Which one of the following is correct about Assam in British India?

Correct — C, (c) It was separated from Bengal in 1874, and along with Sylhet made into a Chief Commissioner’s province. The sequence is short enough to memorise as a whole. Assam passed to the East India Company in 1826 under the Treaty of Yandabo, which closed the First Anglo-Burmese War and ended the Burmese occupation of the Brahmaputra valley. For the next half-century it was not a province at all but a group of districts administered as part of the Bengal Presidency, which meant that everything from revenue policy to the language of the courts was settled at Calcutta for a territory a long way from it. In 1874 the arrangement was changed: the Assam districts were detached from Bengal and constituted a separate administration under a Chief Commissioner, and the Bengali-speaking district of Sylhet was transferred out of Bengal and added to the new unit, largely to give it the revenue and the population that would make it viable. The addition was resented in Sylhet itself, whose people saw themselves as Bengalis being attached to a frontier province, and the grievance ran on until the referendum of 1947 sent most of Sylhet to East Pakistan. Note the grade of the new province as well as the date, because the option names it precisely: a Chief Commissioner’s province was the junior class of British Indian province, run by an officer directly under the Governor-General with no legislative council of its own, unlike the Presidencies and the Lieutenant-Governorships.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)It was a part of the North-East Frontier Agency. — The relationship runs the other way round, and across a different century. The North-East Frontier Agency was not a British Indian province and Assam was never part of it; it was created in 1954, after independence, out of the frontier tracts that had lain on the edges of Assam as excluded areas, and it was administered by the Governor of Assam acting as the agent of the President rather than as head of a state government. It was renamed Arunachal Pradesh in 1972. Since the stem asks about Assam in British India, an option resting on a post-independence administrative unit cannot be right whatever else is said about it.
• (b)It was made a province in 1865. — The right kind of statement with the wrong year, which is the commonest way a history option is made wrong. Assam was separated from Bengal and given its own Chief Commissioner in 1874, not 1865, and in the intervening period it was still a group of Bengal districts. The later upgrades have their own dates and are worth keeping apart from this one: in 1905 the partition of Bengal merged Assam into a new Lieutenant-Governor’s province called Eastern Bengal and Assam with its capital at Dacca; when that partition was annulled Assam went back to being a Chief Commissioner’s province in 1912; and it became a Governor’s province under the reforms of 1919.
• (d)It was a Princely State ruled by Ahom kings. — Assam was directly administered British territory, not a princely state, and the Ahom kingdom had ended before British rule began. The Ahoms ruled the Brahmaputra valley for roughly six centuries until the dynasty was fatally weakened by the Moamoria rebellion of the late eighteenth century and then overrun by Burmese invasions, and it was from Burma, not from an Ahom king, that the Company took the territory in 1826. Princely states did exist in the region — Manipur and Tripura were two — but Assam was not one of them, and no Ahom ruler held it under British paramountcy.

The idea behind the question is that British India was not administratively uniform: its provinces came in grades, and territory moved between them for reasons of revenue, convenience and control rather than of language or culture. At the top were the Presidencies of Bengal, Madras and Bombay, with Governors appointed from London and Executive Councils; next came Lieutenant-Governorships such as the North-Western Provinces and, later, Eastern Bengal and Assam; and below them the Chief Commissioner’s provinces — Assam from 1874, the Central Provinces, Coorg, Ajmer-Merwara, British Burma at first — each run by a single officer answerable directly to the Governor-General, without a legislature of its own. Because these units were made and unmade by executive order, their boundaries were redrawn often, and the redrawing had lasting consequences. Attaching Bengali-speaking Sylhet to Assam in 1874 to make the new province financially viable created a linguistic grievance that outlasted the Raj; the same instinct produced the partition of Bengal in 1905 and the reaction that followed it.

Key facts

• The Treaty of Yandabo in 1826 ended the First Anglo-Burmese War and transferred Assam to the East India Company.
• From 1826 to 1874 Assam was administered as a group of districts of the Bengal Presidency, not as a province in its own right.
• In 1874 Assam was separated from Bengal and made a Chief Commissioner’s province, with Sylhet transferred from Bengal and added to it.
• A Chief Commissioner’s province was the junior grade of British Indian province: one officer under the Governor-General, with no legislative council of its own.
• The partition of Bengal in 1905 merged Assam into the Lieutenant-Governor’s province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, with its capital at Dacca; the partition was annulled and Assam reverted to a Chief Commissionership in 1912.
• The Sylhet referendum of 1947 sent most of the district to East Pakistan, ending an attachment that had begun in 1874.
• The North-East Frontier Agency was created in 1954, after independence, and was renamed Arunachal Pradesh in 1972.

Common traps

• Taking a plausible statement with a wrong date. Every option in this family should be tested against a year before anything else.
• Reading a post-independence unit such as NEFA into a question that says ’in British India’.
• Assuming that any territory ruled by an Indian dynasty before the British became a princely state under them. Assam was annexed outright.
• Confusing the 1874 Chief Commissionership with the 1905 creation of Eastern Bengal and Assam, which was a different and higher grade of province.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under which treaty did Assam pass to the East India Company in 1826?

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

  Answer(a) The Treaty of Yandabo

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, with its capital at Dacca, was created as a consequence of which measure?

  • (a)The Indian Councils Act, 1892
  • (b)The partition of Bengal in 1905
  • (c)The Morley-Minto reforms of 1909
  • (d)The Government of India Act, 1919

  Answer(b) The partition of Bengal in 1905