Siang & Adi Belt · Eastern Himalaya & Brahmaputra Belt
There was no freedom movement here in the national sense, and it would be a fabrication to describe one. There was no Congress committee, no newspaper, no Gandhian campaign, no electorate and no representation; the Inner Line of 1873 kept the colonial administration out of the hills and Indian political organisation out with it. What this region has instead is resistance to entry — four armed confrontations between 1858 and 1912, fought village by village over concrete grievances such as forced porterage, seizure of supplies, and interference with the trade the hills depended on, rather than for any national idea. The people below fought a frontier administration rather than an empire, and are best read that way. The record also preserves almost no names: one man is remembered in detail because the British tried him, and the several hundred who fought at Kekar Monying are not individually recorded at all. That silence is itself part of the finding.
Risings and revolts
The first two armed confrontations with British columns entering the Abor hills from the plain. They are known on the Adi side by these names; the surviving accounts of them are brief on both sides and the detail is thin.
Outcome: British entry into the hills was not sustained, and no administration followed.
A further British expedition into the Abor hills, met with armed resistance. As with the earlier two, the Adi name for it has survived better than the operational record.
Outcome: The hills remained outside administration; the Inner Line of 1873 continued to be the working boundary.
After the killing of Noel Williamson and Dr Gregorson on 31 March 1911, a large force with Gurkha infantry, sappers and survey parties moved up the Siang. Villages including Kebang and Rotung were attacked and burnt. Adi fighters held the cliff of Kekar Monying above the river against the advance, and an ambush mounted by Kebang and allied villages was met with machine-gun fire with heavy loss on the Adi side.
Outcome: The expedition ended in April 1912. Matmur Jamoh was tried and transported to the Andamans; the eastern frontier was reorganised as the Sadiya Frontier Tract; and the survey carried out during the operation supplied the mapping for the boundary alignment agreed at Simla in 1914.
People
| Name | Years | Movement | Known for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Matmur JamohYagrung village, near Pasighat | active 1911 | Resistance to the frontier administration — the Poju Mimak of 1911 | Named in the colonial record as responsible for the killing of Noel Williamson at Komsing on 31 March 1911, following an earlier confrontation between the two men.Surrendered after British forces moved against his family; sentenced to life imprisonment and transported to the Cellular Jail in the Andamans. |
| The defenders of Kekar MonyingThe cliff above the Siang below Rotung | 1911–12 | Resistance to the Abor Expedition | Held a fortified position on the cliff face against an advancing column with bows, arrows and stones. No individual among them is named in either the British record or the surviving oral account; they are remembered collectively, and a memorial now stands at the site. |
| The villages of Kebang and RotungThe middle Siang | 1911–12 | Resistance to the Abor Expedition | Refused the expedition's terms and mounted an ambush on its line of advance. The attempt was detected and met with machine-gun fire; both villages were burnt in the course of the operation.Rebuilt after the expedition withdrew in 1912. |
| The Adi of the earlier expeditionsThe Abor hills between Pasighat and Yingkiong | 1858, 1859 and 1894 | Resistance to armed entry — Bitbor Mimak, Bongal Mimak and Nijom Mimak | Three separate confrontations with British columns over fifty years, each fought by the villages directly in the column's path rather than by any combined force, because no body existed that could have combined them. No individual name survives from any of the three. |
People from Siang & Adi Belt who resisted colonial rule, and the regional risings and revolts that shaped that resistance. (7)