Gained in Translation: The unseen neighbour

(Illustration: C R Sasikumar)

(By Chandana Goswami)

It is a different world altogether. Burma is now called Myanmar. We live so close by, with just the Patkai mountain in between. Yet, it remains a place shrouded in mystery, not only for us alone, but for the whole world. Many would not believe, but most states of Northeast India, including Assam, share a relationship with Myanmar since time immemorial. India shares 1,643 km of boundary with it, yet it is inaccessible. Areas along the boundary are remote, unreachable, covered with thick vegetation, steep mountains, or difficult water-bodies, and infested with mosquitoes and all kinds of poisonous insects and reptiles.

When the British extended their rule to Myanmar, after gradually establishing control over Assam and the adjoining areas post 1826, they also constructed a few roads to reach out to that country. The Allied Army constructed the difficult and zig-zag Stilwell Road from Margherita and Ledo in the Assam plains to as far as Kunming in China through Myanmar in the wake of the Second World War. Hundreds of convoys of military lorries and other vehicles plied to and fro on that road during the War, transporting soldiers and war materials from this side and evacuating civilians from the other. The US Air Force made upper Assam its major base to fly aircraft across The Hump, as they preferred to call the Patkai. As numerous men and aircraft were lost during the War, the British and Americans also began calling it The Land of No Return.

Myanmar has a very complicated past. In the past are hidden heart-rending agonies of thousands of its inhabitants, rivers of tears, deafening sound of bombs and bullets, and fire and smoke. There are endless stories of ethnic cleansing too, which are still going on today. Millions of people have been victims of exploitation, displacement and many a times of mass slaughter too. Bullets, explosions, bombardments, fire and smoke have often turned the sky there black. Children and adolescents have been often compelled to take up arms instead of textbooks, consuming drugs instead of nutritious food.

Bamar, comprising about 60 per cent of the total population, is the largest ethnic group there, followed by Chin, Kachin, Kayin, Kayah, Mon, Rakhine and Shan communities — these groups have a chequered history of inter-ethnic struggles for dominance. Although the Europeans began arriving from the 16th century, it was only after a series of expeditions till 1886, that followed Assam’s annexation to British India in 1826, that the whole of Myanmar passed into the hands of the British. Yangon was a backward place and in turmoil way back in 1889 too when Rudyard Kipling spent just three days there on his way from Kolkata to San Francisco.

The Second World War too left behind indelible marks on Myanmar. Japan attacked Myanmar in 1942 and easily occupied Mandalay. Soon Myanmar’s sky was covered by thick smoke emanating from the numerous battles between the Japanese and British, the latter soon backed by the Allied Forces. The country was full of heaps of bodies, of both soldiers as well as innocent local civilians who had nothing to do with either of the warring sides. It was only in 1945 that Myanmar returned into the hands of the British.

Soon after India attained Independence, the British were also compelled to leave Myanmar. But, 69 years later, the question that arises is: what has Independence given Myanmar? The country has remained steeped in poverty, famine, bloodshed, ethnic clashes, and violence. Not even one government has been able to set things right. Instead most regimes have only added fuel to fire. First it was socialism that destroyed the economy, and then long years of military rule that turned it into a bloody battlefield. Rights of the people remained curtailed, and voices of right-thinking people who tried to tell the outside world about the plight of the common people were gagged.

Ko Ko Thett, a young banished Myanmarese who has written a collection of poems called The Burden of Being Burmese, doesn’t hesitate to call himself an activist protesting government-meted atrocities in his country. When Khet Mar, a Myanmarese novelist, poet and journalist, who spent most of her banished life in the US, asked Thett what freedom of speech meant to him, he told her, “Freedom of expression is everything. It’s democracy’s litmus test. It is tyranny’s most feared weapon. It’s an artiste’s blank canvas, a prisoner’s walls, a woman’s womb, a crossbear.” What can be a better description? It reflects the pain of the people.

Though so-called democracy has returned, there are still doubts about how safe those banished people are who have returned home. Is the democracy there real? Doesn’t a parallel military rule still exist? The military have been ousting the Rohingya from Rakhine State under various pleas. Champion of democracy Aung San Suu Kyi is mum. The keys are still with the military rulers, and that is why Myanmar has once again become a killing field. It is our closest neighbour, ethnically more so, yet there is no way to know, understand and lend a helping hand to Myanmar. The Patkai stands in between, lofty yet silent.