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British Colonial Policy on Frontier Areas Adjoining Assam and Burma: with Special Reference to the Crown Colony Scheme

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British Colonial Policy on Frontier Areas Adjoining Assam and Burma: with Special Reference to the Crown Colony Scheme 76 ■Article■ British Colonial Policy on Frontier Areas Adjoining Assam and Burma: With Special Reference to the Crown Colony Scheme ● Chan, Chai-fong 1. WWII and Reid's Plan, the Crown Colony Scheme1) Lord Wavell was the Governor-General of India, as successor to Lord Linlithgow, from October 1943 to March 1946. In his term, the British faced the most difficult and momentous period in India, not only from the internal challenge from Indian National movements, but also from the Second World War. In Burma, not long after Reginald Dorman- Smith became the second Governor after Burma's separation from India in 1937, the Burmese Government evacuated to Simla, the summer capital of India in early 1942, and returned to Burma only after October 1945. Japanese troops assaulted India's northeastern frontiers after conquering Burma in March 1944, then were finally defeated and withdrew from Assam, the eastern province of British India, after July 1944. 磐 彩 鳳 Chan, Chai-fong, Ph.D. Course of Graduate school of the University of To- kyo. Subject: South Asian History. Publication: "British Colonial Policy in the Naga Hills: With Special Focus on Con- trol Area Policy," The Komaba Journal of Area Studies, No. 3 (The University of Tokyo, 1999), pp.167-87. * This article follows a study of the author's MA dissertation: British Colonial Policy in India's North-East Frontier: With Special Reference to the "Crown Colony" Plan (2000). British Colonial Policy on Frontier Areas Adjoining Assam and Burma 77 Robert Reid, then Governor of Assam, wrote a note in November 1941 proposing to combine the frontier areas of Assam and the adjacent frontier areas of Burma into a British colony.2) It underlined the strategic importance of India's northeast frontier in relations with Tibet, China, 78 Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, 13, 2001 Burma and Japan. Moreover, Reid's endeavor was inextricable to the conduct of extending British administration over the unadministered areas of Assam-Himalayan frontiers and the undefined Assam-Burma borders.3) British Colonial Policy on Frontier Areas Adjoining Assam and Burma 79 The war created a chance for the British to focus attention on Indo- Burma borders and to re-think the proposal of amalgamating the adjoin- ing frontiers. Reid's proposal was followed by an animated discussion in Wavell's Government, Dorman-Smith's Government, and at their Home Government in Britain. This paper will focus on the debate from 1942 to 1946 on the then future status of the frontier areas adjoining Assam and Burma, especially on Reid's scheme as to whether to exclude these hill tracts into a separate North-East Frontier Province or a "Crown Colony." This frontier province, or separate colony scheme, originally intended to cover the adjoining hilly tracts of India and Burma, the Shan States, and the Chittagong Hills of present Bangladesh, into a separate political entity under the direct control of a Crown Agent (see maps). However, Reid's scheme was severely criticized as a "divide and rule" trick that stirred tribal secessionism.4) To judge its causes would go far beyond the scope of this paper; the aim here is to examine why this scheme came out in the last phase of British rule, and how it was debated in the high circles of the British Government. The response of the politicians of Assam and the tribes will be briefly mentioned. In this preparatory work, the substance and influence of British colonial policy toward tribes of India's North-East Frontier is of primary focus, but the frontier areas of Burma, then a British colony, will also be considered. 2. The Ideas of Separating or Amalgamating Hill Tribes by 1942 The idea of amalgamating the "Backward Tracts" of Assam and Burma was initiated in 1928.5) Following the recommendation of the Simon Commission to separate Burma Province from the Indian Empire,6) N. E. Parry and J. H. Hutton, two British officers of Assam, made the sugges- tion of establishing a new "North-East Frontier Province." They pro- posed combining the hill tracts bordering Assam and Burma, and put- ting them under the control of the Central Government.7) Hutton held that the tribal peoples in the hills had nothing in common with the plains people of Assam racially, historically, culturally or linguistically. The solution was, therefore, the formation of a North-East Frontier Province or Agency, which would embrace the northeastern frontier districts of Assam and those areas on the northwestern frontier of Burma.8) He em- 80 Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, 13, 2001 phasized the importance of the proposal from the view of a frontier defense as well as a safeguard towards tribal peoples. The Government of Assam agreed with him, concluding that "the proposition that a North- East Frontier Province, or at least some unified form of administration for the portions of Assam and Burma, which adjoin, has great attrac- tions," in August 1930.9) Parry and Hutton's conception of amalgamation developed for several reasons. If the separation of Assam hills were accepted by the Simon Commission, it would reduce the difficulties inherent in the creation of so small a unit; the peoples of the Assam hills were ethnologically more akin to the peoples of the adjoining Burma hills; and the distribution of these hill tribes ran across the political boundary. The above suggestion found no place in the final plan of constitutional reforms, which resulted in the Government of India Act of 1935. In addition, the British Government showed no interest in Assam's frontier by that time. The scheme of amalgamating backward tracts of Assam and Burma, however, was revived by Reid, who was inspired by Hutton and J. P. Mills, Reid's Secretary from 1937 to 1942.10) The ideas of Hutton and Parry were not adopted in 1935, but they were to become controversial during the last period of British rule in India. Under the Government of India Act of 1935, the Backward Tracts of Assam were divided into "Partially Excluded Areas" and "Excluded Areas."11) The administration of excluded areas became the sole respon- sibility of the Governor of Assam. The partially excluded areas were placed under the ministers and were subject to the Governor's discre- tionary control.12) Indian nationalists criticized the whole system of exclusion and the Governor's arbitrary "safeguards" because these were inconsistent with a full measure of self-government, and any real merger of the hills and plains, while the constitutional premises endorsed a future fusion of backward tracts with Assam as the ultimate goal. For accepting the back- ward tracts as part of Assam already, the Government Act of 1935 con- templated the conversion of the excluded areas into partially excluded areas and the conversion of the latter to ministerial areas, but did not counter the reverse process.13) Burma, as suggested by the Simon Commission, separated from India when the Government of Burma Act of 1935 came into force in April British Colonial Policy on Frontier Areas Adjoining Assam and Burma 81 1937, with Ba Maw as the first Prime Minister. L. S. Amery, Secretary of State for India and Burma, suggested that the separation of Burma from India was the natural consequence of the introduction of self-gov- ernment.14) He said the racial type, culture, and geographical position of Burma belonged not to India but to the projection of the main bulk of Asia and the Indo-Chinese peninsula.15) Following this outlook, Reid wrote that Amery's point of view applied just as closely to Assam's excluded and partially excluded areas as to the "Tribal Areas. "16) Reid said that no other line could fulfill British duty to the primitive peoples without separating them from ministerial control of the plains of Assam, and concluded that he was in favor of Hutton's idea of a North- East Province or Agency. His proposal embraced the entire hill fringe from Lushai in the south to the Balipara Frontier Tract in the north, including the Chittagong Hills Tract of Bengal, the Nagas and the Chins Areas of Burma, and the Shan States (see maps).17) Furthermore, the salient point of the note under discussion was that Reid planned to re- move the areas mentioned above from both the Indian and Burmese Governments.18) He wrote: I would put this under a Chief Commissioner and he in turn would, I imagine, have to be divorced (as is Burma) from the control of the Government of India and put under some appro- priate department at Whitehall.19) Reid's scheme, in the sense that the proposed amalgamated hill tracts would be a separate British colony controlled by a Crown Agent, as Burma, was known as the "Crown Colony" scheme, or a "Separate Agency" scheme. The Governor-General, Lord Linlithgow, was the first person who received Reid's note and sent a copy to the Secretary of State, Amery, in March 1942.20) Amery was personally attracted to the Reid plan and commented upon it: Supposing that Pakistan does come off, there will be possibly two Muslim areas, the whole of the States, Hindu British India...and finally at least an important primitive hill tribe area such as that which Reid has very interestingly outlined in the memorandum which reached me by the last mail.21) Reid's note came at a time when India was in the final phase of its struggle for independence. It added a new dimension to the partition of 82 Journalof the JapaneseAssociation for SouthAsian Studies, 13, 2001 India in that it could have resulted in another partition, along with the birth of Pakistan.22) Amery saw a chance to manipulate Reid's ideas to reserve all the excluded areas to the Britain Government, as he tried to keep the Princely States out of India's future self-government.
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