Who was Lachit Borphukan? war of Saraighat by lachit and Ahom

The Battle of Saraighat was a naval battle fought in 1671 between the Mughal Empire (led by the Kachwaha raja, Ram Singh I), and the Ahom Kingdom (led by Lachit Borphukan) on the Brahmaputra river at Saraighat, now in Guwahati, Assam, India.

Who was Lachit Borphukan? war of Saraighat by lachit and Ahom

Lachit Borphukan was the youngest son of Momai Tamuli Borbarua, the first Borbarua of upper Assam and Commander-in-Chief of the Ahom army under King Pratap Singha.His father Momai Tamuli Borbarua, was a bonded laborer against a loan of four rupees, in his early life, later he turned into a minister and a noble. [6]He was chosen for the position of Borphukan by Chakradhwaj Singha.

Lachit Borphukan (24 November 1622 - 25 April 1672) was a commander and Borphukan, in the Ahom kingdom, located in present-day Assam, India, known for his leadership in the 1671 Battle of Saraighat that thwarted a drawn-out attempt by Mughal forces under the command of Ramsingh I to take over Ahom kingdom. He died about a year later due to illness.

After being defeated by Lachit and his forces, the Mughal army sailed up the Brahmaputra river from Dhaka towards Assam advancing to Guwahati. The Mughal Army under Ram Singh I consisted of 30,000 infantry, 15,000 archers, 18,000 Turkish cavalries, 5,000 gunners, and over 1000 cannons besides a large flotilla of boats.

Ram Singh, the Mughal commander-in-chief failed to make any advance against the Assamese army during the first phase of the war. An arrow carrying a letter by Ram Singh telling that Lachit have been paid rupees one lakh and he should evacuate Guwahati was fired into the Ahom camp, which eventually reached the Ahom king, Chakradhwaj Singha. Although the king started to doubt Lachit's sincerity and patriotism, his prime minister Atan Buragohain convinced the King this was just a trick against Lachit.

Lachit Borphukan was victorious and the Mughals were forced to retreat from Guwahati.

Background History of Ahom

The Ahom kingdom (1228–1826) was a late medieval kingdom in the Brahmaputra Valley in Assam. It maintained its sovereignty for nearly 600 years having successfully resisted Mughal expansion in Northeast India. Established by Sukaphaa, a Tai prince from Mong Mao (present-day Yunnan Province, China), it began as a mong in the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra based on wet rice agriculture. 

It expanded suddenly under Suhungmung in the 16th century and became multi-ethnic in character, casting a profound effect on the political and social life of the entire Brahmaputra valley. The kingdom became weaker with the rise of the Moamoria rebellion and subsequently fell to repeated Burmese invasions of Assam. With the defeat of the Burmese after the First Anglo-Burmese War and the Treaty of Yandabo in 1826, control of the kingdom passed into the East India Company's hands.

Though it came to be called the Ahom kingdom, in the colonial and subsequent times it was largely multi-ethnic, with the ethnic Tai-Ahom people constituting less than 10% of the population toward the end. People from different ethnic groups became a part of the Ahom population due to the process known as Ahomisation. The identity of the Ahom people in this kingdom was fluid, with the king controlling who belonged to it and who did not. 

The Ahoms settled into the tract between the Suriya and the Kachari Kingdoms that was inhabited by the Borahi and Matak peoples. The first clash with the Ahom Kingdom took place in 1490, in which the Ahoms were defeated. The Ahoms sued for peace, and an Ahom princess was offered to the Kachari king and the Kachari took control of the land beyond the Dhansiri. 

But the Ahoms were getting powerful and pushed the Kacharis back west. In 1526 the Kacharis defeated the Ahoms in a battle, but in the same year, they were defeated in a second battle. In 1531 the Ahoms advanced up to Dimapur, the capital of the Kachari Kingdom or Hirmba Kingdom, removed Khunkhara, the Kachari king, and installed Detsung in his place. 

But in 1536 the Ahoms attacked the Kachari capital once again and sacked the city. The Kacharies abandoned Dimapur and retreated south to set up their new capital in Maibang. Maibang is Dima Kachari origin dialect. Mai means Paddy and bang means Plenty or abundance. Then Maibang- plenty of paddies.

Chilarai attacked the Kachari Kingdom in 1562 during the reign of Durlabh Narayan and made it into a tributary of the Koch Kingdom. The size of the annual tribute – seventy thousand gold mohars and sixty elephants – testifies to the resourcefulness of the Kachari state. A small colony of Koch soldiers, who came to be known as Dehan, enjoyed special privileges in the Kachari Kingdom. A conflict with the Jaintia Kingdom over the region of Dimarua led to a battle and the defeat of the Jaintia king (Dhan Manik).

It was during this expedition, against the Ahoms of Assam, that Sukhladhwaj earned the epithet Chilarai or ‘swift as a kite’. The Koch soldiers occupied the Brahmaputra valley, including the Ahom capital of Garhgaon, and then proceeded against the Raja of Manipur who quickly accepted vassalage.

After Nara Narayana died in 1587, the Koch kingdom (ensconced between the Mughal Empire in the west/south and Ahom kingdom in the east) was divided into the western Koch Bihar and the eastern Koch Hajo, ruled by his son Lakshmi Narayan and nephew Raghudev respectively. 

These two kingdoms were bitter rivals. In due course, the Mughals formed an alliance with Lakshmi Narayan and the Nawab of Dhaka, a governor of the Mughals attacked Parikshit Narayan, the son of Raghudev in 1602 at Dhubri, the westernmost corner of present-day Assam. Following many battles, Parikshit finally accepted defeat and was sent off to Delhi; but his brother, Bali Narayana took refuge with the Ahoms, who were interested in keeping the Koch as a buffer between themselves and the Mughals. 

The first Mughal-Ahom, Battle of Samdhara took place in 1615 when the Mughals attacked the Ahoms, then under Pratap Singha. This resulted in a period of Ahom-Mughal conflicts with fluctuating fortunes that ended with the Treaty of Asurar Ali in 1639. The Treaty fixed Barnadi river on the north bank and Asurar Ali on the south bank of the Brahmaputra as the boundary between the Ahoms and the Mughals. This, and the defeat of the Koch king at Pandu in 1641, resulted in a period of Mughal administration in Kamrup (Guwahati and Hajo).

Taking advantage of the Mughal war of succession after the fall of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in 1658, Pran Narayan of Koch Bihar tried to occupy Koch Hajo, but the Ahoms under Jayadhwaj Singha took Guwahati and pushed him back beyond Dhubri. That the Ahoms reached Dhubri by defeating the Koch king and not the Mughals would form a central tenet in later Ahom diplomacy. Soon after, Aurangzeb occupied the Delhi throne. Mir Jumla II, pursuing Shah Shuja in Bengal, was appointed the Subahdar of Bengal in 1660 and asked to retake Assam. 

Mir Jumla marched in 1661 and defeated the Ahoms at successive encounters to finally take the Ahom capital Gurgaon. But the data buddha (guerrilla warfare) of Atan Burhagohain and the rains succeeded in cutting off Mughal communication lines making it impossible for Mir Jumla to consolidate Mughal rule. Unaware of Mir Jumla's difficulties and unnerved by Baduli Phukan's defection, Jayadhwaj Singha sued for peace, an opportunity Mir Jumla seized on. The Treaty of Ghilajharighat (1663) brought an end to the Mughal occupation of Gurgaon, but the conditions of this treaty were so severe that the Ahoms soon resolved to reverse them.

Lachit Borphukan was a general of the Ahom Kingdom whose army he led successfully in resisting the imperial expansion of the Mughal Empire in the late 1600s. To this day he is remembered for his bravery and leadership in the face of insurmountable odds.

Exhausting all avenues of diplomacy, Ram Singh launched a massive naval attack on the Ahom forces at Saraighat. The attack was led by his admiral Munawar Khan. The Ahoms were in a desperate situation as they were yet to recover from their losses at Alaboi and Lachit had fallen seriously ill.

During the engagement, in which the Mughals had technological and numerical superiority, the Ahom army began to retreat. Seeking to rally his wavering troops, Lachit asked to be transported onto a boat despite his condition. Loudly proclaiming that he would rather perish while performing his duty instead of running away, Lachit pushed forward toward the Mughal forces. Seeing their leader surge toward the enemy had an inspiring effect on the Ahom troops who joined en masse to fight the battle.

The small boats of the Ahom forces proved decisive in close-quarter engagements as the bigger Mughal boats could not maneuver quickly enough with their cannons to engage them. Soon a melee ensued between the two parties in which Munawar Khan was killed. This and the loss of other prominent officers forced the Mughals to beat a hasty retreat. The land forces under Ram Singh were forced to retreat as the Mughals had lost the cream of their forces during the river engagement. The Mughals were pursued all the way to the Manas river, where Lachit halted his forces in order to consolidate their gains. Ram Singh would leave for Rangamati later his campaign against the Ahoms at an end.

The aftermath of the Battle of Saraighat

Lachit Borphukan would pass away from natural causes in 1672, a year after the battle of Saraighat. Although the engagement was a decisive one, it did not end the Ahom-Mughal conflicts. Guwahati would be taken by the Mughals when it was abandoned in 1679 by Lachit’s successor Laluk Sola. But it would fall back into the hands of the Ahom Kingdom once again when the Ahom Army under Dihingia Alun Borbarua would defeat the Mughals at the battle of Itakhuli in 1682. This battle would permanently end the Mughal presence in Assam and no further campaigns would be undertaken by them against the Ahom Kingdom.

• Indian Army AGNEEPATH Recruitment 2022 | Vacancy: 46,000 Posts