Sociedad de la Información y Telecomunicaciones en el medio rural

Kerang was well within the sphere which, the Indian military authoriti

thought, should be under British influence for the purpose of obtain- 3

ing a strategically sound frontier.

^See p.141.

2 12

Col. Willoughby's report, No. /1911 enclosed in Jordan to, Crey, No.299, 22 July 1911: P.S.S.F.Vol. 13 (1910), 4082/1911.

About the same time information was received from certain elephant catchers of the arrival of four men in a Hazarikhowa Aka village north of Tezpur. They appeared to have been a party of Chinese.^"

Such a brisk Chinese penetration in the tribal country on the border of Assam caught the British unprepared. The best example of this unwariness was that at the turn of the twentieth century, British knowledge of the area was poor in the extreme. Curzon pointed out in February 1900 tha^nobody, presumably in the Govern­ ment of India, knew anything about the extreme north-east frontier

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of India and that most places were not marked on the map. There was no great change ij^the situation even ten years later when the Government awoke to the Chinese threat on the frontier. Of the entire tribal country, the Lohit valley alone was quite well-

known to the British, mainly due to the Lohit tours of F.J.Needham, the first Assistant Political Officer, Sadiya, and his successor, N. Williamson. In the other sections little was known beyond the fringe of the hills bordering the plains. This lack of knowledge of the north-east frontier as late as 1910 contrasted sharply with the relatively detailed knowledge of India* s northern and north­ western frontiers which the British had come to possess by that time.

1Hardingels tel. to Crewe, 7 July 1911s P,S.S.F.Vol,13(l910), 1478/1911; E. Bengal & Assam to India, Foreign Dept., No. 423-C.G., 14 Julyl911: P.S.S.F.Vol.13 .(1910), 1648/19115 Lamb, The McMahon Line, p. 346.

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146

.

This contrast appears particularly surprising when we remember

that the British had come into contact with the north-east frontier about twenty years before their contact with the northern and north­ western frontiers. The annexation of Assam took place in 1826 which brought them into contact with the north-east frontier, while their

direct contact with the north-west and an indirect one with the northern frontier through Kashmir were established only after the

annexation of the Punjab in 1849- The only explanation of this difference is that' the north-east frontier was of little strategic importance as compared with its northern and north-western counter­ parts. And the importance of a frontier lies in the pressure behind

it. While the northern and north-western frontiers faced the menace of Russia striding across Central Asia in the nineteenth century, on the north-east the weak Manchu empire posed no such threat at all.

The British neglected the north-east frontier as long as they did not suspect any danger from the Chinese there. Consequently, when the Chinese suddenly displayed brisk activity on that frontier, the plains of Assam lay dangerously open to a determined thrust from that area. In August 1910 the seriousness of the situation was

clearly pointed out by Bell, Political Officer in Sikkim. ’’That Assam would ever stand the slightest chance of being invaded by a civilised military Power has never been contemplated, and consequently

no strategic plan, no defences, no organisation whatever exists to repel a serious invasion.... Even with many months of previous warning, it is idle to imagine that the province could be put into

a state of defence, which would even faintly approach the favour­ able conditions under which the defenders would meet an enemy attack­ ing the North-West Frontier,...

"If we wait until the contingency arises to guard against a danger which requires not months but years of previous preparation, in order adequately to meet the requirements of the case, the pro­ bability of a complete breakdown, followed by a disaster of un­

paralleled magnitude, will no longer be amatter of academical^specu­ lation, but a portentous fact which will tax the utmost resources of the Empire to cope with."^

The government was now forced to devise: a dynamic policy to meet the requirements of a live frontier which the old policy of non-interference could no longer satisfy. The new policy had two distinct but inseparable aspects. On the one hand, the tribes were to be properly controlled, while on the other, the frontier was to be protected from any Chinese penetration or invasion. One without the other was impossible. We have already studied the first aspect. We shall now study the second. The earliest indication of a new policy

^Qubted from Military Repoit on Assam in Bell to India, Foreign Dept., No. 1201 T.E.C., 20 August 1910: P.S.S.F.Vol.13 (1910), 1918/1910. Also Lamb? op.cit., p.335.

148

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of the Government of India came in September 1910. They thought

that Mthe best means of safeguarding frontier from Chinese aggression, without bringing the existing independent tribal area under admini- stration, which is impracticable, would be to push forward the

present outer line so as to obtain a good strategical boundary under 1

our control....11 In October 1910 Lord Minto for the first time urged the Secretary of State to sanction the new policy which, in view of the Chinese danger, aimed at converting the tribal country into a buffer by throwing back the Outer Line and entering into treaties

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