Reading the Files of “Bawi Controversy” in the Lushai Hills
Cases of Debt, Runaways and Criminality in Colonial India’s Northeastern Frontier
Introduction
In the Lushai Hills of Colonial India’s Northeastern frontier, debates ensued between colonial officials and missionaries during the second decade of the twentieth century on abolition of a local customary practice called Bawi, with the latter claiming that the practice evoked structures of “slavery”. The details of bawi appeared mainly or only as a controversy. The several numbers of files that were generated in the archives had in fact the identical titles prefixed or suffixed by the term “Bawi controversy”. More importantly, they were perceived from the lens of slavery. What were the elements of bawi as a system preceding colonial presence is rendered secondary in these correspondences/accounts. Within this system, commoners paid tribute to the village chiefs by working in their houses or Jhum cultivation by means of servitude-by-refuge in the geographical context of Lushai Hills.The India Office in London and the Government of India, after deliberation with village chiefs, missionaries and the local government - concurred on not reforming the system entirely but to continue bawi under the “present process of modification” as undertaken by local officials to recruit them as labour or more prominently through the “civilizing influences” mediated through conversions by Christian Missionaries. The operational term to refer to bawi in the meantime had conveniently been identified as “semi-slavery”1.
Dr. Peter Fraser, who came to Lushai Hills in 1908 as a doctor and became part of the Welsh Presbyterians, took a keen interest in local lives. During his tenure as doctor across Lushai Hills, he recorded testimonials of several bawis in order to bring to light their situations. He moved the government against the system of bawi and sought its abolition. As part of this data story, we will first follow the case of two brothers who were assisted by Fraser in their bid to be free from the system of bawi. The case of the two brothers surfaces in the archive only as a testimonial to Peter Fraser. From their testimony we come to know that there were “orders” signed by the district superintendent. The experiences of Bawi in Lushai Hills cannot be traced through court or prison records. Within Lushai Hills, the District jail was established in 1899, but the cases of bawis did not come under their jurisdiction. These cases were taken up directly with the Superintendent of the district with interlocutors varying from the village chiefs, interpreters or the missionaries. The decisions on the cases were reached at the office of the Superintendent, thus rendering the legal system arbitrary, with no distinct forms of judicial courts being present.
From the records found at the Assam State Archives, a regional archive in Assam (India), we do not find distinct individual records of these cases or testimonies. All the records are only found as an already translated transcript, with a local assistant helping with the translation, particularly of the testimonials. It is interesting to note that in the testimonials to Fraser, everyone identifies themselves as a “slave”. We can speculate reasonably here that Fraser intentionally labeled their identity as slaves in order to make a case for their “freedom”. As an attempt to understand how the bawis made their way into the colonial archives, reference will also be made to a certain civil suit that was brought against a “runaway” bawi. While the contrast between the testimonial and the civil suit itself speaks volumes about the different conditions that the bawis had to navigate, it is worth mentioning that in the translated scripts of the suits, the individuals identify themselves as “Bawi”, not as slaves. This is a clear indication that the colonial administration preferred them to be identified as bawi so that they could be returned back into the hierarchical fold of chieftainship.
Paying the Price for “Freedom”: The Case of the two brothers
In October 1910, Major Cole, the then Superintendent of the Lushai Hills district had returned the ransom money paid for by Fraser to free two brothers. Lianthuama and Hranghnuna had left their chief Lalluvia bawiman (price for freeing “slaves”) which the chief had asked for.2 Cole however signed an order that stated that the Lalluvia, the chief from Champai had in fact claimed chawmman (boarding fee) of Rs. 40 each from the two brothers. Cole wrote in the order that the two brothers entered the chief’s house about 6 years ago, the younger one at that time being about 9 or 10 years old. They entered the chief’s house on the remarriage of their mother about 1 or 2 years after their father’s death. Making a case for what would be the course of compensation to the chief, Cole wrote: “The chief looked after these youths for 6 years. There has been complaint of ill treatment but they left because they wished to become Christians and did not like to be in the chief’s house. This is a case in which chawmman would be allowed to any ordinary Lushai and is clearly due to the chief”3.
Fraser issued a note of clarification stating the chief claimed from him bawiman, i.e., the price of slaves. In that case only 40 rupees would free both the young boys, as that payment of bawiman is supposed to be the price of freeing a whole family. Fraser also produced a copy of a statement by one of the brothers, Lianthuama, who similarly clarified that what the chief had initially asked as payment of 40 rupees was meant to be for bawiman, and not chawmman. Lianthuama went on to mention: “The value of my brother Hranghnuna’s and my work is more than what the chief spent on us. Hranghnuna was a nurse and I did the work of jhums (cultivating the land) and some other work”4.
Just one day after Fraser paid the 40 rupees, Major Cole returned the money without clearly stating his reasons. Cole announced that the two young brothers were to pay off the sum as per the court’s orders in three installments of 13 rupees, 5 annas and 4 paisa. The elder brother was directed to earn the same amount by working for a month every year in the Public Works Department.5
Debts and ransom money: Punishment and criminality
While the case of the two brothers comes to a close in the archives here, opinions remained strong afterwards on questions of debt surrounding the Bawi system. J. Hezlett, who had taken over from Cole as the Superintendent of the district, argued that if the government took the responsibility of paying off debts, there were risks involved. Such a measure could encourage the chiefs to send in all feeble-minded and undesirable persons who were living with them, and afterwards to decline to receive them back. Clearly in such a circumstance, it would become a big question as to who would support them.
Hezlett also responded to a question by the Chief Commissioner regarding the treatment of subjects that did not pay debt. Hezlett maintained that the Chief Commissioner was not correct in his observation that there was no imprisonment for debt or that the sense of imprisonment for debt was illegal. Rule 17 of the Rules for the Administration of the district (Notification no. 12522J, dated the 29th November 1906), read as follows: “There shall be no imprisonment for debt except in cases where the Superintendent is satisfied that fraudulent disposal or concealment of property has taken place”6. As a matter of practice, Hezlett noted, the courts never resorted to imprisonment. This was most likely because the decree-holder would be in all sorts of difficulty to pay for the subsistence allowance of the civil debtor. In the second place, it was found to be a more preferred practice to bring the debtor in, and if found able-bodied, make him work under the Public Works Department taking a portion off his monthly earnings to pay off the decree.
Statements coming from other quarters confirmed how payment of debt was a process enmeshed with unbearable and never ending burden for bawis. The cases of inhrang-bawis were an example of how payment of debt was always an uncertain risk to live with. Inhrang-bawis among the Lushais fell into two classes. Firstly, there were the ones formerly living in the chief’s house, i.e., Inchhung-bawi, who have left it on marriage, etc., and built houses for themselves. Claims against them would be allowed as in the case of Inchung-bawis provided the original cause of becoming a bawi was justified. The second category of inhrang-bawis was those who had become so in return for some help received from the chief. In such cases the claims, if reasonable and substantiated, would be treated in exactly the same way as claims between ordinary Lushais.7
The case of Chungeka, a Christian Evangelist and an inhrang bawi was brought forward by W Roberts, a Missionary. Chungeka’s statement read:
My father was a slave. I was also born a slave. I am an Inhrang bawi. I am a slave since my grandfather’s time. We have never lived in the chief’s house. The chief has never fed us, not even in the time of famine. A certain man borrowed bird’s feathers, a foreign cloth and some beads from my grandfather; this man did not want to return them. The chief (intervened and) took possession of them from my grandfather, and therefore my grandfather was obliged to become the chief’s slave.
About 7 or 8 years ago- I killed a pig. Phaisama, an Evangelist, said to me “we Christians ought not to give the sachbiah (a leg of pork given by the Inhrang bawi as an acknowledgement of their slavery to the chief). Therefore I did not give the sachbiah to the chief. The chief fined me Rs. 40- but even then I was not freed from slavery and I am still a slave.8
Roberts had asked the colonial authorities that because Chungeka had provided the fine, could he not be considered a slave anymore? Hezlett pointed out that Roberts’ argument calls an inhrang-bawi a slave because he has not given a leg of any domestic animal he kills to the chief. But according to him, if one was to consider that argument, the logical conclusion would mean that all Lushais are slaves. Any villager whether an inhrang-bawi or not has to give the chief a leg of every wild animal he kills, and also pay the chief a basket of paddy as tribute. If the chief fined any villager for not doing so, the courts would support his decision. And then, Hezlett made a statement that underlay the tension in all these cases: “In fact everyone who pays taxes of any kind would be a slave”9.
The economics of slavery here is understood how mobile or immobile a bawi could be in terms of paying debt and ransom money. The cultural factor of custom itself is now entangled into this economic rationale. The newly defined legal forms would shroud the custom into the webs of economics of debt. Bawiman, which was the customary debt required in Lushai society for the bawi to pay in order to be free, were now given a monetary form in the modern economic sense of debt. Thus, if the situations of the bawis are examined strictly in their cultural or customary form, one may only perceive them as a relic of pre-colonial times. It will be then difficult to understand the changes that the complexities which the colonial intervention brought in the various modern forms. What is important to look into is the persistence of existing and continuing relations and how these acquired different forms as they were worked upon through colonial or western categorizations.
Hezlett went on to mention: “The fact that poor persons had a right to enter the chief’s house, when unable to support themselves, explains the origin of bawiman”. Abolition of the custom entailed a possibility that the chiefs would only take in persons who can earn their own living. “If the chief’s house was to be made a poor-house and an asylum”, Hezlett argued “it was only equitable that he should be given some hold over the inmates”10.
What seemed like freedom in this sense had more to do with structural dependency. Pointing more to a methodological question of defining slavery on the colonial scholarship of bawi, the forms of these asymmetrical dependencies reveal a lot more than an answer to the bawi or slavery question itself. The way in which the British administrators extended the mantle of saviorhood to the chiefs was an indication of layered dependent relationships. The debtors, destitute etc. were aggressively pursued by the colonial forces. But the officials knew very well that there were few avenues through which the debts could be repaid by bawis or how attempts to care for the destitute could cost the administrative exchequer. What followed was to push the poor back into the existing hierarchical fold of chieftainship and then conveniently represent it as an act of charity evidenced by the usage of terms above such as poor-house to indicate the households of the chiefs.
Testimonies and Civil suits: Questions and framework
The testimonies provided to Fraser or even that of Chungeka above, turned on its head the colonial official depiction of the bawi system being a benevolent act of the chieftainship. The administration of the district never mounted a direct counter debate to the testimonies themselves. While condemning Fraser’s activities as an act of inciting the local population, the officials constantly invoked their own way of handling the cases of transgressions as a way of fixing the system.
Questions that were raised were much more complex than simply defining the bawi system. The concern of the authorities was based on whether bawi as it existed among the Lushais was legal or illegal, particularly in terms of their movement from one place to another. We may see cases cited by Hezlett and compare them to testimonies submitted to Fraser. It had been asserted repeatedly that the personal liberty of the bawi was not to be interfered with. But the movement of a bawi had to be situated within a more definite set of terms. Three points in the form of questions were put forward11:
When a bawi runs away, does the chief ever send men to arrest him and bring him back?
When the case comes before the court, is it ever ordered that the bawi should go back to the chief’s service until he pays off his bawiman?
Is it generally believed that the bawiman must be paid to the chief before the bawi contract is cancelled?
Hezlett emphasized how the legal suits brought about in cases of runaway slaves showed that chiefs or their aids did not resort to any force. He cited a few cases of recent times. One plaintiff named Vungnemi (Suit No. 20 of 1910) recalled in one of these cases:
I am Lalsailova’s bawi, have been with him since August last; previous to this I was Tulera’s bawi for over 10 years. I ran away from the latter’s village and went over to Lalsailova about August last. Tulera has made no claim on me. I have now run away from Lalsailova, as I do not wish to remain his slave any longer. I did not ask his permission. Nor have I paid the customary ransom of Rs. 40 to the chief.12
Daivunga and kappa who were Mantris of Lalsailova followed up in the same case:
We were sent by the chief to bring back Vungnemi and Laltinchani. Laltinchani is willing to return. She lost a thina belonging to the chief and she is afraid he will claim the value of this plus her bawiman of Rs. 40.
Vungnemi may be released provided she pays the customary ransom of Rs. 40 to the chief. Dr. Fraser has paid the Rs. 40. Vungnemi is accordingly free.13
These legal suits stood in stark contrast with the testimonies collected by Fraser. One may understand the obvious reasons as to why bawis like Vungnemi or Laltinchani did not or could not express in detail their reasons to escape the confines of slavery. Relatively, and if probably not entirely voluntary in nature, testimonies to Fraser had the accompanying belief that there is a possibility of being free. The legal suits germinated from an already perceived undertaking of a crime by the plaintiff.
Conclusion
The narrowly defined legalities of the colonial state and its judicial discourse confer meaning to an event shorn of all experiences and determinations pertaining to the living context, except in immediate terms.14Involvement in the “crime” is ascribed to those individuals who are seen as involved in the immediate context of the event. The possibility of an involvement of the chief’s acts that made Vungnemi run away in the first place is not even considered. His involvement were not cited by the state for his actions did not fit into the legal specifics but was ingrained in the power relations of the indigenous society, well beyond the reach of the colonial state apparatus. The criminal procedure in the Lushai Hills concealed an entire discourse of subordination meted out by the chief, only to be further subjected to the colonial jurisdiction.
It was in fact intentional on part of the colonial administrative set up to ignore the unequal relations between the village chief and the bawis. Control over the bawis as their source of labour was paramount for chiefs to maintain their old hierarchical status. Colonial expansion in Lushai Hills hinged on retaining the system of chieftainship as a method of control over the people. As much as the colonial state used coercion in punitive expeditions, taxation and labour extraction, they also found it to their benefit to maintain the already existing hierarchical social structure under the village chiefs.
Allegiance of the local population to the chief and practices of servitude under the chief’s helm were seen as integral by the British to run administration. Exposure of what could be clearly understood as slavery by the missionaries only reinvigorated the colonial state to protect the powers of the chief. However, all this was done not to provide the chiefs with territorial jurisdiction, but mainly to keep them as affiliates of the larger administration. We can see the dual position of the intermediary in question – the chief- of i) being coerced to provide labour for public works and imperial expansion and ii) finding himself in a position to continue the practices of servitude, albeit in changed legal forms.
Footnotes
Assam State Archives (Hereafter ASA), Political Department, Political (A), August 1915, Nos. 83-105: Semi-slavery (Lushai Hills), House of Commons, 11 July 1914.↩︎
ASA, Political Department, Political, February 1911, Nos. 66-85, Letter from Peter Fraser to Major Cole, October 1, 1910.↩︎
ASA, Political Department, Political, February 1911, Nos. 66-85: Copy of order by Major Cole, Superintendent, October 4, 1910.↩︎
ASA, Political Department, Political, February 1911, Nos. 66-85: Copy of Statement by Lianthuama, October 12, 1910.↩︎
ASA, Political Department, Political, February 1911, Nos. 66-85: Letter from Major Cole to Rev. D. E. Jones and Peter Fraser.↩︎
ASA, Political Department, Political (A), August 1915, Nos. 83-105.↩︎
ASA, GEBA, Political, Confidential (A), March 1911, Nos. 1-21: Note of the case of Inhrang-bawis (i.e., retainers who live in separate houses) by Major Cole.↩︎
ASA, Political Department, Political (A), August 1915, Nos. 83-105: Statement by Chungeka, January 22, 1915.↩︎
ASA, Political Department, Political (A), August 1915, Nos. 83-105.↩︎
ASA, Political Department, Political (A), August 1915, Nos. 83-105: Comment on Chief Commissioner’s Draft.↩︎
ASA, Political Department, Political (A), April 1914, Nos. 16-33.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Ranajit Guha, “Chandra’s Death” in Guha (ed) Subaltern Studies V (New Delhi: OUP, 1987).↩︎