The Ahoms today are spoken of with reverence, along with a handful of other dynasties who have been selected as icons of contemporary nationalism. However, Ahom power, even in its own time, had its critics. None were more vocal—or more willing to violently rebel against them—than the Moamarias, a gathering of tribal and peasant groups. Just decades after the military campaigns that we most celebrate the Ahoms for today, its subjects brought the kingdom to its knees, leaving it directly vulnerable to Burmese and British conquest. This is their story.
The grip of the Ahom State
In the early 1700s, it appeared that the Ahom kingdom had achieved a glorious pinnacle. Just decades earlier, it had decisively defeated Mughal forces from Bengal, which were led by the Rajput king Ram Singh I. This extended Ahom power into the lower Brahmaputra Valley, once ruled by the thriving medieval kingdom of Kamarupa. The Ahoms had been interested in the Kamarupa region for nearly a century, having previously fought the rulers of Koch Bihar for it. The Koches had then become Mughal allies, directly leading to the Ahom-Mughal wars.
So, Ahom contact with the Kamarupa region had been costly in military terms, but also had many other consequences. As historian Amalendu Guha writes in Neo-Vaishnavism to Insurgency: Peasant Uprisings and the Crisis of Feudalism in late 18th Century Assam, it integrated them into the economic networks of the Gangetic Plains, making artisans and craftspeople prosperous. It also encouraged the spread of the Neo-Vaishnavism of the teacher Shankaradeva.
Also known as the Ekasharana Dharma, this religious movement turned away from expensive rituals of Puranic Hinduism toward a congregational form of worship, making it popular with artisans, traders, peasants, and tribal groups. Ekasharana preachers were accommodative toward orthodox Brahmin practices, and toward tantric and animist rituals; in general, they dismissed caste hierarchies.
Particularly notable for these latter attitudes was the guru Aniruddhadeva (1553–1626), a Kayastha or scribe descended from a landed family. In the early 1600s, Aniruddhadeva founded a sect called the Moamara Sattra in the Upper Brahmaputra Valley. Through the 1700s, Ekasharana sects reacted in unexpected ways with the structure of the Ahom State society.
As we’ve seen in earlier editions of Thinking Medieval, the Ahoms ruled over a strictly hierarchical society with themselves—the descendants of Tai-speaking armed immigrants of the 13th century—at the top. A vast mosaic of other tribal groups lived under their rule, some of them integrated into Ahom nobility, others forced into the paik (conscripted men) levy system of the Ahom State, wherein they had to provide compulsory labour for a significant proportion of the year. As sociologist Chandan Kumar Sharma writes in his paper Socio-Economic Structure and Peasant Revolt: The Case of Moamoria Upsurge in the Eighteenth Century Assam, all that paiks were allowed in return was a tiny strip of 2.66 hectares of land for wet-rice cultivation, barely allowing for subsistence.
Relatively privileged within this system were chamua paiks, generally Brahmins, Kayasthas, rich peasants, and some artisan families. They paid dues in skilled labour; they could even convert their dues entirely into cash. As Guha writes in Neo-Vaishnavism to Insurgency: Peasant Uprisings and the Crisis of Feudalism in late 18th Century Assam, the conquest of Kamarupa—where Mughal governors had encouraged the payment of tax in cash—accelerated this process. As the paik workforce available to the State fell precipitously, land surveys were undertaken, and individual dues were raised. All the while, Ekasharana establishments grew ever more rich and powerful through donations of land and paiks.
Many Ahom subjects voluntarily became Ekasharana householder-monks to escape having to pay dues to the State. Finally, Ekasharanas also collected tithes from their followers, often tribal peoples, granting them resources to rival the State itself.
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The rise and fall of the Moamarias
By the 1760s—while American landlords were plotting against the British on the other side of the world—the Moamara Sattra had waxed mighty indeed. Guha reports that the Sattra owned 4,000–5,000 buffaloes, a dozen farms, 8,000 servile dependants, 10,000–12,000 monks, enormous quantities of gold and silver, and hundreds of thousands of followers. Its adherents included Ahoms, Brahmins, fisherpeople, various “untouchable” groups, and subjugated forest peoples such as the Morans. At a time when the population of the entire Brahmaputra Valley was around 3 million, this represented a huge proportion of the Ahoms’ subjects. When the Moamaras decided to build a new campus, thousands of devotees raised a mound for this purpose in just five days.
On 15 September 1769, the Ahom State, already on edge with its manpower troubles, made a fatal misstep. Ragh Neog, a Moran disciple of the Moamara order, was flogged at the royal court for supposedly delivering to it fewer elephants than due. The infuriated Morans went to the Moamara abbot for counsel.
The abbot attempted caution: as Guha notes, the Moamaras had already attracted hostility from the State in 1650 and 1691. Two of their leaders had been executed: one for tax evasion and the other for not conforming to idol worship and caste purity. The latter were useful to the Ahom kings because they helped maintain a strict social hierarchy. But the Moamara abbot’s caution was to no avail. The Morans erupted into revolt, quickly drawing to their banner other subjugated peoples and disgruntled paiks, many (but not all) adherents of the Moamara Sattra. The Moamaria rebellion had begun.
With guerrilla attacks, superior knowledge of terrain, and the sympathy of paiks conscripted by the Ahom royals, the Moamarias seized the capital, Rongpur, within two months. But, like other rebellions in South Asian history, they had no idea how to transform the system that they had been oppressed by. Instead, their leaders simply took over the offices and riches of the Ahom State, marking the first time that non-royals and non-Ahoms had held them.
The Ahom royalty quickly struck back, driving the Moamarias out of the city. But this was by no means the end. As historian Sristidhar Dutta notes in The Moamaria Rebellion of Assam and the Participation of Hill Tribes and their Bahatias, the Moamarias found even more allies as they scattered to the foothills. These included the Nishi and Dafla peoples, who had been involuntarily settled there by the Ahoms to serve raiders from present-day Arunachal Pradesh—essentially a bribe to the raiders in goods and labour. Meanwhile, the Ahom court requested aid from other regional powers, such as Manipur and erstwhile Burma.
Over the next few decades, the Brahmaputra Valley was left in absolute shambles. According to Guha, nearly half the population was killed, permanently damaging networks of commerce, religion, and agrarian production. The Ahom court was driven from its capital multiple times. Royalist and non-royalist sattras were mercilessly targeted by both sides; abbots took to the battlefield; folk songs and myths were composed around dashing figures, including women generals by the name of Radha and Rukmini.
When the court finally secured British aid and defeated the Moamarias in 1794, they were left with a kingdom in ruins. They were forced to come to terms with a semi-independent Moran chiefdom, and raised a standing army of Hindustani sepoys to reduce their dependence on paiks. But within two decades, Burma began to raid Assam, and soon after, it was assimilated by the British.
As crucial as the Ahom-Mughal wars are to Assam’s history, their indirect sequel—the Moamaria Rebellion—often misses our attention. It is a lasting reminder of the dangers of an oppressive, unequal and diverse State society, the importance of popular uprisings in shaping India’s history, and the unforeseen consequences of conquest. There are many more examples from the 17th and 18th centuries; we will return to them in future editions of Thinking Medieval.
Anirudh Kanisetti is a public historian. He is the author of Lords of the Deccan, a new history of medieval South India, and hosts the Echoes of India and Yuddha podcasts. He tweets @AKanisetti.
This article is a part of the ‘Thinking Medieval’ series that takes a deep dive into India’s medieval culture, politics, and history.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)