North-East Frontier (1874–1905) Assam Province (1912–1947) | |||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Province of British India | |||||||||||||
1874–1947 | |||||||||||||
Assam Province in 1936 | |||||||||||||
Capital | Shillong | ||||||||||||
Area | |||||||||||||
• 1901 | 121,908 [1] [2] km2 (47,069 sq mi) | ||||||||||||
• 1914 | 202,270 [3] km2 (78,100 sq mi) | ||||||||||||
History | |||||||||||||
• Bifurcation of Eastern Bengal and Assam | 1912 | ||||||||||||
1914 | |||||||||||||
15 August 1947 | |||||||||||||
|
Part of a series on the |
History of Assam |
---|
Categories |
Assam Province was a province of British India, created in 1912 by the partition of the Eastern Bengal and Assam Province. Its capital was in Shillong.
The Assam territory was first separated from Bengal in 1874 as the 'North-East Frontier' non-regulation province. It was incorporated into the new province of Eastern Bengal and Assam in 1905 and re-established as a province in 1912.
In 1824, Assam was occupied by British forces following the First Anglo-Burmese War and on 24 February 1826 it was ceded to Britain by Burma under the Yandaboo Treaty of 1826. [4] Between 1826 and 1832, Assam was made part of Bengal under the Bengal Presidency. From 1832 to October 1838, the Assam princely state was restored in Upper Assam while the British ruled in Lower Assam. Purandar Singha was allowed to rule as king of Upper Assam in 1833, but after that brief period Assam was annexed to Bengal by the British. In 1873, British political control was imposed on western Naga communities. On 6 February 1874, Assam, including Sylhet, was severed from Bengal to form the Assam Chief-Commissionership, also known as the 'North-East Frontier'. Shillong was chosen as the capital of the Non-Regulation Province of Assam in September 1874. The Lushai Hills were transferred to Assam in 1897. The new Commissionership included the five districts of Assam proper (Kamrup, Nagaon, Darrang, Sibsagar and Lakhimpur), Khasi-Jaintia Hills, Garo Hills, Naga Hills, Goalpara and Sylhet-Cachar comprising about 54,100 sq miles. Cooch Behar, a historical part of Assam, was left out. [5]
From 16 October 1905, Assam became part of the province of East Bengal and Assam. The province was annulled in 1911 following a sustained mass protest campaign and on 1 April 1912 the two parts of Bengal were reunited and a new partition based on language followed, Oriya and Assamese areas were separated to form new administrative units: Bihar and Orissa Province was created to the west, and Assam Province to the east.
British India's Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms enacted through the Government of India Act 1919 expanded the Assam Legislative Council and introduced the principle of dyarchy, whereby certain responsibilities such as agriculture, health, education, and local government, were transferred to elected ministers. Some of the Indian ministers under the dyarchy scheme were Sir Syed Muhammad Saadulla (education and agriculture 1924–1934) and Rai Bahadur Promode Chandra Dutta (local self-government). [6]
The Government of India Act 1935 provided provincial autonomy and further enlarged the elected provincial legislature to 108 elected members. [7] In 1937, elections were held for the newly created Assam Legislative Assembly established in Shillong. The Indian National Congress had the largest number of seats, with 38 members, but declined to form a government. Therefore, the Assam Valley Party with Muslim League's support Sir Syed Muhammad Saadulla was invited to form a ministry. Saadulla's government resigned in September 1938, after the Congress changed its decision, and the Governor, Sir Robert Neil Reid, then invited Gopinath Bordoloi. Bordoloi's cabinet included the future President of India Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed. During the Japanese invasion of India in 1944, some areas of Assam Province, including the Naga Hills district and part of the Manipur princely state, were occupied by Japanese forces between mid March and July.
When fresh elections to the provincial legislatures were called in 1946, the Congress won a majority in Assam, and Bordoloi was again the chief minister. Prior to the Independence of India, on 1 April 1946, Assam Province was granted self-rule and on 15 August 1947 it became part of the Dominion of India. [8] Bordoloi continued as the chief minister even after India's independence in 1947.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Assam". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Shillong is a hill station and the capital of Meghalaya, a state in northeastern India. It is the headquarters of the East Khasi Hills district. Shillong is the 330th most populous city in India with a population of 143,229 according to the 2011 census. It is said that the rolling hills around the town reminded the British of Scotland. Hence, they would also refer to it as the "Scotland of the East".
Gopinath Bordoloi was a politician and Indian independence activist and politician who served as the 1st Chief Minister of Assam from 1946 to 1950. He was also the chairman of North-East Frontier Tribal areas and Assam Excluded and Partially Excluded Areas Sub-Committee. He was a follower of the Gandhian principle of non-violence as a political tool. Due to his unselfish dedication towards Assam and its people, the then Governor of Assam Jayram Das Doulatram conferred him with the title "Lokpriya".
The history of Assam is the history of a confluence of people from the east, west, south and the north; the confluence of the Austroasiatic, Tibeto-Burman (Sino-Tibetan), Tai and Indo-Aryan cultures. Although invaded over the centuries, it was never a vassal or a colony to an external power until the third Burmese invasion in 1821, and, subsequently, the British ingress into Assam in 1824 during the First Anglo-Burmese War.
Bihar and Orissa was a province of British India, which included the present-day Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand, and parts of Odisha. The territories were conquered by the British in the 18th and 19th centuries, and were governed by the then Indian Civil Service of the Bengal Presidency, the largest administrative subdivision in British India.
Eastern Bengal and Assam was a province of India between 1905 and 1912. Headquartered in the city of Dacca, it covered territories in what are now Bangladesh, Northeast India and Northern West Bengal.
The North–East Frontier Agency (NEFA), originally known as the North-East Frontier Tracts (NEFT), was one of the political divisions in British India, and later the Republic of India until 20 January 1972, when it became the Union Territory of Arunachal Pradesh and some parts of Assam. Its administrative headquarters was Shillong. It received state status on 20 February 1987.
Sir Syed Muhammad Saadulla KCIE was the 1st Prime Minister of Assam in British India from 1937 to 1946.He was also the member of Constituent Assembly of India from 1946 to 1950.
Colonial Assam (1826–1947) refers to the period in the history of Assam between the signing of the Treaty of Yandabo and the Independence of India when Assam was under British colonial rule. The political institutions and social relations that were established or severed during this period continue to have a direct effect on contemporary events. The legislature and political alignments that evolved by the end of the British rule continued in the post Independence period. The immigration of farmers from East Bengal and tea plantation workers from Central India continue to affect contemporary politics, most notably that which led to the Assam Movement and its aftermath.
Bishnuram Medhi was an Indian politician and freedom-fighter who served as the Chief Minister of Assam from 1950 to 1957 and Governor of Madras State from January 1958 till May 1964.
The Naga National Council (NNC) was a political organization of Naga people, active from the late 1940s to the early 1950s. It evolved out of the Naga Hills District Tribal Council, an organization established in 1945 by the Deputy Commissioner of the Naga Hills district. The group was reorganized to form NNC in 1946 at Sanis, with Eno T. Aliba Imti Ao as the President, and other democratically elected Naga representatives as its members. NNC declared independence a day before India's independence on 14 August 1947, and unsuccessfully campaigned for the secession of the Naga territory from India.
The Council of State was the upper house of the legislature for British India created by the Government of India Act 1919 from the old Imperial Legislative Council, implementing the Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms. The Central Legislative Assembly was the lower house.
Abdul Matlib Mazumder (1890–1980) was an Indian freedom fighter and political leader based in undivided Assam State. In 1946, when India was still under British rule, he became an MLA and also Cabinet Minister of Assam. He was one of the prominent Muslim leaders of eastern India to support Hindu-Muslim unity, opposing the partition of India on communal lines. Mazumder along with Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed became the most prominent Muslim opponents of the demand for a separate Muslim state of Pakistan, especially in the eastern part of the country.
The Prithimpassa family, also known as the Nawabs of Longla, are an Shia royal family from the Prithimpassa Union, Kulaura Upazila, Moulvibazar, Sylhet, Bangladesh. The family was of the erstwhile feudal nobility of East Bengal. They played important roles in the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Partition of India and Sylhet referendum in 1947, and the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971.
Bihar Province was a province of British India, created in 1936 by the partition of the Bihar and Orissa Province.
Orissa Province was a province of British India created in April 1936 by the partitioning of the Bihar and Orissa Province and adding parts of Madras Presidency and Central Provinces. Its territory corresponds with the modern-day State of Odisha.
The Manipur Kingdom also known as Meckley was an ancient kingdom at the India–Burma frontier. Historically, Manipur was an independent kingdom ruled by a Meitei dynasty. But it was also invaded and ruled over by Burmese kingdom at various point of time. It became a protectorate of the British East India Company from 1824, and a princely state of British Raj in 1891. It bordered Assam Province in the west and British Burma in the east, and in the 20th century covered an area of 22,327 square kilometres and contained 467 villages. The capital of the state was Imphal.
The 1947 Sylhet referendum was held in the Sylhet District of the Assam Province of British India to decide whether the district would remain in Undivided Assam and therefore within the post-independence Dominion of India, or leave Assam for East Bengal and consequently join the newly created Dominion of Pakistan. The referendum's turnout was in favour of joining the Pakistani union; however, the district's Karimganj subdivision remained within the Indian state of Assam.
The Bengal Provincial Muslim League (BPML) was the branch of the All India Muslim League in the British Indian province of Bengal. It was established in Dhaka on 2 March 1912. Its official language was Bengali. The party played an important role in the Bengal Legislative Council and in the Bengal Legislative Assembly, where two of the Prime Ministers of Bengal were from the party. It was vital to the creation of the Dominion of Pakistan, particularly after its election victory in 1946.
The prime minister of Assam was the head of government and the leader of the House in the Legislative Assembly of Assam Province in British India. The position was dissolved upon the Partition of India in 1947.