The Crown Colony of Northeast India - Britain’s lost Colony plan

The British provinces in India, as we all know, numbered 15 at the time of partition. From the earliest in 1640 (Madras) to the last one in the race in 1942 (Panth Piploda), the administrative structure of British India alternated between the three Presidencies of Bengal, Bombay, and Madras. Eventually, this structure broke up into 15 provinces on 15th August 1947. However, as with any government, there was also a proposal for a separate colony of 2.5 million people. If approved, this would have further divided India into smaller regions. This proposal, known as the Crown Colony of Northeast India or North Eastern Frontier Protectorate, was floated in the 1930s and 1940s. It aimed to incorporate the following districts of Assam Province, primarily: 

1. Sadiya Frontier Tract (part of today's Arunachal Pradesh)
2. Balipara Frontier Tract (part of today's Arunachal Pradesh)
3. Naga Hills (part of today's Nagaland)
4. Tribal Areas (part of today's Nagaland)
5. Cachar (Silchar, Assam)
6. Lushai Hills (modern day Mizoram)
7. Khasi & Jaintia Hills (part of today's Meghalaya)
8. Khasi States (part of today's Meghalaya)
9. Garo Hills (part of today's Meghalaya) 

Additionally, the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bengal, Manipur, Kachins territory and Chin Hills of Burma were planned to be added, along with other minor regions, to form the Crown Colony of Northeast India. Although not formally decided, fleeting discussions suggested either Shillong or Imphal as the colony's capital. Predominantly tribal, the British fascination with the natives led to the idea of establishing a separate Crown Colony in the NE of India. 

According to a 1935 Act, the hill districts of Assam province – Naga Hills, Lushai Hills, Khasi & Jaintia Hills – were grouped under "Excluded Areas". This meant they had British administration with limited involvement from Indian leaders. They were excluded because their ethnicities, languages, cultural practices, and many other aspects were different from the mainland population. To manage these areas more effectively, the British devised a plan to separate them as a single Crown colony. However, this is a simplified explanation based on this article. A separate country of tribes like Naga, Mizo, Kuki, Meitei, Garo, Kachin, and Chin, landlocked between India, Tibet, Bhutan, and Burma, would be extremely vulnerable and exposed to military excursions and experiments, especially by the British. This was because they were in the midst of resolving Japanese aggression over their other colonies, such as Singapore and Malaya, and even Burma. 

The sinister intentions behind this division were pretty much obvious: the British wanted it. Their fascination with tribal culture had little to do with the culture itself, but more with the idea of manipulating and controlling the tribes, as various European colonists had done in Africa and the Americas. Politically, it was another divide and rule strategy that the British had implemented in other parts of the country. They wanted to create a buffer and a 'puppet' state between India and Southeast Asia, to keep a direct check on the rising French in Indochina. Pulling out the tribal regions from the rest of India would create a deep crack in India's integrity, weakening its national unity, as the British had envisioned. 

Nevill Edward Parry, the Deputy Commissioner of Garo Hills, first proposed this idea in the Simon Commission memorandum in 1930. Dr. John Henry Hutton, Deputy Commissioner of the Naga Hills, supported it. In 1941, Sir Robert Neil Reid, the Governor of Assam, secretly presented a formal proposal, backed by James Philip Mills, the Advisor to the Government of Assam. Mills provided examples of African colonies. However, it was Reginald Coupland, a British historian, who popularised the idea of a separate colony, earning the Crown Colony Scheme the nickname Coupland Plan. Even further, Robert Reid justified the proposal by claiming that the hill tribes were "not Indians in any sense of the word, neither in origin, language, appearance, habits, outlook, and it is by historical accident that they have been tacked on to an Indian Province." This statement is also quoted in Caroline Keen's book, "The British takeover of Assam." 

The British had conducted similar experiments in Southern Africa, carving out separate tribal nations that served as Crown colonies. These included Basutoland (now the Kingdom of Lesotho), Bechuanaland (now the Republic of Botswana), and Swaziland (now the Republic of Eswatini). Inspired by these incidents, the British hoped to achieve a similar outcome in India, and this plan even garnered some support. Reverend L Gatphoh and Macdonald Kongar from the Khasi and Jaintia Hills favoured British rule over Congress. However, the Naga tribes were particularly fervent in their desire for secession. They even proposed the establishment of a separate Crown colony for the Naga Hills, a plan championed by Angami Zhapu Phizo, the leader of the Naga separatist movement from the 1940s to 1990. 

When Sir Muhammad Saleh Akbar Hydari was appointed as the Governor of Assam in January 1947, he dismissed all proposals and claims of a British colony in NE India. Instead, he focused on the pressing issues of violence and the imminent independence of India. This shift in focus made the idea of a Crown colony unpopular. Jawaharlal Nehru and Gopinath Bordoloi, the Assam Premier, strongly opposed this notion. Additionally, the ill-timing of such a proposal and Nehru's efforts to convince tribal leaders weakened the demand further. In January 1946, Rev. JJM Nichols Roy, among others, sent a memorandum to the British parliament expressing the support of the people of Khasi and Jaintia Hills for joining India rather than forming a separate territory. Even after the British departure, the hill states of Lushai, Khasi, Garo, and Jaintia favoured maintaining autonomy within the Assam province. Even the Naga National Council was convinced of joining India while preserving its autonomy within the new nation. 

Such oppositions helped dismantle this proposition and saved India from further divisions. Shortly after independence, however, the Manipur and Mizo Union from the Lushai Hills refused to consider themselves part of independent India. Manipur immediately declared independence, and the Mizo Union, a political entity representing the Mizo people, in Aizawl refused to hoist the national flag on 15th August 1947. It was only through various negotiations and promises made by the INC that the two groups joined the Indian Union, although the former took two more years to settle down.

There is no official map to demarcate this plan, so the map here is a self-constructed, assumed map based on various findings from multiple sources.