JAINTIA REBELLION 51 cial measures of the government.20 For a long time a feeling of insecurity and restlessness had gripped the people ofthejaintia hills, who, for the reasons mentioned above, could not completely reconcile themselves to the British administration during the twenty-five years after the occupation of their country in 1835. As observed by a contemporary : "Thejaintias had never reconciled to the way in which their country was taken possession of by the British Government. Many of them look upon this as a piece of treachery..... as a thing to be avenged whenever the opportunity offered itself."21 In spite of this the authorities paid little attention to their distress and grossly undermined their strength and status by indulging in a series of indiscreet and unpopular experiments. Rightly or wrongly, therefore, the people had formed an opinion that they had been neglected and oppressed and that they would not get a fair treatment from their masters as long as the latter lived in the hills. Shortly before the rebellion, in October 1861, the ryots at Phulaguri in the Nowgong district of Assam demonstrated their resentment against certain governmental measures by organising a mass rally of peasants and there was no reason why, the Syntengs thought, they could not emulate the strength and determination of the people living on the other side of their country^s border. The words of the Commissioner of the province are worth quoting in this context: "A people who had neither been left to their own guidance, nor yet fairly brought under ours; upon whom our yoke had pressed with just sufficient force to gall, but not to break into order; who had been denied the boon of having our rule represented among them by an English Officer, and of all our institutions, who had known only our system of Police as illustrated in taxation;....when such a people rise in rebellion it may not be difficult to explain its origin and object, without searching after recondite causes."22 It is an undeniable tact that the whole history of the relationship of the British with the Syntengs had created an explosive situation and the unpopular acts of Major Rowlatt provided the immediate spark for the rebellion.23 SHRUTIDEV GOSWAMI Department of History, Dibrugarh University. 1. The people of the hills in north-east India were accustomed to shifting cultivation and hence it was not possible to assess them individually. It was perhaps because of this difficulty that a house tax was recommended. 2. An Account of the Province of Assam and its Administration, Shillong 1903, p.72. 3. A Mackenzie, History of the Relations of the Government with the Hill Tribes of the North-East Frontier of Bengal, Calcutta, 1884, p 240. 4. WJ. Alien, "Report on the Administration of the Cosseah and Jvnteah Hill Territory, in Selection of Records, Government of Rental, vol. xvii, Calcutta, 1864. 5. Ibid. 6. A. Mackenzie. Memorandum on the North-East Frontier of Bengal, Calcutta, 1869 p. 27. 7. Ibid, p. 28 8 Bengal Judicial Proceedings thereafter BJPL October, 1862, No. 98, Dunsford to Showers, 15 March, 1862. 9. An Account of the Prnmnce of Assam and its Administration, Shillong, 1903. p. 72