The Ahoms

In the 13th century, the Ahom people moved from present-day Myanmar to the Brahmaputra Valley and set up a kingdom there.

Through both the Sultanate and the Mughal periods, the Ahom rulers strongly resisted being taken over, and one arrangement explains much of how they did it.

The paik system called on every able-bodied man to give service to the state, as labour or military duty, in exchange for land rights.

See what that solved. A permanent army must be paid, fed and housed all year, war or no war. The paik system let the rulers build public works and raise a large army without that cost.

In peacetime the same men built and dug; in wartime they fought. (The Mughals solved the same problem differently, with the mansabdari system.)

The Ahoms also took in local culture, encouraged farming, welcomed different faiths, and added to Assam's rich traditions.

In the 17th century, Aurangzeb sent Mughal forces, who briefly captured the Ahom capital, Garhgaon. The Ahoms used their knowledge of the land (thick forests, hills and rivers) and steady guerrilla tactics to drive them back, even though the Mughals had more men and more river boats.

At the Battle of Saraighat in 1671, on the Brahmaputra near present-day Guwahati, the Ahom commander Lachit Borphukan and his 10,000 men defeated a Mughal force of 30,000. The Ahoms stayed independent. The Mughal general Ram Singh himself wrote: "Every Assamese soldier is expert in rowing boats, in shooting arrows, in digging trenches, and in wielding guns and cannons. I have not seen such specimens of versatility in any other part of India."