New Delhi: Sage Publications India, 2014. xiv, 255 pp. (Illustrations.) US$39.95, cloth. ISBN 978-81-321-1347-8.
After more than sixty years of Indian independence and Northeast India’s participation in that project, debates about that region’s tenuous and often troubled relationship with the rest of the country abound. The history of how the once fiercely independent hill tribes came to be part of the Indian state-making project is widely contested, and this has given fuel and sustenance to decades-old insurgency in the region. The multiple versions of history that have arisen, partly due to the lack of written records of the region, provide both sides of the fence with a legitimacy that cannot ultimately be ascertained. This collection of essays that brings into the public domain primary sources on a crucial aspect of planning for the region following the departure of the British administration establishes a solid empirical foundation on which future debates can now be anchored.
The book, which in chronological order takes readers through plans written by four different colonial administrators towards the end of the Raj, throws light, and in some cases provides much detail, on the different futures that were then being considered for Northeast India. These confidential plans were drawn up by four members of the Indian Civil Service who all served in various capacities in Northeast India. The authors of these plans were Sir Robert N. Reid, Governor of Assam (1937–1942); his successor Sir Andrew G. Glow (1942–1947); James P. Mills, Advisor to the Government of Assam for Tribal Areas and States; and this latter’s successor and fellow officer, Philip F. Adams. The book begins by providing useful contextual background in terms of the administrative machinery and political activities among the hill tribes around the time the plans were secretly being discussed. It also makes insightful references to the careers of British officers and their relationships with colleagues as well as the hill tribes.
It was Reid who first put across the idea that the hill people of the region should be afforded special attention by the British Government. Within his note of 1941 is the concept of the Crown Colony for Northeast India and the hill regions of Burma. The note makes a detailed study of how the hill people were to be governed, with suggestions for another and different phase of British administration. Governor-General Lord Linlithgow, who was amongst the first to receive a copy of Reid’s note, in turn sent a copy to L.S. Amery, the Secretary of State for India. Amery, who was impressed with the plan, sent a copy to the Oxford Professor Reginal Coupland who was writing the third and final volume on the constitutional problem in India. Given the confidential nature of the idea, Coupland was prohibited from quoting British officers and the proposed plan was to be aired as one of many broad ideas, with one intention being to garner views on the matter. This is how the first public conjuring of the idea of a crown colony took Coupland’s name.
However, Reid’s successor, Sir Andrew Clow, the last British Governor of Assam, disagreed with Reid on many issues. His long note is a detailed review of the administration of the Assam tribes. Both Reid and Clow had Mills as their adviser. Mill’s own note, quite different from his bosses’, puts in perspective the future of the hill tribes of the region in a self-governing India, given that by the time he wrote his note, it had become clear that the British would not stay much longer in India. Adams, who took over from Mills, stayed on as Secretary to Sir Akbar Hydari, the first Indian Governor of Assam. His short note provides some insights and references on the British thinking towards the hill tribes.
Interestingly, all the notes to varying extent dwell on the common idea of a balance between preservation of culture and development of the tribal population, though they differ in their views on how to go about this. This is an issue that continues to resonate and these documents provide a historical context to the policy confusion that has bound successive governments in independent India. Finally, the book is also hugely significant in providing direction for further research that might give greater clarity to the events that followed, and which determined the fate of the region. Two areas stand out in particular, the different accounts raise many interesting questions about the views of the locals on these plans and the factors and dynamics driving the opinions of different tribal organizations of them. Secondly, the production of primary sources around the plans begs for similar scholarship and more sources on the plans as well as the negotiations and correspondence with the Indian and regional leadership that immediately followed independence.
Laldinkima Sailo
National University of Singapore, Singapore
pp. 932-934