CDS (I) 2023 General Knowledge · Question 35 of 120

Correct — C, Ahom. The Ahom are the community of the Brahmaputra valley in Assam. They descend from a Tai group that crossed the Patkai hills into the valley and mixed with the people already there, a process their own tradition calls Ahomisation. Their kingdom is dated by tradition to 1228 under Sukaphaa, though some recent scholarship places the real founding in the mid-fourteenth century, and it lasted until the Treaty of Yandabo in 1826 handed Assam to the British. The Ahom language belongs to the Tai family and is no longer spoken; the community speaks Assamese today, and the name of the state itself is connected to theirs. They are also the community that produced Lachit Borphukan, the general who held the Mughals at the Battle of Saraighat on the Brahmaputra in 1671. None of the other three names belongs to Assam. The Bhil are of western and central India, the Gond of the central Indian belt, and the Adi of Arunachal Pradesh.

• (a)Bhil — A western and central Indian community, listed as a Scheduled Tribe in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan — the opposite corner of the country from Assam.
• (b)Gond — One of the largest communities of the central Indian belt, spread across Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and neighbouring states. The Gond kingdoms of Garha-Katanga and Chanda are central Indian history, not Assamese.
• (d)Adi — The most plausible wrong answer, because the Adi are of the North East — but of Arunachal Pradesh, not Assam. They are a Tibeto-Burman group, historically known as the Abor.

Assam's history is shaped by a long-lived state that was not Indo-Gangetic in origin. The Ahom kingdom ran in the Brahmaputra valley for close to six centuries, absorbed local communities rather than displacing them, kept its own chronicles called Buranjis, and repeatedly held off Mughal expansion from the west before the Burmese invasions and then the British ended it in 1826.

Community-to-region questions are answered by holding a rough geography of India's major groups rather than a list of names. Two of the wrong options here belong to the western and central belt and one to Arunachal Pradesh, so a candidate who can place any three of the four is done. The Adi is the option that costs marks, because the North East reads as one region to a candidate revising in a hurry, and it is not: Arunachal Pradesh alone has dozens of distinct communities, and Assam's valley history is separate again. Present-day anchor worth adding: the Moidams, the mound-burial site of the Ahom dynasty at Charaideo, were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2024, which is why the Ahom name has been appearing in current-affairs sections as well as in history ones.

• The Ahom are a Tai-descended community of the Brahmaputra valley in Assam, formed through the mixing of Tai migrants with local populations.
• The Ahom kingdom is traditionally dated from 1228 under Sukaphaa and ended with the Treaty of Yandabo in 1826.
• The Ahom language, of the Tai family, is no longer spoken; the community speaks Assamese.
• Lachit Borphukan, the Ahom general of the Battle of Saraighat in 1671, gives his name to the gold medal awarded to the best cadet at the National Defence Academy.
• The Adi are of Arunachal Pradesh; the Bhil belong to western and central India and the Gond to the central Indian belt.

• Treating the North East as a single cultural region; the Adi belong to Arunachal Pradesh and not to Assam.
• Assuming the Ahom are indigenous to the Brahmaputra valley; they are of Tai origin and became Assamese over centuries.
• Confusing the Ahom kingdom with the Koch or Kachari kingdoms, its neighbours and rivals in the same valley.

As a which-community-belongs-to-which-state item, or through the Ahom kingdom's battles, chronicles and monuments.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Ahom kingdom of the Brahmaputra valley came to an end with which one of the following treaties?

  • (a)Treaty of Yandabo
  • (b)Treaty of Sugauli
  • (c)Treaty of Amritsar
  • (d)Treaty of Salbai

  Answer(a) Treaty of Yandabo — signed in 1826 at the close of the first Anglo-Burmese war, it transferred Assam to British control.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Adi community is chiefly associated with which one of the following states?

  • (a)Assam
  • (b)Nagaland
  • (c)Arunachal Pradesh
  • (d)Manipur

  Answer(c) Arunachal Pradesh — a Tibeto-Burman group historically called the Abor, distinct from the communities of the Assam valley.