IZ 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[July i, 1882. 



be a terrible calamity tor the province. The only chance 

 for Assam is in the gratlual introduction of an en- 

 tirely new population, for from the Assamese nothing 

 in the way of progress is ever to be hopeil. "The 

 total want of enterprize and energy which characterizes 

 all the Assamese is a bar to anything like rapid pro- 

 gress in their material condition. The Assanjese cult- 

 ivator has all the materials before him for accumul- 

 ating wealth and storing U|i against evil days, but 

 he has no desire for more than sufficient to eat, 

 sufficient opium, sufficient to clothe himself with aud 

 sufficient to shelter himself from the heat or inclem- 

 ency of the weather. Should a famine ever strike 

 the land he will not, I fear, be found more ready to 

 meet it than the poorest and most rack-rented peasant 

 of Behar." 



The above extract is taken from the report of 

 the Commissiouer of the Assam Valley, and it mildly 

 describes a state of things which is really phenomenal. 

 The Bengali is not generally regarded all over India 

 as the incarnation of virile energy and overbearing 

 physical power : such, however, is the light in which 

 that abject being appears to the still more abject 

 peasant of Assam. The Assamese speaks of a Bengali 

 as a Bengali might speak of a Sikh or Afghan, and the 

 Bengali when he ascends the Brahmapootra puts on all 

 the airs assumed by a Pathan who conies down to 

 Bengal. Two explanations have been offered for this 

 effete condition to which the once comparatively alert 

 and industrious population of Assam have fallen. One 

 of these is the Burmese miesion of 1S15. Between 

 that year and 1824 the Burmese ruled the country 

 despotically, and were only driven out bj' us in the 

 latter year, after perpetrating the most unheard of 

 atrocities and nearly depopulaling the country. When 

 they withdrew they carried with them, so the Assam- 

 ese say, the whole of the youth of the province, 

 and one explanation of the effeteuees of the present 

 population is its descent from aged parents. This may 

 or may not be the case, but the depopulation of the 

 country had the effect, in a climate where luxuriance 

 of nature requires constant repression by the labour 

 of man, of permitting the entire valley to be overrun 

 by the jungle in which it h now submerged. The 

 result of this was seriously to impair (he health, 

 stamina, and spirits of the population, already broken 

 by the terrible calamities inH;cted on them by the 

 Burmese. Add to this the ease with which opium 

 was grown — it is almost a necessity in that climate* 

 — and then it is easy to uudersiand ihe present moral 

 condition of the Assamese. He has ceased to struggle 

 against Kature. He is the victim of the climate, of the 

 jungle, and the wild beasts, and he resigns himself to 

 his faie. With such a productive soil a very small 

 patch of cultivation would yield tbe rice and chillies 

 which are all that he requires for food, and the opium 

 which is necessary for his health and pleasure Why 

 then attempt to cultivate more and thus enter on a strug- 

 gle with the jungle growth which in a mght ,-prmgs up to 

 smother his sprouting plants ; or the deer and hog.-^, and 

 buffaloes and elephants, whicti swarm to consume 

 them when in ear? The British now make him pay 

 revenue, and will not let him cultivate the poppy, 

 but sell him his beloved opium at a round price, so 

 he lias in these days to exert tiimself a little more 

 to hnd the money for both. However, it is no great 

 sum that is required after all, and in other respi cts 

 he is independent. He r quires no clothes ; only a 

 little coconut oil to rub ou his body, and the coco- 

 nut is plentiful. His house is made of the grass 

 and bamboos which grow all around him, and he 

 ' puts it up on bamlioo poles to get out of tlie way 

 of the tigers and other beasts which prowl round the 

 hamlet. Evideutly with a population having such 



* Until its use is superseded by i 

 ciuthooa alkaloids.— Ed, 



plentiful supply of the 



few wants, so little ambition, and so little energy, 

 it must always be the case, as the Commissioner of 

 the Assam Valley reports, that "commou labour 

 continues to be much what it always has been in 

 this division, expensive and difficult to procure, and, 

 when piocured, inefficient whenever the labourer is 

 an Assamese." 



Any progress, then, which Assam m,iy make, must 

 come from without. The population is not prolific ; 

 it 19 very doubtful, indeed, whether the birth-rate 

 much exceeds the death-rate. Of themselves it is 

 most improbable that Ihe Assamese would ever again 

 increase to the teemiug population the traces of which 

 are to be found everywhere — in tanks and embanked 

 roads, and forts aud village sites — hidden under the 

 universal pall of grass jungle spread like a curse 

 over the land. Certainly it was not a country to 

 tempt immigration through its own attraction, so its 

 prospects were really very hopeless until, not a 

 qu.arter of a century ago,* a Mr. Bruce discovered 

 the indigenous tea plant. Since then the tea indus- 

 try has galvanized the province into life. Between 

 the census of 1872 and that of 1881 there has been 

 an increase of population of nearly 19 per cent. This, 

 says the report, is in ihose districts which are "the 

 chief tea-producing tracts, and the large increment to 

 their population is mainly the result of the extension 

 of this industry." But te.i, besides adding year by 

 year largely to the poiiule.tion (as much as 50,000 to 

 60,000 souls per annum), and clearing the jungle aud 

 draining the soil (thus improving the climate), has 

 created a trade of nearly 5i crores, more than half of 

 which is the tea itself, and the rest the result of the 

 money which the industry has poured into the country. 

 Tea has also created communication?. Twenty years 

 ago Assam was completely cut off from the outer world. 

 From the Eastern Bengal Railway terminus at Kooslitea, 

 a steamer struggled up the Brahmapootra once a 

 month, taking a month to perform the trip to Dibru- 

 gurh. Now the railway reaches to Gouluudo, whence 

 a daihj steamer sei-vice has been organized, and 

 lateral communications with the river by means of 

 tramways are in course of construction. 



Tea being thus to As.sam what coal aud iron are to 

 Wales or cotton to Manchester, it would be natural 

 to suppose that every effort would be made to foster 

 that industry. Hitherto the case has been rather the 

 reverse, but the administration now .ippears to have 

 taken up the tea interest and the disabilities imposed 

 thereon in the matter of import of coolies are being 

 removed. Act I of 1882 is a tardy act of justice to the 

 body of euterprizing Euglislinieu who have made Assam. 



It may well be understood how worthless the in- 

 digenous Assam population is when we quote the t'hief 

 Commissioner's remark tha' over 1,550 maunds ofopium 

 were consumed in lS8t) in the five upper districts of 

 the Assam Valley, the revenue from the drug being 

 17 lakhs of rupees. The Assamese will do a few days' 

 labour in a tea garden to obtain the money necessary 

 for this opium and for the Government revenue (whicu 

 is extremely lightly assessed), and will then work no 

 more than is necessary for his little crop of vegetables 

 and rice. " Want of cheap labour," writes the Chief 

 Commissioner, " is the great difficulty of administration 

 in Assam." That difficulty has to be got over by 

 importing a new population. Sucli a measure wbieh, 

 for Government is impossible, as was seen in the 

 failure of all attempts at aided emigration, is being 

 carried out gradually by the operation of Ihe tea 

 industry. — Pioneer. 



* It is more than half a centiiri/ since Mr. Bruce suc- 

 ceeded in drawing attention to the As.sam tea plant, which 

 had been noticed and reported on years previously by 

 a Bengal civilian named gcott. — £p. 



