River routes have long connected Assam in each direction. The major movements that decisively shaped the region in early modern times included: the Mughals and British moving northeast from Bengal; the Ahoms moving down the Brahmaputra basin; Burmese armies moving around the Patkai and across the Nagaland ranges; and trans-Himalayan forces coming south from Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet and China.
Before , Indian Ocean routes seem to have had less direct impact on the Brahmaputra valley than on other Southasian regions comparably close to the coast. Most importantly for its geographical history, however, by Assam lay at the intersection of Indian Ocean routes with inland routes into interior East Asia.
Opium and tea, among other commodities, already travelled Indo-Chinese roads through Assam. From this seacoast view of northeastern India, ethnic groups in the mountains looked more like East and Southeast Asian peoples than like those that dominated the Indian lowlands. These mountain ethnic groups, however, actually represent the historical overlapping of social spaces, defining Asia from the west and east at the same time.
Our national traditions of geographical knowledge do not pay equal attention to all of the routes of human mobility that shaped Assam. Indian historical geography focuses exclusively on routes that run east-west along the Gangetic basin, where dominant social groups have always identified Assam with eastern frontiers.
In the Indian national view, Assam has always been an Indian frontier, always in the process of being incorporated into Indo-Gangetic history. Even when the British Empire began its northeast expansion from Sylhet and Cooch Bihar, Assam still lay on the cultural and political frontiers of Southasia and Southeast Asia.
Like the Mauryas before them, the ancient Guptas carried their imperial ambitions far from their homeland in Bihar, but also much farther west than east — lands to the east of the Ganga basin being considered undesirable. Gupta culture later influenced the Assamese Kamrupa kings in large part through trade.
Indeed, the Buddhists who dispersed across eastern frontiers flourished there for centuries, in part because trade, rather than imperial power, extended across the water routes of Bengal. A thousand years after the last of the Guptas, the strength of Ahom warriors in the Brahmaputra basin, combined with the difficulty of forests and raging river waters, largely kept Mughal imperialism at bay.
During the age of Ahom rulers in Assam, the Mughal Empire was rooted in the far west. The renowned Mughal gardens derived from desert ideals in Central Asia and Iran; Mughal homesteads blended the cultures of Persia and Rajasthan. Lands of dense forests, deep annual floods, rivers, tigers, elephants and fearsome mountain warriors proved too difficult for the dry-land plains warriors to conquer.
These lands paid very little imperial taxation anyway. As such, the Mughal padshah and his nobles mostly conquered and sported on the fringes of forest tracts that they left to local rulers, from whom they extracted as much obedience and tribute as possible.
Assam became part of imperial India only after the Mughals lost their grip in Bengal, as British imperialists expanded inland from the sea with a combined force of merchants, armies and Brahmans. Northeast of Calcutta, Mughal highways pointed to Assam; but because Assam lay outside of Mughal control, it remained so for early British India as well. Only once the British conquered Assam in did the area obtain — for the first time in its history — a firm regional identity as a part of Indian imperial geography.
British Assam always included the Brahmaputra and Barak river valleys, as well as the Surma-Kushiara river basin of Sylhet. After , the tea industry spread across hills around these rivers and enhanced control of the administrative unity of Sylhet and Assam.
Until , British Assam was an eastern borderland of British imperialism, which tried to incorporate Burma and never quite established full control over the mountains between India and China. War along this road was intense. The year dramatically changed the forces shaping Assam. Partition and its fallout resulted in the cutting and restriction of traditional routes around Assam, and introduced major demographic changes. Together, these two forces give Assam the shape and location we see today.
Partition also exaggerated a process of change in the cultural composition of the Sylhet population, which had proceeded slowly for at least 50 years after the first Indian census in , when the Muslim and Hindu populations had been roughly equal in number. After , migration into Sylhet farming regions increased the Muslim population with every census.
Between and , people reportedly born in the Bengal District of Mymensingh but living in Assam increased from one-third to two-thirds of the population of southern Assamese valleys, including Sylhet. The question of how to regulate migration into Assam from Bengal dominated the state political agenda in the s and s. After , this topic became a new type of national issue, with reference to alleged threats to national security.
The conflict between these two pressing modern needs — territorial openness and closure — seems increasingly difficult to reconcile. Migration continued to increase after Partition, however, and remained high for three decades, spurred in part by wars in and In much of Sylhet, a new social formation emerged, which ranked the cultural status of old and new residents — a dynamic that continues today.
It is also becoming an increasingly popular destination for wildlife tourism. The state is rich in water resources and has vast tracts of fertile land. Assam is also the third-largest producer of petroleum and natural gas in the country and has ample reserves of limestone. With its five national parks and 18 wildlife sanctuaries, the state is a biodiversity hotspot.
Other potential areas of investment include power and energy, mineral-based industries, tourism, and crude oil refining. Assam has adopted numerous investor-friendly policies to attract investments and accelerate industrial development. Assam stood 22nd among Indian states in rankings based on ease of doing business and reforms implementation, according to a study by the World Bank and KPMG.
The Government has set a target to generate 6,megawatt MW power in the state by Assam exported key items such as tea, petroleum products, coal, coke and briquettes and other products.
Hajo is another spiritual centre where people from three religions, Buddhist, Hindus and Muslims congregate for pilgrimage. The mighty river Brahmaputra decors the geography of the state and one can take a Cruise along this river with first class facilities experiencing wildlife, tradition, adventure tourism on its way.
Lying on the southern fringes of the mighty Brahmaputra river, Spread across a lush green landscape dotted with imperial bungalows Lush green tea gardens, picturesque landscapes and endless paddy We use cookies to ensure that you have the best experience on our website. Continued use of the website would be assumed to be an acceptance of these conditions.
Barak Valley The southern zone or the Barak valley region of Assam is, in fact, an extension of the neighboring country Bangladesh. The major districts of this region are Karimganj, Cachar and Hailakandi. To the south of the district lies the districts of North Cachar and Nagaland.
Often referred to as 'Switzerland of the East', North Cachar Hills make up a place of incomparable beauty and unending serenity. With a total area of square km, this enchanting landscape has many tourist destinations, like the mysterious Jatinga, Haflong, Maibong, Umrangso and Panimoor. Report typo or correction. International Holidays.
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