An Endangered History: Indigeneity, Religion, and Politics On The Borders of India, Burma, and Bangladesh 1st Edition Angma Dey Jhala

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Title Pages
An Endangered History: Indigeneity, Religion,

and Politics on the Borders of India, Burma, and
Bangladesh
Angma Dey Jhala
Print publication date: 2019

Print ISBN-13: 9780199493081
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: August 2019
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199493081.001.0001
Title Pages
Angma Dey Jhala
(p.i) An Endangered History (p.ii)
(p.iii) An Endangered History
(p.iv) Copyright page
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Page 2 of 2
Dedication

Bangladesh
Angma Dey Jhala

Print ISBN-13: 9780199493081
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199493081.001.0001
(p.v) Dedication
Angma Dey Jhala
For my mother,
and her dreams of home (p.vi)
Page 1 of 1
Figures, Tables, and Maps

Bangladesh
Angma Dey Jhala

Print ISBN-13: 9780199493081
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199493081.001.0001
(p.ix) Figures, Tables, and Maps

Angma Dey Jhala
Figures
2.1 ‘My House on Sirthay Tlang above Demagree on the Kurnapoolee
River, Chittagong Hill Tracts.’ 46
2.2 ‘My Bungalow on the Hill at Chandraguna, Chittagong Hill Tracts.’ 63
2.3 ‘T.H. Lewin with the Seven Lushai Chiefs Who Accompanied Him to
Calcutta (1873).’ 84
4.1 ‘Rangamati Lake.’ 168
4.2 ‘Family Portrait (Bohmong’s Son and Wife).’ 183
4.3 ‘Three Women with a Child.’ 194
4.4 ‘Woman Pounding Rice.’ 195
4.5 ‘Portrait of a Man (A Boy, Basanta Pankhu Kuki).’ 195
Tables
3.1 ‘Return of Nationalities, Races, Tribes and Castes, in Each Division of
the Chittagong Hill Tracts’ 126
3.2 Censuses in the CHT, 1872–1901 140
Maps
I James Rennell, Map of Colonial Bengal and Arracan Border.
II ‘The Chittagong Division Comprising the Districts of Noakhali and
Chittagong with the Hill Tracts under the Jurisdiction of the Lieutenant
Governor of Bengal.’
III Chittagong Hill Tracts, 1890. (p.x)
Page 1 of 1
Acknowledgements

Bangladesh
Angma Dey Jhala

Print ISBN-13: 9780199493081
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199493081.001.0001
(p.xi) Acknowledgements
Angma Dey Jhala
I first considered writing on the Chittagong Hill Tracts as a newly arrived

doctoral student at Oxford in 2001. At the time, much of the scholarship (and
news coverage) on the region focussed on insurgency movements and human
rights violations, and less on the history, particularly the colonial history, of the
east Bengal and Burma border. While intrigued, I would go on to focus on
another research topic, which would preoccupy me fruitfully for the next 15
years, but I remained haunted by the untold story of the Hill Tracts. The
intervening period has witnessed the opening up of archives on northeast India
and east Bengal as well as the publication of dynamic new histories on the larger
borderland region. This work contributes to this emerging discourse on an oft
forgotten area and its peoples.
Several people, institutions, and funding agencies have been invaluable in their
support of the research that went into this book, as well as my earlier work.
David Washbrook was a supportive and generous doctoral supervisor, and he
remains a kind mentor until today. Shun-ling Chen, Ayesha Jalal, Norbert
Peabody, Jayeeta Sharma, and Willem van Schendel have expressed interest in
this project at different stages.
I wrote this book as a faculty member in the History Department at Bentley

University, and it is with deep gratitude that I thank my institution. Bridie
Andrews and Marc Stern, my department chairs during this time, as well as my
dean, Dan Everett, were encouraging, supportive, and thoughtful mentors
throughout this endeavour. Conversations with my colleagues Chris Beneke,
Sung Choi, Samir Dayal, Ranjoo Herr, Cliff Putney, Kristin Sorensen, Leonid
Trofimov, (p.xii) and Cyrus Veeser have provided much insight and pleasure
Page 1 of 4
Acknowledgements
over the years, and I thank them for creating a warmly collegial and engaging
environment to teach and work.
A number of institutions and funding agencies have generously assisted in the

writing of this book. Faculty summer grants and a faculty affairs grant from
Bentley enabled me to examine university and government archives and cover
permission costs for my book. Student research assistants from Bentley’s
Valente Center, Mihir Saxena, Rijul Hora, and Ei Shwe, in 2012 and 2014–15,
were vital aids, transcribing and annotating often nearly incomprehensible hand
written archival manuscripts, with sunny dispositions. In particular, a sabbatical
in 2015–16 provided me the intellectual freedom and time to write a full draft of
the book. Much of that year was spent as a visiting scholar at the Studies on
Women, Gender, and Sexuality department at Harvard University, where I was
kindly welcomed by Afsaneh Najmabadi. The resources at Harvard, particularly
access to libraries, university archives, and the fellowship of likeminded
scholars, aided enormously in the writing of this book.
A book that dwells in the archives, as this does, is indebted to the painstaking
work of librarians, who preserve repositories not only over decades but
generations, despite the vicissitudes of time. I benefitted exponentially from the
thoughtful help of archivists who assisted in copying and scanning delicate
materials, answering bibliographic questions, tracking down ever-elusive
documents, images, and maps, and giving permissions to reproduce images. I
thank the Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library, London; the
Senate House Library, London; the SOAS Archives and Special Collections,
London; the Centre of South Asian Studies Library, Cambridge; the Pitt Rivers
Museum Collection, Oxford; Harvard Map Collection, Cambridge, MA; Harvard
Widener Library, Cambridge, MA; and Bentley Library, Waltham, MA. I especially
thank Geraldine Hobson for graciously permitting me to reproduce images from
the J.P. Mills Collection at the SOAS archives.
This book also deeply benefitted from the writings and memoir of the late
Chakma raja, Raja Tridiv Roy. While I was unable to seek his counsel on certain
points, his written recollections on the Hill Tracts were invaluable and broad
sweeping in nature. I also thank Rajkumari Moitri Roy Hume of the Chakma raj
for sharing with me her vivid, (p.xiii) detailed memories of the Chittagong Hill
Tracts during a dramatic era of transition.
The arguments within this book were presented at conferences and symposia,
and benefitted from the critique and encouragement of various audiences. I
thank the audiences at the Historical Justice and Memory: Questions of Rights
and Accountability in Contemporary Society Conference, hosted by the Alliance
for Historical Dialogue and Accountability programme at Columbia Law School
(December 2013); the New England Association for Asian Studies Conference,
Page 2 of 4
Acknowledgements
hosted by Boston College (January 2017); and the Bentley History Department
Seminar, Of Beheaded Statues and Other Colonial Legacies (October 2017).
I also wish to acknowledge the editors at Oxford University Press, who

expressed keen interest in this book at the earliest stage. I thank them and the
several anonymous reviewers for championing this book.
Many friends and family have cheered me on during the writing of this book, and
I am grateful for their steadfast interest throughout this process.
My dearest Mapu Chacha, while he did not have a chance to see this book, knew
of its progress and sustained my heart and spirit throughout its writing. I miss
him daily with a tender ache and always shall, and his love for beauty and search
for sublimity in all forms remains a guide of how to live a life well. My esteemed
and beloved Dadabava likewise did not have a chance to read this book, but our
conversations on anthropology and ethnography, and more generally, ideas of
knowledge in the past have influenced this book nonetheless. I hope he might
have found this a useful attempt.
Richard Cash and Maria Hibbs Brosio are always interested and kindly
supportive of what I do, and over the years, I have regaled them with accounts
of this book, as well as others, which they have listened to with indulgence. I
thank them for their continued love over these many decades.
My parents and Liluye have listened to many discussions about this book and
witnessed its evolution from an idea to a final manuscript. My father patiently
read through the complete draft of the book, giving suggestions for
improvement. Liluye provided insight on various visual and technical issues.
She, along with Mithun, Kesariya, Suryavir, (p.xiv) and Ayushi, has filled my
days with drama, adventure, and joy, and in between writing spells, the delights
of a boisterous family.
In particular, it is to my niece Kesariya that I give special thanks. She was my

constant companion during much of the writing of this book, composed as it was
in the darkness of pre-dawn hours and late winter nights during my sabbatical.
Between school drop off and pick up, she taught me how to write on schedule
with still time for laughter, love, and the always unexpected. In some magical
way, she showed me books can be birthed and children reared, happily side by
side.
I dedicate this book to my mother. Years ago, my mother taught me with

painstaking patience how to read. Suffice it to say, I was a slow, plodding reader
at first. For a book focussed on how we read and interpret knowledge, I would
be much remiss to not acknowledge my first teacher. In teaching me to read, she
brought the world into living, vibrant colour. Without her, I could not have
Page 3 of 4
Acknowledgements
written this or indeed any earlier work, and I thank her for this gift that never
ceases giving.
And finally this book is for the people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts and all those
interested in unearthing lost histories of indigenous peoples.
Angma Dey Jhala
February 2019
Bentley University, Waltham, USA
Page 4 of 4
Maps

Bangladesh
Angma Dey Jhala

Print ISBN-13: 9780199493081
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199493081.001.0001
Maps
Angma Dey Jhala
Map I James Rennell, Map of Colonial

Bengal and Aracan Border.
Source: Based on the map, ‘To the
Honorable Warren Hastings, Esquire,
Governor General of the British
possessions in Asia this Map of Bengal
and Bahar’, 1779. MAP-LC G7652.G3
Page 1 of 3
Maps
1779. R4. Housed in the Map Collection,

Pusey Library, Harvard University,
Cambridge, MA.
Note: This map is not to scale and
does not represent authentic
international boundaries.
Map II ‘The Chittagong Division

Comprising the Districts of Noakhali and
Chittagong with the Hill Tracts under the
Jurisdiction of the Lieutenant Governor of
Bengal.’
Source: Based on the map published in
W.W. Hunter, A Statistical Account of
Bengal, Volume VI: Chittagong Hill
Tracts, Chittagong, Noakhali, Tipperah,
Hill Tipperah. London: Trübner & Co.,
1876. © The British Library Board. IOR/
V/27/62/6. Official Publications, India
Office Records, British Library, London,
UK.
Page 2 of 3
Maps

Map III Chittagong Hill Tracts, 1890.

Source: Based on the map © The British
Library Board. Cartographic Items Maps
I.S.70. Calcutta: Survey of India Offices,
1890. Reproduced by permission of the
British Library, London, UK.
Page 3 of 3
Introduction

Bangladesh
Angma Dey Jhala

Print ISBN-13: 9780199493081
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199493081.001.0001
(p.xv) Introduction
Border Histories and Border Crossings in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bengal
Angma Dey Jhala
In the winter of 1771, an English gentleman farmer, on a brief jaunt away from
his family, found a bedraggled orphan boy on the streets of Liverpool and
brought him home to the dark, howling moors of Yorkshire. The boy appeared to
have no discernible race; he was described at various points as a gypsy, an
Indian lascar, son of a Chinese emperor, an African slave, and an American/
Spanish castaway.1 It is possible that he was abandoned on the Liverpool docks,
after arriving on an East Indiaman from India, China, Malaya, or Dutch Batavia,
or a slave ship from Africa or the Americas, as the port city, along with London
and Bristol, was part of the teeming British slave trade.2 In his adopted home,
the boy found solace in the strange and ungovernable beauty of the moors,
delighting in their open spaces, running wild and undisciplined under the wide
skies. His close connection to the land, coupled with his indefinable race,
ethnicity and ‘gibberish’ language, rendered him uncivilized, irrational, and
inhuman to the English country folk he met. He was a ‘universal “other”’ of no
known origin, dangerous and violent.3 Between liminal worlds—occident and
orient, metropole and colony, white and black, civilized and savage—the young
man represented the foreignness of groups on the margins of colonial society
and the porous, liminal frontiers of the Empire. This young man was Heathcliff,
the protagonist of Emily Bronte’s classic novel, Wuthering Heights.
Wuthering Heights was published in 1847 to mixed reviews,4 but it would go on

to become a significant work of nineteenth-century (p.xvi) British literature,
and one that tellingly examined ideas of Victorian sexuality, identity, and class.
But it is also a work that expressed British views not just of non-European others
in general, but specifically those groups that could not easily be categorized
Page 1 of 52
Introduction
through language, race, religion, or geography. Heathcliff falls between various

regional/ethnic identities: Eastern European or Irish (gypsy), South Asian
(India), East Asian (China), American (North or South), and African. Many of the
adjectives used to describe the young Heathcliff were not just applied to non-
Europeans as a whole, but often specifically to indigenous groups on liminal
border frontiers of the Empire—areas which could not be easily contained by
territorial, geographic, or political boundaries, or, for that matter, by a narrow
sets of physical characteristics, social customs, or religious practices. The
descriptions of Heathcliff’s naive primitivity and childlike, unwavering devotion,
his cunning and cruel harshness, and his love for the untamed heath were often
used to describe autochthone groups—whether Native Americans, Australian
aborigines, or South Asian hill tribes—in larger narratives of imperial encounter
and (mis)adventure around the colonized world.
An Endangered History is an account of one such liminal border area, the little-
studied region of the Chittagong Hill Tracts of British-governed Bengal, from the
late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. The CHT lie on the crossroads of
India, east Bengal (now Bangladesh), and Burma (contemporary Myanmar). It is
in an area of lush rivers and fertile valleys, which has historically been
celebrated for its haunting natural beauty and cultural heterodoxy—from the
chronicles of Mughal governors to the ethnohistories of colonial British
administrators. The region is composed of several indigenous or ‘tribal’
communities, including the Bawm, Sak (or Chak), Chakma, Khumi, Khyang,
Marma, Mru (or Mro), Lushai, Uchay (also called Mrung, Brong, Hill Tripura),
Pankho, Tanchangya, and Tripura (Tipra).5 They practise Buddhism, Hinduism,
animism, and Christianity; are close in appearance to their Southeast Asian
neighbours in Burma, Vietnam, and Cambodia; speak Tibeto-Burmese dialects
intermixed with Persian and Sanskritic, Bengali idioms; and practise jhum or
swidden—slash-and-burn agriculture.6 Their transcultural histories, like that of
Bronte’s fictional hero, defied colonial, and later, postcolonial taxonomies of
identity and difference. Indeed, both British (p.xvii) administrators and South
Asian nationalists would misunderstand and falsely classify the region through
the reifying language of religion, linguistics, race, and, most perniciously, nation
in part due to its unique, and at times perilous, location on the invisible fault
lines between South and Southeast Asia.
This book aims to re-establish the vital place of this much marginalized (and oft
maligned) border region within the larger study of colonial South Asia and
Indian nationalism. In the process, I argue that the region is a fertile space to
analyse transregional histories, which cross the boundaries, technologies, and
teleologies of state formation, colonial or postcolonial. The peoples of the region
have long been engaged in transcultural relationships with neighbouring states
and communities throughout Southeast and South Asia, whether for the
purposes of trade, pilgrimage, or marriage, in the process defying the bounded
spaces of imperial–political geo-bodies, Mughal or British, as well as later post-
Page 2 of 52
Introduction
independent nation state boundaries. I suggest that studying this fluid border
area reveals a number of important developments in how colonial states created
and imagined porous frontier zones, and the consequences of such colonial
policies on later nation state formation.
In particular, I focus on how British administrators used European knowledge

systems to define this region as distinctly different, from the moment of the
English East India Company’s expansion into Bengal in the mid-eighteenth
century to the partition of British India and Independence in 1947. Much of this
colonial archive, based upon the writings of regional district administrators,
applied European-derived intellectual paradigms, whether from botany, natural
history, demography, geography, or ethnography, to construct the autochthone
groups of the CHT and their landscapes. In the process, such readings of the
culture, religion, languages, and geography of the indigenous ‘tribes’ reveal the
problems of imperial knowledge production. While there are manifold accounts
by colonial administrators, serving in both British India and the princely states,7
there are few histories of political agents that have focussed on the ‘political and
personal dimensions’ of colonialism, particularly in frontier areas, such as the
larger northeast India border,8 in which the CHT was situated. This is one of the
major contributions of this book.
These colonial interpretations were varied and diverse, far from uniform in
nature, and rich with ambiguity and paradox, revealing (p.xviii) the lively
debate among colonial administrators and policy makers on how best to govern
and police tribal ‘others’. Complex and often puzzling, their works are filled with
ambivalence, self-contradiction, and subversion—in several cases critiquing
colonial rule while upholding it and praising and protecting indigenous custom
while advocating Western ‘civilization’ and reform. As a result, I suggest these
accounts are as much about European administrator-scholars as the groups they
were trying to define in the CHT.
For this reason, the colonial archive serves not only to exhume a long-forgotten
regional past, but also to illuminate a dynamic interconnected global history. In
the process of describing and defining unfamiliar autochthone groups, British
administrators grafted European and colonial landscapes and cultures from
around the world upon the CHT, including the Scottish highlands, English
countryside, German riverine valleys, wooded American frontiers, island
Jamaican plantations, upland Indonesia, and Ashanti villages, among others.
Nearly every account I examine included a geographic or cultural comparison
with other parts of the Empire as well as other parts of the Indian subcontinent.
In response, tribal peoples from the CHT both resisted and adopted aspects of
colonial culture and governance, and their chiefs increasingly saw themselves as
global cosmopolitans by the early twentieth century, crossing both constructed
geopolitical borders as well as imperial subjectivities in the way they constituted
and reconstituted identity. Their life histories reveal that indigenous voices, long
Page 3 of 52
Introduction
assumed to be marginal and peripheral to colonial power, were engaging or

attempting to engage with power systems at the imperial centre.
Such ideas of transregionalism, both within and outside the subcontinent, would
become increasingly contentious in the twentieth century with the rise of the
Indian nationalist movement. The politically charged language of nationalism left
a troubling legacy on this multi-ethnic, multireligious, and multicultural border
area. The indigenous peoples, who were primarily Buddhist (as well as Hindu
and animist), were sidelined during the nationalist movement, which emphasized
majority Hindu and Muslim constituencies. While the leaders of the CHT
petitioned to join either India or Burma during the 1930s and 1940s—nations
with whom they shared historic and contemporaneous cultural and religious ties
—the region was placed in Muslim-majority (p.xix) East Pakistan in 1947
(subsequently Bangladesh after the Bengali war of liberation in 1971). In the
following period, the indigenous peoples suffered widespread state-
manufactured violence and human rights violations, including ethnocide,
genocide, forced conversion to Islam, destruction of Buddhist and Hindu places
of worship, inundation of thousands of miles of arable land with the building of
dams, rape, massacre, and forced migration in the second half of the twentieth
century, mostly because they were seen as non-native others—more Southeast
Asian than Indian (or later Bengali)—in ancestry and culture. Examining the
decades leading up to Partition is one way to re-remember these groups who
have often been excluded and forgotten as ‘stateless’ silents9 in the violent
tectonic shifts of Partition and nation state building. Largely overlooked in
mainstream histories of Indian nationalism, I suggest that a study of the CHT
would further broaden our understanding of Partition, particularly in Bengal. In
addition, recovering its colonial past would shed light on the postcolonial history
of a Buddhist minority in a contemporary Muslim-majority nation state, of which
there are few similar studies.10 Before delving further, I will briefly address here
the CHT’s transregional past.
Historical Overview
Pre-colonial Border Crossings, Burmese, Mughal, European: Through Mountain Passes
and across Ocean Routes
Originally a remote hinterland of the colonial province of Bengal, the CHT was a
fertile meeting ground for Indo-Persian tradition, indigenous tribal cultures, and
European influence, belonging to a larger geography that stretched across
Assam, Tibet, Kashmir, Nepal, Burma, and western and southern China.11 For
centuries, foreign merchants—whether Armenian, Afghan, Shan, or European—
traded with Bengalis, Khasis, Cacharis, and Manipuris in this larger border
region with Burma.12 Goods and people moved between hill and lowland
societies throughout northeast India, as merchants, pilgrims, and migrants
travelled between western Assam, northern Bengal, Bhutan, Tibet, Cooch Behar,
Rangpur in Goalpara, and the foothills of the Himalayas in a porous and flexible
environment of ever shifting political frontiers.13 During the colonial period, the
Page 4 of 52
Introduction
overland trade route with China appealed to both private investors and
corporations connecting, as it (p.xx) did, east Bengal to Yunnan province in
China, Burma, Manipur, and Cachar.14 European merchants were eager to find
markets for their own goods as well as gain gold, elephant tusks, pepper,
lacquer, hardwoods, cotton, and highly prized wool shawls, which were valued at
up to a thousand rupees in Mughal India, Tartary, Persia, and Arabia.15
This transcultural engagement reflected a dynamic intermingling of religious

practices, including Hinduism, Sufi Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, and Judaism,
from the early medieval era up through the twentieth century. Medieval
accounts describe relationships between Afghan soldiers, Mughal-Rajput
commanders, Tibetan-speaking Buddhist Tantric kings, and Portuguese sailors in
the area as well as the role of northwestern Indian merchants and bankers in
spreading Hindu and Buddhist doctrines and Ismaili forms of Islam. Records of
the Surma-Barak river systems chronicle communities practising conjoined
forms of Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and tantric Buddhism living peacefully side by
side, while narratives of the religious and cultural traditions of the Chakmas
from the CHT note the incorporation of Hindu worship and ritual into their
Buddhist practices.16
The port city of Chittagong in many ways reflected this cosmopolitanism,

connecting the region to Mughal India and the larger Indian Ocean economy. In
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, metropolitan Chittagong and its
surroundings served as a ‘frontier’ between Mughal India and the monarchic
state of Arakan in Burma.17 The port attracted foreign capital and empire
builders, in addition to the Arakanese and Mughals, including the Portuguese,
Afghans, Pathans, and eventually the British.18 Christian slaves and fugitives
from Goa, Ceylon, Cochin, and Malacca settled in Chittagong and were gifted
land grants by the king of Arakan. These Portuguese merchants engaged in
piracy and plunder of coastal villages19 via river pathways into inland Bengal
and Burma,20 undermining Mughal control in the process. Bengali, Tamil,
Telugu, Malay, Arab, Persian, and Dutch merchants also traded in its harbours
and on its streets.21 Chittagong thus saw a rich intermingling of diverse
cultures, reflected in the cosmopolitanism of medieval mainland Burma as well.
The Arakan or Rakhine state, which controlled Chittagong, was, as Rishad

Choudhury argues, ‘a paragon of the early modern cross-cultural polity’.
Consolidated in 1430, it was nominally a Theravada Buddhist kingdom, and its
capital, Mrauk-U (Myohaung), was located (p.xxi) on the eastern littoral of the
Bay of Bengal. The Mrauk-U dynasty incorporated various aspects of the
material culture and ceremonial of Indo-Islamic courts, including the patronage
of a Persianate Bengali literature and adoption of Persian titles, alongside
Buddhist practices and Burmese honorifics. Such rich cultural fusion was
expressed in the works of the Bengali poet, Alaol (c. 1607–1680), who served at
Page 5 of 52
Introduction
the Arakan court, and evocatively described the region’s multi-jati22 hybridity
and its location in a diverse Burmese coastline.23
The Mughals themselves were unsure exactly where the city and its
surroundings fell. They had trouble particularly in classifying the Arakan polity
in religious terms, for the royal dynasty did not practise the familiar faiths of
either Islam or Hinduism. Emperor Akbar’s court chronicler, Abu’l Faz’l, while
noting that the city and region around it lay in Arakan, at the same time
ambiguously situated it under Akbar’s revenue administration.24
Mughal Intrusions: Imperial Sovereignty and Local Autonomy

It was eventually the Mughal distaste for Arakanese slave raiding that instigated
formal imperial conquest. After two failed invasions of Chittagong in 1617 and
1621, and various threats through the 1630s, when the Mughal governor of
Bengal warned Arakan that the entire region of Chittagong and Rakhang would
come under Mughal suzerainty,25 Chittagong fell in 1660. Shaista Khan annexed
Chittagong that same year.26 It formally became part of provincial Bengal under
Nawab Murshid Quli Khan (r. 1716–1727) in the early eighteenth century.27
This growing Mughal influence would not only affect coastal Chittagong but also
the hill tribes further inland, although more indirectly. While the Mughals gained
influence in Bengal from the sixteenth century onwards, with Akbar’s annexation
of Bengal in 1574, Shah Jahan’s appointment of his son Shah Shuja as governor
of Bengal in 1639, and the later 1660 annexation of Chittagong,28 most British
colonial records noted that there was little direct intervention by the Mughal
state in the CHT until the eighteenth century. Indeed, the powers and territories
of the local tribal rajas or chiefs remained largely autonomous throughout
Mughal rule and the hill tribes were mostly untouched. In part, this may have
been due to the fact that the CHT had a small population who practised jhum
agriculture, which had little (p.xxii) surplus, making it less attractive for
imperial control by the Mughals or neighbouring Chittagong, Arakan, and
Tripura.29
This period reflected not only the gradual spread of Mughal political and
economic systems, but perhaps more importantly, the sustained role and
salience of local dynastic power, manifest through significant alliances between
regional states within the area. Local rajas, such as the rulers of Bijni, Cooch
Behar, the Ahom court in contemporary Assam, Bhutan, and the Dalai Lama of
Tibet,30 as well as the rulers of Tripura, Manipur and the CHT tribal chiefs,31
formed important interregional alliances with each other, as well as with the
imperial centre. Such connections reflected the abiding importance of local
ideas on territoriality and sovereignty. Furthermore, when the rajas of Bijni,
Sidli, and Karaibari in northeast India, for instance, received the elevated rank
of peshkari zamindars from their Mughal overlords, their titles not only
symbolized their traditional status in the eyes of the emperor, but also their
Page 6 of 52
Introduction
substantial military influence, regional autonomy, and judicial authority over

their own peoples32—a policy of indirect rule which would continue under the
English East India Company.
A passage from the Tripura Rajmala, the genealogical poem of the royal Manikya
dynasty of Tripura, recounts some of these ambiguities of sovereignty through
one princely encounter. In this episode, the Mughal prince Shah Shuja took
refuge at the court of a local tribal ruler, the Magh raja (possibly Raja
Candasudhammaraja), at the same time that his neighbour, the Tripura king,
Raja Govinda, was also visiting due to a dynastic conflict at home. Upon Shah
Shuja’s arrival, Raja Govinda stood and invited the Mughal prince to take his
kingly seat (siṃhāsan) (the Sanskrit word for seat serving as a metonym for
royal throne). The Magh raja turned to his fellow ruler, questioning why they
should renounce their royal seats (material and symbolic) to a Muslim foreigner
(a mlechha). Raja Govinda retorted that the Mughal prince was a paramount lord
among their fellowship of kings.33
The incident reveals the influence of Mughal power in the region, but also its
contested nature. By no means did the Magh raja instantly recognize the Mughal
prince as his liege lord; rather he saw him as a foreign interlocutor. Mughal
administrative conventions, whether relating to voluntary trade or Indo-Persian
ceremonial in such settings as Darbars, would be adopted in modified form by
(p.xxiii) local rulers for strategic alliance making, but alongside the continued
observance of tribal authority, and local forms of agricultural production,
religious ritual, customary law, inheritance, and marriage conventions, as well as
a host of other social practices.34 In certain cases, there was more overt
resistance.35 Indeed, there was little Mughal intervention in the CHT until 1713,
when Chakma Raja Zallal Khan petitioned the then Mughal Emperor Farruksiyar
(1713–19) to allow open trade between the jhumiahs (the swidden
agriculturalists who peopled the Hill Tracts) and the lowland beparees (traders)
on payment of a cotton tribute.36
This hybrid regional history has also influenced ideas of tribal identity and
origin. Colonial administrators, scholars, and indigenous genealogists have long
been divided on the historical antecedents and migration patterns of the original
autochthone peoples in this porous border area. In large part, due to the
‘absence of detailed authentic records’, particularly written chronicles, it has
been difficult to verify the premodern history of the region. Most genesis stories
are based on oral histories and the narratives of minstrel-bards, such as the
genkhuli, who recited genealogical histories over generations.37 Some claim the
peoples of the region originated in southern Tibet or southeastern China before
migrating to their current location.38 Others argued that they were from
Malacca, a place of Malay origin.39 Yet other hypotheses suggested they had
moved from Arakan in Burma40 or were the descendants of medieval mixed
Mughal–Arakan marriages.41 Such genesis narratives captured the imagination
Page 7 of 52
Introduction
of later British colonial administrators who from the eighteenth century onwards
attempted to use such mythologies to determine and define tribal identity and
otherness.42 Members of the Chakma tribe, the largest group in the region, have
several origin tales, and believe themselves descendants of both Hindu and
Buddhist royal dynasties. They claim ancestry from the ancient Hindu Kshatriya
kings of Champanagar in Magadha, in what is contemporary Bihar,43 as well as
lineal descent from the Shakyas, the gotra or clan of Gautama Buddha, the
founder of Buddhism.44 Such varying accounts reflect the diverse
interconnecting histories of the CHT peoples, which crossed boundaries of
religious, cultural, and ethnic typology. As the tentacles of colonial military
capitalism grew, particularly under the East India Company, such fluid histories
became increasingly scrutinized and more rigidly bounded.
(p.xxiv) Colonial Capital at the Borders of Empire: The East India Company and the
Burmese State
By the early eighteenth century, the Mughal empire was splintering both at the
centre and at the margins. Its wane saw the rise of European commercial
interest. In the eighteenth century, the English, Dutch, Danish, Ostend, French,
and Portuguese companies were all engaged players in the region.45 The English
East India Company, which had been formed by royal charter under Queen
Elizabeth I in 1600, gained rights to trade in Mughal India under Emperor
Jahangir by 1619.46 It would broaden its reach in Mughal India throughout the
seventeenth century, and by the eighteenth century, would adopt a militarily
expansionist role in the subcontinent, in part due to the growing strength of its
navies. With the decisive victory of the British commander, Robert Clive, against
the nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-Daula, in the Battle of Plassey of 1757, the East
India Company emerged as the dominant European force in Bengal. Seven years
later, following the Battle of Buxar in 1764, it acquired the rights of diwani or
revenue collection in Bengal from the much diminished Mughal emperor.47
In 1760, Nawab Mir Qasim Ali Khan, the Mughal governor of Bengal, ceded the
province to the British. Chittagong soon became strategically significant to the
Company for several reasons: it housed a bustling port, important for a naval
imperial power; it was a significant commercial hub in the Indian Ocean
economy; it served as a frontier district between Bengal and Arakan, which still
controlled much of the nearby territory;48 and it was a shield against the
increasingly muscular ambitions of Burma.49 Burmese ships were trading far
and wide and Burma’s port cities, such as Pegu, were, like Chittagong, a
mélange of Europeans, Persians, Armenians, South Asians, Mons, and Burmese,
among others in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. By the early nineteenth
century, there was a prosperous and vibrant commercial relationship between
Burma and China. Burma exported cotton to China, while China sent raw silk for
the Burmese weaving industry; gold and silver, which enriched the Burmese
Page 8 of 52
Introduction
aristocratic class; as well as copper, sulphur, zinc, cast-iron pots and pans, paper,
and various exotic goods.50
Thus, the East India Company saw the CHT and the neighbouring hill border as
a strategic gateway to the riches of Burma and China, (p.xxv) and a buffer zone
against both these expansionist, robust Asian states51 as well as the more
recalcitrant and troublesome eastward-dwelling tribes, such as the oft-vilified
Lushais/Kukis.52 In 1785, Burma invaded cosmopolitan Arakan,53 leading to the
displacement of Arakanese refugees into the CHT,54 where they received support
and sanctuary from local Buddhist communities. In response, the Burmese
attempted to disrupt the East India Company’s local trade and revenue systems
in northeast India. Burmese armies invaded Assam three times between 1817
and 1826, and after 1821, were forced to retreat during the Anglo-Burmese War
of 1824–6.55 With their final victory in 1826, the British gained control over
Arakan56 and became fully entrenched in the region.57 Under the Treaty of
Yandabo, the court at Ava relinquished interference in the affairs of Jaintia,
Cachar, and Assam, and ceded their territories of Manipur, Arakan, and the
Tenasserim. It also agreed to pay an indemnity of one million pounds sterling (a
vast sum for the era) and exchange diplomatic representatives between
Amarapura and Calcutta.58
Company Administration: Revenue Collection and Plough Agriculture

From the start, the colonial government was concerned with extracting revenue
collection from the CHT and transitioning the hill tribes from jhum cultivators to
plough agriculturalists.59 These twin issues would remain primary
administrative objectives throughout the colonial period, up until the twentieth
century, but on both fronts the British faced strong indigenous opposition. Until
1772, the East India Company largely maintained pre-existing Mughal policies of
regional non-interference, but in the period following, after Warren Hasting’s
assumption of the office of governor of Fort William, the CHT increasingly came
within the crosshairs of Company ambitions.60
Resisting the Company’s demand for revenue payments, the hill peoples rallied
behind the leadership of the Chakma chief.61 In 1777, the British chief of
Chittagong wrote to Warren Hastings that a deputy of the Chakma chief, one
soldier-statesman, ‘Ramoo Cawn’, or Ramu Khan,62 had violently resisted
Company landholders by recruiting and leading a fighting body of Kuki
warriors.63 The Kukis, later termed the Lushais and after India’s independence,
the Mizos,64 were perceived by (p.xxvi) the British as the most skilled and
bloodthirsty headhunters and raiders among the hill tribes. In November 1777,
the government requested British troops under the command of Captain Edward
Ellesker to move against the Kuki forces.65 In the following year of 1778, the
Chakma Chief Jan Baksh Khan, along with Ramu Khan and their warriors,
captured Bengali talukdars, raiyats (reyotts), or cultivators, and requested the
payment of nazirs (or tributes) following Mughal revenue patterns. They erected
Page 9 of 52
Introduction
neeshans (flags of independence) and would not allow the raiyats to cultivate the
land.66 A decades-long war broke out thereafter, with various skirmishes in 1784
and 1785, which the British failed to win. As Amena Mohsin argues, the
Chakmas had constructed a formidable military structure and strategy, using
guerilla tactics of hit and run to fight the East India Company army.67
In 1787, the British finally succeeded in squelching the resistance. Jan Baksh
Khan surrendered to the Company after an enforced economic blockade on the
hill people. He subsequently accepted British suzerainty and agreed to pay a
cotton tribute in exchange for reinstated hill–plains trade. He also agreed to
keep the peace in the neighbouring border regions.68 At first, the tribute was
paid in cotton, but after 1789, it transitioned into cash. In exchange, the British
protected the autonomy of the Hill Tracts and the sovereignty of its indigenous
leadership, largely preventing Bengali migration to the hills until 1860.69
As the commissioner of Chittagong, Mr Halhed, admitted in 1829, the British

had no real ‘authority in the hills’ and revenue amounts remained modest, ‘the
payment of the tribute which is trivial in amount in each instance is guaranteed
by a third party, resident in our own territory, and who is alone responsible.’70
Indeed, while the amounts may have been ‘trivial’, the Company’s system of
revenue collection would nonetheless have reverberations, which would in time
alter the Hill Tracts. As Halhed noted, most payments were made through
intermediaries—Bengali commission agents, who collected tribute from the
chiefs on behalf of the Company. Bengalis now began living and travelling in the
Hill Tracts as government agents, traders, and fortune-seekers.71 By the mid-
nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries, colonial administrators
observed and bemoaned the extortionate rates of Bengali moneylenders, who
swindled local tribal peoples, and (p.xxvii) recounted many such incidents in
their administrative reports, surveys, and memoirs. The British often disparaged
the Bengalis and worked assiduously to block further Bengali migration,72 which
ironically they had themselves catalyzed a century earlier. In his 1909 gazetteer,
R.H. Sneyd Hutchinson noted:
The authorities do all in their power to protect the hillmen from the
rapacity of the money-lenders, but it is a very difficult task to deal with
these blood-suckers, and the general improvidence of the hillman renders
him an easy prey to these astute rogues. A very wholesome regulation in
the Hill Tracts is the one forbidding the appearance of a pleader or
mukhtear (lawyer) in any court within the jurisdiction of the Chittagong
Hill Tracts. This regulation has a very satisfactory deterrent effect on
unnecessary litigation.73
The second major issue of contention was that of plough cultivation. From the
first, the hill people resisted colonial proselytization of plough agriculture. They
remained firmly rooted in jhum production, up through the mid-twentieth
Page 10 of 52
Introduction
century. While Francis Buchanan (later Hamilton) noted that the soil quality was
rich for plough cultivation as early as the late eighteenth century, the hill people
were uninterested in colonial enticements to shift to plough farming. He even
(grudgingly) acknowledged that while jhumming was ‘rude’ in nature, it had
various advantages.74 Despite the British introducing a number of incentives, in
1868, merely six applications were made for plough cultivation, and by 1873, the
number rose to a scant 78, which resulted in only 294 acres under investment.
The deputy commissioner, in his Annual Report for 1874–5, noted numerous
drawbacks, including the threat of wild animals, such as tigers, on cattle as well
as other ‘wild beasts’ and birds on crops. Furthermore, the local leadership
resisted such introductions as they would lose capitation tax for the hill people
would thereafter pay allegiance to the deputy commissioner not the chief.75 This
lack of interest persisted through the early twentieth century, when the majority
of CHT residents continued to jhum as noted in the 1901 census.76
Despite such measures of control, the colonial period saw continued cultural
hybridity within the region irrespective of the creation of more rigid territorial
boundaries. The CHT was still governed by the chiefs, who ruled groups of
people—several dozen to thousands of people in number.77 Many of these chiefs
maintained connections (p.xxviii) with Southeast Asia, particularly Arakan and
Burma, as they had for centuries.78 At the same time, they retained relations
with neighbouring plains-dwelling Bengalis who practised various faiths such as
Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam. In the flat lands of their territories, Chakma
rulers encouraged Bengalis to settle and cultivate arable land,79 in part because
plough agriculture was a form of farming that the tribal peoples would not
embrace, preferring a more ‘free and wandering’ life.80 In larger northeast
India, colonial borders remained porous and there was a vibrant movement of
goods and people, from traders, migrants, healers, and mendicants.81
Visitors to the region observed this rich cultural heterogeneity. When Francis
Buchanan first travelled through the region in 1798, he was impressed by its
rich religious and cultural hybridity, which had emerged out of its multi-ethnic,
multireligious past. He noted that the tribal chief, the Bohmong raja, employed
both Hindu and Muslim servants, consulted a Muslim minister of state, and
housed debt slaves from the Marma tribe in his household. He also collected
European commodities, outfitting his royal residence with chairs, carpets, beds,
mats, and other western furniture.82 During this same trip, Buchanan noticed a
Chakma Buddhist priest reading a Bengali text and observed that many
Chakmas spoke Bengali. Local place names were often of Sanskritic-Hindu
derivation, including that of the main river, the Karnaphuli, the Chakma city of
Rangamati, and the sacred hill landscapes of Ram Pahar and Sita Pahar.83 Such
heterogeneity was the product of centuries of cultural exchange in the area, and
was particularly highlighted in colonial accounts as stunning evidence of
unusual fusion. Buchanan, who was critical of the work of contemporary British
administrators in Bengal that emphasized Brahmanical Hinduism such as that of
Page 11 of 52
Introduction
the Sanskritist and founder of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, William Jones,
was particularly intrigued by the egalitarianism of Buddhism.84 He found such
instances of religious and cultural cross-mixture both surprising and inscrutable.
Indeed, as we shall see in Chapter 1, the hill people befuddled him, as their
cultural practices questioned his perceived beliefs on the bounded nature of
religion. Such observations reveal the importance of colonial accounts as
records of cultural cosmopolitanism, and the ensuing problems of later colonial
reification.
(p.xxix) Post-Mutiny Reverberations: Overt Intervention under the British Raj

The nineteenth century saw more pronounced colonial intervention with the
development of the British Raj. After the Mutiny or first war of Indian
independence in 1857–8 and the subsequent transition from Company to Crown
rule, the administration of the CHT began to change. In 1859, a raid occurred at
the fort at Kaptai, and in 1860, Kukis raided and killed British settlers living in
Tripura, which led to a force being sent to Barkal with the purpose of punishing
the ‘offenders’.85 The region was subsequently annexed that year, formally
separated from the Chittagong Administration, and thereafter declared an
‘Excluded Area’ with its own revenue and civil administration.86
There was a long prior history of raiding in the region, and the colonial
government had already led a number of punitive campaigns against offending
hill tribes, resulting in the direct colonial administration of the Khasi Hills
District in 1833 and the Jaintia Hills District in 1835.87 Company administrators
feared raiding for three primary reasons: its disruption of agricultural activities;
prevention of further Company expansion; and limitations on efficient and
enhanced revenue collection. The British perceived the frequency of such raids
as forms of indiscipline, epitomizing ‘the “uncivil” nature of the tribes’ according
to the Arakan commissioner. Colonial administrators in particular blamed the
lack of unity among local elites as a key reason behind raiding, citing that
raiders took advantage of internal familial disputes, for instance, those within
the family of the Bohmong raja, to raid within the raja’s territory.88
To prevent raiding and to discipline the tribes, the colonial government

implemented forms of indirect rule, which undermined the position of traditional
leaders. Under Act XXII, the hills and forests to the east of Chittagong district
were renamed the ‘Chittagong Hill Tracts’, divided into a new territory which
constituted of 17,602 sq. km with a population of 63,054 and a population
density of less than four persons per sq. km.89 The purpose of the 1860
annexation, according to the colonial government, was the protection of hill
people from the oft-cited menace of Bengali middlemen, particularly the
aforementioned attorneys and moneylenders; the preservation of indigenous
‘customs (p.xxx) and prejudices’ from foreign assimilation; and a greater
Page 12 of 52
Introduction
emphasis on British courts intervening in rulings on judicial matters, particularly

‘heinous’ crimes.90
In the process, the British, while co-opting pre-existing systems of semi-

autonomous tribal governance, also created a bureaucracy that undermined the
authority of the chiefs and was far more interventionist than in the first century
of Company rule. The CHT came under the jurisdiction of a superintendent,
whose headquarters were first established at Chandraghona, and later moved to
the Chakma capital of Rangamati.91 In 1867, the British formally changed the
official title from superintendent to deputy commissioner.92 The first
superintendent of the Hill Tracts, considered an ‘eccentric’ man, was known
locally as the ‘Pagla Sahib’, and was subsequently succeeded by Captain Graham
and then Thomas H. Lewin, who later became the newly created deputy
commissioner.93 ‘An unusual British official’,94 Lewin originally took up
residence in Chandraghona, 18 miles up the Karnafuli river, on the border of
Chittagong District.95 He would produce a voluminous written, visual, and
photographic archive of the Hill Tracts. From the start of his administrative
term, he aimed to curb the chiefs’ powers in military, political, and financial
spheres. He and later colonial officials to follow would argue that the chiefs
were unable to protect their own peoples from the raiding of eastward-dwelling
tribes and that the indigenous hill men needed British courts to settle disputes
rather than their chiefs’ rulings.96 To this end, Lewin would work to control the
local chiefs or rajas. For instance, he would go on to replace the Bohmong chief,
Kong Hla Nyo, with a more malleable cousin. However, he would find the
Chakma chieftainess, the widowed Rani Kalindi, a much more formidable
adversary.97
The rani resisted colonial intervention into local Chakma state administration,
law, revenue collection, and territorial issues for years. As a way to curb the
rani’s influence, Lewin elevated one of her village headmen (roaza) to the rank
of chief and created the new state of the Mong raja from 653 square miles of
existing Chakma raj territory.98 She fought continuously throughout this period
for Lewin’s dismissal, raising a slew of charges related to mismanagement with
his superiors in Calcutta, which would throw a subsequent pall over his career
and lead Lewin to suggest, perhaps (p.xxxi) hyperbolically, that she was behind
a botched assassination attempt on his life.99
In light of Lewin’s policies, the CHT was redrawn and subdivided into three
chieftaincies in 1881: the Mong circle in the north under the newly crowned
Mong raja at Manikchari; the diminished Chakma circle at the centre under the
Chakma raja at Rangamati; and the Bohmong circle in the south under the third
premier tribal ruler of the CHT, the Bohmong raja, at Banderban.100 In the
process, the colonial government elevated these three primary or ‘circle’ chiefs,
although there were several other tribal groups in the region with their own
indigenous leaders. For security reasons, the district headquarters were moved
Page 13 of 52
Introduction
from Chandraghona to Rangamati.101 The new district consisted of the three

chiefs’ circles, initially a khas mahal or government estate, and government
‘reserved’ forests.102 Revenue collection was divided between the colonial
government and the indigenous chiefs, with the British collecting rent from
plough cultivators while the chiefs collected tax from jhum practitioners.103
One of Lewin’s primary administrative objectives, in addition to limiting the

influence of the tribal chiefs, was dealing with the larger issue of raiding and
bringing the more recalcitrant raiding tribes and headhunters to heel. Towards
that purpose, he and successive colonial administrations worked to suppress the
Kukis/Lushais. In 1871–2, he engaged in a successful campaign against the
Lushais after an English tea plantation was raided, suffering one fatality and the
abduction of several indigenous workers, including the young English girl Mary
Winchester, daughter of the plantation manager.104 The raid and ensuing
campaign received much publicity in the Anglo-Indian and British press of the
day.105 In the period following, the colonial government created military camps
to maintain ‘law and order’, and by the 1870s, there was one military policeman
for every ninety-six inhabitants.106 Troops, particularly imported Gurkha forces
from Nepal, Manipur, and Assam, were stationed throughout the district, their
presence embodying the image of colonial discipline and dedication.107 In 1892,
the Lushai Hills were annexed and the CHT became an independent subdivision
of Chittagong, leading to the 1900 Regulation, at which point the Hill Tracts was
reclassified as a separate district.108
(p.xxxii) Defining a Nation: Excluded Status, Local Sovereignty, and the Language of
Indian Nationalism
The new district had a unique and rather tenuous position in colonial India. As
Willem van Schendel notes, it became neither a princely state, as were several
neighbouring semi-autonomous kingdoms with hereditary dynasties such as
Tripura, nor was it a regular district under the direct control of the Government
of Bengal, like that of bordering Chittagong district.109 Indeed, if this borderland
had not come under colonial rule, it would have remained a ‘multi-polar-zone’ of
monarchies and chieftaincies in constant competition with each other.110 Its
unique status after 1900 reinforced localized traditional tax collection systems
with the chiefs at the apex. Chiefs retained hereditary positions, with the ability
to choose their successors, and the colonial state formally recognized the
investiture of each chief up until 1947. Rajas and their village headmen received
commissions on collected tax and, in return, additional land grants. Chiefs also
retained jurisdiction, as they had done since Mughal times, over customary law
and ‘minor legal matters’ in their circles, and chose their village headmen in the
new administrative units of mauzas which the British had introduced.111
However, while the Regulation or Manual (1900), as it was called, appeared

‘favourable’ to the hill people on the surface, it eroded their sovereignty and
further alienated them from the larger political environment in turn-of-the-
Page 14 of 52
Introduction
century Bengal and greater India. More power was invested in the deputy
commissioner while chiefs were converted into local ‘tax collectors’.112 This
redrawing of districts, annexation of lands, and subjugation of recalcitrant tribes
was in large part driven by a colonial need to create firm borders and ideas of
territoriality.113 An island people, the British brought a ‘seacoast view’ to
frontier areas like the CHT, and felt the need for neat boundaries between
different tribes and their territories. This need to create boundary lines was the
impetus behind the creation of the chiefs’ circles and excluded or special status
for tribal areas. However, in reality, these newly created borders were often
more fluid than fixed.114 In 1920, an amendment declared the region a
‘Backward Tract’. Fifteen years later, the Government of India Act of 1935
designated the entire region a ‘Totally Excluded Area’, severing its ties with
larger Bengal.115 Under (p.xxxiii) this Act, the tribal chiefs who had previously
been charged with the administration of their circles now found themselves
acting more as advisors to the colonial government than executive agents, with
their powers acutely curtailed.116 In the process, the colonial state rigidified
territorial boundaries and limited earlier, more fluid cultural exchanges through
strict binaries of self vs. the other.117
Scholars such as Amena Mohsin argue that these colonial policies of territorial
exclusion ultimately divorced frontier zones, like the CHT, from the developing
Indian nationalist movement.118 While protected against the vicissitudes of
lowland capitalists, such demarcations also created limited market and trade
interactions for tribal entrepreneurs and weakened the flow of cultural and
intellectual ideas from greater Bengal into the Hill Tracts, such as those of the
Bengali renaissance. Earlier, there had been more movement between
highlanders and lowlanders through an unrestricted hill–valley flow.119 Tribal
groups now became voiceless minorities in the ensuing debate for political
enfranchisement.
It was these historical forces—pre-colonial cross-border movements and colonial

attempts to control, survey, and ultimately territorialize the peoples of the region
—that influenced the way the region was perceived in the imperial imagination.
Colonial administrators, from East India Company botanists to early twentieth-
century pukka sahibs of the British Raj, not only patrolled and policed the
region, but they also recorded and romanticized it. Their ensuing writings
dissected and deciphered the Hill Tracts, as well as poeticized and memorialized
its lands and people through multiple literary, visual, and photographic methods.
This book attempts to gauge the writings of these administrators on the hill
region. But who exactly were they?
The Colonial Archive: Knowing and Classifying the Hills

British political administrators, including scientists, topographers, explorers,
and ethnologists,120 took up posts in ‘frontier’ regions such as the CHT, and in
the process became would-be ethnographers of the peoples they encountered.
Page 15 of 52
Introduction
They often had sustained, if unequal, cross-cultural relationships with the

indigenous subjects they came in contact with. A number of these amateur
scholars were soldiers who experimented with new hobbies like rock collecting,
botany, (p.xxxiv) recording philological and cultural histories, and writing
accounts of military conquests in the lull periods between campaigns.121 In the
first century of colonial rule, it was mainly such administrator scholars who
created and shared colonial knowledge.122 Their monographs would later serve
as guides for new European arrivals, whether soldiers or civil servants.123
In their desire to categorize and record the cultural rites and material
phenomena of life in frontier zones, these colonial officials created new
intellectual practices, literary genres, and disciplines. They were seminal in
naming and taxonomizing indigenous systems of knowledge through what
Bernard Cohn describes as a system of ‘investigative modalities’ using methods
such as observation and travel narrative, survey, enumeration, and
surveillance.124 In this way, interpretations of the Hill Tracts were formulated
within the emerging European intellectual discourses of Linnaean botany,125
natural and environmental history,126 statistics,127 studies of gender, sexuality,
and domesticity,128 enumeration in the census and survey,129 and personal
observation and oral testimony formulated by ethnography and the later more
formal discipline of anthropology.130 As Peter Pels observes, through these new
epistemologies, people and their surroundings became ‘things’, measured and
classified.131 In the process, colonial scholar-administrator utilized various
literary genres and intellectual disciplines to record and share their findings,
including travelogues, ethnographies, anthropological monographs, tour
journals, diaries, memoirs, letters, poetry, short fiction, journalistic articles,
surveys, censuses, and craniometry. I employ Cohn’s modalities broadly as a
prism through which to examine colonial knowledge formation of the CHT and
the way it defined and catalogued indigenous geographies, peoples, and
customs.
The work of such colonial officials on the northeast border is particularly

important in revealing both the vulnerabilities and opportunities that colonial
administrations faced in such buffer zones and how individual officials, agencies,
and regulatory systems of the Empire forged the region. Their writings address
a host of key questions, such as the construction of frontiers and the codification
of boundaries, the nature of British imperial control as embodied in the survey,
treaty or military force, the regulation of tribal political alliances, local, district
economies, and the colonial state’s role in (p.xxxv) engineering intertribal
conflict.132 Before going further, it is important to discuss these colonial
knowledge systems as each chapter of this book is structured chronologically
through the lens of a particular investigative modality.
Page 16 of 52
Introduction
Botany and the Eighteenth-Century Natural History Travelogue

During the eighteenth century, the travelogue flourished as a genre and was
used to describe peoples both familiar and unfamiliar to the Western observer.
Popular audiences were especially hungry for narratives of exotic, distant locales
and European encounters with the non-European other.133 After Swedish
taxonomist Carl Linné’s (Linnaeus)’s Systema Naturae (The System of Nature)
was published in 1735, eighteenth-century travel writing became inherently
intertwined with studies of natural history. Young botanists were often first
trained in the medical sciences before turning to careers in natural history.
These Enlightenment men of science—dubbed as Linnaean ‘disciples’—gained
employment on colonial trading vessels as ships’ surgeons, using such voyages
as a way to see the world and discover and classify new species. In the process,
they encountered new human societies, which they named just as they did
plants, animals, and landscapes134 in a comparative method that was, at its
heart, unequal. Linnaean botanists and natural historians invariably supported
the abiding ‘myth of European superiority’.135
Francis Buchanan was one such man of science who applied a botanical lens to
the Hill Tracts. As mentioned earlier, he was a Scottish ship’s surgeon who had
earlier visited the West Indies before travelling through Burma and Bengal. He
came to the CHT in 1798 after an earlier trip to Ava and Pegu in Burma in 1795.
In his ensuing tour diary, he employed the language of natural history to
describe not only the region’s unusual soil quality, topography, and local jhum
production, but also the religious, cultural, and linguistic practices of the various
hill tribes he encountered. In the process, he exposed the tumultuous history of
this border region, which found itself at the crossroads of imperial ambition by
both the East India Company and the kingdom of Burma.136
Throughout his diary, Buchanan interwove the language of planting, growing,

fertilization, and crossbreeding to determine and (p.xxxvi) critique existing
transregional, inter-religious, multi-linguistic, and interethnic practices.
Buchanan was uncomfortable with the various hybrid cultural practices of the
border tribes he encountered, whether it was religious rituals, which merged
elements of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and animism; languages and dialects
that breached the boundaries of South Asian and Southeast Asian vernaculars
such as the Bengali-inflected Tibeto-Burmese spoken in the region; or the
crosspollination of Bengali, Burmese, Arakanese, and indigenous material
culture in forms of dress, ornamentation, and architecture. Just as he searched
for ideal soil conditions, high quality crops such as spices or rice, and pure-bred
animals, Buchanan sought to find unadulterated human specimens, who were
‘essential’ representatives of their respective ‘tribes’ or religions.137 While
ultimately a futile quest, Buchanan’s botanical records from his two-and-a-half
month visit to the Hill Tracts nonetheless serve as a fascinating revelation on the
Page 17 of 52
Introduction
historic cosmopolitanism of this border region, which questions the later reifying
nationalistic depictions of ethnic identity.
Gendered Histories: Nineteenth-Century Readings of Landscape, Tribe, and

Indigenous Female Agency
Travellers like Buchanan, as a whole, represented a new generation of colonial
knowledge-makers who had replaced the rapacious Company soldiers and
merchants of the mid-eighteenth century with nineteenth-century gentlemanly
scholar administrators: part scientists and part military men of fairness and
intellectual questioning, epitomized by Enlightenment reason and the ‘civilizing
mission’ of the colonial project.138 By the mid-nineteenth century, informal
Indian ethnography was found in a plethora of colonial publications, including
gazetteers, census reports, scholarly journals, and the writings of scholar
administrators. Such material was used to define India’s races and contrast
them with each other as well as with their British overlords.139 In creating
categories of difference, Victorian administrators incorporated a wide range of
intellectual methodologies, including the language of gender and sexuality.
Thomas H. Lewin, who served as superintendent and then first deputy
commissioner of the CHT during the 1860s and 1870s, wrote extensively on the
CHT. His works addressed a range of (p.xxxvii) topics, from administration and
jhum collection to religious rituals, linguistic histories, and cultural practices,
which constituted an important compendium on the hill peoples and the
gendered conceptions of ‘tribal’ difference. His writings are sprinkled with
liberal references to family histories, both of the tribal subjects he encountered
and of his own, and reveal the significant legacy of personal recollections,
‘intimate or private memories and public debates’ on colonial history and its
interpretation.140
Lewin’s work is by no means dry or factual in nature, for he was very conscious
that he was narrating an adventure tale. He portrayed the northeast border as a
site of imperial imaginative longing through the careful and artful choice of
specific literary symbols, tropes, and stylistic devices, often derived from images
of the American frontier.141 In particular, it was his interest in women’s lives that
is most revealing of how he perceived tribal culture and hill geography in the
CHT. Many of his writings delved into issues relevant to women’s history,
including the customs, rituals, and laws surrounding indigenous marriage, the
position of local female rulers, female political agency and resistance to colonial
and patriarchal hierarchies, and comparisons between tribal and Victorian
domesticity and maternal authority.
During his time in the CHT, Lewin was involved in a contentious tug-of-war
struggle for power with the Chakma regent queen and step-grandmother of the
minor chief, Rani Kalindi. Rani Kalindi consistently fought to have him removed
from office by petitioning his superiors in Calcutta and employing a battery of
Bengali lawyers and advisors. Despite practising partial purdah, Rani Kalindi
Page 18 of 52
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
est ce pays des forêts, situé par delà les Andes. Il est comme
enfermé entre les grandes solitudes du Brésil occidental et la
gigantesque Cordillère. Le chemin de fer transandin va lui donner la
vie et, plus tard, atteignant l’un des grands affluents de l’Amazone,
l’Ucayali, aura créé une voie directe sur l’Europe, par laquelle
s’écouleront les produits de cet immense territoire.
On peut affirmer que jamais l’établissement d’une voie ferrée ne
présenta pareilles difficultés.
Le chemin de fer de l’Oroya gravit une hauteur de 4,700 mètres,
sur un parcours de 200 kilomètres, ce qui donne une pente moyenne
de 22 millimètres par mètre. La ligne compte 45 tunnels et 25 ponts,
dont l’un a des piles de 79 mètres de hauteur (quatre à cinq fois
l’une des plus hautes maisons de Paris).
Il a fallu une audace et une énergie peu ordinaires pour
entreprendre et mener à bien un pareil projet. L’honneur de son
exécution en revient d’abord au gouvernement du Pérou, puis à M.
Meiggs, ingénieur américain, concessionnaire des deux lignes de
Mollendo au lac Titicaca et de Lima à Oroya, enfin à M. Malinowski,
déjà nommé.
Vers huit heures du matin, notre train commence à attaquer
sérieusement la montagne ; nous sommes entrés dans la région
interandine, la Sierra. Le paysage devient sévère et les précipices se
creusent sous notre route à mesure que s’effectue l’ascension. La
voie ferrée ne peut plus trouver assez de place pour y développer
ses courbes ; alors le train s’engage dans un cul-de-sac sans issue,
s’arrête à son extrémité ; un aiguilleur change la voie, véritable lacet,
et la machine, repartant en arrière, nous pousse sur une nouvelle
pente. Ainsi, tantôt tirés, tantôt poussés, nous escaladons une
succession de terrasses superposées à des hauteurs qui déjà nous
donnent le vertige. Voici le pont de Verrugas, d’une hardiesse inouïe,
jeté entre deux montagnes séparées par un précipice, le tablier est à
claire-voie, et le regard plonge librement dans le vide. Plus loin, le
pont de Challapa, tout en fer comme le premier, construit en France
et ajusté sur les lieux par des ouvriers français. On nous fait
remarquer, sur le revers des montagnes, de larges plates-formes
soutenues par des pierres, travail primitif des Indiens, déjà attirés
par les gisements métalliques.
Le train s’arrête au village de Matucana. Nous ne sommes
encore qu’à quatre-vingt-dix kilomètres de la capitale, et l’altitude est
de deux mille quatre cents mètres. Après avoir été vite, mais
consciencieusement écorchés par des exploiteurs allemands
installés au buffet de la station, nous repartons.
L’aspect de la montagne devient tout à fait grandiose ; notre route
est une course échevelée par-dessus des gouffres invraisemblables,
à travers d’étroits tunnels se succédant presque sans interruption.
Soudain, au sortir d’une profonde obscurité, nous nous engageons
sur un pont jeté en travers d’une énorme crevasse formée par deux
murailles de rochers à pic, dont les bases se perdent dans un
abîme. Le site a un caractère de sauvagerie diabolique, et l’endroit
est bien nommé : el puente del Infernillo, le pont de l’Enfer ! Nous
avançons doucement, nous franchissons ce sombre passage, non
sans quelque émotion, et le train disparaît de nouveau dans un
tunnel qui sert de lit à un torrent qu’on s’apprête à détourner ; les
eaux roulent au-dessous de nous avec un mugissement
assourdissant et sinistre, la machine semble lutter avec peine contre
ce nouvel obstacle. Je ne puis rendre le sentiment d’admiration et de
crainte que nous éprouvâmes en cet endroit. Cette escalade à toute
vapeur de la plus grande chaîne de montagnes qui soit au monde
n’est-elle pas véritablement extraordinaire ? Nous sommes encore
bien plus « empoignés » par ces deux simples rubans de fer que par
les sévères beautés du paysage, et les vers du grand poète des
Odes et Ballades reviennent à ma mémoire :
« A peine adolescent, sur les Andes sauvages,

» De rochers en rochers, je m’ouvrais des chemins ;
» Ma tête, ainsi qu’un mont, arrêtait les nuages ;
» Et souvent, dans les cieux, épiant leur passage,
» J’ai pris des aigles dans mes mains. »
Allons, hurrah ! trois fois hurrah ! à notre compatriote, qui,
semblable au Géant, a su s’ouvrir et ouvrir au monde entier un
chemin à travers ces altières montagnes.
Vers deux heures, nous atteignons Chicla, où s’arrête
actuellement le chemin de fer, bien que les travaux soient presque
complètement terminés jusqu’au Summit tunnel, point culminant de
la voie ferrée, dont l’altitude exacte est 4,768 mètres. Chicla n’est
qu’à 3,725 mètres au-dessus du niveau de la mer, juste la hauteur
du fameux pic de Ténériffe. C’est une petite station, auprès de
laquelle on a construit une modeste auberge, où nous trouvons
cependant le luxe d’un billard. Nous n’y devons rester que quelques
minutes et ne protestons pas contre un arrêt aussi court, car
quelques-uns d’entre nous, y compris le conducteur du train lui-
même, souffrent du sorocho ou mal des montagnes, causé par la
raréfaction de l’air ; nous le combattons assez victorieusement par
l’absorption de plusieurs petits verres d’eau-de-vie, et comme la
température est devenue très froide, nous nous enveloppons dans
nos manteaux. En attendant que le train soit prêt, nous assistons au
départ assez pittoresque d’une troupe de lamas porteurs. Cet animal
rend aux habitants de la Sierra des services inappréciables ; doux,
timide, s’apprivoisant facilement, il remplace ici le dromadaire qu’il
rappelle un peu par sa couleur, sa forme et ses allures, sinon par sa
taille qui est beaucoup plus petite.
Nous n’avons constaté à cet utile quadrupède qu’un défaut, dont
il est bon d’être prévenu à l’avance, celui de cracher à la figure des
gens qui lui déplaisent.
Au-dessus de nos têtes plane un grand condor, ce roi des
oiseaux carnassiers, qui peut dans ses puissantes serres enlever un
mouton ou un enfant. L’envergure de celui-là doit bien atteindre cinq
mètres. Tout près de nous se dresse le mont Meiggs, dans le ventre
duquel passe la voie ferrée avant de redescendre le versant
oriental ; deux de nos amis, MM. René et Jules de Latour, sont partis
depuis la veille au matin pour en atteindre le sommet et ne seront de
retour que dans la nuit. Un employé du chemin de fer nous dit les
avoir vus passer. Sans inquiétude sur le sort de nos compagnons
qui, d’ailleurs, se sont dégourdi les jarrets en faisant l’ascension du
mont Blanc avant notre départ, nous remontons dans notre wagon.
Un coup de sifflet sec, strident, et nous redescendons sur Lima
avec une vitesse vertigineuse. Les grands monts, les profonds
tunnels, les gorges sauvages, les noirs précipices défilent comme
une fantasmagorie de ballade allemande ; l’ardente vapeur semble
nous emporter dans une fuite éperdue, et nous avons à peine le
temps de reconnaître les lieux que nous venons de traverser tout à
l’heure.
Cependant, nous voici en plaine ; le train ralentit sa course,
s’arrête et, sous la clarté d’un crépuscule prêt à s’éteindre, nous
dépose sains et saufs, étourdis et charmés, aux portes de la ville.
AU PÉROU
LE CALLAO ET LIMA
(Suite.)
La collection Zaballos. — Discussion avec le Vatican. — Rembrandt et le

Savetier. — Un bal à bord de la Junon. — Notes rétrospectives : le guano,
l’empire des Incas, la situation actuelle et l’avenir du Pérou.
Le lendemain de notre excursion en chemin de fer, nous avons

été invités à visiter la collection des tableaux d’un riche armateur de
Lima, don Manuel Zaballos. Ici, lecteur, j’ai besoin de toute votre
indulgence et de toute votre confiance dans ma sincérité. Vous ne
voudrez pas me croire quand je vous aurai dit que M. Zaballos a la
plus belle collection particulière du monde entier, et vous
m’opposerez cette irréfutable objection : Si cela était, on le saurait.
« A beau mentir qui vient de loin » est un commun proverbe, et vous
voilà tout prêt à me l’appliquer. Un chemin de fer fantastique, une
collection merveilleuse de toiles anciennes…, au Pérou ! c’est trop à
la fois.
Croyez-moi ou ne me croyez pas, je me suis donné pour mission
de dire ce que j’ai vu, j’obéis à ma consigne.
Nous voici devant une des plus vieilles maisons de la ville, dont
la façade est déjà un bijou d’architecture espagnole. Le maître de
céans nous introduit dans un premier salon ne contenant que des
sujets religieux ; il nous montre avec quelque négligence trois
Murillo, où nous cherchons en vain la faute d’orthographe d’un
copiste, et avant que nous ayons eu le temps de détailler cette
Sainte Madeleine, ce Saint Jean et cette Descente de croix, il nous
entraîne dans son salon carré, en face d’un Zurbaran bien connu ou
plutôt bien cherché des connaisseurs : l’Extase de saint François ; à
droite deux beaux Rubens ; à gauche, un Van Dyck ; partout,
accrochés au hasard, dans des cadres ternes et vermoulus, des
Raphaël, des Claude Lorrain, des Paul Potter. Sans être savants
comme des experts, nous ne sommes pas trop de notre province, et
quelques-uns de la bande, le commandant entre autres, ont de
bonnes raisons pour savoir distinguer le coup de pinceau d’un
maître du tâtonnement d’un élève ; nous nous regardons un peu
surpris. Le visage de notre hôte s’éclaire d’un sourire de satisfaction
triomphante. Nous passons dans une autre pièce, même profusion
de chefs-d’œuvre, même désordre.
Les écoles se mêlent, les sujets se heurtent, les cadres
empiètent les uns sur les autres. Ce sont encore les mêmes noms
de maîtres anciens, parmi lesquels dominent ceux de la grande
école espagnole. Devant ces toiles noircies, enfumées, mal rangées,
nos doutes s’évanouissent, et notre admiration est un plus sûr
garant de la sincérité des signatures que les signatures elles-
mêmes.
Enfin nous entrons dans une vaste galerie qui est à elle seule
tout un musée. Le milieu et les extrémités de cette galerie sont
occupés par trois tableaux splendides. D’abord, la Communion de
saint Jérôme. — Ah ! pour le coup, monsieur le voyageur, vous
abusez, me direz-vous ; la Communion de saint Jérôme, du
Dominiquin, est au Vatican ; on l’y a vue, et tout le monde encore
peut l’y voir ; donc… — Pardon, à mon tour. J’en suis fâché pour le
Vatican, mais la Communion de saint Jérôme qu’il possède n’est
qu’une reproduction de l’original, qui est ici. En voulez-vous la
preuve ?
Voici, à l’autre extrémité de la même galerie, la Mort de saint
Jérôme, du même Dominiquin, laquelle n’a pas été reproduite, que
je sache, et vous conviendrez qu’il est difficile de se tromper quand
on a sous les yeux deux saint Jérôme, du même ton et presque
dans la même attitude. Quant à supposer que le Dominiquin ait
envoyé en même temps au Pérou la copie de l’un des tableaux et
l’original de l’autre, cela est peu vraisemblable. N’est-il pas plus
simple de supposer, ce que des recherches dans les papiers des
couvents prouveraient sans doute, qu’à une époque où certaines
congrégations religieuses possédaient ici plus de 800,000 francs de
revenu, sans compter les dîmes, offrandes, cadeaux et héritages de
l’année, elles pouvaient faire aux maîtres anciens des offres
colossales, que ces illustres prodigues ne songeaient pas à décliner.
Mais continuons… Voici une Vierge de Raphaël, avec la gravure
du temps qui en démontre l’authenticité ; plus loin une bataille de
Salvator Rosa, d’un effet plus puissant que celle du Louvre ; trois
portraits équestres de Velazquez, grandeur naturelle ; des Tintoret
aussi beaux que ceux du palais ducal de Venise ; une collection
complète de l’école flamande : des Teniers, des Van Ostade, des
Gérard Dov, etc., à faire envie au musée de La Haye ; enfin, trois
beaux Rembrandt, dont l’un représente avec un fini de détails et une
crudité d’expression bizarre « le mur d’une échoppe de cordonnier ».
Don M. Zaballos nous raconta l’histoire de ce tableau ; la voici :
« Rembrandt se promenait un jour dans les rues d’un des plus

pauvres quartiers d’Amsterdam, lorsque passant à côté d’un bouge
infect, occupé par un vieux savetier, il lui sembla voir, fixée au mur
de la boutique, une gravure représentant l’un de ses premiers
tableaux.
» Une idée originale lui vient à l’esprit. Il entre et s’adresse au
vieillard :
» — Voulez-vous me vendre cette gravure ?
» — Mais, monsieur, elle n’est pas à vendre…
» — Si je vous en offrais un bon prix ?
» — Ma foi, non, monsieur. Je ne veux pas la vendre, cette
image-là. C’est de notre fameux maître Rembrandt, et j’y tiens.
» — Cependant…, dix ducats d’or !
» — Dix ducats ! Ah ! mon bon monsieur, je sais bien que cela ne
vaut pas dix ducats ; mais quoique je ne sois pas riche, dit le vieux
cordonnier en jetant un regard attristé sur sa misérable échoppe,
quand même vous me les offririez pour de bon, j’aimerais mieux la
garder… ça me tient compagnie, voyez-vous. Voilà sept ans que je
l’ai là…
» — Allons, pas tant de bavardages. Voilà trente ducats, dit
Rembrandt en prenant une poignée d’or dans sa poche, et donnez-
moi la gravure…
» Le bonhomme hésite un moment, regarde cet étrange visiteur
d’un air stupéfait, puis s’en va détacher l’image et la donne au
maître :
» — J’ai une femme et des enfants, lui dit-il, et je n’ai pas le droit
de vous refuser.
» Le lendemain, Rembrandt venait replacer son acquisition de la
veille là où elle était restée si longtemps, s’asseyait droit en face du
mur et commençait ce petit tableau que vous voyez. Voici le portrait
de cette gravure salie et écornée, un vieux peigne édenté suspendu
à une ficelle, l’almanach de l’année 1651, avec ses feuilles toutes
graisseuses ; les rognures de cuir laissées sur une vieille table
branlante, et tout cela rendu en trompe-l’œil, avec une vérité
saisissante.
» Rembrandt conserva cette toile toute sa vie, et j’ignore moi-
même comment elle est venue au Pérou ».
L’école espagnole surtout est admirablement représentée dans la

collection Zaballos, et peut-être serait-il nécessaire de venir l’étudier
ici pour la bien connaître, car il y a des toiles, comme les Bohémiens
de Zurbaran et la Naissance du Christ de Cano, dont les équivalents
ne se retrouvent, je crois, nulle part.
Avant de quitter cette maison, dont nous sortions émerveillés,
don Manuel Zaballos nous réservait une dernière surprise. Prenant
sur un vieux bureau Louis XIII une feuille de papier jauni :
« Messieurs, nous dit-il, je remercie les étrangers qui veulent bien
venir voir mes tableaux, mais je ne conserve que les noms de mes
compatriotes. Voici une liste qui est commencée depuis six ans ;
voyez, il n’y en a pas cinquante ! »
C’est peu flatteur, pensai-je, pour les Péruviens. Mais ne nous
hâtons pas d’être sévère. Si quelque jour on s’avisait de fermer
brusquement les portes des galeries du Louvre et de compter
combien on aurait ainsi enfermé de bourgeois de Paris, y en aurait-il
beaucoup ?
J’ai eu l’occasion de dire que, partout où la Junon avait passé,

l’expédition avait trouvé un accueil fort aimable, mais, nulle part plus
qu’au Pérou, nous n’avions trouvé autant de bonne grâce et de
prévenances. Notre ministre plénipotentiaire, M. de Vorges, nous
avait reçu plusieurs fois ; il s’était, dès notre arrivée, occupé de faire
organiser l’excursion du chemin de fer de l’Oroya, et nous avait
donné la clef de sa loge au théâtre, où, par parenthèse, jouait une
excellente troupe française de vaudeville et d’opérette ; les attachés
de la légation s’étaient constitués nos pilotes, et, grâce à eux, nous
eûmes bientôt notre couvert mis en plusieurs endroits. Nos noms
figuraient comme membres honoraires du Cercle français, fort bien
installé au centre de Lima, car la colonie française est ici très
importante ; nous ne pouvions y paraître sans recevoir quelque
invitation. Au Callao, les hospitalières maisons de notre vice-consul
et du commandant de Champeaux, directeur du port, nous étaient
ouvertes.
Comment reconnaître tant de bons procédés ? Le commandant
proposa d’organiser, pour la veille du départ, une réception à bord,
et ce fut en un instant chose résolue.
L’installation du bateau pour cela n’était pas facile, car
l’honorable ingénieur qui, il y a quelque quinze ans, construisit la
Junon, n’avait certes pas prévu qu’on dût jamais y donner une fête.
Heureusement, les marins sont adroits et inventifs ; ils se mettent de
tout cœur à un travail de ce genre et aiment assez à avoir « du beau
monde » à bord, sachant bien que, de manière ou d’autre, il leur en
reviendra quelque aubaine.
Le 6 novembre, au coup de midi, c’est-à-dire vingt-quatre heures
après les premiers ordres donnés, la Junon, pimpante, brillante,
méconnaissable, transformée en un nid de fleurs et de feuillages,
était prête à recevoir ses amis. Le second capitaine, M. Mollat, M. de
Saint-Clair, M. J. Blanc, officier de quart, et notre excellent
consignataire, M. Cavalié, qui s’étaient partagé le soin des
préparatifs, contemplaient avec satisfaction leur ouvrage. Plusieurs
d’entre nous avaient contribué propria manu à l’arrangement
décoratif ; mais ceux qui arrivèrent en toute hâte de leurs excursions
dans les environs n’en pouvaient croire leurs yeux en franchissant la
coupée.
La dunette, débarrassée des compas, manches à vent et autres
impedimenta qui l’encombraient d’habitude, était devenue une vaste
salle de bal, complètement entourée d’une ceinture de branchages
garantissant en même temps des rayons du soleil, du souffle de la
brise et des regards profanes. On y accédait par un large escalier,
de construction récente, couvert de tapis et de fleurs. Partout on
avait disposé des corbeilles de roses, de jasmins, de gardenias, de
géraniums rouges, enlevées aux jardins de Lima. Dans notre salon
arrière, en partie démeublé, on avait disposé un monumental buffet ;
les dressoirs en étaient chargés de fleurs, courant en festons tout
autour du cadre des glaces ; enfin la galerie et le logement du
commandant avaient été arrangés en boudoir, avec force
mousseline et profusion de ces mille riens qui sont de si grande
importance lorsqu’il s’agit de relever une boucle qui se dérange ou
de faire un point à un volant déchiré.
Par-dessus ce jardin improvisé, on avait établi une tente de forte
toile, cachée par un velum formé de pavillons, parmi lesquels ceux
de la France et du Pérou tenaient les places d’honneur.
Notre canot à vapeur et celui de la Direction du port, remorquant
d’autres embarcations, amenèrent nos invités vers deux heures et
demie. Je cite au hasard : M. de Vorges, ministre de France, Mme et
Mlle de Vorges, M. le comte de Persan, secrétaire de la légation, M.
le comte de Boutaut, chancelier, M. d’Alvim, ministre du Brésil, Mme
et Mlles d’Alvim, M. le consul général de Belgique, M. Saillard, vice-
consul de France au Callao, et Mme Saillard, M. le capitaine de
vaisseau de Champeaux, M. Combanaire, président de la chambre
française de commerce, M. Combe, etc., etc… Quant au monde
essentiellement péruvien, ces messieurs de la légation française le
connaissant bien mieux que nous, toute latitude leur avait été laissée
pour le choix des invitations. Ils avaient eu la cruauté de nous
amener les plus jolies têtes de Lima…
Le grand faux pont, dont nos visiteurs ne soupçonnaient même
pas l’existence, avait été transformé en salle de souper. Lorsque,
vers cinq heures, on y pénétra par une galerie dont l’entrée avait été
jusqu’alors interdite, à la vue de cette longue pièce, entièrement
tendue aux couleurs péruviennes, blanc et rouge, étincelante de
lumières et de cristaux, ce fut une explosion de compliments et
d’enthousiasme. Après le lunch, qui fut rempli d’entrain et de gaieté,
nous remontâmes sur le pont.
La nuit était venue, et la Junon, pavoisée d’innombrables
lanternes vénitiennes, semblait inaugurer une nouvelle fête. On
recommença donc à danser de plus belle, et ce fut seulement le
dernier train du soir qui emmena le gracieux essaim de nos
valseuses. En prenant congé de nous, notre aimable ministre dit au
commandant : « La Junon a trop de succès. Je vous conseille de
partir demain, sinon vous ne partirez plus. »
Le conseil était sage ; car, en vérité, les séductions de ce
magnifique pays étaient bien de nature à nous retenir. Nous eûmes
le courage de résister. Malgré notre secret désir de rester ici encore
une semaine… ou deux, et en dépit des manœuvres des
propriétaires de la Junon, qui, pour des motifs bien différents,
voulaient à toute force arrêter notre voyage, le 7, à la tombée de la
nuit, nous étions en route pour Panama.
En mer, 11 novembre.
Je viens de relire mes notes sur le Pérou, et je m’aperçois que

j’ai complètement oublié de vous parler de ce que tout le monde est
censé connaître sur ce pays. Je n’ai rien dit du fameux guano,
source de tant de fortunes et de conflits ; du légendaire empire des
Incas, sur le compte duquel on a raconté mille sottises ; enfin de la
situation économique et politique actuelle, qui nous montre la plus
riche contrée du globe luttant difficilement contre d’énormes
embarras financiers, tristes conséquences de la légèreté de ses
habitants.
Il ne faudrait pas moins de trois gros volumes pour résumer en
une étude complète ces graves questions, trois gros volumes que
vous ne liriez certainement pas, tandis que vous aurez, j’espère, la
patience de lire les quelques pages que mes devoirs de narrateur
m’obligent à leur consacrer.
Le guano, nul ne l’ignore, est un engrais des plus efficaces, très
recherché depuis une trentaine d’années, et dont le prix a toujours
été en augmentant. Ses principes actifs sont le phosphate et le
carbonate de chaux. Son nom est tiré de l’idiome des Indiens
Quichuas, du mot huanay. Le guano n’est autre chose que de la
fiente d’oiseaux de mer, pétrels, mouettes, pingouins, pélicans, etc.,
mélangée avec les détritus de ces animaux et accumulée par
couches qui atteignent parfois cent mètres de profondeur. Le Pérou
n’est pas le seul pays qui possède des gisements de cet étrange et
précieux produit ; on en trouve aussi en Patagonie et au Chili ; mais
le guano du Pérou est le meilleur et le plus abondant ; tellement
abondant que, sans les maladresses financières des gouvernants
qui ont laissé écraser la république sous le poids d’une dette d’un
milliard, la seule exploitation du guano suffirait à couvrir le budget
des dépenses normales de l’État.
Toutes les îles du littoral en sont plus ou moins couvertes, et il se
trouve encore en amas considérables sur un grand nombre de
points de la côte. Quand le dépôt des îles Chinchas fut épuisé, on fit
courir le bruit que le Pérou n’avait plus de guano : c’était une
manœuvre de la spéculation. Il y a encore actuellement sept ou huit
millions de tonnes de guano, dont les gisements ont été reconnus ;
mais les sondages opérés dans cette matière d’une consistance
variable, parfois dure comme de la pierre, étant très incertains, des
dépôts ignorés devant sans doute être plus tard découverts, on peut
assurer que ce chiffre est fort au-dessous de la réalité. En somme,
bien que l’épuisement du guano dans un avenir relativement
prochain soit chose certaine, il est absolument impossible d’en fixer
l’époque.
Mes renseignements étant pris au Pérou, je me garderai bien de
discuter ici, même d’une manière générale, les conditions des
contrats que le gouvernement a passés avec des banquiers
européens. Il lui a plu d’affermer et d’hypothéquer sa principale
source de richesse, pour subvenir à des besoins toujours croissants,
et cela à plusieurs reprises. C’était au moins une imprudence. Il n’y a
pas besoin de connaître le dessous des cartes pour supposer que
cette imprudence a dû profiter à quelqu’un.
Quoi qu’il en soit, la situation est telle aujourd’hui, que tout le
monde se plaint, et personne ne s’entend. L’Angleterre, la France, le
Pérou, les banquiers, les porteurs de bons, — autant de ruinés.
N’y aurait-il pas là le sujet d’un de ces petits dessins à énigmes
qui nous amusaient tant l’année dernière ? On l’ornerait de la
légende : « Où est… celui qui n’est pas volé ? » Quelqu’un d’habile
trouverait peut-être.
De tous les pays que nous avons visités, le Pérou est celui dont
l’histoire primitive est la plus intéressante, d’abord parce qu’elle
porte un cachet d’originalité très remarquable, ensuite parce que la
race actuelle tient beaucoup plus de la race indigène qu’en aucune
autre contrée de l’Amérique du Sud.
Tout porte à croire que le continent américain a été peuplé par
des migrations asiatiques, mais je n’oserais m’engager dans une
discussion sur ce point. Ce qui est considéré comme certain, c’est
qu’avant l’arrivée des Incas, dont le premier, Manco-Capac, est tout
simplement descendu du ciel avec sa femme Mama-Oello, vers l’an
1000 de notre ère, le territoire péruvien était occupé par diverses
tribus dont les plus importantes étaient les Chinchas, les Quichuas
et celle des Aymaraës. Cette dernière avait la singulière coutume de
déformer la tête des enfants, le plus souvent de manière à lui donner
une hauteur tout à fait anormale ; une telle distinction ne s’appliquait
qu’aux personnes bien nées, et sans doute il y avait à cet égard des
règles de convenance absolument obligatoires.
On croit que Manco-Capac, avant de descendre du ciel, avait
passé les premières années de sa jeunesse parmi ces guerriers au
crâne pointu.
Cet homme extraordinaire ne tarda pas à devenir grand prêtre et
empereur incontesté de tous ceux qui entendirent sa parole. Il
mourut paisiblement après avoir régné quarante ans ; son fils
continua l’œuvre commencée, compléta ses lois, agrandit ses
domaines, et, successivement, douze Incas s’assirent sur le trône de
Manco-Capac.
Cet empire théocratique, fondé par un seul homme, se
perpétuant et prospérant pendant quatre siècles et sur l’étendue de
douze générations consécutives, est certainement le fait le plus
étrange de l’histoire du monde. Par quelle mystérieuse influence ces
souverains improvisés ont-ils pu faire respecter leur domination sur
plusieurs peuples très différents, occupant un espace de trois
millions de kilomètres carrés ? Nul ne peut l’expliquer. Bien des
livres donnent, avec force détails, des renseignements sur la religion
fondée par les Incas et principe de leur autorité ; malheureusement,
on ne peut avoir que peu de confiance dans ces récits, parce qu’ils
émanent d’Espagnols fanatiques ou de métis convertis au
catholicisme.
Il est vraisemblable que le Soleil, plutôt que l’idéalité par laquelle
ces historiens ont cherché à le remplacer, occupait le premier rang
dans la mythologie des Incas ; l’empereur n’était rien moins que le
petit-fils du Soleil, ce qui le faisait, dans le fait, l’égal de la plus haute
divinité. La coutume des empereurs Incas était d’épouser une de
leurs sœurs ; l’impératrice devenait ainsi la personnification de la
lune (ainsi que le prouvent les statues des temples de Cuzco), et la
succession au trône était dévolue aux premiers enfants mâles issus
de ces mariages.
Si les Incas s’étaient bornés à ces joies de famille, constamment
isolés au milieu de leur peuple, ils eussent vraisemblablement été
renversés ou abandonnés avant la venue des Espagnols. Mais le
prudent fondateur de la dynastie avait eu le soin de laisser, en
dehors de ses enfants légitimes, une postérité des plus nombreuses,
officielle sinon régulière, en sorte que, imité par ses successeurs, la
famille impériale devint bientôt une nation dans la nation, multipliant
avec une incroyable rapidité, grâce au pouvoir absolu dont
jouissaient tous ces descendants d’Apollon.
Bien que les empereurs fussent, de droit divin, maîtres de leurs
sujets et de leurs biens, législateurs et justiciers, autocrates dans
toute la force du mot, ce n’est pas par la terreur qu’ils avaient assis
et maintenu leur puissance. Leur despotisme allait jusqu’à défendre
de changer de lieu et jusqu’à interdire absolument l’écriture. On ne
peut donc imaginer un esclavage plus étroit que celui de ces
malheureux peuples ; cependant il n’y eut, pendant la domination
des Incas, que peu d’exécutions, et les idoles ne réclamaient que
rarement des sacrifices humains. Ces tyrans ne manquaient jamais
de proclamer bien haut les principes de droit et « d’égalité », de
protester de leur respect pour les anciennes coutumes, de leur
tendresse à l’égard de leurs sujets, du souci qu’ils avaient de leur
bien-être. Mais ce n’étaient là que de vaines déclamations ; leur
fantaisie était la loi, le sol et ses habitants leur propriété ; nul ne
pouvait se mouvoir, parler, trafiquer, aimer, vivre, en un mot, sans la
permission du maître.
Il suffit d’une poignée d’aventuriers pour renverser le colosse.
L’empereur mort ou prisonnier, il ne devait plus rester de ce
monstrueux état social qu’un troupeau d’esclaves à la merci du
premier venu ; aussi ne fut-ce que par précaution qu’après le
meurtre d’Atahuallpa, Pizarre le remplaça par un fantôme
d’empereur, dont il ne s’embarrassa guère, malgré ses tentatives de
révolte. Ce dernier des souverains Incas se nommait, ainsi que le
premier, Manco-Capac.
Après la bataille vint le pillage. L’Espagne, pendant trois siècles,
recueillit avidement le butin que quatre années de combats (1532-
1536) lui avaient acquis. La rapacité brutale des conquérants réveilla
parfois le courage endormi des vaincus ; il y eut des rébellions, qui
furent réprimées avec une terrible cruauté. La race indienne,
écrasée, épouvantée, se mourait ; mais une race nouvelle venait de
naître et grandissait chaque jour : fille des Indiens et des Espagnols,
maîtresse du pays et par droit de naissance et par droit de conquête,
jeune, ardente, impatiente, il lui tardait de venger à son profit les
aïeux opprimés des aïeux oppresseurs.
Les temps de Charles-Quint étaient passés ; l’aigle espagnole
combattait ailleurs, non plus pour sa gloire, mais pour sa vie. Bientôt
le Chili se soulève au nom de la liberté ; l’illustre Bolivar accourt du
fond de la Colombie et vient pousser le cri de l’indépendance jusque
dans les murs de Lima ; le peuple entier prend les armes ; et le
drapeau victorieux du Pérou remplace à jamais celui de la métropole
(1826).
Ainsi qu’on pouvait le prévoir, ce fut au milieu des troubles et des
désordres politiques, des pronunciamientos, dans le tourbillon d’un
changement perpétuel des hommes et des institutions, que grandit
la jeune république. Elle grandit cependant ; elle a franchi
aujourd’hui l’ère redoutable du travail trop facile et des fortunes trop
rapides ; l’or et l’argent ne sont plus à la surface du sol, et le
président ne pourrait, pour entrer dans son palais, s’offrir la fantaisie
de faire paver toute une rue de Lima en argent massif, ainsi que le fit
le vice-roi espagnol, duc de La Palata. Le Pérou a payé très cher
une chose dont le prix n’est jamais trop élevé : l’expérience, et, s’il
lui en reste à acquérir, il est encore assez riche pour le faire.
En ce moment, deux partis sont en présence, lesquels

malheureusement représentent des ambitions tout autant, sinon
plus, que des idées. Le premier, le plus fort et le plus intelligent,
sympathique aux commerçants et aux étrangers, est celui qu’on
nomme le parti civil ; il est dirigé par un homme d’une haute valeur et
d’une grande influence, don Manuel Pardo, actuellement président
du Sénat.
Le second parti a pour chef Nicolas Pierola, le même qui, à bord
du garde-côte cuirassé péruvien, le Huascar, soutint, le 29 mai 1877,
un brillant combat contre les navires de guerre anglais Schah et
Amethyst, plus puissamment armés que lui. Nicolas Pierola,
révolutionnaire, fils de prêtre, dit-on tout haut à Lima, personnifie une
fusion assez compliquée entre la révolution et le cléricalisme. Ce
parti a surtout pour lui les femmes, qui se font gloire d’être
« piérolistes ».
Le président actuel, le général Mariano Prado, s’appuie d’une
part sur l’armée, d’autre part sur une fraction considérable du parti
civil, et ce groupe, assez mal défini, constitue ce qu’on appelle
actuellement le parti « national ».
Les piérolistes affectent de le laisser tranquille ; mais il suffira
d’un événement imprévu, d’un prétexte quelconque, pour faire
passer le pouvoir en d’autres mains, et tout ce monde est si remuant
que l’événement ou le prétexte peut surgir d’un jour à l’autre [10] .
[10] Ces appréciations ont été écrites quelques jours
seulement avant l’assassinat du président Pardo par le
sergent Manuel Montoya, le 16 novembre 1878. Il est à
craindre que la mort du président du Sénat n’ait entraîné
la désorganisation du parti civil, amené le président
Prado à accentuer sa politique de militarisme et concouru
ainsi à l’immixtion armée du Pérou dans le différend entre
la Bolivie et le Chili, qui vient d’éclater récemment.
Les difficultés financières contre lesquelles lutte le Pérou sont

intimement liées à son instabilité politique, mais les conséquences
en sont plus graves encore, parce qu’elles engagent l’avenir de plus
loin. La dette est hors de proportion avec les ressources effectives
du pays ; mais, heureusement, celles-ci sont, à leur tour, hors de
proportion avec sa richesse réelle. Le travail ne s’organise pas
assez vite au gré des exigences de la situation ; les vieux préjugés,
enracinés par trois siècles de luxe et d’oisiveté, mettent trop de
temps à disparaître ; là est le danger du présent et la source de
craintes légitimes pour un avenir prochain.
Quant à l’avenir définitif, il nous paraît absolument assuré. Le
Pérou possède les éléments d’une prospérité dont on ne peut même
prévoir les limites, et qui se résument en deux mots : une race
vigoureuse et intelligente sur un sol d’une richesse incomparable.
Que notre vieille Europe, si prudente et si prévoyante… pour les
autres, réserve donc à de meilleures occasions ses dédains
affectés. Elle a pris coutume de nous représenter les républiques de
l’Amérique du Sud comme des coupe-gorge, où le terrible se mêle
au ridicule ; qu’elle veuille bien se rassurer à leur égard et relise,
avant de les juger si durement, la liste des attentats qui, depuis
quarante années, ont mis en danger les jours de ses propres
souverains.
Pour ne parler que du Pérou, dont l’histoire ne date guère de plus
loin, qu’on ne se mette pas en peine de ses destinées. S’il est
malade, ce n’est pas du développement d’un de ces germes
morbides éclos dans l’atmosphère viciée des prisons ; c’est la fièvre
de croissance d’un bel enfant élevé au grand air, et il a, pour s’en
guérir, un médecin qui ne repassera plus l’Atlantique, le meilleur de
tous : la Jeunesse !
PANAMA
La mer de sang. — Mouillage à Panama. — La ville. — Le vieux et le

nouveau Panama. — L’espoir des Panaméniens. — Percera-t-on l’isthme ?
— La politique. — Le chemin de fer de l’isthme. — Comment on écrit
l’histoire. — Le climat de Panama. — En route pour New-York.
A bord de l’Acapulco, 19 novembre.
Nous voici depuis deux jours installés sur un des beaux steamers
de la Pacific Mail Navigation Company, qui fait le service de l’isthme
de Panama à New-York. Après avoir visité les États-Unis, nous irons
rejoindre la Junon à San-Francisco.
Le lendemain de notre départ du Callao, nous avons eu
l’occasion d’observer un phénomène très curieux et assez rare, que
les marins appellent « la mer de sang. » Quoique la côte ne fût pas
très éloignée, elle était cependant hors de vue, le temps presque
calme, un peu couvert. Aux environs de midi, et sans transaction,
nous vîmes les eaux passer du vert à un rouge peu éclatant, à
reflets faux, mais absolument rouges. La teinte n’était pas uniforme ;
le changement de couleur se produisait par grandes plaques aux
contours indécis, assez voisines les unes des autres. De temps en
temps, l’eau reprenait sa teinte habituelle ; mais, poursuivant
toujours notre route, nous ne tardions pas à entrer dans de
nouvelles couches d’eau colorée, et nous naviguâmes ainsi pendant
plus d’une heure. La couleur primitive, d’un vert pâle, reparut alors
brusquement, et peu de temps après nous avons revu l’eau tout à
fait bleue.
On explique ce phénomène d’une manière aussi claire
qu’insuffisante, en disant que la coloration accidentelle de la mer est
due à la présence d’un nombre infini d’animalcules ; s’ils sont blancs,
on a la mer de lait ; s’ils sont phosphorescents, on a la mer
lumineuse ; s’ils sont rouges, on a la mer de sang. Voilà qui est bien
simple. Mais pourquoi ces petites bêtes sont-elles là et non ailleurs ?
Ah ! dame ! Elles sont là… parce que…
On n’a pas pu m’en dire davantage.
Du Callao à Panama, la distance est d’environ 1,500 milles ;
nous l’avons franchie en six jours et demi. Ce n’était pas trop de
temps pour mettre un peu d’ordre dans nos cerveaux fatigués. Cette
revue du monde entier à toute vapeur laisse tant d’idées et rappelle
tant de souvenirs qu’il est nécessaire de se recueillir un peu pour
classer dans l’esprit et la mémoire ces fugitives images.
Je constate cependant que nous commençons à nous faire à ce
« diorama » de pays et de peuples. Nous voyons mieux, nous nous
attardons moins aux détails ; nos surprises sont moins grandes
lorsque nous nous trouvons en présence de tableaux nouveaux et
en contact avec d’autres êtres ; de même qu’en regagnant le bord
nous possédons le calme du marin qui supporte la tempête avec la
même insouciance que le beau fixe. En résumé, notre éducation de
voyageur est en bonne voie, et j’espère qu’elle sera terminée
lorsque nous atteindrons les rivages asiatiques.
Le 10 novembre, nous avons coupé l’équateur pour la seconde
fois, mais sans aucune fête ni baptême, puisque nous sommes tous
devenus vieux loups de mer et porteurs de certificats en règle,
délivrés, il y a deux mois et demi, par l’estimable père Tropique. Le
charme des magnifiques nuits étoilées nous a fait prendre en
patience la chaleur parfois accablante des après-midi, et, sans
fatigue ni mauvais temps, nous avons atteint, dans la nuit du 13 au
14, les eaux paisibles du golfe de Panama.

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An Endangered History: Indigeneity,

Religion, and Politics on the Borders of

Biota Grow 2C gather 2C cook Loucas

Remarks on the Biology Psychology and Politics of

Design Politics An Inquiry Into Passports Camps And

Land Acquisition and Compensation in India: Mysteries

Archaeologies of Us and Them Debating History Heritage

Secularism and Cosmopolitanism Critical Hypotheses on

On Human Nature Biology Psychology Ethics Politics and

Digital Politics and Culture in Contemporary India The

An Endangered History: Indigeneity, Religion,

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(p.i) An Endangered History (p.ii)

(p.iii) An Endangered History

(p.iv) Copyright page

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.

© Oxford University Press 2019

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

First Edition published in 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

You must not circulate this work in any other form

ISBN-13 (print edition): 978-0-19-949308-1

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and her dreams of home (p.vi)

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(p.ix) Figures, Tables, and Maps

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I first considered writing on the Chittagong Hill Tracts as a newly arrived

I wrote this book as a faculty member in the History Department at Bentley

A number of institutions and funding agencies have generously assisted in the

I also wish to acknowledge the editors at Oxford University Press, who

In particular, it is to my niece Kesariya that I give special thanks. She was my

I dedicate this book to my mother. Years ago, my mother taught me with

Angma Dey Jhala

Bentley University, Waltham, USA

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Map I James Rennell, Map of Colonial

1779. R4. Housed in the Map Collection,

Map II ‘The Chittagong Division

Note: This map is not to scale and

Map III Chittagong Hill Tracts, 1890.

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Angma Dey Jhala

Wuthering Heights was published in 1847 to mixed reviews,4 but it would go on

through language, race, religion, or geography. Heathcliff falls between various

In particular, I focus on how British administrators used European knowledge

assumed to be marginal and peripheral to colonial power, were engaging or

This transcultural engagement reflected a dynamic intermingling of religious

The port city of Chittagong in many ways reflected this cosmopolitanism,

The Arakan or Rakhine state, which controlled Chittagong, was, as Rishad

Mughal Intrusions: Imperial Sovereignty and Local Autonomy