50 Fun Facts About Assam

Tea gardens in parts of Assam keep 'bagan time', a local clock set how far from Indian Standard Time?

One hour ahead is 'bagan time', tea garden time, in the corner of India that sees daybreak first. In 2014 Assam's chief minister urged the whole state to adopt a clock an hour ahead of IST to save energy.

Whose 1904 visit to Kaziranga set off the first moves to protect it as a reserve forest?

The Viceroy's wife, Mary Curzon, toured Kaziranga hoping to see its famous rhinos and saw none, so she pressed her husband to protect them; officials proposed a reserve forest there the next year.

Rongali Bihu, the Assamese New Year when village cattle are washed in rivers, falls in which month?

April, because the Assamese year begins when the sun enters Aries, the same solar reckoning that puts Thailand's Songkran and Punjab's Vaisakhi in the middle of the month.

Majuli is Guinness's largest river island, but Britannica picks Bananal Island in which country?

Brazil's Bananal Island, where the Araguaia River splits into two branches for 320 km, is Britannica's pick. Guinness backs Majuli, a title under threat: the Brahmaputra's floods keep eroding the island.

Which golden wild silk of Assam, spun by larvae fed on som and sualu leaves, holds a GI tag?

Muga is the silk that washing improves: its golden lustre is said to grow with every hand wash. The silkworm that spins it has never been fully domesticated.

Assam's Ahom dynasty traced its founder to Möng Mao, a Tai principality whose core lay in which modern country?

China's Yunnan, around today's Ruili, was Möng Mao's core. The Ahoms who came from there took on their new home's ways: their Tai language fell out of use, and their descendants speak Assamese.

Which Assamese singer, a Columbia PhD and Paul Robeson's friend, got the Bharat Ratna in 2019?

Bhupen Hazarika met Robeson in New York and reworked his 'Ol' Man River' as the Assamese song 'Bistirno Parore', with the Brahmaputra in the Mississippi's place; the Bharat Ratna came after his death.

Which Assamese sprinter won India's first World U20 track gold, the 400 m at Tampere in 2018?

Hima Das, a farmer's daughter from a village near Dhing, was talked into sprinting by a school PE teacher who spotted her at a camp; in Tampere she ran 51.46 s to win.

Which 1826 agreement, ending the First Anglo-Burmese War, handed Assam to the East India Company?

The Treaty of Yandabo was Burma's to sign because its armies had overrun the Ahom kingdom a few years earlier; defeat also cost it Arakan, Tenasserim and an indemnity of a million pounds.

Which Ahom general won the 1671 naval battle of Saraighat near Guwahati, halting a Mughal invasion?

Lachit Borphukan's side spun out sham peace talks to buy time; then, with the Mughal boats driving the Ahoms back, he arrived with more ships, beat their fleet and forced the invaders to retreat.

Which June festival at Guwahati's Kamakhya temple celebrates the goddess's yearly menstruation?

Ambubachi Mela shuts the temple for three days, when the goddess is believed to be menstruating; the sanctum she rests in holds no idol, only a yoni-shaped cleft in the rock fed by a natural spring.

Which temple islet at Guwahati is called the world's smallest inhabited river island?

Umananda, or Peacock Island to the British, carries a legend: Shiva, disturbed at his meditation here by Kamadeva, the god of love, is said to have burnt him to ashes, which gave its hill the name Bhasmachal.

Which Dima Hasao village is infamous for birds plunging from the sky on foggy monsoon-end nights?

Jatinga's 'bird suicides' are no such thing, researchers say: on foggy, windy nights the birds, mostly young ones, are drawn down to the village lights, where people kill them with bamboo poles.

Which bird, known locally as the deohanh, is Assam's state bird?

The white-winged wood duck has proved hard to save in captivity: flocks bred from birds caught in Assam around 1970 grew fast, then were cut down by avian tuberculosis, to which the species is unusually prone.

Which bloom, the kopou phul worn by Bihu dancers, is Assam's state flower?

The foxtail orchid flowers on the treetops just as the festival comes round, so dancers wind its flowering sprays around their hair; as a symbol of love it turns up at Assamese weddings too.

Which cetacean, called shihu in Assamese, is the official animal of the city of Guwahati?

The Ganges river dolphin, also India's National Aquatic Animal, is nearly blind: living in silty water, it finds its way and its prey by echolocation rather than sight.

Which fleeing leader did Assam Rifles soldiers meet at the border in 1959 and escort on towards Tezpur?

The Dalai Lama slipped out of Lhasa by night in March 1959. Nehru sent an Assam Rifles detachment to meet him at the frontier near Tawang, and a month after his escape he reached Tezpur in Assam.

In Bangladesh, the Brahmaputra's main channel takes which name before it joins the Ganges?

The Jamuna was only a minor side channel until the late 1700s, when the Brahmaputra began to abandon its old bed past Mymensingh; that former main course survives as the Old Brahmaputra.

Asom Divas, 2 December, marks the 1228 arrival of which Tai prince who founded the Ahom kingdom?

Sukaphaa is said to have left his homeland in 1215 with some 9,000 followers and spent thirteen years crossing the Patkai hills, raiding as he went, before he came down into the Brahmaputra valley.

What are the pyramid-like burial mounds of Ahom royalty at Charaideo, a UNESCO site, called?

Maidams are earth mounds raised over hollow vaults. Kings were laid in them with grave goods that could include horses and elephants and, in the early centuries, servants buried to attend them.

Which Ahom royal pavilion, often called one of Asia's oldest surviving amphitheatres, let kings watch buffalo fights?

Rang Ghar is said to have begun as a bamboo and timber stand; Pramatta Singha rebuilt it in brick in the 1740s as a permanent royal box for the animal fights on the field at Rangpur.

The Assam–Tibet earthquake of 1950 struck on which Indian national day?

Independence Day, 15 August. The shaking sent landslides across the hill rivers, and when one of those natural dams burst days later, the flood drowned hundreds of people downstream.

Purandar Singha, the last Ahom king, ruled Upper Assam as a British tributary from 1833 to 1838 from which town?

Jorhat was his capital for five years. He owed the British 50,000 rupees a year, fell behind, and in 1838 they deposed him and took Upper Assam for themselves, ending six centuries of Ahom rule.

Which Mughal governor of Bengal led a war fleet up the Brahmaputra in 1662 to seize the Ahom capital?

Mir Jumla II took the capital within weeks, but the rains then cut his garrisons off amid Ahom raids and an epidemic; he came to terms, fell ill and died just before his ship reached Dhaka.

Ram Singh of Amber led the Mughal army beaten at Saraighat in 1671 on the orders of which emperor?

Aurangzeb sent him east the year after Shivaji escaped from Agra while in the raja's custody, and defeat completed the fall: Ram Singh was recalled and lost rank and standing at court.

What name is given to the Ahom chronicles first written in the Tai Ahom language on sanchi bark?

Buranjis were kept by Ahom priests and leading families, who brought them up to date and handed them down from father to son; their accounts of the Mughal wars tally with the Mughals' own chronicles.

Koch general Sukladhwaja earned the name Chilarai for moving troops as fast as which bird?

A kite, 'chila', gave Chilarai his name; fighting for his brother Naranarayan he helped subdue the whole Brahmaputra valley, Ahoms included, and went on to invade Sylhet.

By a legendary curse, members of which royal family avert their gaze when passing Kamakhya temple?

Cooch Behar's Koch kings rebuilt the temple in 1565. In one widespread story their king then demanded to see the goddess for himself, and she cursed him and his descendants never to visit her shrine.

Guwahati's site was Pragjyotishpura, capital of which early kingdom that Xuanzang visited in the 640s?

Kamarupa's king Bhaskaravarman, an ally of the emperor Harsha, sent an invitation to bring the Buddhist pilgrim to his court, though he was not a Buddhist himself.

Guwahati takes its name from 'guwa', the Assamese word (from Sanskrit guvaka) for which crop?

Areca nut, chewed with betel leaf as tamul-paan, is traditionally offered to guests in Assam as a mark of respect.

Assam's malty, strong leaf is a mainstay of which kind of tea blend?

Breakfast tea leans on Assam for strength: grown at or near sea level, the leaf brews dark, brisk and malty, the backbone of English and Irish breakfast blends alike.

In 1823 the trader Robert Bruce found which upper Assam people already brewing the native tea bush?

A Singpho chief promised Bruce specimens of the plant his people brewed, but Bruce died before it was even classified; his brother Charles received them and went on to run the government's first tea forests.

Which Assamese noble, the first Indian commercial tea planter, was hanged by the British in 1858?

Maniram Dewan began as a loyal ally of the East India Company and planted his own tea garden at Cinnamara, but was hanged for conspiring against the British during the 1857 uprising.

Which Brahmaputra weaving town is nicknamed the 'Manchester of Assam' for its silk handlooms?

Sualkuchi is said to have begun as a planned weavers' village: an 11th-century Pala king is credited with settling 26 weaving families there, and its looms still turn out all three of Assam's silks.

Which red-bordered white cloth do Assamese hosts offer to a guest as a mark of welcome?

The gamosa looks like a plain hand towel but carries real weight: elders are given one at Bihu, and scriptures are laid on a gamosa rather than on the bare ground.

Which Bihu hornpipe, played beside the dhol drum, is made from a buffalo horn?

The pepa leads the Bihu dance, which began as a courtship dance: a man blows the pipe beside the drummer while the women dance.

What is the bamboo-and-thatch bonfire lit at dawn after Magh Bihu's Uruka night called?

The meji is lit as a prayer to the god of fire to close Bhogali Bihu's night-long feast; alongside it young men raise a bhelaghar hut, eat the feast inside and burn that too the next morning.

Which conical bamboo hat, once an Assamese status symbol, is now presented to guests of honour?

The japi began as a farmer's sunshade of bamboo and palm leaf; ornate versions became court wear, and those of royalty and nobles were tipped with silver and gold.

On Kati Bihu in October, Assamese homes light earthen lamps at the foot of which sacred plant?

Tulsi gets a lamp, as do the granary, the garden and the paddy fields, where in earlier times the flames doubled as a natural insecticide by drawing in insects during the lean season.

The WWII Stilwell Road to Kunming, built after Japan cut the Burma Road, began at which Assam town?

Ledo gave the road its first name. Once it linked up with the Burma Road in 1945, Chiang Kai-shek renamed it for the American general Joseph Stilwell; its muddy climb over the Patkai range was nicknamed 'Hell Pass'.

Khar, an alkaline ingredient of Assamese cooking, is made from water filtered through the ash of what?

Dried banana peel burns down to an ash rich in potassium carbonate, which is why the water filtered through it turns alkaline. The liquid itself is called khar too.

Which Golaghat boxer won 2020 Olympic welterweight bronze, only the third Indian boxer to medal?

Lovlina Borgohain first trained in Muay Thai alongside her two elder sisters, then switched to boxing; after her Tokyo medal, Assam made her a deputy superintendent of police.

Which 17-year-old was shot leading a flag-bearing Quit India march on Gohpur police station in 1942?

Kanaklata Barua belonged to the Mrityu Bahini, a 'death squad' of Gohpur youth who set out to raise the flag over the police station; when she fell, Mukunda Kakoti took up the flag and was shot too.

Which first Chief Minister of Assam (1946–50), titled 'Lokpriya', now names Guwahati's airport?

Gopinath Bordoloi led Assam's refusal of the 1946 Cabinet Mission plan, which would have grouped the province with far larger Bengal, and readied a mass agitation rather than give way.

Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya's novel 'Mrityunjay' made him the first Assamese writer to win which award, in 1979?

The Jnanpith Award reached Assamese literature fourteen years after the prize began. Its winner had also edited the magazine Ramdhenu, where he found and promoted a generation of young writers.

Which 'father of the Assamese short story' wrote the words of the state song 'O Mor Apunar Desh'?

Lakshminath Bezbaroa wrote Assam's anthem from afar: he married into Calcutta's Tagore family and made his living in the timber trade, first in Calcutta and later at Sambalpur in Odisha.

Which 1935 Jyoti Prasad Agarwala film about a tortured Ahom princess was the first Assamese movie?

Joymoti was a home-made film in every sense: Agarwala, back from months learning the craft at the UFA studios in Germany, set up his own studio on a tea estate in Assam and shot it there.

Which 4.94 km Dibrugarh–Dhemaji bridge opened in 2018 as India's longest rail-cum-road bridge?

Bogibeel was promised under the Assam Accord of 1985 and took a generation to arrive: the foundation stone was laid in 1997, and trains and cars first crossed its two decks in 2018.

Which student body led the 1979–85 Assam Movement against foreigners on electoral rolls?

AASU signed the Assam Accord in Rajiv Gandhi's presence in August 1985, accepting migrants who had arrived before 1966; its leaders then founded a party, the Asom Gana Parishad, and won power in the state.

Which Dima Hasao headquarters, its name said to mean 'ant hill' in Dimasa, is Assam's only hill station?

Haflong lent its name to a language: Haflong Hindi, a pidgin that grew up so the district's many hill peoples, Dimasa, Hmar, Kuki and Zeme Naga among them, could talk to one another.