The Politics of Allowances in Waziristan During the British Raj

The paper describes the nineteenth and early twentieth century British Indian Government dealings with the Wazir tribe dwelling on the North-West Frontier of the subcontinent. In view of the steady advances of Russians in Central Asia, the British Indian Government thought it necessary to control the Wazir tribe because it was essential to the security of India in the North-West Frontier. Therefore, the British evolved such an administrative system by virtue of which they could exercise influence over them. One of the main elements of arrangement was the payment of allowances and subsidies to the Wazir tribe. The paper argues that the payment of allowances to Wazir tribe created a considerable strategic space and time for the then British Empire to pursue its colonial interests and initiate the Great Game, in a recurrent competition with the 19th century expanding Czarist Empire. The paper follows a historical approach relying mainly on archival sources and an inductive interpretation of these archival sources involves, methodologically, an empiric-analytic reasoning that adds to research on the subject.