Thanks for that extremely informative bit of history Saurav. I would have been hard pressed to substantiate my assertions -- am much too history challenged :-). Yours makes it complete and believable without a doubt.
At 12:26 PM -0400 8/7/03, Saurav Pathak wrote: >Alpana B. Sarangapani said on AssamNet: > >+ Actually I was trying to analyze why Badan B. did what he did. > >badan borphukon did what he did because he - >(1) had the opportunity: even though he was the ahom viceroy in >guwahati, he was far from the ahom capital. the borphukans were >always more independent than the borbaruas. in the past, another >borphukan had made a bid to capture the swargadeo-ship, laluk >borphukan, the brother of lachit. guwahati was the place where many >a conspiracy was born. > >(2) lacked political support: whereas laluk and others had a wide >network of support among the other nobles, badan lacked this. he >and his sons were autocratic, and cruel, and had fun at the expense >of his own subjects in guwhati. so when the ahom monarchy decided to >oust badan, he had no option but to flee. also, he failed to exploit >the other nobles as laluk and others could. > >(3) had some network in burmese capital: one of the queens in the >burmese court was an ahom princess. it was she who entertained >badan. (just like laluk tried to exploit the romoni gabhoru/rahmat >begum connection with the mughals and a past "traitor", baduli.) > >so badan was no different from the others. he just tried to exploit >the opportunities that were available to him. the later ahom >swargadeos had to hire merceneries and finally the british to oust >the burmese just like badan tried to capture power with outside help. >(even though this was not in the same class as the badan action it led >to the colonization by the british, just as badan brought in the >burmese). > >from the naga point of view, even though they were not in the least >involved in these events, the colonization of assam led to the >"colonization" of the naga areas under the british, and finally to >the present situation in nagaland. the dynamics of "buffer zones" >applied then, as it does now. it can be imagined that without tea, >assam would have been the primary buffer for british india, and not >nagaland (the british maintained the ahom swargadeoship for some >time after the yandaboo treaty, before it showed an interest in the >tea). > >is the badan action analogous to the naga situation? prima facie, >it is not. the indian "viceroy" in nagaland is the naga chief >minister. the jamirs of nagaland. and the analogy stops right >here, and cannot be stretched further, imo. > >-- >saurav _______________________________________________ Assam mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/listinfo/assam
