3. History of
the Khasis
(1824 to pre-Shillong)
An important fallout of the interaction
between the Khasis and the plains people (including the plains people of
Kamrup) in the 18th Century is the existence of a great number of
clans with the name dkhar, (i.e.
plains people) or in its short form 'khar,
usually prefixed[1].
This is estimated to be about 10% of the 3,363 or so Khasi clans. This would suggest that the male ancestors of these clans were in the habit of making raids into the plains and bringing back with them women who were then inducted into Khasi society to become the ancestresses of new clans.
This is estimated to be about 10% of the 3,363 or so Khasi clans. This would suggest that the male ancestors of these clans were in the habit of making raids into the plains and bringing back with them women who were then inducted into Khasi society to become the ancestresses of new clans.
Clanhood could not otherwise have been
transmitted in the matrilineal Khasi society. It is not unlikely that all these
'mixed' clans owed their origin to a period of marauding raids which must have
been going on for centuries, coming to an end with the British occupation of
these hills.
Gurdon asserts that if the lists of
the Khyrim and Cherra clans are examined, it will be seen what a large number
bear the name of Dkhar or its
abbreviation 'Khar[2].
The word Dkhar is that applied by a
Khasi to an inhabitant of the plains. He goes on to say: “We come across names such as khar-mukhi, khar sowali, the first word
being an abbreviation of dkhar, and mukhi being the common Bengali name which
occurs in Chandra Mukhi, Surjya Mukhi, etc. Sowali (chowali) is the common
Assamese word for a girl. The ancestresses of these tribes were plains women,
carried off, no doubt, in the raids made by the Khasis over the border into
Assam and Sylhet”.
Until the advent of the British at the turn of the 19th Century, the area
comprising the Khasi Hills was divided into 26 independent states. The Khasi
term for the entire territory is translatable as the 'land of the 30 kings'.
These chieftainships combined in a loose confederacy which did not materially
affect their isolated independent existence.
Of the Khasi chieftainships, the most
prominent was the Kingdom of Shillong, comprising Mylliem and Khyrim. The
Khyrim chiefs probably had more frequent contacts with the Jaintia kingdom,
their closest neighbour to the east, contacts which were alternately friendly
and hostile, till the very advent of the British.
The
acquisition of the Diwani of Bengal
in 1765 by the East India Company ushered in the first contact between the
Company and the Khasi Hills. The necessities of commerce arising from their
monopoly of the lime quarries, from which Bengal has drawn its supply from time
immemorial, soon attracted European enterprises to the country.
Towards the close of the 18th Century, these
trade contacts were frequently disturbed by acts of violence largely due to the
rapacity of the Europeans. Robert Lindsay who was Collector in Sylhet about
1776 obtained virtual monopoly of the trade and for the next few decades the
cutthroat competition of the sort that had been such a disagreeable feature of
earlier trade contacts disappeared. Trade by itself, though obviously
lucrative, might not have led to the extension of British rule to the Khasi
Hills were it not for Assam coming under British rule.
Another
important article of export was the famous Khasi orange
which appears to be indigenous in these hills. Sir George Birdwood refers to it
as having been carried by Arab traders into Syria, "whence the crusaders helped to gradually propagate it throughout Europe."
The Khasis
seemed to have lived in a state of intermittent warfare with Sylhet and they
continued to be the worst offenders against the order and peace of Sylhet when
it came under the British in 1765. It was said that the Khasis secured in their
mountain retreats, ravaged with fire and sword the fertile plains at the foot
of their hills with impunity. Night was the time almost invariably chosen for
these murderous assaults, when neither age or sex was spared. And long before
the dawn of day, the perpetrators, glutted with slaughter and loaded with
plunder, were again far among the fastnesses of their mountains on their way
home. To the British, they were known as "truculent and blood thirsty Khasis" and "fierce marauders."
The Company
was ignorant of the unhealthy trade relationship between the Khasis and the
plains people of Sylhet, and the Khasis were often blamed for every dispute.
Colonel Shakespeare blamed the English officials who were often businessmen:
"The few English
officials who were there in early days seem to have busied themselves, one
reads, in amassing fortunes from the valuable limestone quarries lying along
the outer spurs of the Khasi Hills, their Superintendants and quarrymen,
frequently, by injudicious conduct, irritating the hills people, thus causing
an unsettled state which often ended in retaliation and murder."
The Company regarded the Syiem of Sutnga as the most lawless and troublesome of all the
Khasi rulers. He injured the Company's trade by obstructing the Company's boats
in their passage down the Surma, exacting tolls, looting their contents and
causing them endless delay and annoyance and further raided the revenue paying
lands of the Company.
In
1774, a punitive expedition was sent to Jaintiapur under Captain Elliker
(Henniker) and the conflict was however localised in Jaintiapur. Captain Robert
Boileau Pemberton attributed the spark of the conflict to some aggressions
against the inhabitants of the adjacent plains of Sylhet which had, rendered
the chastisement necessary.
At
that time, Richard Borwell was a member of the Governor General's Council of
Revenue, Dacca under whose jurisdiction Sylhet was placed. It was he, who
ordered the expedition to Jaintiapur against the Syiem of Sutnga because the latter did not allow the British to use
their boats in the Surma without paying taxes to him. Captain Elliker was the
officer-in-charge of the expedition. The Captain defeated the Syiem of Sutnga and took Jaintiapur.
A demand of Rs.25,000 was made from the Syiem of Sutnga to meet the cost of the
expedition. Instead of paying the money, the Syiem fled to the Hills. As the troops could not be left
indefinitely at Jaintiapur, Captain Elliker was directed to return. Attempts
were made to persuade the Raja to
come back and to pay whatever amount he was ready to pay, but the British
should be allowed to use their boats free of tax in the Surma, which was the
limit of the boundary of the Syiem of
Sutnga beyond the Hills. The Syiem returned
but did not pay the money, and the British had access to the Surma free of
interference. This was the first time that the Khasis came into collision with
the British.
One
important outcome of this invasion was that it led to the survey and
demarcation of the boundaries of Sylhet and Sutnga. This was done entirely by
Company officials. It therefore, led to frontier troubles with the Khasis when
Robert Lindsay (the first Collector of Sylhet) leased some lime quarries about
1779. The magnificent lime quarries attracted European traders to Pandua, near
Bhologanj, at the end of the 18th Century.
According
to the Company, the conduct of these European traders were hardly calculated to raise the prestige
of the Englishmen in the eyes of the Khasis, and most of the disturbances which
occurred, were attributed by the Collector of Sylhet, to their injudicious
conduct.
In 1783,
the Khasis attacked Pandua to avenge an insult (one of the Khasi Chiefs was
prevented from defecating in Lindsay’s property) offered to one of them by the Havildar of Lindsay. Much blood was
shed, the servant of Lindsay was killed and his lime kilns were destroyed. The
prisoners were killed and scalped.
Sir Charles
Lyall[3]
stated that a line of forts was established along the foot of the Hills to hold
the:
“the mountaineers in
check and Regulation. No. 1 of 1779 was
passed declaring freedom of trade between them (Khasis) and Sylhet but
prohibiting the supply to them of arms and ammunition, for forbidding anyone to
pass the Company's frontier towards the hills with arms in his hand.”
A report,
accompanied by a map, "carried the
definition of our frontier to the neighbourhood of Pandua" it was
bounded by the States of the Syiem of
Sutnga and the Syiem of Khyrim. The
report also states that to defend the boundary, the Khasis should be confined
to the mountains, no matter what the objective of the Khasis might be.
It was
found that during the relaxation of the Mughal power, the Khasis made many
considerable encroachments on the lowlands and even after establishment of the
British Government possessed themselves partly by force and partly intimidation
of several estates on their side of the Surma valley.
A series of
outrages committed on the adjacent country, at length drew the attention of the
Marquis of Cornwallis, who in 1789,
issued orders for the definition of the boundary line and the Collector was
directed to inform the Khasis that they would not for the future, be permitted
to come down armed, within the line of the Company's frontier. Though measures
were not taken to mark the limits with precision, yet from common report, it
would seem that it was intended to include all the lowlands within the
Company's frontier, leaving to the Khasis the undisturbed possession of the
mountains.
In 1817 an
incident occurred over the 10-year lease of limestone quarries by the Syiem of Langrin to Inglis and Company,
at an area called Lour which was situated between Bogles Churrah on the west
and Punatit on the east.[4]
In 1821 a dispute occurred when the Syiem
of Nongstoin who wanted to extend the boundaries of his State, questioned the
authority of the Syiem of Langrin
over the quarries and in the process came into conflict with Inglis and
Company. In September 1821, the Khasi traders raided the area and carried off 7
men of the Company. The Nongstoin Syiem
afterwards granted the lease to a French businessman, suspending Inglis and
Company from the area of work.
In 1821 three subjects of the Sutnga State
were seized in the Sylhet District while in the act of dragging away a young
man. It appeared that they had been sent by the brother-in-law of Ram Singh to
seize a man for the purpose of offering him as sacrifice to the shrine of Kali. They were in the midst of their
mission, when they were seized by the villagers and delivered over to the civil
authorities.
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