Roads and the Raj: The politics of road building in colonial Naga Hills,1860s

Abstract

This article looks at the historical importance of borderland routes, the way they were laid out, built and monitored, and the changing role of hill communities in this colonial enterprise. It argues that road building provided a crucial site upon which plots of empire building could unfold in the Naga Hills. This was a space, which had to be constituted through the politics of access. Access routes intensified the colonial state’s ability to penetrate, control and incorporate ‘unstable’ peripheral areas and its inhabitants into the imperial domain. Road building was then woven into a complex network of colonial practices such as military surveillance, taxation, population enumeration and the subordination of the hill populace as ‘coolies’. However, British officials could not have simply re-shaped the landscape, framed policies and establish its domination from above. To do so, they had to engage with the existing ‘traditional’ structures and institutions, whereby they had to create and draw upon native agents in the form of gaonburras (village headmen) and dobhashis (interpreters) who came to hold considerable stake in their imperial project.

Keywords

Nagas roads access house-tax labour headmen interpreter

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Ahuja

Ravi

. Pathways of Empire: Circulation, ‘Public Works’, and Social Space in Colonial Orissa, 1780–1914, Hyderabad, 2009.

Ahuja

Ravi

. ‘The Bridge Builders: Some Notes on Railways, Pilgrimage and the British “Civilizing Mission” in Colonial India,’ in Tine

Harald Fischer

Mann

Michael

, eds, Colonialism as Civilizing Mission: Cultural Ideology in British India, London, 2004.

Annual Report of the Administration of the Bengal Presidency, 1867–69.

Annual Administration Report of the Manipur Agency, 1873–74.

Annual Administration Report of the Naga Hills, 1874–79.

Report on the Administration of the Province of Assam, 1877–78, 1884–88.

Baruah

Sanjib

. ‘Confronting Constructionism: Ending India’s Naga War,’ Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 40(3), 2003, pp. 321–38.

Butler

Captain John

. ‘On the Angami Nagas and their Language,’ Proceedings of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal for January ,1876.

Edwards

Penny

. ‘The Tyranny of Proximity: Power and Mobility in Colonial Cambodia, 1863–1954’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 37, No. 3, October 2006, pp. 421–443.

10.

Foreign and Political Department, 1840–1900, National Archives of India, New Delhi.

11.

Fox

Ralph

. The Colonial Policy of British Imperialism, London, 1933.

12.

Frontier and Overseas Expedition from India. Vol. IV. North and Northeast Frontier Tribes, Calcutta, 1911.

13.

Gray

Christopher J

. Colonial Rule and Crisis in Equatorial Africa: Southern Gabon, 1850–1940, Rochester, 2002.

14.

Haines

Chad

. ‘Colonial Routes: Reorienting the Northern Frontier of British India,’ Ethnohistory, Vol. 51, No. 3, 2004, pp. 535–65.

15.

Heath

Ian

. The North-East Frontier, 1837–1901, Oxford, 1999.

16.

Home and Political Department, 1882–83, NAI.

17.

Imperial Gazetteer of India, Vol. XVII, Delhi, 1905.

18.

Inner Line File(s), 1875, Nagaland State Archive, Kohima.

19.

Ispahani

Mahnaz Z

. Roads and Rivals: The Political Uses of Access in the Borderlands of Asia, Ithaca/London, 1989.

20.

Jacobs

Julian

. The Nagas. The Hill People of Northeast India: Society, Culture and the Colonial Encounter, London, 1990.

21.

Johnstone

James

. My Experiences in Manipur and the Naga Hills, London, 1896.

22.

Mackenzie

Alexander

. History of the Relations of the Government with the Hill Tribes of Northeast Frontier Bengal, Calcutta, 1884.

23.

Maitland

P.J.

‘Detailed Report on the Naga Hills Expedition of 1879–80’, p. 19, accessed from http://himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/naga/record/r87618.html

24.

Mitchell

John F

. The North-East Frontier of India: A Topographical, Political and Military Report, Delhi, 1973 (1883).

25.

Mills

J.P.

The Ao Nagas, Bombay, 1926.

26.

Mills

J.P.

‘Notes on the Effect on Some Primitive Tribes of Assam of Contacts with Civilization’, in Census of India, 1931, vol. 1–India, Part III–Ethnographical, Shimla, 1935.

27.

Naga Hills Administration Report 1882–83, Shillong, 1884.

28.

Moharir

V.J.

‘Operations on the Eastern Frontier,’ in History of the Army Service Corps. Vol. 2, 1858–1913, Delhi, 1984.

29.

Prain

David

. ‘The Angami Nagas,’ Revue Coloniale Internationale, Vol. V(6), 1887, pp. 472–94.

30.

Proceedings of the Chief Commissioner of Assam, Foreign Department, 1881, Assam State Archives, Guwahati.

31.

Robb

Peter

. ‘The Colonial State and Construction of Indian Identity: An Example of the North East Frontier in the 1880s’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 31(2), 1997, pp. 245–83.

32.

Shakespear

L.W.

History of Upper Assam, Upper Burma and the North-Eastern Frontier, London, 1914.

33.

Shakespear

L.W.

History of the Assam Rifles, Calcutta, 1929.

34.

Sanyu

Visier

. A History of Nagas and Nagaland: Dynamics of Oral Tradition in Village Formation, Delhi, 1996.

35.

Sema

Piketo

. British Policy and Administration in Nagaland, 1881–1947, Delhi, 1992.

36.

Tour Diaries of Deputy Commissioner, Naga Hills, 1890–1921, Government Record Cell, Nagaland Secretariat, Kohima.

37.

Woodthorpe

R.G.

‘Notes on the Wild Tribes Inhabiting the So-Called Naga Hills, on Our North-East Frontier of India, Part I’, The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. XI, 1882, pp. 56–73.

Roads and the Raj: The politics of road building in colonial Naga Hills,1860s–1910s

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References