments, to be effective, will require the sanction of the Deputy Commissioner…indeed it is but a rehabilitation of the old social constitution prevailing under their own chiefs, which has fallen into desuetude owing to the opposite tendencies of the British law and routine. ¹²⁵

There was a clear and growing tension between colonial officials and the chiefs over the British rules of control in the hills. From the very beginning, the government had sought to squeeze the chiefs’ authority and influence over their people, and by its own admission,

[T]he general tendency of the measures introduced into the Hill Tracts by the British Government has been towards defining the local limits of the jurisdiction of the chiefs, and the subordination of their authority to that of the local officers. The chiefs were proved to be unable to protect their subjects against raids committed by the tribes further east, and the gradual diminution of their power was the necessary result. ¹²⁶

Confident that its policies of management and revenue generation were approved of by the inhabitants of the Tracts, the local government believed the people sided with the Raj and recognised ‘now to the full that the local authorities are superior to the chiefs’. But even at this stage of colonisation, the government did not gain full control of indigenous institutions; it still applied an indirect form of intervention and abided, to a greater or lesser extent, by the rule ‘not to destroy, but to fix more definitely and firmly, the indigenous organisation found among the several tribes’. ¹²⁷

The Political Economy of Rule

At the heart of British rule in the Tracts, the idea of territoriality had a major influence on how its administrators imagined and designed their structures of control. The late 1870s saw the territory of the Chittagong Hill Tracts subjected to a wider application of British policies. The policies were not just intended to restructure the economic sphere of the hill society as the article has discussed, but also to reorder the political dynamics of existing local institutions.

With the state becoming more engaged in administration, the border between the Tracts and Chittagong district was proving to be essential to the control of the area. The task of defining the boundary was taken up as it would ‘facilitate the adoption of many much-needed reforms in revenue and excise matters which have been hitherto found impracticable’. ¹²⁸ The absence of a definite border was also encouraging settlers from Chittagong to take up lands in the Tracts. In his annual report in 1877, E. E. Lowis, the Commissioner of Chittagong, wrote of a spillover of noabad settlements into the Tracts, claiming that ‘large Tracts of sunn grass lying within the Hill Tracts were claimed by noabad talookdars, without any valid title, as included within their talooks, the boundaries of which were often very vague and undefined’. Lowis was disgruntled about the claims advanced by the noabad talookdars ‘to hold land in excess of the areas specified in their leases’ and argued that these should be disallowed and their rights ‘restricted to the cultivation of lands only, without being extended to the forest produce growing on them’.

However, Lowis assured the government that other lucrative plots were secure in the government’s hands and that ‘there were many grass and gurjun kholas throughout the Hill Tracts to which neither the noabad talookdars nor anybody else could lay any legal claim; and it was suggested that Government rights should be asserted’. He made a case that a special establishment should be put in place to ascertain the area and position of the grass and gurjun kholas (land where gurjun species of timber is cultivated), ‘the produce of which has hitherto been appropriated without payment of any rent at all, or on payment of a nominal sum’. ¹²⁹ The following year, with an increasing demand for revenue from the sunn grass and gurjan kholas, the areas were brought under government control ‘owing to the working of a special staff of sub-deputies, who have been employed to definitely settle the boundaries of the kholas’. ¹³⁰

It was also during this era that the chiefs began to be organised into discrete jurisdictions that essentially functioned as revenue circles. The administrative territory was divided between the Chakma raja Hurrish Chunder Rai Bahadoor, Mong raja Narubuddy, the khas mahals under the deputy commissioner, occupying the largest area but with the smallest population, and the rest under different members of the Bohmong family. ¹³¹ It was decided by the government, through a resolution of 21 April 1873 that, in principle, a divisional administration would be established. However, details of what form the divisions should take remained an open question. The main purpose of the existing division of jurisdiction was that ‘[h]itherto the jurisdiction of the chief was tribal, and it was recommended on administrative grounds that it should now be territorial’, and the formation of seven territorial circles was approved. With this, the powers of the chiefs were further curtailed. Their role in the Hill Tracts economy was now confined to the collection of capitation tax on jhum, and their traditional rights over land were subsumed by the colonial state, which declared ‘that the chiefs would exercise only the delegated power of colleting the capitation-tax on behalf of Government within the limits respectively assigned to them, while the proprietary right in the land would remain vested exclusively in Government’.

The government also deliberately created khas mahal areas outside the jurisdictions of the three chiefs, where the deputy commissioner was the sole administrator. These were the areas beyond the limits of the chiefdoms and where government officials collected tax directly from the inhabitants. But perhaps most interestingly, they were administered as an ‘open’ area, where any Hill Tracts inhabitants could come and settle. The colonial administration justified the formulation of the open policy in terms of the realities it faced, whereby

[A] hillman under a settlement-holder is more or less a slave: he might be ill treated to any extent with impunity by his chief. If he complained it was more than probable that his condition would not be bettered thereby. It was therefore necessary that he should have some place of refuge, which purpose these khas mehals are intended to serve. ¹³²

In this way, khas mahal was another mechanism for undermining the chiefs, providing a refuge for those who did not wish to live under the rajas.

But the British were concerned that if an open policy was put in place, the area might be flooded with newcomers. Hence, to ensure that people did not just come there to take advantage of the fee exemptions, the capitation tax in khas mahal area was increased. A case was made that

[A]s the establishment of such places would hold out many indirect advantages by absolving the villagers from the various incidence of feudal service, and thereby encourage desertions from the jurisdiction of the chiefs, it was proposed to raise the capitation-tax within the khas mehals to Rs. 5. ¹³³

The chiefs were furious, but despite their protests, the policy was driven through for another reason, which was to prevent the inhabitants of the Hill Tracts migrating to neighbouring territories. The administration created the mahal because it was felt that in ‘the absence of such an institution, discontented ryots would continue to emigrate to Hill Tipperah, Arracan, and the regulation district’. ¹³⁴ The khas mahal essentially served as a pacification territory for disgruntled paharis, with the hope that this would make them less likely to practice jhum.

Popular discontent with the rajas began, in this way, to be mediated by colonial administrators. They also began to intervene in the tensions between the rajas and their dewans. According to the deputy commissioner, there appeared to be some friction between Chakma raja Harish Chandra Bahador and his dewans because ‘Chuckma dewans are dissatisfied with Rajah Hurrish Chandra, who does not reside at Rangamati or take any interest in his people. He always lives in Ranee’s Hat, in Chittagong, leaving Bengali mooktears to settle hill cases’. ¹³⁵ Describing the Chakma raja’s practices as unacceptable, Gordon reported,

[T]his is very bad. Under the terms of the summary settlement held by the Rajah, he is required to reside at Rangamati, and mooktears are not permitted to appear in the Hill Tracts Courts. Numerous complaints as to the Rajah’s conduct have also been made to me. He is deservedly unpopular.

A gap had been identified, and the administration took advantage of the opportunity to set up more new regulations for the chiefs, further limiting their exercise of economic, social and political power. Gordon reassured Beames that ‘in the scheme relating to the readjustment of the jurisdiction of the Hill Chiefs now under consideration, I am embodying certain proposals designed to ameliorate the existing unsatisfactory state of things’. ¹³⁶

Headmen were increasingly used by the Raj to counter the authority of the chiefs. To allot more political legitimacy to the headmen vis-à-vis the rajas, a system was set up by which headmen were elected to their positions. However, by the late 1870s, the initiative was found to be ineffective on account of the dual role the headmen had to play. They were liable to the chief for collecting capitation tax and were also to serve as chowkidars to assist government authorities with civil, fiscal and criminal administration. As a result of this, according to Lowis, in return for their services, the headmen enjoyed many privileges—such as presents from people on festive occasions, free labour for a certain number of days and a certain share of every animal killed in a hunt—that were beyond the wishes of the government. Hence, Power proposed a return to the old system where appointments of headmen were hereditary not elective. ¹³⁷

As for the revenue circles, the scheme had understandably proved unpopular with the rajas, except the Mong raja whose chieftainship was, by Lowes’ own admission, ‘a creation of our own’. ¹³⁸ Raja Hurrish Chunder Rai Bahadoor forwarded a petition stating various objections to the scheme, and it was thought to reflect the sentiments of other chiefs. But the administration was not too concerned about the raja’s discontent, believing that ‘with a little tact and firmness… the Deputy Commissioner will succeed in carrying out the proposal’. ¹³⁹

For the government, the policy served both political and economic aims: the revenue circles not only limited the powers of the chiefs, but also limited the territory for ordinary jhumias to practice jhum. With the revenue circle system implemented on 1 October 1876, ¹⁴⁰ Lowis wrote in his report, ‘[t]here is no doubt that the assignment of territorial limits to the chiefs must in the long run prove fatal to their existence, for the amount of land fit for jooming is limited, seeing the same plot cannot be occupied twice over’. Predicting an exodus of people when the supply of jhum land ran out, he asserted, ‘as soon as the supply becomes exhausted, the people will move outside the circle and be lost to their chief’. The change was expected to cause considerable emigration into Hill Tipperah, and to ‘strike a blow at the position and influence of headmen, on whom we mainly depend for the administration of the district’. ¹⁴¹ Nonetheless, the government was determined to push through with the policy.

Fearing a mass exodus, the Chakma chief urged that restrictions on territorial limits be relaxed for the time being

[A]s there is reason to apprehend that rather than own allegiance to a chief other than their own, or move from a favoured locality to a less favoured one within the circle of their own chiefs, many of them would prefer to desert the Hill Tracts en masse. ¹⁴²

But in addition to limiting the movement of people in general, the Raj also now began to control the movement of chiefs, who, for example, required the permission of the state to relocate. In one such case, permission was ‘granted to the Syloo chief Van Hoya to move from his present residence and to settle on the Raojan range’. ¹⁴³

The government also began experimental cultivation and opened farms in Rangamati, where tobacco, chilli, safflower and dal [lentils] were cultivated. ¹⁴⁴ Six species of tobacco were planted, five foreign and one local. Officials found that chilli crops grew well in the hills, but tobacco proved to be an accident-prone crop that readily caught fire. In addition to these experiments, 400 tea and coffee seedlings were planted in the hills and valleys in the vicinity of the government buildings in Rangamati. ¹⁴⁵ About 6,000 plants of all kinds were collected and stored in a nursery to be planted in due course, an initiative undertaken by Captain Gordon at his own cost. ¹⁴⁶

It was not only on nature that the Raj sought to impose its structures of control; ¹⁴⁷ the management of tribes went hand in hand with the administration of the region. Durbars were frequently held by the British; for instance, one of these durbars headed by the deputy commissioner amongst the tribes was of Kookies held at Demagiri in April 1875 by Mr Power. ¹⁴⁸ In January of 1877, a durbar was held at Demagiri for the Lushai chiefs, at which both Anderson and Mr Showers, the district superintendent, were present. ¹⁴⁹ The administrators used these gatherings to exert their authority and to use ‘every opportunity…to enunciate clearly our position and attitude towards the frontier tribes’.

At this assemblage, which was attended by 31 chiefs of the Syloo, Thangboa and Howlong clans, accompanied by no less than 300 followers, Mr Anderson proclaimed the boundary line of their territories and declared that all who already resided inside would be duly protected, but that murders and similar offences committed within their boundaries would be followed by punishment, while as for those who resided outside, they were welcome to become their subjects, and would be carefully protected if they came in for purposes of trade. ¹⁵⁰

True to the government’s policy, Anderson used the economic incentives to entice the various tribes to give up their nomadic lifestyle and promised to protect them if they did so and settled within government territory. Officials argued that the effects of this initiative were immediately felt ‘inasmuch as trade with the trans-frontier tribes has been and is becoming more developed’. ¹⁵¹ Hence, durbars were also used as a tool to mitigate the impact of both frontier chiefs and raiders. ¹⁵²

The creation of the agriculture-based economy and utilisation of various economic technologies had a far-reaching impact on the social and cultural, or ‘traditional’, aspects of the hill communities. David Washbrook has argued that the colonial state was not the only source of power in the nineteenth century, and that culture and society ‘may be seen to have lain in the economy’. ¹⁵³ He suggests that the application of capitalist methods to the ‘changing relations of material production and social reproduction’ ¹⁵⁴ was an important aspect of colonial rule in this period, particularly because India’s economy, encapsulated as trade and production, was deeply integrated into the world economy. ¹⁵⁵ According to Washbrook, Indian ‘tradition’ was redefined and modified into ‘indigenous’ society under colonial rule, and the nature of this rule is better described as ‘pseudo-traditionalisation’ than ‘modernisation’. ¹⁵⁶ C. A. Bayly argues similarly that the ‘intervention by British officers modified the very institutions whose character they sought to maintain’. ¹⁵⁷

Drawing on Washbrook, the economic expansion of the Hill Tracts on to its political institutions in this era can be better understood as an exercise in ‘pseudo-traditionalisation’ in which the state redefined ‘tradition’ to impose an economy that not only generated revenue and achieved control, but that was also connected to the world market through trade. In the case of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, its political institutions and administrative ‘traditions’ were modified and restructured internally in this period while giving the impression that the ‘traditional’ form of rule had been retained, with the chiefs and their chieftainships maintained. It is important to point out here that the emergence of an ‘indigenous’ identity was a by-product of this pseudo-traditionalisation; it began to be articulated by the Tracts’ elites when ‘tradition’ ‘start[ed] to become objectionable’ ¹⁵⁸ by the end of the nineteenth century.

The local administration followed the activities of the chiefs very closely and maintained surveillance of the extent to which they cooperated in implementing state policies. Plough cultivation figured high on its agenda, and so the state was keen on seeking collaboration from local elites, mostly the chiefs, in convincing the people to adopt it. The Chakma raja was reported to have ‘taken some interest in the movement, by attempting to settle joomeas on land at Shingee nullah now in course of settlement’. ¹⁵⁹ Narabuddy, the Mong chief, was also reported as ‘doing the same in his part of the country’. ¹⁶⁰

The Mong raja, being a product of the Raj, experienced less stringent scrutiny and generally received more support and accolades from the administration. According to Lowis,

[The] Mong Rajah is in embarrassments and difficulties, having had to obtain large advances from Government to help his ryots. He is reported to be making strenuous efforts to settle his affairs, and to appreciate the value of the efforts made on his behalf by the authorities. For his past services he got a certificate of honor on the occasion of the imperial durbar. ¹⁶¹

Lowis’ complaint that the Chakma raja behaved like a ‘Hindu-Bengali zemindar’ is most intriguing. At this juncture in the history of the Hill Tracts of Chittagong, the Chakma raja was portrayed more as a foe of the Raj than as a collaborator, and this is clear in terms in which Beames described him:

[O]f Rajah Hurris Chundra I am sorry I can say little that is good. He is fast becoming a Hindu-Bengali zemindar. Bengali zemindars are, no doubt, highly respectable and meritorious persons; but the status and tone of mind of a zemindar is something very different from, and almost incompatible with, that of the Chief of a hill clan, and I cannot but see that the Rajah is growing every day more and more unfit for the latter post, and does not do his duty to his people, by whom consequently he is neither liked nor respected. ¹⁶²

In comparison, the Bohmong raja fared well in the estimation of the British, earning praise for his good behaviour and efficient estate management: ‘[T]he Bohmong is a very worthy old chief, and has behaved very well during the year…reports that have reached me show that he [Ongiophru Chowdry] has done very good service in recovering the estate from its indebted condition’. As usual, the Mong raja, who had just died, received the most praise: ‘[T]he Mong Rajah was when I last saw him much dejected and depressed by his difficulties. He died soon after I met him. He was a well-disposed young man, but I fear rather weak. He always loyally co-operated with the district officers’. ¹⁶³

Conclusion: A Late-Victorian Famine

There is little doubt, then, that after 1860, the chiefs began to chafe at the new pressures they faced. But we must not lose sight of the fact that those most affected by the Raj’s political and economic policies were lay inhabitants of the Tracts, who, as each year passed, were taxed more heavily even as they lost access to forest produce and areas in which to jhum. Their situation was particularly dire after the bad harvest and cyclone of 1876. To assist the affected locals, the government came up with a scheme of loans to be disbursed by the chiefs and headmen. Lowis, in the annual administrative report for 1876–77 mentioned the government plan, which was to impress

[O]n the chiefs and headmen the necessity of some action on their part, and conveying to them assurance of Government help where necessary, in the shape of advances of money to be repaid in due course, the money so obtained to be expended in helping those were worse off. ¹⁶⁴

The government made it very clear to the chiefs that the amount it had given was not a grant but a ‘loan’, which needed to be repaid. As ‘the chiefs were given to understand that the advances were to be repaid, it was hoped that they would see that the money was laid out to the best advantage’. ¹⁶⁵ Despite its acknowledgment that many inhabitants of the Tracts were starving and that the cyclone had devastated their harvest, the colonial state remained adamant that it would seek repayment of all the loans it had advanced.

But even after the famine ended, the economic prospects of the people did not improve. Even the British were obliged to recognise that its policies of revenue circles and aggressive taxation in various spheres were partly to blame. Beames blamed bad seasons for at least three successive years, rather than the high rate of tolls on forest produce; he even acknowledged the ‘disturbing effect on the village system of the measure known as the “localization of the authority of the Chiefs,” or in other words the “circle system”’ ¹⁶⁶ as a factor that added to the hardship of the increasingly impoverished hill residents.

The lay hill inhabitants seem—not surprisingly—to have become more and more dissatisfied with the manner in which the government levied forest tolls, taxes on reserves and with the high rates of duty on forest produce. Lowis in his administrative report for 1877–78 mentioned that ‘[t]he general state of feeling is reported to be unsatisfactory. It is not one of complete confidence, gratitude, and respect towards the Government’. Arguing that the circle system had not been working as desired, Lowis reported,

[W]anderers as the hillmen naturally are, the system of localization of authority of their Chiefs, as introduced under the orders of September 1876, has made them still more wandering and unsettled, causing thereby no small amount of trouble and anxiety to their Chiefs and creditors who in consequence have found it a matter of great difficulty to realize from them their dues. ¹⁶⁷

The following year, under the title ‘State of Public Feeling on General and Special Subjects’, Beames in his administrative report for 1878–79 informed the Raj that ‘[p]ublic feeling during the year under review has according to the Deputy Commissioner been one “of calm and contentment”’. He alluded to the causes for this change of mood: ‘[T]he reduction of tolls on forest produce has given universal satisfaction, and the revival of the old village system is said to have been much appreciated by all classes’. With the transfer of forest administration to the deputy commissioner’s office 1878, the colonial officials hoped to address the discontent among the people as well as safeguard its economic interests. Beames believed that

[T]he establishment of extensive reserve forests will prevent the denudation of the hills and secure a supply of timber for the future, while the removal of vexatious restrictions in other parts of the district restores to the Hillman a profitable means of livelihood in collecting and disposing of forest produce. ¹⁶⁸

The administration may have removed the strictest regulations on forest use, but it did so in a manner that kept its economic interests intact.

In 1885, The Government of Bengal authorised a fund of ₹ 5,471 for the relief of villages suffering from scarcity in the Hill Tracts. ¹⁶⁹ The situation in the Tracts had become so desperate by this time that the Deputy Commissioner, C. A. S. Bedford, informed higher officials that there were several villages, ‘unless they be supplied with rice at once their people will eat the seed-grain and will thus be unable to joom this season….’ ¹⁷⁰ The three chiefs, on the other hand, were reported to be with ‘sufficient paddy to carry them on for this season’. One of them had applied for an advance of money from the government, which was rejected ‘as he was unwilling to repay the same by labour I have declined to grant his request’. ¹⁷¹

The harsh economic climate seems to have opened up what can be described as a class divide in the Tracts with

[T]raders…still fairly well supplied, and those who have credit are able to obtain grain. These comprise, of course, the wealthier members of the community; but the poorer classes, who have but little grain and no credit, will, I fear, be in sore straits unless a helping hand be held out [to] them. ¹⁷²

But despite these realities, Bedford argued that what actually caused the scarcity in the first place was

[T]hat the people of the district are still somewhat primitive and simple…and their knowledge of the intricacies of correspondence and the ramifications of red tape are even to this day almost nil. The consequence is that they allow their stocks to run out, and no intimation is given to the authorities whilst the running out process is going on till towards the end. ¹⁷³

In the opinion of Bedford, the disorderly, primitive nature of the people, who had no regard for their future, was to blame for the famines in the Hill Tracts.

Yet, the British interpreted that the frequency with which the courts were established resulted in fall in crime and ‘the favorable season and plentiful harvest’. ¹⁷⁴ Instead of recognising the worrying signs of deepening stratification and immiserisation, in the British imagination,

[I]n years of scarcity the people [were] too much occupied, and have not the leisure or inclination to repair to the courts, unless, of course, advances of money are being made. Then they repair to the court with joyous activity. In years of plenty the people can allow themselves certain indulgences, and consequently treat themselves to the luxury of a little litigation. ¹⁷⁵

With famine explained by the childlike character of the people, the British moved ahead to implement their economic and political policies with even greater resolve. ¹⁷⁶ Yet, a hundred years after its first entrance into the Hill Tracts, it was clear that British economic and political initiatives were not only unpopular amongst ordinary paharis, but they were also increasingly impoverished.