On the Road to Mandalay . . .

A Plural Army Liberates A Plural Society

For those of our readers interested in historical cameos you may be interested in the following pieces.  They are taken from one of the best, recent books on Myanmar.  That country was the scene of some of the most terrible jungle fighting of World War II.  

So, for all amateur historians of WWII, we reproduce the following:

The last hurrah for Burma's plural society was, appropriately enough, the reconquest of Burma itself, for General Slim's 700,000--strong 14th Army was as dazzlingly multi-ethnic as pre-war Burma had cone been.  One historian has speculated that the 17th Army must have "contained more diverse races than any other perhaps in history", and at its core were the Indians: Rajputs, Dogras, Sikhs, Jats, Punjabis, Ahirs, Amirs, Chamars, Rawats, Minas, Mahars, Coorgs, Assamese, Adivasis, Kumaonis, Pathans, Brahuis, Mers, Tamils, Telegus, Paraiyahs, Brahmans, Hindustani, Mussulmans, Punjabi Mussulmans, Madrassi Mussulmans and Gurkhas, from Nepal.

They were joined by a wide variety of soliders from east and West Africa, including Hausas, Ibos and Yorubas from Nigeria, Mandis and Timminis from Sierra Leone, Baganda and Achole from Uganda and Womalis from Somaliland--as well as white New Zealanders, Australians, Canadians and South Africans, to say nothing of the Scots, Welsh, Irish and English.

The large and beautifully maintained Commonwealth War Graves cemetery at Kaukkyan on the outskirts of today's Yangon bears silent witness to the sacrifice of the 14th Army in the reconquest of Burma.  But the long lists of names from almost every part of the globe carved on plain white stone also testify to the pluralism of the army, even if the very society that those soldiers fought to preserve had all but disappeared by the time they reached Rangoon in August 1945.  Even so, it was, quite appropriately, an Indian solider, Mohammed Munsif Khan, who finally raised the Union Jack over the "liberated" city.  [Richard Cockett, Blood, Dreams and Gold: The Changing Face of Burma (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), p. 53.]

We have had the privilege of visiting the Commonwealth War Graves cemetery.  It remains a sober, yet awe inspiring place.
  If anyone needs a visually powerful symbol of just how universal the Second World War was, the Commonwealth War Graves cemetery provides it in spades--far more so, of course, than the euro-centric Great War of 1914-18.

They say that the United States was the melting pot of nations.  In its own way, Myanmar has also been a melting pot of nations--the reconquest being just one example of the diversity of that nation.  There is something else unusual about Yangon (or Rangoon) in that regard.  It's relatively recent history has also been an ethnic melting pot due to British colonial policies.  But in some ways it has been a remarkably tolerant and open and plural society.  It is, says Cockett, one of Yangon's singular virtues:

. . . [Rangoon] might have shoved aside the indigenous peoples, but within its own bounds, within its own terms of reference, set by the immigrants themselves in conjunction with the colonial authorities, it was, and remains, an impressively amicable society.  As we have seen, immigrants brought their religions and cultures with them to Rangoon, squeezing a multitude of churches, mosques, temples and synagogues into a few square miles.  Yet, the bloody sectarian divisions and ethnic hatreds that have consumed much of the rest of the world seem to have passed these old streets by.

Today's downtown Yangon, hidden away from the world, somehow survives as a remarkable exemplar of inter-faith harmony.  Nowadays it is rivalled only, perhaps, by New York for its intoxicating variety of cultures and faiths, and is probably unequalled in its atmosphere of religious toleration and mutual respect.  [Ibid., p. 60.]

Plural Yangon, liberated by a plural army.  Collectively celebrating humanity in all its ethnic diversity, where fundamentally all human beings are of one stock.   An unusual circumstance, to say the least.