Nagaon Tourism, Assam India

Much of the ancient past of Assam lies buried deep beneath its soil. Lack of proper and systematic archaeological research has resulted in a dearth of archaeological material, and though evidence of human habitation in the land has been traced back to the Early Stone Age, the overall picture remains vague and indistinct. That Assam, by whatever name, was known in other parts of the world as far back as in 100 BC is nevertheless clear from the records of the Chinese explorer Chang Kien who traced his country’s trade with Assam during that period. The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea depicts how Chinese silk from Assam reached Egypt and Rome before the advent of Christianity. Ptolemy’s geography also acknowledges the existence of Assam.

The earliest inhabitants of Assam can be safely said to be the Australoids or the pre-Dravidians. It was however the Mongoloids who entered the land through the eastern mountainous passes who were to almost overrun the land long before the time of the compilation of the Hindu religious literature known as the Vedas around the 10th Century BC. The Vedas called the Mongoloids Kiratas. Pragjyotishpura - the City of Eastern Lights - was deemed to be the capital of the Kiratas, and the epics define a land of the Kiratas stretching from the foothills of the Himalayas in the north to the Bay of Bengal in the south. The Kirata king Narakasura is said to be the founder of Pragjyotishpura. The Kalika Purana and the Vishnu Purana identifies this land as Kamarupa saying that it extended for 450 miles in all directions from the shrine of Kamakhya. Narakasua’s successor, Bhagadatta finds mention in the epic Mahabharata, leading a huge Kirata army with a large number of elephants in the war between the Pandavas and the Kauruvas against the former.

The records of the Chinese traveler Hiuen Tsang shed light on the area in the Seventh Century. Pragjyotishpura came to be known as Kamarupa in the medieval period. Hiuen Tsang speaks of a powerful and prestigious Kamarupa under King Bhaskaravarman. Kamarupa had perhaps achieved the zenith of its power during the time, for subsequent centuries were witness to repeated onslaughts by aboriginals which reduced the power of the kingdom and led to its fragmentation.

Between the heydays of the Kamarupa kingdom and the coming of the Ahoms in the Thirteenth Century, the land experienced a spell of turmoil in which no single power could hold sway. Thus, when the Ahoms entered Assam through the eastern hills in 1228, they chanced upon a period in its history when it was at its most susceptible. Among the local tribes, only the Chutias and the Kacharis could offer a semblance of resistance.

Thereafter, the next six centuries belonged to the Ahoms who founded a powerful dynastic rule with their capital in Sibsagar of Upper Assam. It was after the Ahoms that the land was named Asom. The advent of the Ahoms marked the beginning of a new era in the history of Assam.

The centre of power was thus shifted from Kamarupa in Lower Assam to Upper Assam, and the importance of Lower Assam declined sharply save for an intervening short period in the early Sixteenth Century when the western limits of the kingdom of the Koch, one of the Kirata tribes, increased considerably under their illustrious king Naranarayana.

Meanwhile, the unprecedented rise in power of the Ahoms was taken as a challenge by the Mughal emperors in Delhi who sent seventeen military expeditions to shackle the Ahoms - all in vain. The last of these expeditions resulted in a long-drawn see-saw battle between the Mughals and the Ahoms at Saraighat --- the present site of the first bridge over the Brahmaputra - near Guwahati, which climaxed in a resounding victory for the Ahom forces under its general Lachit Barphukan.

Lachit Barphukan achieved immortal fame and his heroism together with the battle and its many annecdotes - one of which relates the interesting incident of Lachit beheading his own uncle for slight of duty, as an example of his patriotism - are now integral parts of the history and folk culture of Assam.

The victory at Saraighat was followed by a spell of treacherous court intrigues which threatened the very existence of the Ahom kingdom until Rudra Sinha assumed power and took the Ahom kingdom from strength to strength. From this zenith however it was a plunge straight down, starting with the uprising of the Vaisnavite Moamoria Mahantas in protest against the religious harassment meted out to them at the instigation of the Sakta Ahom queen Phuleswari, in the eighties of the Eighteenth Century. It was during the troubled times of the uprising and many court intrigues and dissension sapping the strength of the Ahom rulers that the Burmese invaded Assam through its eastern borders.

The thickly populated parts of the present day Nagaon, earlier spelt as Nowgong, were amongst the chosen targets of violence during the subsequent Burmese rule in the late 1810s. There was no leadership to organize resistance movement against the Burmese. The people heaved a sigh of relief when the British came down heavily on the Burmese and compelled them to withdraw from Assam. Following the treaty of Yandaboo in 1826, this area of the province passed off silently into the hands of the British. Nagaon was carved out as a separate district administrative unit in 1832. It took a couple of years before the British finally settled on the present site on the bank of the Kollong River as the district headquarters in 1839. The district headquarters was called Nagaon and gradually it emerged into a town. It became a municipality in 1893.

The eastern, western and southern segments of the newly organized district were once ruled by different small-time feudal kings or their agents. An extensive and undulating plain intersected by big and small hills and rivers - the geography of the segments determined who their masters ought to be. The residual effects of the rule of the Bara Bhuyans were imaginatively utilised and reorganised by Momai Tamuli Barphukana, an intrepid officer of the Ahom king Pratap Singha in the first half of the seventeenth century. This area, until then, was more of strategic than administrative concern. A newly organized village system - hence called "Nagaon", 'Na' meaning new.

At the social level, a great majority of the people were the Vaishnavites. Sankardeva, the great saint of the Bhakti movement era was born at Bordowa, at a distance of fifteen kilometers from the district headquarters. His life and work had been social exemplifiers and one can feel the long shadow of his influence even in the remotest part of the district.

Conscious of its strategic location, the administration of the district was always entrusted to officers of extraordinary merit. A local peasant uprising at Phulaguri in 1861 against government’s taxation policy was enough of an indication that the peasantry was not altogether a stolid and docile lot. The peasantry was also an active participant in the various stages of the national struggle for freedom.

The entire credit of introducing modern education in the district goes to Christian Missionaries. Of them, the name of Miles Bronson, the American missionary, shines as brilliantly as ever. The apostle of the new age Anandaram Dhekia Phukan spent the best part of his life at Nagaon, His spiritual successor Gunabhiram Barua also worked in Nagaon for about two decades.

At one time, a large chunk of the Naga Hills, the Mikir Hills and North Cachar Hills were part of the district. With the passage of time, they were sliced away to form separate districts.

Nagaon follows the pattern of any other district of the Lower Provinces east of the Ganges. It is basically a rural conglomerate of agricultural population.