Collis: Lords of the Sunset

Just finished reading Maurice Collis "Lords of the Sunset". Fascinating book describing the tour that Collis made of the Shan States in 1937. Much of the area he visited is off-limits to travelers these days (the famous falls at Nam Pang. The Shan heartland between Taungyii and Lashio along the Nam Pang river. The hill states (except for Twang Peng) on the north western edge of the Shan States (Namkham, Mong Mit). Almost the entire length of the Salween river in the Shan States. The towns that you can visit, like Hsipaw and Namshan, seem to have been far more vibrant in the days of yore than they are today.

One observation about Collis is that he had an eye for the ladies. A bachelor, living in Kent in the 1930s, he probably was not getting, to put it crudely, any. His book is full about observations about the eyes, the charms, the smiles, the beauty, and the characters of the various Mahadevis and Princesses that he met along the way. Very little about the Sawbwas themselves (except for how wonderful they were). And all those photographs ... Still, an excellent read, one that makes me want to pack my bag and head for the falls at Nam Pang!

Blackness

Hunting for a reference to something that I remembered reading as a child, that Merle Oberon damaged her skin by excessive use of 'Fair and Lovely', a skin whitening cream popular in India, I googled my way to this blog about a New York mother who was shocked at the blackness of her adopted Indian daughter's skin color (does every emotion, however crass, make its way into the public domain these days?). Interestingly, I happened to be reading this:

The doctor was a blackish Indian, about twenty-five years old. None of us now, of course, suffers from colour prejudice--it is so low brow--but I must confess that it was rather a shock to see so dark an Indian in this Shan interior, and when I looked at his little wife, the Karen, colour prejudice did not seem so far-fetched. ........... I looked at her husband again. He must be a nice man if she was so happy. But it was hard to believe it on account of his appearance, though Rossiter told me afterwards that he had an admirable character.

This from Maurice Collis (Lords of the sunset: A tour in the Shan States, New York, Dodd Mead and Company, 1958) after he has repeatedly self-congratulated himself on how, unlike the other English in India, he could treat the Indians as equals. What is it about the blackness of the Doctor's skin that so shocked Collis in the 1930s? And, how could someone in the cosmopolitan twenty first century be surprised or shocked by black skin?

No answers. Just thought I'd share this. Meanwhile, my millions of readers, any ideas on a reference that shows that Merle Oberon destroyed her skin by using whitening creams?

Peace, man!

If he is unsettled in mind, does not know the true Teaching, and has lost his peace of mind, a man's wisdom does not come to fulfilment.
A bit complicated this. Not only do you have to have peace of mind, but you must also know the true teaching, otherwise forget about fulfilment (spiritual, not sexual, ye with the dirty mind!).

This is from the chapter on Thoughts. All about the nature of thoughts. In essence, your mind needs to be at peace and you must have control over your thoughts. Let your mind roam, and you know where its going to go first, don't you!

More random Dhammapada

One is one's own guardian. What other guardian could one have? With oneself well disciplined one obtains a rare guardian indeed.
I guess OJ Simpson, Scooter Libby, all subscribe to this. Why acknowledge the right of the state as a moral arbiter when one is ones own guardian.

This is from a chapter titled Self. Make your own judgement about right and wrong, and then stick to your principles and, better still, teach them.

The Dhammapada Again

Hmm. I don't recall posting twice. What could this mean? Let's see what the random Dhammapada has to say about this.

Ashamed of what is not a matter for shame, and not ashamed of what is, by holding to wrong views people go to a bad rebirth.

Figure that out! I guess the dhammapada is telling me that I shouldn't be ashamed of having posted the same blah-og twice. If, that is, it is my desire to not have a bad rebirth.

The Dhammapada

Here's another one:

Therefore don't take a liking to anything. To lose what one likes is hard, but there are no bonds for those who have no likes and dislikes.

Straightforward this time. The more things you are attached to the harder it is for one to seek knowledge. Or, as Kris Kristofferson said: "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." Keeping up with the Joneses is not a good recipe for salvation.

(This verse is from the chapter entitled Preference. See post of June 13th.)

The Dhammapada

Here's another one:

Therefore don't take a liking to anything. To lose what one likes is hard, but there are no bonds for those who have no likes and dislikes.

Straightforward this time. The more things you are attached to the harder it is for one to seek knowledge. Or, as Kris Kristofferson said: "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." Keeping up with the Joneses is not a good recipe for salvation.

(This verse is from the chapter entitled Preference.)

The Dhammapada

Another verse:

Blinded indeed is this world. Few are those who see the truth. Like a bird breaking out of the net, few are those who go to heaven.

I have no argument with the 'few are those who see the truth' but the bird breaking out of the net analogy is unclear. I assume that what The Buddha is saying is that birds, when they end up captured in a hunter's net, mostly stay captured and few manage to escape. But most birds are free and very few birds actually end up in nets. It would also have been nice if the analogy had something to do with clarity and truth rather than just having a sharper beak!

(This verse is from the chapter, The World. All about doing the right deeds in the right way.)

The Buddha and The Dhammapada

What could be more Indian than The Buddha. Brought up as a prince, deserted his family as a young man, roamed the land in search of something, and found it while sitting under a tree! Reading about the Buddha's search is interesting (Pankaj Mishra's excellent An End to Suffering is an excellent Buddha travel book, but reading what he said (or rather, what it is assumed he said) is even more interesting. Take this from the Dhammapada,

from affection arises sorrow, from affection arises fear, but he who is freed from affection has no sorrow and certainly no fear.

As Bertie Wooster would say, "Well, I say what?" Like most of what the Buddha says, this is pretty straightforward. If you love something, expect to be sad and scared (the fear of losing that thing or person heads the scared list). Sorrow and Fear are not constructive emotions and so, perhaps, you should consider heading away from affection if you want to be truly free (to attain nirvana, I suppose). Oddly enough, this, and other Buddha-isms (if I may coin the word) could also be construed as an excuse for the Buddha's desertion of his family. Perhaps he left his family and then spent the rest of his life trying to build a convincing excuse for deserting them (do Buddhists issue fatwas?). Just Kidding!

(Note: The sutra is from the chapter on Preference where the Buddha says never have preferences and treat everything equally - a nightmare scenario for Capitalists, Economists and Marketing gurus everywhere!)

Back, again, to Forbes-Mitchell

I must say that there is a certain charm to life in the slow lane! Wearing only my bathers with none of the accoutrements of modern life; money, cell-phones, watches, keys, even - if I may - underwear; lying in the sand on a deserted beach, the water lapping away at ones heels, the only sound being the surf and the occasional bird, one wonders why we keep running!

No. That's not from Forbes-Mitchell. That's me returning from the beach after watching a really strange cricket match yesterday. I guess the cricketing world is upset and angry (c.f. this article in The Guardian) but let's face it, cricket would not be cricket without its eccentric moments!

Anyway, back to Forbes-Mitchell for a moment. Dalrymple, in The Last Mughal, makes the case (amongst the many cases that he makes) that the Mutiny was more broad-based than is generally accepted and that the muslims received the brunt of the retribution. Forbes-Mitchell provides some support for both views. Clearly the mutineers were very committed to their cause. Both Forbes-Mitchell, as well as Forrest (the reference is somewhere in a post below this one) comment on how the mutineers fought, often to the last man. But, as Forbes-Mitchell says, sometimes the last man was a woman. He describes an incident that took place after the British had taken the Secundrabagh (an enclosed garden on the way to the Lucknow Residency). "In the centre of the inner court ... there was a large pipal tree with a very bushy top, round the foot of which were set a number of jars full of cool water. .." {He reports that many men went to the tree because of the shade and the water and that there were many bodies under the tree.] [The many bodies "attracted the notice of Captain Dawson. ... he noticed that in every case the men had evidently been shot from above." A British soldier named Wallace shot down the person sitting in the tree. "down fell a body dressed in a tight-fitting red jacket and tight-fitting rose-coloured silk trousers; and the breast of the jacket bursting open with the fall, showed that the wearer was a woman."

In another place, reporting on the assault on the Shah Najaf, the British recover the colours, drums, etc of the Seventy-First Native Infantry and the Eleventh Oudh Irregulars. The mutineers had kept their British organization intact. Amongst the bodies they found that over fify men "were found to have furlougs, or leave certificates, signed by their former commanding officer in their pockets, showing that they had been on leave when their regiment mutinied and had rejoined their colours to fight against us." Not just opportunistic rebels these.

About the Muslims. Forbes-Mitchell says (page 39) ".. I formed the opinion that the pampered high-caste Hindu sepoys had far more to do with the Mutiny and the cowardly murders of women and children, than the Muhammadans, although the latter still bear most of the blame." FM generalizes this from a single incident (where an apparent meditating yogi turns into a killing terrorist type guy).

More on the Mutiny

The one question that always puzzled me about the Indian Mutiny is how often the mutineers lost in battles against the English. In most cases, the Indians were something like ten times the strength of the British troops and they seemed to have had a much greater motivation to fight than the Indians (Sikhs, Madrasis) fighting on the side of the British. Still, battle after battle ended with thousands of Indians dead for a couple of hundred British troops.

Forbes-Mitchell (The Relief of Lucknow by Williams Forbes-Mitchell, The Folio Society, London 1962) provides some answers. Forbes-Mitchell was a young NCO in the 93rd Highlanders and he took part in the British rescue of the beseiged English men and women in the Lucknow Residency during the mutiny. Here he makes fun of the Pandies:

... in addition to the regular army, there was a large body of archers on the walls, armed with bows and arrows which they discharged with great force and precision, .... Looking at the arrow, 'My conscience!' said White, 'bows and arrows! bows and arrows! My conscience, the sight has not been seen in a civilised war for nearly two hundred years. Bows and arrows! And why not weavers' beams as in the days of Goliath? Ah! that Daniel White should be able to tell in the Saut Market of Glasgow that he had seen men fight with bows and arrows in the days of Enfield rifles! (Page 53.)

Enfield rifles are, of course, the infamous grease coated bullet using rifles that were the trigger for the mutiny. New to the army and not in the hands of the rebels, they were a great weapen for the British. In this next extract, Forbes-Mitchell talks about the superior range of the Enfield rifle. The rebels had brought their big guns outside the Padshahbagh to shorten the distance across the Gomti river assuming that they would be out of range of the British rifles:

They evidently as yet did not understand the range of the Enfield rifle, as they now came within about a thousand to twelve hundred yards of the wall of the Shah Najaf next to the river. Some twenty of the best shots in the company, with carefully cleaned and loaded rifles, watched till they saw a good number of the enemy near their guns, then, raising sights to the full height and carefully aiming high, they fired a volley by word of command slowly given ... and about half a dozen of the enemy were knocked over. (Page 66.)

What chance did the poor mutineers have with their bows and arrows against Enfield rifles and the heavy naval canons that the British used to level defensive walls! Interestingly, from the description above, even the British were new to the longer range of the rifles and presumably that's why the author describes the process, including raising the sights and aiming high, so carefully!

Shame on India!

Well, went to the Australia vs. Ireland match this morning. This morning because the match was over before lunch! The West Indian on the street is really disgusted with the Aussie team because they chose to bat second. The taxi driver said, "that's not cricket man. These guys have paid thousands of pounds to come see their team play and the Aussies should have given them a proper match by batting first. I hate the Aussie's and I hate the fans." He was half kidding of course, one of us here is an Aussie and he knew it!

A video of the most interesting t-shirt in the match. And, for entertainment, a brief view of Calypso Cricket.

India in the World Cup Cricket

So, here I am in Barbados watching the cricket world cup. Today's match was between Bangladesh and England and the match itself was ho hum bad. Sloppy fielding on both sides, and lousy batting from what should be a mature English side. Giving some truth to the movement of the center of cricket to India, Kensington Oval was full of Indian fans. The stadium was a little less than half full and about half the audience was Indian (the other half was English with the occasional Aussie and South African or West Indian dotting the stands). Shouting, playing samba music, singing songs, and cheering an India that is no longer in the World Cup. One section was on its feet throughout the match, Brazilian football like but for much longer than the duration of a football match. Take a look at the following two videos (you have to ignore the lone Australian with his huge flag in the first one!)


It says something about the maturity of India that all these fans showed up for the cup even though India was out of it. And, rather than morosely trying to pick another team or just sit around watching the matches, the Indian contingent (labeled the Bharat Army by the Barbados press) decided to go ahead and have a good time. And, a good time they did have. The action in the stands was much more entertaining than the dismal cricket on display. The English fans may be known as the "Barmy Army," but the real 'Barminess' is in the Bharat Army.

Lonely Planet Myanmar (Burma) or Publish and be Damned

So, what's with the LP Myanmar guide book anyway. Very comprehensive in its listings but full of moralistic platitudes about whether one should visit or not. Perhaps it should be titled 'how to not let your money get into the sweaty hands of the Tatmadaw'. LP refuses to list government owned hotels (often naming them so that you don't end up there by mistake) and by including an extensive chapter on the history of the military and on its dubious nature.

Let's forget about the implicit assumption that underlies the "should you go" section in the guide. That the average LP reader is unaware of the sad record of the Burmese military junta and is too lazy to do the spadework himself or herself. Focus instead on the weakness of the listing government owned hotel to not let your money get into the hands of the junta. The reality on the ground is very different. Every business in Burma that touches a tourist has some connection with the government. The nature of the connection may vary from bribes to low level functionaries to get and keep licenses to the cohabitative behavior of the multi-millionaires who run large businesses. Simply stated, a dollar revenue business cannot exist in Burma without some kickback to the Tatmadaw. One hotel owner explained the financial structure of his business, license fees, bribes to officials, etc. and his contention was that, in the best of times, 60% of his dollar revenue goes to the government. It is next to impossible, and possibly dangerous, to hide any of this revenue. At the higher end, hotels like Traders and airlines like Air Bagan are owned by drug lords (often ex rebels now in cahoots with the government). Millions of dollars flow from these "private" businesses to the military; directly and indirectly keeping the junta in power. Why it is ok to list Traders but not the Thiripyitsaya Sakura Hotel in Bagan is not at all clear. Is it somehow better to split your money between the government and a drug baron than to give all of it to the government? What about all the government run ferries? LP recommends the Mandalay Bagan ferry, the Myitkyina-Bhamo-Mandalay ferry, the Pathein ferry, all demanding high dollar amounts from tourists. (In an interesting twist, the junta privatized the Mandalay-Bagan express ferry and the price went up from $16 to $25. My guess is that the government probably gets a little more than it got before and some other baddie gets the rest of your money. You, poor tourist, are more out of pocket than before.)

Sadly, it would seem that LP is trying to have its cake and eat it too by publishing a guidebook for Burma and then hedging about the morality of going or not going. All you get as a result is a trivilization of history, a bunch of platitudes, an incomplete guidebook, and more revenue for LP. A truly principled publisher would either:

1. Not publish a guidebook at all.

2. Publish a comprehensive guidebook with full listings and no moralistic claptrap. Full listings would include reviews of government run hotels.

3. Publish a guidebook that restricts itself to describing the historical and cultural background of the sights but has no business listings whatsoever. This would probably be the best of the three alternatives.

For a good review of the weaknesses of the LP approach, see Publish and Be Damned from the Irrawaddy Times.

The Untouchable (L'Intouchable) Benoit Jacquot (2006)

It is always interesting seeing India through the eyes of the West. The India I see is transparent, familiar and easy to navigate. The crowds, the bazaars, the poverty, social hierarchies seem natural and go unnoticed by my conscious eye. To Western eyes, however, as is obvious in Benoit Jacquot new film The Untouchable (L’intouchable), India is a mysterious, crowded, and hard to fathom place. His India is across a border that the Western visitor cannot hope to cross. His India is, in a sense, untouchable.

Like many great French cinema directors, Jacquot is the master of understatement. Nothing much happens in the film. Jeanne (Isild Le Besco), a penniless young actress drifting through life discovers that her father might have been Indian. Her mother is not totally sure, but who else could it have been. Obviously confused about this new Indian side to her, she impulsively decides to visit India. Since she doesn’t have the money, she signs up to act in a simulated sex scene to pay her way (the emotional distance with which Isild Le Besco plays this scene is worth the price of admission alone).

When Jeanne arrives in Delhi, the picture changes. From the muted colors, empty streets, and soft sounds of France, the film is suddenly full of the sound, people, and vibrant colors of India. In the India part, Jacquot lets the camera do the talking and one can see the wonder that is his India - populated, anarchic, and overwhelming. Jeanne immerses herself in India and the camera does the same. In one sequence, the camera stays still while a seething mass of humanity rushes by on rickshaws, motorcycles, cars; each vehicle competing for the limited space available on the road. She buys a 3AC ticket to Varanasi but ends up traveling in unreserved second class, perhaps to experience the India she thinks that Indians do (or perhaps the director was careless!).

In Benaras, she meets the son of the Dom she thinks is her father (no, not a gratuitous coincidence, she asks around for the Dom by name) and is invited to his sisters wedding. At the wedding, she discovers that her father, if he is indeed her father, is not the Dom but rather is the Dom’s brother Arnab, a school teacher in Delhi. She returns to Delhi where she follows Arnab from the school but then returns to France without meeting him. He, in a sense, remains the last untouchable.

While the India/France contrast works well in the film, Jacquot, unfortunately, overplays the untouchable angle. On the flight to Delhi, Jeanne is seated next to a mysterious Indian, an untouchable himself, who mysteriously disappears mid-flight through the machinations of the Flight Attendants. This episode, designed presumably to lecture the audience about untouchables, is seeped in the mysterious ways of the Orient of books like The Moonstone. These mid-nineteenth century ideas have no place in a modern film.

In another episode, a gay French man takes Jeanne along to visit his cousin, a sister of St. Theresa at a convent near Varanasi. In the conversation that follows, the gay man and his cousin seem to be on different planets and one can only assume that Jacquot is trying to imply that all human relationships are untouchable.

In summary, the film is worth seeing just to see the familiar sights of India through the eyes of an outsider. But, as cinema, the film was a little disappointing with a simplistic message and a storyline that is, um, untouchable.

Timeline of the Indian Mutiny

Here is a rough timeline. I'll amend it, and add comments, as I go along:

Feb 25th, 1857. Incident (mutiny?) at Berhampore involving 19th Regiment Native Infantry.
March 29, 1857. Mangal Pandey mutinies.
April 8, 1857. Mangal Pandey hanged.
May 1857. Eighty five soldiers refuse cartridges in a parade.
May 9, 1857. The soldiers are sentenced to hard labor and fettered in front of the entire regiment.
May 10, 1857. The Meerut soldiers of the 3rd Light Cavalry revolt to rescue the eighty-five. Soon the entire cantonment of Meerut mutinied.
May 11, 1857. Mutineers arrive in Delhi.
May 19, 1857. Mutiny in Moradabad.
May 30, 1857. Mutiny in Lucknow. Quelled.
May 31, 1857. Mutiny in Bareilly.
May 31, 1857. Mutiny in Shahjehanpore.
June 3, 1857. Mutiny at Azimgarh.
June 4, 1857. Mutiny at Sitapur.
June 4, 1857. Mutiny at Benaras.
June 6, 1857. Nana Saheb controls Kanpur. Siege starts.
June 8, 1857. Mutiny at Faizabad.
June 28, 1857. Kanpur seige ends with the massacre of European population.
June 30, 1857. British troops, families withdraw into the Residency at Lucknow.
July 25, 1857. Revolt at Dinapore (Patna).
Sep 14, 1857. Storming of Kashmiri Gate by the British.
Sep 21, 1857. Bahadur Shah Zafar is taken prisoner. The Mughal Empire ends after 388 years.
December 10, 1857. Kanpur recaptured by the British.
January 8, 1858. Jung Bahadur’s Gurkhas join the British.
March 21, 1858. Lucknow is recaptured by the British.
April 2, 1858. Jhansi recaptured.
May 1, 1858. Death of Koer Singh, Rebel commander in Bihar.
May 7, 1858. Bareilly falls.
June 14, 1858. Rohilcund is in British hands.
June 27, 1858. Gwalior falls.
August 2, 1858. East India Bill given Royal Assent. East India Company rule ends.
August 8, 1858. Faizabad relieved.
October 5, 1858. Defeat of the rebels at Miranganj, Oudh.
October 7, 1858. Action at Sundeela, Oudh.
November 1, 1858. Royal Proclamation read all over India.
November 4, 1858. Battle at Rampore Kussiah.
November 9, 1858. Defeat of the rebels at Mehunde, Oudh.
November 11, 1858. Occupation of Amethi.
November 15, 1858. Occupation of Shankerpur. (Beni Mahdoo escapes.)
November 19, 1858. Occupation of Rai Bareilly.
November 24, 1858. Battle at Doun-de-khara.
November 7, 1862. Death of Bahadur Shah Zafar in Rangoon.

An earlier Indian Mutiny

Still reading G W Forrest, A History of the Indian Mutiny. Apparently, there was another mutiny in the Bengal Army in 1764 during the Battle of Buxar (faint memories of this from my school days). Here is how it was handled:

"Munro, who had hastened to the spot, ordered eight and twenty of the most culpable to be picked out and tried by a drum head general court marshall, when the whole were sentenced to death. The eight guns of the detachment being brought out, the first eight were fixed to their muzzles and blown away."

Very nice!

The rest were blown away in a similar fashion.

(Why did they mutiny? Apparently, according to Forrest, they wanted to join the other - Indian - side.)

The Sepoy Mutiny

"... Mrs. Christian, the wife of the commissioner, struggling to get on with her little child in her arms, a girl two-and-a-half years old, and her husband with her carrying a boy about six months old .... I took the child from her arms, and with the aid of Quartermaster-Sergeant Morton, of my regiment, got it away safe and sound; all three escaping unscathed through the fearful showers of bullets sent after us as we crossed the river, and hid ourselves in the friendly jungle. No sooner had Mr. Christian crossed the stream when a bullet struck him and he fell dead. The widow took the babe, and sat down by her husband's corpse. It was but a moment, and mother and child joined the father."

History of the Indian Mutiny by G W Forrest, volume 1, pp 205-206.

Full of pathos. One feels for the mother, despairing, giving up, sitting by her husband's corpse waiting for sure death. Still, I do wonder where the stories of the despairing Indians are? Those who, equally unceremoniously lost their loved ones during the sepoy mutiny?

BACSA

Another thing about the BACSA register on European Deaths and Burials in Burma. According to the edition I have (1983), "A remarkable amount of information on the cemetery has recently been supplied by Captain Kolu Ban, a retired Officer of the Burma Army Signals. He volunteered to undertake a full research and it is thanks to him that it has been possible to compile the list below of all the gravestones that could be identified." Very thoughtful of the Captain. But, I can't help wondering why he missed the Wingate grave. It had one of the largest headstones in the cemetery and the inscriptiopn quoted in my previous post was one of the clearest. It's not as if the cemetery is large, it isn't, nor is it the case that there are dozens of cemeteries littered all over the town, there aren't. How then did he miss this easy to find stone?

May I add, if the Burmese junta are listening, that the Maymyo cemetery is in deplorable condition. A path runs through the cemetery serving as a shortcut to the Lashio Road (the old "Burma Road"). Headstones are broken and carelessly scattered all over the place. Wild grass is growing everywhere. Like them or not, these cemeteries are a part of Burmese history. Shame on you!

The Raj: See How They Died

You have to feel sorry for some of these Raj rulers. Stuck in an unhealthy climate, harried by mosquitos that seemed to leave the locals alone, felled by cholera and other strange tropical diseases, they had to be tough. I've walked through so many Raj cemeteries in India and Burma and so many of them died young, quite sad in its own way. Here I am flipping through the Register of European Deaths and Burials for Burma. Published by BACSA, flipping through is quite instructive. A few random entries:

"Died in 1928 of illness from the delayed effects of an un-healed wound." (Maymyo). Un-healed wound?

"In loving memory of Edward, infant son of Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Moss of Shwegyin." (Maymyo). Poor baby. And, it certainly is odd that the Moss's identify themselves as being from Shwegyin.

"GLENDINNING The Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Ltd. Joined the Corporation in about 1881. Died of Cholera in 1882. Presumed buried in Prome." (Prome Cemetery) Didn't take long for the East to get him! And, apparently the poor man's body is still awol.

And, what about this poor guy:
"OREN The Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Ltd. Joined the corporation in about 1882/82. A Swede or Norwegian. Killed by dacoits. No further details." (Paungde cemetery) Nationality unknown, details of death unknown. Presumably there are Orens out there who have no idea that they have an ancestor who was killed by dacoits in far away Burma.

"Sacred to the memory of Captain John Swinton Browne, deeply regretted, who departed this life, aged 29 on the 5th of May 1834. ... said to have died of bilious fever." If that doesn't signify that the poor man's doctor had no clue what disease he was dealing with, nothing will.

"In loving memory of the infant son of Captain & Mrs F.L. Orman, 10th Gurkha Rifles, Born Maymyo 19th April 1908 died Maymyo 23rd April 1908." (Maymyo) The poor kid. I wouldn't want anyone to undergo childbirth in Burma today and one can only imagine the odds of survival in 1908.

Why, you might ask, this macabre passtime. I was looking for some information on half a headstone that I found in Maymyo (Pwin u Lwin) when I was there a few months ago. If I read this headstone correctly, a hefty chunk of the family of the Wingate's perished at around the same time and curiousity as to what killed them got the better of me. Unfortunately, this headstone is missing from the register.

.....also of John Bruce
Who died at Maymyo on the 16th July 1900
aged 10 months
Infant children of
John Bruce and Isabel Wingate

BACSA publishes registers recording known deaths and burials on the Indian Sub-Continent and in Burma.

The Ruling Caste

I've been reading The Ruling Caste by David Gilmour. Gilmour describes the lives and times of the Civil Servants who ran India in the 19th century. The book is dry, very dry, but there are many interesting tidbits in it. In the discussion on famine, for example, Gilmour writes "Whatever shortcomings the Government may have had, famine duty brought out the best in the ICS." The impression being that the Civil Servants did a great job during the famine. The reality is that the civil service was the government and they did a singularly bad job in dealing with famines, each one being worse in its effects than the previous ones. Famines in India were largely a phenomenon confined to the British era, few before and few since.

Elsewhere, he gives revenue figures (p.109).
"At the end of the 19th century it [Land Revenue] produced some 210 million rupees, while Customs, Excise, and Stamps brought in 140 million, the Salt Tax yielded 75 million, and the sale of opium 40 million."
Interesting. Let's see:
1. Of the Rs. 465 million in revenue, 16% came from taxing one essential item, salt. That explains the salt march!
2. 45% came from property taxes. Given that the zaminari system was in full flourish, the brunt of this must have been passed on to the share-croppers and ryots. No wonder there were so many famines, these guys were broke!
3. The less said about the 40 million (8.6%) from opium the better.

It gets more interesting, let's see how the money was spent:
"The chief items of expenditure were the Army, which accounted for nearly half the total (244 million rupees), followed by the administration (140 million) and public works (68 million)."
O.K. So, the Raj collected Rs. 465 million in revenue and spent Rs. 244 million on the army. 52.5% of the money collected taxing the Indian people was spent on subjugating them. A mere 14% was spent on public works.

Now, I know that the Raj was in the business of enriching the Brits, but this is ridiculous. How can anyone pretend that the Raj was a good thing when half the revenue from taxes was spent on what was essentially a police force, and a disproportionate chunk of the revenue was from the impoverished people!

(Note: The salt tax reminds me of a very interesting book I read a few years ago. The Great Hedge of India by Roy Moxham. A must read if you can find a copy.)

The Trouser People

The quintessential colonial book on Burma is The Burman: His Life and Notions by Shwe Yoe a nom-de-plume of Sir George Scott a British colonialist in Burma. That book was written in 1894 and remains a standard source for understanding the Burmese people of the late 19th century (you can read it for free here). Of course, since Scott was British, albeit one who could speak several languages of Burma, we'll never really know what life in Burma was like, but you get what you get ...

The Trouser People: A Story of Burma In the Shadow of the Empire by Andrew Marshall follows the travels of George Scott in Burma. The book is interesting partly because his writing is interesting and full of humor, partly because he goes where no one else goes (the Wa State), but mostly because it is shocking that opium is being grown and drugs manufactured in the Shan and Wa States with impunity. The junta is known to be cynical (and more than a little crazy) but such large scale abdication of their responsibility is horrendous. The casual visitor to Burma, me on more than one occasion, sees a poor country with a despotic government, hears a few stories of the Karen being "cleansed," mostly from journalists who cannot visit Burma, sees evidence of forced labor in road-building projects, but the scale of the criminal enterprise that passes for government in that country is well hidden.

Burma

Burma is not a country that most people think about every day, or even every year. Rarely in the news, off the radar screens, one never hears about it, except perhaps as a passing mention in the odd State of the Union Address (was that bizarre or what!). What most people know about it can be summarized by the words backward and dictatorship. If probed, they may add that it is a small country somewhere in South East Asia occupied by the monolithic "Burmese" people. The reality is, of course, that the country is quite large and far from monolithic. It is populated by a diverse range of ethnic groups with distinct cultures that speak languages that don't even share the same root (some are Indo-European, some share Southern China origins, some, like the Wa are unclassifiable). Sort of like a problematic version of India.

My fascination with Burma began about 35 years ago. I was visiting my father at his Air Force base in North Eastern India for the summer holidays. I already knew something about Burma, my (maternal) grandfather had been stationed in Rangoon during the end of the Second World War and was full of stories about that country, about the Stilwell Road, about the epic battle to re-take Burma from the Japanese. The battle in Europe was a cakewalk in comparison. One day, while I was visiting him, announced that we should go for a drive along the Stilwell Road. We drove in an Air Force jeep up to the Ledo border and there I could see Burma. There was a well paved road and a border checkpost on the Indian side but, on the Burmese side, there was no checkpost, no guard, nobody. And, the "man a mile," Stilwell Road had been swallowed up by the jungle. I don't know what it was about the contrast but my little boy heart wanted to know more about what was going on across that border.

Of course, it is not easy to know what is actually going on across that border. Books on Burma are few and far between and that has always been the case. A colonial backwater, few British civilians and soldiers wrote about Burma, and most books are out of print. After the 1962 coup, the whole country disappeared into a black hole from which it is only now returning. Still, I read everything I could find. For a long time it was next to impossible to get a visa to visit. But, visit I did. On my first visit, I was interviewed on three separate occasions by head of the mission, suspicious, I suppose, of my motives in visiting. On a more recent visit, I walked into the London embassy and walked out with a visa, no questions asked, thanks to the desperate need that the junta has for hard currency. What I found was a complicated country, in some ways stuck in a time warp but in other ways as savvy as the savviest Silicon Valley entreprenuer. It is hard to get a read on Burma by visiting Burma because one sees so little of the country and only what the junta wants you to see.

So, books about Burma. More to come ....

The Last Mughal and Indian Muslims

The thing that is the most striking about The Last Mughal, for me anyway, is that for the first time I got some perspective on why the Indian Muslim disappeared from public life. After a thousand years of being the ruling class in Northern India, they were, at best a marginal force in pre-independence India. What happened to them is a subtext of The Last Mughal. At the time of the Mutiny, Delhi was still a Mughal city, marginal to the British led power structure of the Raj, but still an important center of Mughal, and thus, Muslim power and culture. For six months during the Mutiny, the Mughal empire returned, but this was a Mughal empire that depended as much on Hindus as it did on Muslims. In a sense, it was the first sign of a nationalist India. Once the Mutiny was over, the British took a series of steps that left the Muslim population of India out in the cold.

1. For almost two years Delhi's muslims were excluded from the city! By the time they returned, they had lost control of business and property and, even in Delhi, the punjabi hindus were in ascendance. The economic and cultural impact on the muslim community was enormous.

2. They excluded muslims from the army. Read anything about the Mutiny in 19th century histories and you realize the extent to which the pre-mutiny Company army was drawn from the muslim population. It seems to me that at least 40 to 50% of the army was muslim. Post-mutiny, the army was drawn from the "martial races," the Sikhs and the Gurkhas, who also happened to be the main sources for the British army that fought the mutineers. The Sikhs were a part of British India by then, but the Gurkhas were the offering of an opportunistic Nepali king who joined the British when he had figured out who would win.

3. The creation of a Babu class that was mostly drawn from loyal Hindus and actively excluded muslims. The large recruitment of Sikhs, Gurkhas, and "Madrasis" in the army, and the creation of a loyal english speaking educated babu class, largely left muslims out of the two avenues of government service open to Indians, the army and the civil service.

The Indian Mutiny

So, how long and how important was the Indian Mutiny or the War of Independence anyway? I always thought it started and ended in 1857. Asked around and almost everyone thought the same thing. No one came even close to the actual length of the mutiny, two years and two months from the first incident in Berhampore near Calcutta in February 1857 (the 19th Regiment Indian Infantry refused to take their bullets on parade and was subsequently disbanded), to the capture of Tantia Tope, or rather the opportunistic betrayal of Tantia Tope by Man Singh, in April 1959. From the history I read at school I always got the impression that the First War of Independence was fought by a few kings (Nana Saheb, Tantia Tope, Rani Laxmibai) and that it was a brief affair that resulted in the crown taking over India from The Company. I'll give a timeline of the mutiny in a later post.

I am reading "History of the Indian Mutiny," by G. W. Forrest. Three volumes, two published in 1904 and one in 1912. A fascinating book. The entire mutiny is discussed from the point of the view of the British and gives absolutely no mention of the strategies, troop movements, etc. of the mutineers. Much more of a victors view than a real history. (Yes, I have read William Dalrymple's The Last Mughal.) With a lot of stuff about the brave English soldiers fighting to save the empire. Don't get me wrong, they were brave. One only has to read the history of the siege of the Residency at Lucknow to see that. But surely the Indians fought with equal bravery on both sides.

The other striking thing is the degree to which the English were hated by their own men. They, the English i.e., thought that they had loyal soldiers who would follow them anywhere. Many of these soldiers were veterans of other battles fought under British command. But, almost to a man, entire regiments not only deserted but also hacked/shot their commanders to death whenever they got the opportunity. Here is an extract from Forrest (writing about the evacuation of the British from Kanpur at the start of the mutiny):

“A litter containing Colonel Ewart, commanding the First Native Infantry, who had been severely wounded, fell into the rear, and when passing St. John’s Church was stopped by seven or eight men of his own regiment. ... The sepoys then mockingly asked their wounded commander [Colonel Ewart], “Is this not a fine parade, and is it not all well dressed up?” Two of them then cut him to pieces.” (Vol.1 462). They then killed his wife as well. One boat that managed to cut loose was chased for days and almost everyone killed.

Colonel Ewart's men were clearly passionate about killing their masters. Time after time, as one regiment after another mutineed, their officers were caught off-guard. "My men will remain loyal," they said.

This Blog!

I read. I read a lot. Almost everything I read is connected with South Asia in some way or the other. Because Burmese history is so tied up with Indian history, think British Raj, I include Burma in South Asia. This blog is all about my meandering thoughts about the books I am reading, with thoughts on film and art thrown in for good measure.

Saouq is the Burmese word for book.