write short note on phulaguri Dhawa
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Assam has always contributed in different manners to the socio-cultural and political life of the Indian nation, but all these contributions have most often remained unobserved, unnoticed by the national intelligentsia. It is the same with the freedom movement also. Assam had her due share in the freedom movement, where the country fought to a man in order to oust the two-century old British rule from the country. In fact Assam acted as the prime mover in some respect. One such important episode in the annals of freedom movement, where Assam acted as the prime mover, was the uprising in the Phulaguri area of middle Assam in October 1861 AD. It was the first ever peasant movement in the context of Indian freedom movement, which took place much before the Champaran movement took place under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. The Bengal farmers had revolted in the previous year, that is 1860 AD. But their ire was against the indigo planters, not against the British administration. So the Phulaguri uprising was a historic event. It was also the first ever non-cooperation movement of Indian freedom movement because the farmers of Phulaguri region had stopped payment of taxes to the British administration and thus openly defied the rulers. This had not happened anywhere in India before Phulaguri.
The immediate cause of the Phulaguri uprising of 1861 AD was the exorbitant taxes imposed by the British administration on the farmers of Assam. The British administration always acted in the interests of the British tea planters, not the common masses. These tea planters had been suffering from dearth of labourers. They had to bring labourers from other states at high costs. Moreover a large number of such labourers died of unhygienic conditions in the tea estates as malaria was rampant in those areas. So the tea planters thought that it would be better to engage the local people as labourers in their estates. But the indigenous Assamese people were always independent minded. Even the erstwhile Ahom kings could not uproot a farmer from the latter’s homestead as the right of the farmer on his land was considered to be supreme.