By R. T. Rymbai
The 29th of March is a Govt holiday in Meghalaya on account of Tirot Singh’s Death Anniversary. But from all accounts available, Tirot Singh did not die on the 29th of March 1834.
Before the Hill States were carved out of it, had mistakenly declared the 29th of March a public holiday in honour of the Death Anniversary of Tirot Singh. The then Government thought that Tirot Singh must have died on that date because Rijon Singh acceded to The Raj of Nongkhlaw on that day. This was a confusion with the British system of succession when their heir apparent succeeds the moment the reigning sovereign dies or abdicates. Hence the famous English saying; `The king is dead, long live the king’. The Khasi system is different. We have their presumptive. When a reigning system dies, resigns or its otherwise removed from office there is an election for a new Syiem by an electoral college or the public, as the case may be from amongst the their presumptive.
The Government of Meghalaya wrongly followed what the Government of Assam once did when it also declared the 29th of March as a public holiday on account of the Death Anniversary of Tirot Singh. But this year the Government of Meghalaya has had second thoughts about the matter on account of the protests of persons like me. And so we find that the 29th of March has been marked a holiday on account of the Death Anniversary of Tirot Singh as `Conditional to Change.’
The Khasi Cultural Society, Meghalaya, observed the 150th Death Anniversary of Tirot Singh on the 22nd of Feb. last for the first time. The inference from this is that the Society must have taken the 22nd of Feb. 1834 as the date of death of Tirot Singh. But Dr Hamlet Bareh himself, the President of the Society, admitted that the date of death of Tirot Singh was as yet unknown. He contributed an article on Tirot Singh published in the Souvenir of the Society celebrating the Anniversary. He wrote therein. “The date of his (Tirot Singh’s) has not been obtained.” With due respect to the Society the celebration could have been called The Tirot Sigh Memorial Day, or by any other suitable name, but by no means his death anniversary when the date is not known.
Dr. John Hung Morris, in his “The History of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists’ Foreign Mission,” wrote, “Teerut Singh was condemned to imprisonment for life at Dacca where he died in 1836”. Dr R M Lahiri, in his The Annexation of Assam wrote, “He (Teerut Singh) breathed his last in 1841” . These two authors gave two different dates, either of which might be wrong as the 29th of March was wrong. Capt. Boileau Pemberton’s The Eastern Frontier of India is a mine of information about Assam and the Hills in the early nineteenth century. It is liberally made use of by later authors in their works on Assam and the Hills of the early 19th century. Pemberton completed his book on the 21st of September 1935. About Teerut Singh he wrote, “on the day appointed (the 13th of January 1833), the Rajah Teerut Singh met Mr Inglis at Nursingare, a mile east of Oomchilung and Teerut Singh was conveyed to Myrung, from where he was taken to Gowahatee, and eventually confined in the jail of Dacca, where he remains a prisoner for life”.