An Exodus from Burma

I have heard from my parents, stories about people who had returned to India from Burma, crossing rivers and mountains and jungles during the Second World War. A brother of my mother’s father returned leaving everything behind. We were young children that time and used to gawk at the stories of these people escaping horrors. On the way they saw gold, jewels and other valuables lying around but no one was really interested to picking these up, for everyone was trying to save his or her own life, throwing away personal and valuable things, to lighten their burden, just like sailors in a marooned ship would lighten it by throwing things out, including the sacks of food grains. Many perished along the way, the few lucky ones who survived the ordeal to reach the Indian borders had to start all over again from a scratch. 

It was a tragedy of epic proportions, a people caught in the midst of fighting and enmity, obsession to hold more land under control and the power that will flow to them from the control of resources. But very few written record of this human tragedy exists. I recently came across an Assamese book translated into English. The Assamese author is Debendranath Acharya (died in 1981), translated by Amit R. Baishya and published in 2018,[1] a remarkable account of thousands of ordinary people fleeing under extreme sufferings.

Around 450,000 to 500,000 Burmese Indians walked to British India fleeing the advancing Japanese troops and to escape the rising anti-Indian feelings among Burmese nationals. The Indians from the subcontinent had gone over to Burma after it was incorporated into British India in 1885. A lot of Indians migrated to Burma in search of employment, many as indentured laborers and were quite poor. There were poor farmers, laborers and petty traders who settled in Burma.

Chettiar money lenders from Tamil Nadu also had settled there in search of riches. They had grabbed control over some 3 million acres of paddy fields in the lowlands of Irrawaddy River. This had created hatred for Indian banyas and when the opportunity presented, they spewed hatred and vengeance on all people from India. All these impelled the Indian settlers to flee Burma despite living there for generations. Some 50,000 people would die during the journey.

The rich and the powerful escaped via air or sea, but the poor and the ordinary had to walk it through Arakan range of mountains to Chitttagong or through Chindwin valley into Manipur or through the hilly passes of Hukawng valley into Lekhapani (Ledo) in Assam. This book, Jangam which means “The Movement,” describes the ordeal along the third route.

During times of peace Indian settlers and Burmese stayed in villages peacefully and in relative bliss. A peasant Ramgobinda and his family consisting of his mother, wife and a 7 year old boy were living rather peacefully in a village Manku. His wife was seven months pregnant and a little parcel of land which he owned, he tilled and eked out his living. But when the troubles broke out, along with the advancing Japanese troops, atrocities committed against the Indian-Burmese started to increase day by day. The Burmese’s goal was to drive foreigners away from Burma and to rebuild Burma. This small family leaves with a few others and they start on their long march to their motherland, which they had not seen in a few generations.

Ramgobinda’s mother dies on the way; his second son is born in the midst of the jungle and along with his mother was put in a jeep that came along with British military official for emergency medical treatment. The father and the elder son continued their journey on foot. The father ends up carrying the son on his back most of the journey. They discard all valuables on the way to lighten their load, the only load they could carry was their own bodies. Saving themselves with their ‘life’ intact was the only thing that mattered. It was the stubborn will of human survival that carried the survivors through. 

The way was treacherous, red clay soil, which deteriorated with the onset of monsoon, when people sank up to their thighs in the mud. The sultry heat was unbearable. Leech bites, dysentery, malaria plagued them even as they walked. Many just lay down and died, they could not be buried even. The escape route was strewn with corpses. A poignant one was of a mother and infant frozen in the act of suckling the baby. No animals or vultures were there to greet them or pick their bones of the dead clean. But scores of beautiful butterflies covered the dead bodies, feasting off the juices oozing out of these decaying bodies.

Once what they brought from home was finished, they ate what was available on the way, bamboo shoots, leaves and fruits of wild banana trees. They kept walking pushing themselves to the utmost of human endurance for to stop would mean death. Their feet became swollen and blood oozed out. With some more loss of life the small group reaches the refugee camp after some 25 days’ walk. They were skin and bones when they arrived. The husband and wife do meet in the end, but unfortunately both had lost their minds in the ordeal and anxiety and had become insane and couldn’t recognize each other. The little boy and the small baby of 21 days survive, but are being taken care by others, who had walked along with them in the journey.

These tragic tales of human beings push us to wonder why do men do this to each other. The same country which goes by the name Myanmar now, has thrust out some 500,000 Rohingya people of Muslim faith, from their country as refugees. They were driven off because they were not recognized as citizens of Myanmar. These unfortunate people are living in Cox Bazaar in Bangladesh in refugee camps in untold misery. They have been driven away, with no place to go, no citizenship and no identity, another human tragedy of recent times.[2] It is tantamount to genocide.

Where is the world going? Where is compassion and love for the sufferings for others, which almost all religions teach? How can one set of human beings inflict such pain on another set of humans? Have they no compunction left in their hearts? Is there no fear of God in the breasts of the people who commit such atrocities? Don’t we realize that one day we will have to stand before the Judge of the whole earth and give an account of all the wrongs we have done in this life?

All that people like us can do sitting far away from the scene of such actions is to pray for these displaced people, who suffer so much for no fault of theirs, so that God would strengthen them through their trials and tribulations, and for the authorities and powers that be, to wake up to such human tragedies and desist from such actions and provide succor to these suffering people.

God be with them all.

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[1] Debenranath Acharya, Jangam: A Forgotten Exodus in which Thousand Died, trans. by Amit R. Baishya, Vitasta Publishing Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi: India, 2018

[2] I have written about the Rohingya refugees in an earlier blog, The Fate of Rohingyas, dated 27.2.2018, which gives an account of their tragic story.