Continuity and Changes Among the Morans of India: Economy, Forest, Culture and the State

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC & TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH VOLUME 9, ISSUE 04, APRIL 2020 ISSN 2277-8616 Continuity And Changes Among The Morans Of India: Economy, Forest, Culture And The State- Sponsored Modernity Name: Sun Gogoi Abstract: The study of indigenous groups with in-depth fieldwork has been the focus of anthropologists since long. Today such studies are not just confined to the discipline of Anthropology that earlier had a near monopoly over them, but are being pursued with varying degrees of skill and quality by scholars of other disciplines too, such as Political Science. Here the focus will be on understanding the socio-cultural aspects of the Moran community of Assam, predominantly inhabiting the Doomdooma region of Tinsukia district. The Morans are one of the aboriginal groups of people in Assam. The Morans had their own traditional belief system and social organizations which they have been maintaining till date in some transformed ways, even after the inclusion of Vaishnava belief in their socio-cultural sphere. Likely to many other tribes of India, neighbouring Jungles and their species and resources have had a crucial role in the socio-economic life of Moran villages. They can unanimously claim themselves as the ‗son of the soil‘. However, changing political scenario down through the centuries, and the colonial and the post-colonial modernity brought a number of changes to the socio-economic practices as well as political organisations among the Morans. Key-words: Colonial, Culture, Indigenous, Jungles, Modernity, Morans, Post-colonial, State-sponsored. —————————— ————————— major concern of my paper, as my paper is aimed at 1. INTRODUCTION: assessing the socio-economic and cultural aspects of the The Moran is one of the major ethnic groups of Assam. Moran. Nevertheless, I must take into account the They speak Assamese and are mainly confined in Tinsukia contemporary political scenario of Assam as the process of district. Few Moran villages are located in Dibrugarh, political transition in a society accelerates the process of Jorhat, Sivasagor, Dhemaji and Lakhimpur districts also. socio-cultural transition of a group of people which comes However, it will be safe to opine that today their specific under the jurisdiction of that greater socio-political system. ethnic identity is alive only among the Morans of Tinsukia The prolonged Rebellion (1769-1805) against the Ahom district. They are Mongoloid in origin. The Moran follows State led to considerable change in geo-political distribution patriarchic family system and traditionally maintains joint of the Moran population, as many of them took shelter in family culture. They are followers of the Mayamara sect of the jungles or interior frontier regions surrounded by hills to Vaishnavism in Assam, introduced by Aniruddhadeva in the escape Royal persecution or to organize the Rebellion. early 17th century. According to a survey carried out in Moreover, it alienated the Morans from the mainstream 2007-08, the total number of Morans in Dibrugarh and Assamese society of the Brahmaputra valley as the Tinsukia districts is 83,583 (Mahanta 2013: 206). Morans erstwhile litterateurs of Assam and the dominant section of are concentrated in a compact region comprising Saikhowa, the society labelled the Morans as an ‗uncivilized race‘ and Burhi Dihing, Doomdooma, Hapjan, Tingrai, Makum, blamed them for disrupting Assam. Some Morans disguised Rongagarao Mouzas & Tipling in Tinsukia district in remote themselves as Ahoms overnight to escape the unrest, and areas of Upper Assam. Morans have a prominent place in with the passage of time they merged with the Ahoms. Assamese history and are known to have an independent Wide scale Royal persecution and displacement of large kingdom in Bengmara (Tinsukia) prior to the advent of the number of Moran families to other places largely destroyed British between 1805 and 1842. The Morans, along with the village based socio-economic structure of the Morans. their brethren Borahis were the first tribes, whom Sukapha, That process of socio-economic alienation continued the founder of the legendary Ahom dynasty of Assam had throughout the Colonial era, after the annexation of Matak to encounter when he entered Brahmaputra valley in the State by the British in 1842. Large swaths of land were year 1228. On the basis of their racial and linguistic grabbed by the British Government and their agents in the affinities, the Morans are generally ascribed Bodo origin. He regions inhabited by the Morans for tea plantation under won over the natives by the policy of both conciliation and various Colonial schemes and agreements. The Morans too coercion. The service of Morans was of great help in due their religious conservatism and ignorance were subsequent expansion and consolidation of the Ahom State hesitant to join hands with the Colonizers and thus they for more than five centuries. However, for various reasons remained sidelined. The British too developed a myopic in the second half of the 18th century they became critical of vision about the Morans being backed by the erstwhile the Ahom Authority and raised the banner of rebellion in dominant discourse of Assam as the latter blamed the 1769 under the banner of Mayamara Satra. Satras are the Morans for severely disrupting Assam as well for being an socio-religious institutions of Assam associated with the unpolished race. On the other hand, Caste Hindus from the teaching of Sankardeva, a famous Vaishnava saint from very beginning of the Colonial era, and later on since 1920s Assam, and the Mayamara is a branch of these Satra onwards the other tribes of plains and hills of the undivided institutions. The Mayamara (Moamaria) rebellion shattered Assam joined hands with the British administration and the pride of Ahom Monarchy, and for the first time paved became politically privileged in comparison to the Morans. the way for foreign military intervention in the politics of Unlike the other communities of Assam, the latter joined the Assam. However, taking a keen interest on the background, electoral politics of the state much later only after causes and outcomes of the historic Rebellion is not the Independence since 1970s. 203 IJSTR©2020 www.ijstr.org INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC & TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH VOLUME 9, ISSUE 04, APRIL 2020 ISSN 2277-8616 2. SOCIO-POLITICAL BACKGROUND: At the time of arrival of Sukapha, the Moran ruler Badaucha The Morans still regret the fact that their community would had his capital at Kakatal, identified by many with present- have been included in the Scheduled tribe list way back day Kakopather, while the Barahis with their ruler under the Government of India Act, 1935, when Simon Thakumtha had their headquarters at Tipam. The Morans Commission was appointed for the purpose in 1928. But and the Barahis were the first inhabitants of Brahmaputra there was no well educated person among the Morans to valley with whom the Ahoms established close ties that represent their case and as such they were left unnoticed. were sanctified with matrimonial relations. Nevertheless, Now this community is determined to prove their tribal Morans are one of the aboriginal tribes of the Upper identity. The Morans call themselves ―Habitolia‖ (people Brahmaputra valley. The Morans initially resorted to from jungles), whereas they call other Mataks ―Mukolia‖ jhumming or shifting cultivation. Community feeling and (people from open areas) (Gogoi 2007: 110). The Morans corporate life grew stronger for pursuing such a culture of who have been recognized since 1959 as a More Other farming. These made the group leaders more powerful. Backward Class (MOBC) till date, today are demanding During Ahom era although the process of assimilation Scheduled Tribe (ST) status from the Indian Government began and they introduced the productive Tai-Shan culture along with five other OBC/MOBC communities- Ahoms, of wet-rice cultivation, and instruments like yoke, plough Koch-Rajbangshis, Mataks, Chutiyas and Adivasis (Tea and harrow among the natives, the practice remained tribes). It remains a crucial issue in the electoral politics of largely confined in the mainstream Brahmaputra valley, and Assam in the recent decades. Indigenous tribal bases and various tribal groups from both hills and plains continued military adventurism led to small state formations in the pre- their age-old practice of shifting cultivation. Unlike the colonial era. Even during the Ahom era which once Morans of present Sibsagar region who had largely been included almost the entire Brahmaputra valley under their Ahomized and became a part of the Ahom society and jurisdiction the tribes of plains and hills were left to their system, the Morans who lived north of the river Dibru own and the degree of their loyalty to the Ahom retained their separate ethnic identity and specific socio- Government had always been fluctuating during the long six economic culture and organizations. They lived under their centuries. Among all the tribes of Assam, the Morans were own Gaonburhas (village headmen) and the nature of his closer the Ahom administration and they contributed a lot to authority over the Moran villagers was not only social, but the expansion and consolidation of the Ahom regime. E. political as well. Ahom Government never interfered in the Gait in his Report on the Census of India, Assam 1891 internal affairs of the Moran villages. Referring to the noted that the Morans had their own language which was Moran‘s relations with the Ahom Government, Gait (1863- akin to that of the Kacharis. However, when the process of 1950) writes: assimilation and then Sanskritization began during the days ―……..the Morans still survive as a separate tribe. of Ahoms, the Morans gave it up in favour of Assamese. At the end of Ahom role rule, they occupied the country Further, Gait in his History of Assam, states that the Moran between the Dangari and Dibru rivers; they paid no revenue language was undoubtedly Bodo.

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