LAND OF BLUE HILLS

MIGHTY BRAHMAPUTRA

Assam is a land of blue hills, green valleys and a red river. Situated just below the eastern Himalayan foothills, it is surrounded by the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura and Meghalaya, which together with Assam are known collectively as the seven sisters.

With an area of 78,438 square kilometers, Assam is almost equivalent to the size of Ireland or Austria. Assam shares international borders with Bhutan and Bangladesh and the international borders of China and Myanmar are within 80 to 100km.

Assam has been a world leader in the production of tea for more than one hundred years and currently produces around 25 percent of the world's tea. Traditionally it is a producer of high quality silk, locally called paat bred on mulberry leaves, and the only place in the world where all four major silk types are cultivated, the others being the golden silk Mugaunique to Assam , the Ahimsa silk Eri bred on castor leaves, and tassar.

It has the highest reserves of oil and natural gas after Bombay High and Gujarat. Along with neighbouring Arunachal, it has the richest biodiversity in India.

HISTORY

Leaving Manipur and Tripura, rest of these states are carved out from Assam during 1960s and 70s and Sylhet, a district of Assam was annexed with Bangladesh during partition of British India (1947).

Assam was known as the Kingdom of Pragjyotisha-Kamarupa during the first millenium AD and was broken into smaller states during the beginning of the second millenium; however, later, after 13th century for next six hundred years the region again transformed into a united sovereign country as the Kingdom of Assam under the later dynasties such as the Ahoms and Koches. Despite being an archaeologically and historically rich region, Assam is still a terra-incognito to the world.

Assam is also rich in history and archaeology. In the ancient times, the Kingdom of Pragjyotisha-Kamarupa under at least three successive dynasties for more than 700 years and in the medieval periods the Kingdom of Assam under the Ahoms for 600 years were strong and sovereign kingdoms; no western powers including the great Mughals could invade and occupy the region till the British had come. Apart from several failed attempts by the north Indian kingdoms in the ancient times, the Mughals attempted invading Assam for 17 times, where only once they could get little success in occupying and controlling a major portion only for a small period of two years. Mughals were defeated and completely thrown out from the Brahmaputra Valley in the 17th century. However, Mughals had maintained control on the western territories (now North Bengal) of the Koch Kingdom and in some parts of the Jayantiya Kingdom (a tributary ruler under the Ahoms) - now in Bangladesh. Due to richness and self-sustained nature of the kingdoms in Assam, the rulers hardly attempted any outward aggression leaving only few instances. During the rule of Barman Dynasty of Kamarupa the king Bhaskarvarman occupied the then Gauda (later Bengal) along with its capital city Karnasuvarna in the 7th century; then a major portion of present eastern Bangladesh was a natural part of Kamarupa. In the 17th century, a plan for reoccupying the lost land of the ancient Kamarupa kingdom and destroying the Nawab of Gauda by the Ahom king Rudra Simha was thwarted after the king's sudden death during his organisation of a large amry of 4 hundred thousand in Guwahati. With such a historic background, Assam possesses hundreds of historic and archaeological sites, where extensive research opportunities and tourism potentials are still left.