Barak Valley · Eastern Himalaya & Brahmaputra Belt
This plain's periodisation runs on its own clock because for most of recorded history it was an edge rather than a centre — the eastern lobe of the Srihatta lowland, lying between Kamarupa upstream and the deltaic polities downstream, and named in other people's copperplates rather than its own. Its medieval period does not begin with any conquest from Delhi, which never reached it; it begins when a hill dynasty came down onto it, after the Dimasa Kachari court was driven out of Dimapur in 1536 and finally out of the hills in 1706, and set up at Khaspur on the plain. Its modern period begins on 14 August 1832, when the Company annexed Cachar by proclamation — twenty-five years before 1857 and six years after the rest of the Brahmaputra system changed hands. And its twentieth century has a second hinge that belongs to no national timeline at all: 1947, when the plain it had always drained into became another country.
Periodisation is regional, not national — the medieval period does not begin in the same century here as it does elsewhere in India.
The Barak plain has almost no monumental record of its own for this period, and what is known comes from land grants issued elsewhere for land inside it. The lowland was agrarian and settled early — the drainage is poor and the silt is deep, which makes it excellent paddy country and terrible ground for anything built to last — and it sat on the frontier between the Kamarupa kings of the Brahmaputra and the Srihatta and Harikela rulers of the lower Surma and the delta. What the copperplates record is a plain of Brahmin settlement grants, paddy revenue and shifting overlordship, with the hill communities of the Barail and the southern ridges outside all of it.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 7th century | Bhaskaravarman's Nidhanpur copperplate grant, recovered at Panchakhanda in the Sylhet plain, records land assignments in this lowland — the earliest documentary evidence of settled agrarian society here. |
| c. 11th–12th century | The Bhatera copperplates of the Srihatta rulers record grants in the same lowland immediately downstream, indicating a plain administered from the Surma side rather than from over the Barail. |
| c. 13th–15th century | The Dimasa Kachari state that later ruled this plain is at this stage a hill power to the north, with its seat at Dimapur; the Barak lowland is not yet its territory. |
| c. 15th–16th century | Koch chiefs hold the Khaspur tract in the western plain; the transfer of Khaspur to the Kachari line is preserved in dynastic genealogy rather than in dated record. |
The valley's medieval history is the story of a hill dynasty being pushed downhill onto it. The Dimasa Kachari kingdom lost Dimapur to the Ahoms in 1536 and withdrew to Maibang in the hills; in 1706 the Ahom king Rudra Singha defeated Tamradhwaj and the court came down into the Barak plain altogether, taking Khaspur as its capital. What followed was two centuries of a hill dynasty governing a Bengali-speaking wet-rice plain, and the court changed to fit the plain rather than the other way round — records at Khaspur were kept in Bengali, the kings took Sanskritic titles and genealogies, and Krishna Chandra and his brother Govinda Chandra were formally initiated into Hindu rites in 1790. From 1813 the succession was contested, and the contest drew in Manipuri princes displaced by the Burmese occupation of their own country — which is how the Manipuri settlements of the Cachar plain, and the looms and the Raas that came with them, date from the 1820s rather than from anything earlier.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1536 | Dimapur falls to the Ahoms under Suhungmung; the Kachari court withdraws south to Maibang in the hills. |
| 1706 | Tamradhwaj is defeated by the Ahom king Rudra Singha; the Kachari court moves down onto the Barak plain and Khaspur becomes its capital. |
| 1790 | Krishna Chandra and Govinda Chandra are formally initiated into Hindu rites at Khaspur, and the court's records and titles take their Bengali and Sanskritic form. |
| 1813 | Krishna Chandra dies and the succession is disputed; Manipuri princes displaced by the Burmese occupation of Manipur begin to contend for the plain. |
| 1817–1823 | Marjit Singh enters Cachar with several thousand followers after the Burmese occupation of Manipur; Chourjit and then Gambhir Singh contest the plain in turn. The valley's Manipuri settlements date from this decade. |
| 6 March 1824 | The Treaty of Badarpur makes Cachar a protected state under the East India Company during the First Anglo-Burmese War. |
| 24 April 1830 | Govinda Chandra, the last Kachari raja on the plain, is assassinated at Haritikar leaving no male heir; contemporary British reports attributed it to a rival claim, and no case was ever brought to trial. |
Annexation converted the plain into a revenue district and then into a plantation economy. Tea planting began in 1855, failed in its first attempt and succeeded in its second, and the gardens drew indentured labour from Chhotanagpur and the Central Provinces for the next seventy years — the origin of the valley's tea-garden community and of its third language layer. Two administrative decisions then set the frame for everything since. In 1874 Cachar and Sylhet were taken out of Bengal and put into the new Chief Commissioner's province of Assam, which is how a Sylheti-speaking plain came to be governed from over the Barail. And in July 1947 a referendum in Sylhet, followed by the Radcliffe award, divided the plain at the Kushiyara — leaving Karimganj on one side of an international border and the rest of the drainage on the other.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 14 August 1832 | Cachar is annexed by proclamation; Thomas Fisher, in charge as magistrate and collector since June 1830, becomes the first superintendent. |
| 1834 | A treaty acknowledges Tularam Senapati's possession of the North Cachar hills; that tract is annexed in 1854 after his death and attached to the district. |
| 1855 | The first tea gardens are laid out on the plain; recruitment of indentured labour from central India follows and continues into the twentieth century. |
| 1849–1893 | A long series of raids from the hills to the south on gardens and villages of southern Cachar, the largest of them in January 1871, prompts the Lushai expedition of 1871–72. |
| 1874 | Cachar and Sylhet are transferred from Bengal to the new Chief Commissioner's province of Assam. |
| May 1921 | The Chargola exodus — tea labourers walk off the gardens of the Chargola and Longai valleys and set out for home during the non-cooperation agitation. |
| 6–7 July 1947 | A referendum is held in Sylhet district; the Radcliffe Commission subsequently awards the Karimganj subdivision to India and the plain is divided at the Kushiyara. |
Rulers and commanders
Held the Khaspur tract in the western plain before the Kachari court came down from the hills. The passage of Khaspur to the Dimasa line through his daughter's marriage to a Dimasa prince is preserved in dynastic genealogy rather than in dated record, and is best treated as tradition.
Dynasty: Koch of Khaspur. Seat: Khaspur
The Kachari king defeated by the Ahom ruler Rudra Singha in 1706. The defeat is the hinge of this region's history — it moved the court off the hills and onto the Barak plain for good, and every later Kachari raja is a plains ruler.
Dynasty: Dimasa Kachari. Seat: Maibang
The strongest of the Khaspur kings. He and his brother Govinda Chandra were initiated into Hindu rites in 1790, and under him the court's language, titles and ceremonial settled into the Bengali plains form that the Khaspur ruins still show. His death in 1813 without a settled succession opened the plain to thirty years of contested claims.
Dynasty: Dimasa Kachari. Seat: Khaspur
The last Kachari raja to rule on the plain. He signed the Treaty of Badarpur on 6 March 1824, which placed Cachar under Company protection during the First Anglo-Burmese War, and was assassinated at Haritikar on 24 April 1830 leaving no male heir. His death led directly to the annexation of 1832.
Dynasty: Dimasa Kachari. Seat: Khaspur
Held the hill tract north of the plain as an independent authority through the whole period of the succession dispute, and was recognised in possession of it by treaty with the Company in 1834. The tract was annexed in 1854 after his death and attached to Cachar district, which is how the hills and the plain came into one administrative unit.
Dynasty: Dimasa Kachari. Seat: North Cachar hills
One of the Manipuri princes who took refuge in the Barak plain during the Burmese occupation of Manipur. He commanded the Manipur Levy raised in Cachar under Company officers in 1825, which cleared Burmese forces from the valley and then from Manipur. He was also one of the claimants to Cachar in the dispute that ran from 1813 to 1832.
Dynasty: Manipur ruling house. Seat: Cachar, then Imphal
Took charge as magistrate and collector in June 1830, conducted the enquiry into the rival succession claims, and administered the annexation of 1832 as the district's first superintendent. The shift of the administrative centre from Khaspur to Silchar dates from this period and is why the valley's principal town sits where it does.
Dynasty: East India Company administration. Seat: Silchar
The history of Barak Valley from ancient through medieval to modern times, and the rulers, commanders and administrators who shaped it. (7)