Hingkanonta, Lalita (2013) The police in colonial Burma. PhD Thesis. SOAS, University of London http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/17360 Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination. The Police in Colonial Burma Lalita Hingkanonta Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD in History 2013 Department of History School of Oriental and African Studies University of London Abstract The thesis considers a number of important aspects/themes of the police in colonial Burma. It first seeks to establish the numerical strength of both the civil and military police, before examining the critical issue of race and the racial composition of the police, that is British and Indian domination of the higher ranks and the limited presence of Burmans, restricted to marginal roles. The thesis then considers a major re-organization of the police that took place in the later 1880s, following the final annexation of the Burmese kingdom. This is followed by a chapter on the socio-economic condition of the Indian military police in Upper Burma. Then, the thesis advances to explore the arguments put forth at the time for the alleged high levels of crime in colonial Burma, and the effectiveness of the police in suppressing crime. The final chapter describes and analyses the police in Burma during the 1930s, when it faced its most severe challenges. The thesis focuses on three central themes. The first is the issue of consent, and the extent to which the colonial administration had to use coercion to maintain the political and social order, particularly in the final full decade of British rule. The second critical theme is to consider how the policing of colonial Burma might be assessed: how might success be determined. And, finally, the crucial theme of race is approached as a respond to the question of how Burma became policed largely by foreign police and how the indigenous reacted to it. i Declaration for PhD thesis I have read and understood regulation 17.9 of the Regulations for students of the School of Oriental and African Studies concerning plagiarism. I undertake that all the material presented for examination is my own work and has not been written for me, in whole or in part, by any other person. I also undertake that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of another person has been duly acknowledged in the work which I present for examination. Signed: ____________________________ Date: _________________ ii Contents Abstract i Acknowledgements iv List of Tables v Map vi 1 Introduction 1 2 Locating race in the Burma police 46 3 Re-organizing the police in the 1880s 89 4 Feeding the Indian military police 124 5 Police and crime 153 6 The police in a time of crisis 202 Conclusion 238 Glossary 263 Bibliography 267 iii Acknowledgements I owe a great debt to Professor Ian Brown whose supervision and support have given me deeper understanding of history, life, and, above all, dedication. My heartfelt thanks go to John Okell, the true saya-gyi of Burmese, whose great depth of knowledge has constantly driven me to bring this thesis into fruition. His family also gave me endless encouragement during a time of crisis. I genuinely admire their generosity. I would like to thank also U Thaw Kaung, Daw Saw Nan Nwe and the staff at the National Archives of Myanmar, U Ba Aye and U Khin Maung Maung for their valuable eye-witness views on the colonial police, Mahasarakham University for partial funding and SEASREP Foundation for their financial support for Burmese language learning in Rangoon in 2009. I am particularly thankful to Professor Kei Nemoto, Tharaphi Than and Noriyuki Osada who have commented on my thesis and just generally being a good company, to Robert H. Taylor and Maitrii V. Aung-Thwin for thought-provoking comments, and to Dr Elizabeth Moore initially for her kind words and inspiration he has often given to me. During years of doing this research, my parents and the rest of my family have stood firmly by my side. I owe so much to them. I would like to extend my sincerest thanks to Thanongsak Hanwong with whom I have shared inspirational conversation. His generosity and kind support are also crucial in the completion of this thesis. iv List of Tables and Figures Page Table 1 Total of Civil and Military Police in Burma, 71 1867-1939 Table 2 Comparative Number of Civil Police in Burma, 73 1890 and 1910 Table 3.1 Indian Races in the Burma Military Police Force, 74 1888-1905 Table 3.2 Indian Races in the Burma Military Police, 76 1910-1925 Table 3.3 Indian races in the Burma Military Police, 1929-1938 78 Table 4 Statistics of Violent Crime, 1913-1922 155 Table 5 Comparative Salary of Subordinate Police in Burma, 165 1920 Table 6 Crime Statistics in Lower Burma, 1901-1910 191 Figure 1 Total of Civil and Military Police in Burma, 20 1867-1939 Figure 2 Comparative Numbers of Civil Police in Burma 23 by Division, 1890 and 1910 Figure 3 The Burma Civil Police, 1867-1939 25 Figure 4 The Burma Military Police, 1886-1939 28 v Map of Burma (With key towns and cities) vi 1 Introduction Ship me somewhere east of Suez, where the best is like the worst Where there aren’t no Ten Commandments an’ a man can raise a thirst For the temple-bells are callin’, an’ it’s there that I would be.1 Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘Mandalay’ might not be seen as an imaginative opening for a thesis on the police in colonial Burma. But it points to a paradox. The romantic imagining of Burma, projected by Kipling and others, belied an often grim reality. Burma was the least populated province of British India (apart from Assam) yet the ‘most criminal’.2 Here surely was a territory which demanded a strong and efficient police force. Yet throughout the colonial period, Burma’s police were seen as weak and 1 Rudyard Kipling, Collected Poems of Rudyard Kipling. Ware: Wordsworth Poetry Library, 1994, p. 430. 2 G.E. Harvey offered the following comparison: ‘England and Wales, with 40 million people, have 140 murders a year; Burma, with only 15 million, had 900.’ Harvey gives no date for these figures. G.E. Harvey, British Rule in Burma. London: Faber and Faber, 1946, p. 38. 1 ineffective: and the Burmese themselves, or specifically the Burmans,3 were regarded as ill-fitted for police work. Indians could be employed as sentries, treasury and gaol guards, and, crucially, in the military police. But the Burmans and some others among the local peoples were restricted to the more modest civil police, or assigned to office posts. The colonial administration was unwilling or unable to reinforce sufficiently the local police presence. According to a contemporary observer, Sir Herbert Thirkell White, British India treated the province of Burma with ‘unsympathetic parsimony.’4 Moreover, after the annexation of Upper Burma in 1885, perhaps influenced by Kipling’s romantic imaginings, a number of young British officers sailed for Burma only to discover a grim and dreary reality. Sir Herbert explained: The majority had a hard and disappointing life, waiting long for the realization of their dreams. The story of the Burma Civil Police is one of home deferred, and of weary plodding through 3 During the colonial period and beyond, while ‘Burmese’ was generally used to refer to the Buddhist-oriented people living in Burma Proper, ‘Burmans’ referred, in a more specific sense, to the ethnic Burmans (bama) whose characters, in the colonial point of view, differed greatly from the rest of the Buddhist peoples of Burma such as the Shans or Arakanese. Throughout this thesis, these terms will be used interchangeably but, as a rule, ‘Burmans’ will be used to differentiate them from the rest of Burma’s ethnic groups. 4 Sir Herbert Thirkell White, A Civil Servant in Burma. London: Edward Arnold, 1913, p. 155. 2 many dismal years. It is greatly to the credit of its officers that they did well under such depressing conditions.5 Such ‘depressing conditions’ were also vividly illustrated in George Orwell’s first novel Burmese Days. The plot reaches its climax in the grotesquely-described suicide of John Flory, the main character, a British teak merchant who struggled and ultimately failed to survive in the narrow, if not claustrophobic, British community. Many British officials clearly hated Burma: the cost of living in the province was the highest in British India, the climate was excessively hot and damp, and there were, in the early days at least, no hill stations, except perhaps Maymyo.6 And Burma’s apparently rampant criminality would have discouraged all but the most optimistic of new British recruits to the police. The origins of the colonial police force in Burma The formation of the police in colonial Burma was a product of British rule in India, particularly in the adjacent Bengal.