British India and the Partition of Burma

I realized how little I knew of British India as I read Sam Dalrymple’s Shattered Lands. British India extended from Yemen all the way to Burma, but not as a single continuous landmass, as this map shows. By the end of it all, British India would break into 12 nations, hence the book title.

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The first partition of India was with Burma. As the British came under growing pressure and protests, they considered granting more autonomy to (British) India. But with areas as diverse as Baluchistan, Bengal and Madras:

“How would they write a single constitution for a landmass larger and more diverse than Europe?”

 

It will seem surprising now, but back then, Burma was the largest and richest province in the Raj! So much so that people from all parts of British India flocked to Burma for jobs and better opportunities. Yet Burma was sidelined in Indian politics (it was even called the Cinderella province).

 

The British felt the Burmese were racially different and felt a split was warranted. For Gandhi, India was really what many called (call?) Bharat from the epics, i.e., without Arabia/Yemen and Burma. He said as much in a visit to Burma urging non-Burmese to act like “guests in a foreign country”. But all this was just talk, wishes and views at this point; the majority of Burmese didn’t care for a separated status as they feared it would hurt their thriving economy.

 

Then the Wall Street crash of 1929 happened triggering the Great Depression. As the price of rice dropped, lakhs of Burmese farmers began to default on their loans. And who were the biggest lenders? The Chettiars, who had brought with them their “distinctive cuisine, gods and subprime mortgage loans”! Unable to recover their money, they began to seize the farming land. Inevitably, this led to anger and added to the pre-existing resentment of those who lost jobs to the outsiders who kept coming. All the above resentment – job losses, the Great Depression, and the Chettiar lenders – would lead to repeated attacks on Indians (and British) in Burma.

 

Then a massive earthquake hit Rangoon. In the chaos, fights broke out between the local Burmese and the Indians. What followed was Rangoon’s first major pogrom. At this point, the British announced that Burma’s “inclusion in India was a historical accident” and that it be separated.

 

But nobody knew where the boundary should lie. The British barely understood the region, there were dense forests, and the Naga tribes were distributed throughout the region – into which territory should they come (Of course, the British never asked the Nagas their preference)? Regardless, on 1 April, 1937, the partition of Burma (and also Aden/Yemen) became official.

 

Even after that, racial relations deteriorated in Burma. Not just with the remaining Hindus, but even against the Muslim minority. In fact, the two groups were considered the same as far as the Burmese were considered – outsiders. Anyone not a Buddhist, not looking like a Burmese was labelled a foreigner. As these emotions kept getting whipped up, riots followed.

 

When World War 2 broke out, Britain no longer had the resources or willpower to maintain peace in Burma. Taking advantage of this, the Burmese government undertook an ethnic cleansing of all “foreigners”, i.e., Indians, killing or chasing them out of Burma. Many Burmese welcomed the Japanese as liberators from British rule. The purge, along with the chaos of Japanese occupation of Burma, would lead to a massive exodus (the Long March) of Indians back to India.

 

As the author says, this event is barely mentioned in Indian history books. The “Burmese refugees” would end up mostly in the North East. Many would settle there, others would be resented and always looked upon as outsiders who were “stealing” local jobs, a problem that persists to this very day.