Number of words: 563

In unadministered frontier areas and Indian native states the authority of the British Raj was usually vested in the political agent or the political officer. His powers were limited, so his effectiveness as an administrator was largely dependent on the degree to which he could impose his will on peoples who were often actively engaged in resisting government attempts to curtail their independence. In consequence politicals tended to be strong-minded individuals who, because they often served for long periods in isolated corners, tended to become a little idiosyncratic- if not downright eccentric- in their ways.      

     One such political who left his mark on the North-East Frontier was John Butler, who had special charge of the hill tribes from 1844 until his retirement in 1865. His son, also called John, followed him into political service on the Assam frontier and was later killed in an ambush in the Naga hills. The older Butler had a great reputation as an up-country character or what his fellow Anglo-Indians would call an ‘old Koi Hai’, being chiefly remembered for his habit of touring with two glass windows, which were inserted into the bamboo walls of the bashas and huts in which he put up for the night. It was largely on Butler’s advice that the government followed a policy of non-interference with the awkward and intractable peoples scattered along the edges of the Assam valley. This was perfectly satisfactory so long as the tribals kept to themselves, less so when they came down to raid the plains.

The greatest mischief-makers were the Abors, those same aggressive defenders of their privacy who in the 1820s had stopped Bedford, Wilcox and Burlton from exploring the Dihong river. In 1858 they attacked a village within cannon- shot of the military headquarters at Dibrugarh, killing a number of villagers. A punitive force was at once sent after the raiders, only to be drawn deep into the Abor hills and ambushed. Retiring in disorder, the government forces were harried and repeatedly ambushed all the way back to Dibru- garh, with considerable loss of life. So cockahoop were the Abors after this episode that they sent a challenge down to the plains, calling upon the British to give them a return match.

 It was now decided to restore the prestige of the Raj by ‘inflicting such chastisement as will teach these savages to respect its power. This second military expedition, complete with elephant-drawn howitzers, was as much of a fiasco as the first and ended with the loss of three of its officers. A third expedition in 1862 ended in a political victory for the Abors when it was agreed that they would keep to their tribal lands in return for government posa, the annual payment in cash or kind of a sum amounting to 3400 rupees. This Danegeld did little to stem the raiding and the depredations continued, presenting a contant threat to the new tea gardens that were fast taking over from the jungle scrub in the alluvial plain. A further element in this policy of appeasement was the prohibition of any kind of mapping or exploration into sensitive tribal areas, which meant that any attempt to close Montgomerie’s ‘missing link’ would have to be made from the Tibetan rather than the Indian side of the Himalayas.

Excerpted from page 120 – 121 of ‘A Mountain Tibet ’ by Charles Allen