Tea was gaining popularity in the British isles and other European countries since the 17th century. The British were familiar with the commercial value of tea and that it was a lucrative business. The British, who were trading consignments of tea with China, had no control and had to do tea trading on the terms of Chinese traders. Moreover, the Dutch and French were also in tea business with the Chinese.

The discovery that tea was a native plant of Assam and grew wild was a boon to the British government. In 1823, a British official Robert Bruce was touring the Rangpur hills (in present day Sivasagar district) and he was introduced to the tea plant by a local Assamese noble man Dewan Maniram Dutta Borbhandar Barua, who worked as land agent with Assam Company — a British trading company. The Singpho tribe of Rangpur hills drank a concoction made from these tea leaves. The advantage of growing extensive areas under tea in a country under their colonial rule was quickly grasped by the British. There is a declaration by the Tea Committee in 1835 that states: “We have no hesitation in declaring this discovery — to be by far the most important and valuable that has ever been made in matters connected with agricultural or commercial resources of this Empire.”

The British government in order to bring more and more land under tea cultivation encouraged British entrepreneurs to invest. The investors were given easy land terms and the policy of the British was to favour only their own people. A few local Assamese entrepreneurs saw an opportunity in the tea growing business. But they could never get prime lands for opening up tea gardens. The British administration supported their own people for prime tea cultivation lands. Starting from growing tea in wastelands and areas discarded by the British, these indigenous entrepreneurs — the first capitalists of Assam — got into a business that opened avenues for them to the national and international trade and commerce.

A largescale business with a number of stakeholders would have problems of administration, finance, selling of produce, etc. To address these bottlenecks and find appropriate solutions and answers, an association was a necessity that would promote their common interests. The British planters had formed their own association, but to their exclusive ‘club’ only the British holdings were preferred.

If planting tea in areas discarded by the British did not deter the Indian planters, the formation of their own association also did not. With their numbers growing, the need for an association to protect and promote their common interests was growing. A group of 22 Indian planters representing 17 tea gardens got together in Dibrugarh on June 23, 1935 and formed ‘The Assam Valley Indian Tea Planters Association’. After independence in 1947 the association was renamed as ‘The Assam Tea Planters Association’. The headquarters of the association is now based at Jorhat. The association has always pushed for a common forum that would protect and promote the common interests of the Indian tea industry as a whole.

This prestigious and lucrative tea business encouraged the growth of middle class society in Assam and along with it came the role of the Assamese tea planters in developing art, education and culture with many families known for their acts of philanthropy. Contributions of Jyotiprasad Agarwala, Parbati Prasad Baruah, Rohini Kumar Baruah, Jagannath Baruah, KK Handique, Chandra Kamal Bezboruah, the Kanoi and the Jalan families of Dibrugarh to name a few, are well known and all were from tea planter families.

JPS Bhamra