The discourse around indigeneity, customary rights of possession and claims to political autonomy in Northeast India conventionally traces the postcolonial protectionist legislation for ‘tribes’ to various acts passed under the late colonial state, the most significant precursor being seen as the Government of India Act, 1935. This article will argue that one can in fact trace the ‘original moment’ in the idea of customary law for ‘tribes’ much further back in history, to the early decades of the nineteenth century. This historical moment was anchored in the beginnings of the East India Company’s conquest of the Garo hills in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, in the appropriation of the land and revenue of the Garos and in the ethnogenesis of the ‘hill Garo’. The article will explore the ways in which the beginning of the invention of customary law and traditional authority in Northeast India under East India Company rule was impelled by the Company’s demands for revenue and was shielded and secured by the deployment of military power across the hills. Over the course of the nineteenth century, the strategies of imperial control first introduced in the region were reproduced across the rest of Northeast India, underscoring the significance of the Garo hills as the first ‘laboratory’ of colonial rule in the region as well as sharpening our understanding of the character of the early colonial state. The article thus takes as its task the historicization of the categories of ‘customary law’, ‘traditional/indigenous authority’ and the ‘hill tribe’, all of which form the basis of late colonial and postcolonial legislation on the ‘tribe’.

印度东北部关于土著、习惯占有和政治自治要求的讨论通常将后殖民保护主义立法追溯到晚期殖民国家通过的各种行为，最重要的前兆被视为印度政府法案， 1935 年。本文将论证，事实上，人们可以追溯“部落”习惯法观念中的“原始时刻”，其历史可以追溯到更远的历史，可以追溯到 19 世纪早期的几十年。这一历史性时刻植根于东印度公司在 18 世纪末和 19 世纪初征服加罗山的开始，加罗的土地和收入的占有以及“加罗山”的民族起源。这篇文章将探讨东印度公司统治下的印度东北部习惯法和传统权威的发明之初是如何受到公司对收入的需求的推动，并被跨山部署的军事力量所保护和保障的。在 19 世纪的过程中，最初在该地区引入的帝国控制战略在印度东北部的其他地区得到了复制，强调了加罗山作为该地区第一个殖民统治“实验室”的重要性，并加强了我们对早期殖民国家特征的理解。因此，本文将“习惯法”、“传统/土著权威”和“山地部落”的类别历史化作为其任务，