‘An Assamese person,’ her mother would say with a smile. Looking at her mother’s gentle face, she would break down.

Shaking off her emotions, Lailin returned to the pages.

*

Ho Han was sold off.

It was an ordinary incident. The ownership right had been transferred to another man with ease. No tears were shed. Ho Han left the market as the slave of a meat dealer.

Those were the days of slave trade during the reign of the Manchu rulers of the Qing dynasty. Ho Han’s master had his shop in a marketplace adjacent to the Thirteen Factory area near the docks outside the walled city of Kwangchow. Foreign traders were allowed to trade here. The meat dealer lived in a corner of the city. It was there that he stocked his pigs and chickens and this was where Ho Han was now taken.

The story could have ended there. What could be special in a slave’s life, other than hard labour and death? Other than tears and sighs? Other than captivity and brutality?

Ho Han’s life could have been just that, but it wasn’t, for he had brought with him a unique destiny. It was not his destiny alone but that of thousands of people of China and India. That was the time when a strong public opinion was building up in Europe and America against the slave trade. Organized movements, protesting against the inhuman treatment meted out to millions of unfortunate men and women, had begun. Slavery was banned in England, America and many other countries. But the vast Chinese world, with a history spread over six thousand years, remained untouched by these winds of change.

Meanwhile, far from southern China, in the upper reaches of Assam, the seed of Ho Han’s future had just begun to sprout.

The political scene was changing. The East India Company had started to repulse the Burmese soldiers. Unable to take on the army of the East India Company, the Burmese army was withdrawing. The British army had set up camp at Kundil ghat in Sadiya near Upper Assam. The responsibility of the administration was now in the hands of David Scott, a representative of the Governor General for the entire eastern frontier.

The post at Sadiya had been set up with a view to keeping the Dafala and Singpho people under control as well as to protect the eastern border of Assam. The East India Company appointed Charles Alexander Bruce, the brother of Robert Bruce, as the leader of a flotilla of gunboats to monitor the natural waterways of this riverine state. Travelling upstream on the Brahmaputra, Charles had arrived at Sadiya. Kundil ghat was the last port on this river. The journey, via Shirajgunj between Calcutta and Kundil ghat, took eighty days. As soon as Charles arrived, he got involved in a strategic political formulation.

While the war was going on, the Singphos started their raids on Sadiya, as well as in the region between Dibrugarh and Rangpur. In 1826, an infantry division headed by Captain Neufville arrived to fight them.