Lighting up a Blind Spot in the East

Most South Indian middle-class families have a Burma connection. One that goes back a gneration of two when the country was an attractive destination for young men seeking employment, and for traders trying to make their fortunes.

Perhaps the first time I heard about the country was at the home of a family friend in Hyderabad in the mid 1970s. This gentleman had a large, framed picture of the magnificent Shwedagon Pagoda in his drawing room, as well as intricately woven baskets made of bamboo, mementos from his frequent visits to Rangoon.

Then there were books that told you about the country's past - Amitav Ghosh's "The Glass Palace" and the Ibis Trilogy. Short stories by George Orwell, references to the World War in books by Japanese authors, Michio Takeyama and Haruki Murakami.

What about Burma after it became Mynamar? The whole country seems to have slipped into some kind of blind-spot with hardly any news coming in directly. Nothing much except for the occasional news-stories from Western magazines about of Aung Sang Suu Kyi,  and the ongoing Rohingya refugee crisis. It was a big blind spot waiting to be filled and I was pleased to get hold of a book by Burmese born author and diplomat, Thant Myint-U.

Myint-U's book "Where China Meets India" is bit like walking across the street to visit a reticent neighbour, and realising that you own house looks so different from the other side! You are reminded that parts of your own house belonged to them not so long ago, and vice versa. The Burmans once ruled over the Assam valley, and kings of tiny Manipur once invaded and subjugated the rulers of Mandalay.

China too looks like a completely different country when viewed through the eyes of a neighbour.  I learnt, for instance, that Yunnan, the Chinese province bordering Myanmar is as ethnically diverse, with a per-capital GDP which is among the lowest in China. Over the past few decades, China's Western Development Strategy seeks to remedy this disparity by connecting its poorest, land-locked provinces to the sea, through Myanmar.

Getting all the local tribes and communities - most of them mutually hostile - was certainly not easy. The process of assimilating non-Han Chinese has been a work-in-progress for the past 1000 years or more. The Yao were brought to heel in the 1450s in a war in which the Chinese killed 7300 and took as many, or more, PoWs; The Miao lost out in the Battle of Mount Leigong in 1726 where more than 10,000 Miao had their heads chopped off  and 400,000 starved to death; Ditto for the Buyu in 1797. And then there are groups like the Naxi who owe their musical skills to a band left behind by the Mongol invader, Kublai Khan. Another community which has managed to keep its traditions is the Musuo people living north of Lijiang. Among the matrilineal Musuo,  women are strong and dominant, engaging in 'walking marriages', very similar to the "Sambandham" system practiced by Nairs of Kerala.

A lot of water has flowed down the Irrawaddy since then. Burma is now Myanmar, its capital has moved from Mandalay and Rangoon to a newly purpose-built capital city of Naypyidaw. After years of international sanctions trade is on the upswing, and the country is trying to lower its dependence on China.

Perhaps the day is not far off when we too can drive across from Guwahati to Mandalay, or just take a ferry from Kolkata to Yangon/Rangoon.

-----------------------------
LINKS & REFERENCES

* Myint-U, Thant (2011): WHERE CHINA MEETS INDIA - Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia, Faber and Faber, 2012 URL - https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/12151572-where-china-meets-india

* Literature - Japanese connection - https://www.mmtimes.com/news/literary-sun-rising-over-golden-land.html

* Wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myanmar










=============================

* Myint-U, Thant (2011): WHERE CHINA MEETS INDIA - Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia, Faber and Faber, 2012

-----link-----
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/12151572-where-china-meets-india

Kamakhya & the Ahoms

The city of Guwahati has an intriguing landscape. It sits on the flood plains of the mighty Brahmaputra river, and yet, unlike the Gangetic plains, the landscape here is dotted with little hills, poking out abruptly here and there. 

On the outskirts of the city, the river is more than 16km wide, so it is not surprising that much of the urban sprawl is spread around a few hills that constrict the river, narrowing it down to a point where bridges are relatively easy to build. On one of these hills sits the ancient Kamakhya temple.

To my untrained eye, the temple looked as though it has been transplanted from Western Himalayas. The narrow pathway to the temple resembles Kangra, the sculptures look like the handiwork of masons from Bageshwar, but the apparent absence of proportions in the temple complex leaves you a little confused.  

And then you have the animals. A large black goat nibbles at ornamental plants near the gate, sheep of various sizes amble all over the Shikara area which is home to hundreds of pigeons in white, brown and grey. These are not pets. 

Special scaffoldings are built around the temple tell you where the black goat is going next. In side the temple you need to go down a narrow, dark flight of stairs to reach the sanctum where the Devi is represented by an irregular mound. The Panda sitting here has two things by his side - a towel spread on the floor for collecting the cash offerings, and a set of decapitated animal heads - two buffalos, five sheep.

The temple may be as old as the earliest settlements in lower Assam but the present structure was mostly built by the Ahom kings (). Like the Cholas in South India, the Ahom economy was built on the agriculture surplus coming from the fertile Bahmaputra plains.

The surplus has to be carefully protected against regular raids from the hill tribes and enemies further afield. It is interesting to know that the military structure and hierarchy that evolved over the centuries is still reflected in the surnames of people in this area:

1. Bor-fukan: Supreme commander of the armed forces
2. Bor-baruah: Senior commander
3. Baruah: Commander
4. Hazarika: Leader of a 1000 men
5. Saikia: Leader of 100 men
6. Bora: Leader of a team of 10 men

A similar hierarchy existed for the intellectual / spiritual / political leadership. 

1. Budha-gohain
2. Bora-patra-gohain
3. Bor-gohain
4. Gohain

It is perhaps no surprise that the Kamakhya temple resembles the resembles the Himalayan shrines. This temple too has seen numerous sieges and and may have been pulled down quite a few times by the Muslim armies. The last round must have been during the Ahom-Mughal wars (1615-1682).

The temple we see today may have been a hasty, piecemeal reconstruction that has been happening over the last two centuries.

LINKS / REFERENCES:

* Thekaekara, Tarsh (2014): WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, Indian Express Eye, 27Apr14

* Sanyal, Sanjeev (2014): ONCE UPON A RIVER, Indian Express Eye, 27Apr14

- 1661 - Ahom Kingdonm repulses Aurangazeb's attack

- Dec. 1667, Aurangazeb sent a huge Turkik-Rajpur army

- Ahom army heded by Lachit Borphukan defeats the Mughal army in March 1671 at Saraighat, near Guwahati

- Bharmaputra - 2900km long - originates from Mansarovar area - flows as "Tsangpo" in Tibet - enters Arunachal as "Dihang/ Siang" - enters plains at Pasighat

- Secret Surveyors - 1880 - Chinese Lama and Sikkimise surveyor called Kinthup - throwing logs into Tsangpo

Guwahati - Notes

At 8:30 in the morning we found ourselves in a big traffic jam in Guwahati. Our vehicle was on a road leading up a metal bridge across the Brahmaputra river. Traffic crawled on this narrow, single-lane bridge. "Why don't we try the next bridge?", I asked the driver.

He gives me the are-you-making-fun-of-me look. "The next bridge across this river", he says blandly, "Is 200 km away, in Tezpur".

As we finally get to the bridge (built after the 1962 war), I see that efforts are on to build a wider, concrete bridge. Work seems to be moving a lot slower than the traffic. They have been at it for the past four years...

This just about sums up Guwahati for you - a sprawling, shabby town with a municipality that seems pretty much dysfunctional.

This is, of course, not the city I expected to see. Impressions gathered from conversations, satellite maps and history notes had created a picture in my mind of a great city on the banks of the Brahmaputra river. A metropolis, a hub, a gateway to the seven colorful states of India's North-East.

All my expectations began to crumble as soon as we drove out of the airport, towards the city. Empty, uncertain plots of land line both sides of the road. As darkness sets in we drive past the old, crumbling buildings of Guwahati University.

There were hardly any street lights, pavements or place-boards anywhere. Lights from hundreds of little shops lit the roadsides where people parked their bicycles and cars wherever randomly. Despite the apparent greenery and availability of water, there were no grand trees to be seen. Instead, the byepass was lined with famished, scrawny Ashoka trees, planted just two feet from each other...

Is this the city which sent Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the Rajya Sabha? Is this the state that has had a "stable" government for the past 13 years??