By Prof. P.M.Passah & Dr. Omarlin Kyndiah
Of all the three tribes and the three regions that now comprise the present Meghalaya State, the Jaintias and their homeland the Jaintia Hills, have been the most looked down upon since the Independence of India. A large chunk of Jaintia Hills, the very small abode of the Jaintias left of their larger kingdom was unconstitutionally detached, transferred and mechanically tagged with the non-contiguous and truncated Mikir (now Karbi Anglong) Hills in April 1951 very soon after the promulgation of the Constitution of Independent India on January 26, 1950. Hence of all the three regions of Meghalaya, Jaintia Hills is an exceptional case in the history of the current boundary dispute with Assam which might be the first and only State which had violated the provisions of the Constitution of India soon after it was promulgated on 26 January 1950 in respect of Part –X (Article 244) and Part XII (Article 275). These two Parts of the Constitution along with the Fifth & Sixth Schedules adequately provide for the protection and fiscal assistance to The Scheduled and Tribal Areas in the country. But the then Assam government had politically meddled with the tribal area set apart for the Jaintias against the provision of the Constitution and against the ethno-geography and geo-polity of the hill tribes in the north-eastern region hardly 15 months after the Indian Constitution came into force.
The British annexed the Jaintia kingdom in 1835 and confined the Jaintias to their small hilly country as their primitive and ancestral home and this was duly ratified by the Constituent Assembly as per the Constitution of Independent India approved and signed on 26 November 1949 and promulgated on 26 January 1950. But the then government of Assam against the will of the people, detached a large portion of the Jaintia Hills comprising two Dalloiships (Nongphyllut & Ri Bhoi), one Sirdarship (Langsoh-Mynriang), a large part of Raliang Dalloiship known as Pangam Raliang, part of each of the Dalloiships of Shilliang Myntang, Nangjngi and Nartiang, which altogether consist of nearly half of the Jaintia Hills; and as stated above, the detached area was forcibly transferred and mechanically tagged with the non-contiguous and truncated Mikir Hills to create the then United Mikir & North Cachar Hills District on April 13, 1951. Since 1951 and for almost 80 years the Jaintias have been demanding a re-transfer of these two Blocks as per the pre-1951 Map of Jaintia Hills.
Geographically the Jaintia Hills & the Mikir Hills are in no way contiguous. A map of the ‘Meghalaya and Mikir Region’ taken from R.L.Singh, India – A Regional Geography indicated that the Jaintia Hills and Mikir Hills are lying apart from each other and in between, them are the North Cachar Hills and the Assam plains known as the Kapili and Jamuna Valleys. Historically, linguistically and culturally the two tribes are poles apart. The Mikirs or Karbis are rather closer to the Assamese and the Tibeto-Burman group or Bodo as will be seen from historical records quoted below.
The boundaries of the habitat of the Mikirs (Karbis) can be found in Sir Charles Lyall’s notable book, The Mikirs published in 1904 which gives the following boundaries of the Mikir Hills at pp.2-3. “The Mikirs inhabit in greatest strength the hills called after them, the isolated mountainous block which fills the triangle between the Brahmaputra on the north, the Dhansiri valley on the east, and the Kopili and the Jamuna valleys on the west and south; this tract is now divided between the Nowgong and Sibsagar districts.” Sir Lyall further explains clearly in detail about these boundaries and adds, “It is in this hilly country, and in the plains at the base, that the Mikir people are found.” On page 5, Sir Lyall further adds, “They (The Mikirs) . . . . are, in fact, difficult to group with other branches of the great Tibeto-Burman stock to which they undoubtedly belong.”
Besides Sir Lyall, Dr. A.M.Meerwarth’s book, The Andamanese, Nicobarese and Hill Tribes of Assam, published in 1919 and republished by Spectrum Publications, Pan Bazar, Gauhati, in 1980 with a New Introduction by Dr. N.N. Acharyya, Professor of History, Gauhati University, also gives an almost identical description of the boundaries of the Mikir Hills at pp.34-35. Dr. Meerwarth also remarks: “It must, however, be said that they (Mikirs) have mixed very much with the Assamese and are rather like them in physical appearance.” Dr. Meerwarth also mentions that the Mikirs are also found in Khasi Hills and in the plains of Assam, in the (erstwhile) districts of Nowgong and Sibsagar. They spread to these areas and even across the Brahmaputra to Darrang district, in good numbers in search of work and employment.
The premier Newspaper and very popular Daily since pre-Independence times in the North East ‘The Assam Tribune’ in its April 11, 1941 Issue under the heading “Sad Lot of The Mikirs”, states. “They (The Mikirs) live mostly in the interiors, the slopes of the low hills and mountains called the Mikir Hills which rise pyramid-like between the Nowgong and Sibsagar districts extending on both.”
Raj Mohan Nath in his A Background of Assamese Culture, published in 1948, states on page 108 that the Mikirs are “A small tribe apparently of the Bodo origin . . . live in the hills between the plains of the Sibsagar district and Naga Hills.” Nath further states that the whole of the Mikir Hills area was under the full control of different dynasties that ruled Kamrupa in the past “as testified by the innumerable archaeological finds of Hindu temples and images all over the Mikir Hill area from Parokhoa to Dighalpani on one side and Numaligarh to Deopani on the other.”
In Tribes of Assam compiled by S.Barkataki and published in 1969, in Chapter V on ‘The Mikirs’ supposed to be written by L.S.Ingty, I.A.S.(himself a Mikir vide Acknowledgment in the Book), it is stated at pp.50-53: “Their (Mikir’s) main habitat is the hills named after them . . . . The climate of the hills and the contiguous plains inhabited by the Mikirs are not salubrious. In fact, many of the Mikirs living in the plains have become undistinguishable from the Assamese. They have also become bilingual speaking Assamese generally and Mikir at home.”
All the above findings have been re-affirmed by the scholars of the Tribal Research Institute, Assam in their publication Tribes of Assam Part –I published as late as 1987. It quoted (vide pp.53-54) three writers: (1) Jygnoram Gogoi who states that the Karbis came down to the plains and settled in the hills Lumbejong lying between Dimapur and Diphu; (2) G.C. Medhi who says that the habitat of the Karbis was in the hilly region between the (erstwhile) Nagaon and Sibsagar districts in and around Kaziranga forest; and (3) N.N. Barua who opines that the area between Dimapur and the Kapili river called Hayong was inhabited by the Karbis and that the entire Kaziranga was within their habitation. Like Sir Lyall and others, the Book also states that the Karbis belong to the Tibeto-Burman group. Thus culturally and socially, the Karbis who follow a patriarchal society must be different from the Jaintias who are an Austrics-speaking tribe following the matrilineal custom.
Even Phillippe Ramirez in his very recent book, People of the Margins – Across Ethnic Boundaries in North-East India, published in 2014 by Spectrum Publications, Guwahati: Delhi, writes on page 9, “Karbi (Mikirs) is to be found both in the Karbi (Mikir) hills and in the central Assam plains.”
But when the then district of United Mikir & North Cachar Hills was created in April 1951, the then government of Assam denied the Mikirs the plains portion contiguous to their hills and in particular the Lumding’s north-east region where the Mikirs are predominantly concentrated. Instead of attaching this plains portion to the new district as demanded by the Mikirs (vide the Minutes of the relevant Commission), the then Assam government had arbitrarily sought to transfer forcibly a large chunk of Jaintia Hills to the Mikir Hills which are a hundred miles apart from each other thereby violated the provisions of the Constitution of India for the purpose of protecting the Scheduled & Tribal Areas of the respective Tribes and unthinkably deprived the Jaintias a large part of their traditional homeland. By this unconstitutional act, the then government of Assam has set one tribe against the other for which every subsequent government of Assam has to bear perpetual responsibility. This arbitrary action of the then government of Assam has been regarded as the first seed of misunderstanding sown by it which had started to antagonize the hill tribes of Northeast India culminating in the passing of the Assam Reorganisation (Meghalaya) Act, 1969 (Act No.55 of 1969) and subsequently the North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, 1971 (Act No.81 0f 1971) by the Parliament which bifurcated the North-east region into 7(seven) states as it stands today.
A popular Newspaper ‘The Shillong Times’ published a write-up under the caption “Jaintia ‘Refugee’ – a New Problem” in its Issue of July 12, 1973 (re-published 30 years later in its Issue of June 23, 2003), with a comment: “the Jaintia refugees who had to be evacuated from their homes in the neighbouring villages have found it possible to return to their habitats. That they had at all to evacuate is bad enough: it is worse that the alleged harassment leading to this unfortunate evacuation was perpetrated by members of one hill tribe upon another whatever the provocation in the view of one group and the lack of it in the opinion of another. It is known that the dispute, big or small, had its own origin.” True, its origin was none other than the forcible and unconstitutional transfer of a large part of Jaintia Hills to the truncated Mikir Hills. The Central government, it is trusted, will take note of this entire story and will not allow the Jaintias to suffer in their homeland. It may be noted that recently even militant elements have been used occasionally by the Assam police to intimidate the Jaintias and threaten to kidnap them while forcibly harvesting their crops almost every year. Their land records and documents were snatched away from them and destroyed. As a result, the Jaintias cannot live in peace and where they are in good numbers, open quarrels ensue from time to time. It may also be noted that of the five hill tribes recognized by the British, the Jaintias were the smallest in number and occupied the smallest area.
We however hope the Meghalaya government would be able to convince Assam to honour history and to undo its unconstitutional act committed soon after the promulgation of the Indian Constitution, and to agree to the re-transfer. We do accept the five principles as agreed by Assam and Meghalaya viz. historical facts, geographical continuity, administrative convenience, ethnicity, and people’s will, in deciding the boundary issues between the two states.