(Part 1)
Satyaraj Hazarika, IPS
Deputy Inspector General of Police, Assam
Introduction:
No war could be valourised, without of course its armies. And no armies are half as prescient without the few men who wage it, first in the mind and latter in the thick of battle. More than a century before the fog of war descended on Kohima, in 1826 the Treaty of Yandaboo gave imperial Great Britain the sovereign rights over Assam, and by extension the Naga Hills. Britain and its armies variously called Cachar Levy (1835), Jorhat Militia (1838) and Frontier Police (1862) staged localised battles with the warlike Nagas, without much success. The indomitable spirit of the Nagas and the difficult terrain, stood between the imperial designs. British Army was not pressed into service in the Naga Hills as the Levies were less paid and did not dig a hole in the exchequer. The arrangement of poorly paid soldiers took up stocades at Samaguting and Lotha Hills foothills before Kohima could be taken.
The British officer in charge of Cachar Levy was Grange who was billeted at Nagaon and took punitive raids on Naga raids on the tea gardens dotting the Barak valley. The Jorhat Militia were comprised of men of the Shan races who surrendered to the British at the conclusion of First Anglo-Burmese War in 1824, after their ineffective fight to stave off the British from taking Jorhat. By 1863, the Nagaon base for Naga operations was expanded as Nowgong Frontier Police came into being and Major John Butler arrived in the scene. The lump of Cachar Levy and Jorhat Militia amalgamated into the Frontier Police.
As incursions of the imperial British increased into Naga Hills in 1872 Naga Hills Frontier Police was detached from the Nagaon branch of Frontier activities, headquartered at Samaguting (present day Chümoukedima near Dimapur, Nagaland) under the command of Captain Butler, the son of Maj John Butler. Civil Police was introduced from 1830 in Assam and used for protection of jails and treasuries. The Police Act of 1861 started the concept of Constabulary much on the lines of Peel's Constabulary of London, and all the Levies and Militias are absorbed in the respective police districts. The division of Civil Police and Frontier Police were clear cut delineation of law and order and frontier forward operations respectively. The Frontier Police were modelled in the British Army in drill and discipline. They were using Snider Rifles of .557 calibre. By 1888 the next generation Martini-Henry Rifles was replaced by Lee-Metford Rifles.
In 1874, politically Assam was made a separate Province, under a Chief Commissioner and Angami Country was taken over by Captain Butler from his Samaguting base. A new direction from Fort William Calcutta in 1878 saw Damant moving to Kohima as a Political Officer. A series of raids beginning Grange's expedition from 1839 till Captain Butler's in 1874 culminated the subjugation of the Angamis, with forces of Naga Hills Frontier Police (NHFP). No regular British Army was utilised for Naga Hills operations uptill then. The British utilised Assam Light Infantry (ALI) raised in 1827 and 2nd ALI raised in Guwahati and later moved to Sadiya to be known as Assam Sebundry Corps (Irregulars), and subsequently in 1864 as 43rd Bengal Infantry (Assam) and finally two years later as 2/8 Gorkha Rifles. With the occupation of Naga Hills with Damant at the helm the NHFP took gaurd and the Regular Units of British Army were stationed at Guwahati (42nd), Shillong (43rd) and Dibrugarh (44th) Assam Light Infantry.
In Silchar, the Bengal Regiment is headquartered. Naga Hills was not an easy place to govern but Captain Butler could bring in a semblance of order after his initial forays into Kohima. But luck was not in Captain Butler's side in Wokha where after setting up a functional administrative setup and a fortified position in 1875, he was ambushed and killed. Things are sharply turning worse for Damant as well in Kohima with Captain Butler's death the Angamis have different plans up their sleeve. They attacked the British in Mazema in 1877 promoting Fort William to move in 43rdBengal Infantry with NHFP holding lower reaches of Kohima ridge upto Dimapur.
In 1879 the four British Indian Regiments stationed in Assam had 32 elephants attached to them, but none was transferred to the Naga Hills. The British took it nonchalantly, business as usual in Naga Hills, for which they would pay dearly. In 13 October 1879, Damant, Cawley and two hundred and forty upwards men, with insufficient arms, half disguised as a peace mission moved up to Jotsoma and Khonoma. The volley of fire from stocaded positions left Damant dead with 25 Frontier policemen and 10 troopers of 43rdBengal Regiment falling to the hail of bullets. The news of the catastrophe reached the British Viceroy in Calcutta. A pall of gloom descended over the whole of North East at the first major debacle of the British arms since the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857.
Burma: The Japanese invasion of 1942
The Third Anglo-Burmese War of 1885 replaced the rule of Thibaw, the Burmese monarch with British rule as the Indo-Burma frontier collapsed. In 1891 British occupied Manipur and regular movement of troops and people from either side started. In Oct-Nov 1941 Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brook-Popham, the Commander-in-Chief of British Far Eastern Command placed put most of the Burma Division (British Army in Burma) in the Shan Hills, as he anticipated that the Japanese invasion would come from Siam from the North, keeping a Brigade level strength along Burma's border with Malaya. After staging the Pearl Harbour attack on 7 December 1941 Japanese quickly took the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Malaya.
On Christmas Day Japanese troops entered Siam. Two days before Siam fell, Japanese air force bombed Rangoon for the first time. And as the New Year arrived by January middle the Burmese coastal towns of Mergui and Tavoy were lost and the Japanese when the second week came the shocking news of the fall of Singapore. A fortnight later in February Japanese Div (33rd and 55th) seized Moulmein, third biggest Burmese town and peering over the banks of Salween towards Rangoon. Another twenty odd days British blew up the bridge over Sittang, hundred miles east of Rangoon. By early March Mandalay the second largest Burmese town in Central Burma was bombed, the eastern hills of Maymyo fell from where the British Governor Dorman Smith was airlifted hours before it fell. Refugees are pouring into India from across Manipur and Assam, crossing the 4000 ft high Pangsau Pass or the ill fated Diphu Pass up North with its snow tipped ranges at over ten thousand feet.
By the spring of 1942 the Japanese conquest of Burma was complete and the ethnic Burmese leaders drafted by the Japanese into Burma Independence Army (BIA). The hill tribes like the Christian Karen and Kachins stood firmly behind the British. BIA in reprisal for anything anti-Japanese killed the Karen leader Saw PeTha and his Scottish wife and their children. The main Japanese invasion came through the Kraishtmus, the narrow land bridge that connects the Malaya peninsula to Burma and rest of South-East Asia. Towards the end of April the British Army got orders to take the long road to India. British rule in Burma had collapsed. The 17th Indian Division retreated 1,000 miles in its retreat from Sittang and reached Kalewa on 15th March, 1942 and then deployed along the Assam-Manipur border. The Eastern Army of the British were responsible for the defence of North-East comprises of 4th and 15th Corps with Lt Gen NMS Irwin in charge of 4th Corps with responsibility for the defence of Assam and Naga Hills.
