The region's two risings are thirty years apart, are fought by two different peoples over two different grievances, and have no organisational connection at all. The first is Khasi and is about a road; the second is Pnar and is about a tax. Both were fought by the standing institutions of the hills rather than by any movement — a Syiem with his dorbar behind him, and a body of Jaintia villages refusing an assessment — which is why neither produced a party or a successor organisation. The twentieth-century all-India movement reached the plateau mainly as constitutional argument about how the hills would be represented, conducted in legislatures rather than in the field.
The Anglo-Khasi War1829–1833
Opened by the attack on the British post at Nongkhlaw on 4 April 1829, in which Lieutenants Bedingfield and Burlton were killed, after the agreement for a road across the plateau broke down over the duars on the northern foot. U Tirot Sing fought a dispersed campaign across broken country for four years; several himas joined and others stood out.
परिणाम: Tirot Sing was taken in January 1833 and died in confinement at Dhaka in 1835. The Khasi states were brought under British authority through separate engagements with individual Syiems rather than by annexation, which is why their internal constitutions survived.
The Jaintia Rebellion1860–1863
Jaintia villages refused a house tax and an income tax newly extended to the hills. U Kiang Nangbah organised the refusal across the Pnar country around Jowai, and the fighting ran for roughly three years.
परिणाम: Kiang Nangbah was taken and publicly hanged at Iawmusiang in Jowai on 30 December 1862; resistance continued into 1863 before the assessment was enforced.