Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia (32 page)

The ruler of Manipur also came under maximum pressure. It was hard to imagine that Manipur could regain its independence but some people in Imphal certainly hoped that it was possible. There had also been discussion of the state becoming part of an independent Burma. In early 1947 the British had decided to quit Burma and an agreement was soon reached between Burmese nationalist leaders and the Shan princes or
sawbwas
and other more minor chiefs on a new union, in which a degree of local autonomy would be respected. Manipur was certainly much closer to Rangoon, both geographically and culturally, than New Delhi. There were unhappy historical ties, but ties nonetheless. But in the end this idea did not go very far, and Manipur was essentially given Hobson’s choice: join India. And so, a few days after Indian independence, the last king of Manipur also signed away any thought of a separate future.

In some quarters, there was hope that accession to India would still mean only a very loose federal relationship. The king formally handed over political power to the first elected government ever in that state. A new constitution and a legislature of fifty members was established and some local politicians believed that these new representative institutions might strengthen Manipur’s claims to self-rule. This was in 1948. Burma was already independent and at civil war. But the new Indian government saw little need to grant Manipur a special place in the new order and so, under considerable duress (the circumstances are still somewhat murky), the last maharaja of Manipur, Bodhachandra Singh, ‘on behalf of himself, his heirs and successors’ agreed as well to full ‘merger’ with the rest of India. Manipur would be ruled directly from Delhi as a ‘Union Territory’. Only in 1972 would it become a full-fledged state of the Indian union.

Never before in history had the sovereignty of an indigenous government in Delhi extended so far east, well beyond the traditional limits of Hindustan, beyond the boundaries of Mauryan, Gupta and Mughal rulers, almost to the Irrawaddy valley and the frontiers of southwest China.

In addition to Manipur, Delhi also had to contend with the upland regions of the Northeast, home to a mix of dozens of different tribal peoples who felt they had little if any ties to ‘India proper’. In British times their homelands were ruled as part of Assam, but, as with similar parts of Burma, the British had ruled these highlands indirectly, through local chiefs. This included the Naga Hills to the north of Imphal and the Lushai Hills to the south. And again as in the highlands of Burma, local peoples had converted overwhelmingly from earlier animist beliefs to Christianity and worried that, with independence, they would be swallowed up. Many lived in areas that had been heavily militarized by the Second World War and were awash in guns. They had also no connection to the anti-colonial movement and the now ruling Congress Party. In January 1948 Robert Reid, ex-governor of Assam, was touring Nagaland when he received news of Gandhi’s assassination. Writing that he felt a great ‘shock of pain’ he shared his grief with his host, Changrai, chief of the Konyak Nagas, only to find that Changrai had no idea who Gandhi was. Reid replied that he was the man ‘responsible for the British leaving India. It is he who got India its independence.’ ‘I see,’ said Changrai, ‘it is he who has caused all this trouble for the Nagas.’

The Nagas would soon rebel, refusing to recognize New Delhi’s authority, and in the sixty years that have followed, literally dozens of tribal insurgent groups have followed suit, battling the Indian army and police. Other rebellions against the Indian state since independence (most notably by the Sikhs in the Punjab in the 1980s), as well as the continuing violence in Kashmir, have attracted far more attention. The armed conflicts of India’s Northeast are little known and even less understood, not only internationally but even in ‘India proper’. The consequences, however, have been devastating.

A Naga National Council had actually been formed prior to independence, in 1946, and this grouping had urged the departing colonial authorities not to include the Naga Hills in the soon-to-be-partitioned India. Some Naga leaders accepted the idea of full autonomy, with Delhi managing only defence, foreign affairs and perhaps a few other select issues. But militant Nagas wanted nothing to do with India and their voices became the loudest. Their leader, Angami Zaipu Phizo, travelled to Delhi for discussions with the government of Pandit Nehru, but these failed to produce any agreement. The Indian government was not willing to negotiate actual independence and with the monumental choices and challenges then facing its leaders, the destiny of these remote highlands must have seemed an irritant at best. But, by the early 1950s, an armed Naga rebellion was in full swing. Phizo declared a ‘People’s Sovereign Republic of Free Nagaland’ and soon escaped to London, where he launched a successful public relations campaign, claiming widespread Indian atrocities and deeply embarrassing the Nehru government. It would be the first of many rebellions along the Burmese–Indian border.

The conflict soon ravaged entire communities, with whole villages displaced and thousands killed or injured. Prime Minster Nehru intensified talks with more moderate Naga leaders and these discussions eventually led to the creation of a separate state of Nagaland, with its own elected government. This was a not insignificant concession as there were only half a million people within the borders of the new state, compared with the tens of millions in nearly all others in India at the time. Over the following years, other small tribal states would also be carved out of the hill areas of Assam, at times satisfying local feeling, at other times leading to more demands and the militarization of new, even smaller tribal communities aspiring for recognition and self-rule.

The Naga rebellion has continued up to the present, though at the time of writing there is a ceasefire between the main armed group, the Nagaland National Socialist Council (Isaac–Muivah faction), and the Indian government. And over the past few decades, the Naga insurgency has been joined by a host of others. In some places the insurgents have been quelled or peace agreements reached, but usually only for new conflicts to appear or old ones reignite. In Manipur itself there are dozens of competing armed groups, and Indian security forces barely control more than the capital city of Imphal and the road leading to Tamu on the Burmese border. As in Kashmir, the Indian army and paramilitary Assam Rifles operate under what is called the Armed Forces Special Powers Act of 1958, a much condemned and draconian law that provides Indian soldiers immunity from prosecution, and allows them to ‘shoot to kill’ on mere suspicion, and search homes without a warrant. The Northeast of India today is far from being a war zone, and many areas are entirely free from insurgency, governing themselves through elected institutions, with local people enjoying the rights and freedoms of any Indian citizen. But lawlessness and the rule of the gun remain widespread, much worse in some places (like Manipur) than others, driving away prospective investment and tourism, and branding the Northeast with an image of violent unrest.

The underlying reasons for all this are complicated. It’s important as well to remember that the peoples of the Northeast of India have what many minority peoples in Burma still long for (and some still take up arms for), a considerable degree of local self-government within a federal and democratic state. The press is free in a way unimaginable in Burma. To watch the news in Imphal was to be alarmed by the violence shown, but at least here the violence was in full view, and official responsibility hotly debated. Yet there is still the continuing feeling by many local people, whether in Nagaland or Manipur or elsewhere, that India is an alien power and that they are aliens within the larger Indian union. The Indian independence leader and politician Jayaprakash Narayan, who travelled extensively in the Naga Hills in the 1960s, echoed this idea when he later wrote that India was not simply a state but a civilization, and that this civilization, whilst including Pakistan, did not necessarily include these frontier areas in the far Northeast, which had no historic or cultural ties with other parts of the country, their recent conversion to Christianity only underlining a feeling of difference. It is an argument made time and again. Naga students I met talked hopefully about oil fields that they had heard might soon be discovered in Nagaland and how this might provide an economic base for independence. I asked if they meant full independence, as a sovereign country, and they unhesitatingly said yes.

Poverty is part of the problem. Per capita income in the Northeast was higher than the national average at independence. The region is rich in natural resources, including oil and gas, and the valley of the Brahmaputra is one of the most fertile anywhere. But today it lags far behind and is a world away from the new centres of economic dynamism like Bombay or Bangalore. Money itself is not an issue. The Indian central government spends far more per capita in this region than in any other part of the country; with just forty million people, or 4 per cent of the population, the northeastern states receive 10 per cent of federal funds. But the money is channelled through vast and often corrupt and unresponsive bureaucracies that have done little to create jobs or stimulate development.

Related to this is the problem of access. As we have seen, the only overland connection between ‘India proper’ and Assam is the ‘Chicken’s Neck’. But these hill states further east are even more isolated, as their only overland access is via Assam. The British built railways across India, but not here. There has never been a train line anywhere between upper Assam and upper Burma. And though these states are with a few hundred miles of China, there is virtually no trade. The Look East policy originally meant a strengthening of India’s trading links eastward, but for some it has also come to mean the reorientation of Northeast India as a bridge to Burma and China and a solution to the Northeast’s long decades of economic isolation.

With an improvement in New Delhi’s ties with Bangladesh since late 2008, there came a possibility that Bangladesh would again provide a conduit for Northeast India to the Bay of Bengal. In the meantime, both Delhi and state-level governments saw Burma as the key. As Burma had been the solution to Yunnan’s landlocked position, so too could it be for Northeast India and in particular for the states closest to Burma: Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur and Nagaland. In 2008 the Burmese and Indian governments signed an agreement to rebuild the old port at Akyab (also known as Sittwe) on Burma’s western shoreline and link this port to the North east. The Kaladan River would be developed as an inland waterway, and from the upper reaches of the Kaladan a new road would be constructed, one that would merge with India’s National Highway 54. In this way, Manipur and these most remote parts of the Northeast would soon enjoy a much shorter connection to the sea.

It all sounded good on paper, but as of late 2010, the ‘Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project’ was only slowly moving ahead. It was also unclear how useful this new link would be without an overall improvement in infrastructure in the Northeast. National Highway 54 runs several hundred miles to Assam, almost to Gauhati (and has many useful signs along the way like ‘After Whisky–Driving Risky’), but has only a single lane and is hardly an important commercial artery.

There is also the prospect of trade directly with Burma, from Manipur to Mandalay and then onwards south to Rangoon or north to Yunnan. Northeast India and Burma combined make up a market of over 100 million people, poor now, but not necessarily for ever. It has not helped Northeast India to have an internationally isolated, economically mismanaged, military dictatorship next door. But neither has it helped Burma to be adjacent to one of the most conflict-ridden and neglected parts of India. Gun-running and illicit trade in everything from narcotics to tiger parts are major components of the border economy. And there has been nothing like the same investment in new roads and infrastructure. Yunnan may soon have a high-speed train to Mandalay. From Imphal to Mandalay what exists is little more than a country road. In a way Northeast India and Burma have long reinforced one another’s problems. As borders begin to open, the question is whether they can now support each other’s progress instead.

Imphal reminded me of Mandalay. It was early in the year and though the afternoons were warm and sunny, in the early mornings people were bundled up in sweaters and nylon jackets, some with heavy scarves and even woollen hats. It was dry and dusty and the air smelled of wood smoke and diesel. There were constant blackouts. And as in Mandalay, the palace was in the middle of the city, surrounded by a big square wall and moat.

I met with a writer in Imphal and after lunch at a restaurant near my guest-house, we drove around town to see the sites. The palace itself is now in ruins, really just a pile of bricks over perhaps half an acre, the original architecture impossible to make out. The site had been used by the British as a fort (Fort Kangla here, Fort Dufferin in Mandalay), and there was still a neat row of colonial-era bungalows, including the one used by General Slim as commander of the British Fourteenth Army. In the early 1940s there had been thousands of British and other Allied soldiers and officers living in and around Imphal, during that brief period when much of the world’s future quite literally hinged on what happened over these few square miles. But before that Imphal was a place of scant importance, perhaps the equivalent of one of the larger upper Burma towns (like Katha, where George Orwell had lived), home to thirteen ‘Europeans’ (the British colonial term for any white person) in the 1930s. There was a tennis club but no golf course, a clear sign that Scottish commerce had not penetrated into this remote corner of the Raj.

On my second day in Imphal, we also drove around the local university, which was home to India’s only ‘Burma Studies Centre’. It was the second Burma Studies Centre I had ever been to in my life. The first was at Northern Illinois University, a two-hour drive from Chicago past innumerable cornfields, McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts outlets. The centre in Imphal had published a few papers and was a reminder that for Manipur, if for nowhere else in India, Burma really mattered, not as a distant or abstract place, but as the big country next door, with a shared past, and almost certainly a shared future.