38 Recentering the Bay of Bengal The Focus Connected spaces in an inter-Asian bordersea

Resistance narratives along the Bay of Bengal border-zones and the expansion of Myanmar's rebellion geography

Maitrii Aung-Thwin In his celebrated book The Glass Palace, Amitav Ghosh writes of the connected lives and experiences of families that tie the main characters to the lands surrounding the Bay of Bengal and the broader Indian Ocean zone during the last century. When read through the experiences of its more prominent characters, the novel highlights how the bonds of family, commerce, and politics stretched across South and Southeast Asia, linking people to places via circuits across borders and the waterways that bridge monsoon Asia.

Above: British forces arrival in Mandalay 1885, photo by Willoughby Wallace. Centre right: U Ottama with prison uniform. Far right: Surya Sen before 1934. All images in the public domain on Wikimedia.

riting about a Burmese temple the waters stretching from the southeastern in north Calcutta, Ghosh relates coast of India, to the western coasts of Whow the temple became a place for Bangladesh-Myanmar, and down the western intellectual framework for understanding this by local politicians, the connections to Bengal's displaced, overseas communities – Gujaratis, coastlines of Thailand and Malaysia as event to its fullest extent. While classic studies anti-colonial activities were entrenched; Bengalis, Tamils, Sikhs, Eurasians – who grew ‘a region’ in its own right.2 applied comparative approaches that expanded legal and ethnographic assertions were up or had spent much of their lives in Burma, Viewing the history of Myanmar within the how the rebellion could be conceptualized within made to create a rebellion topography that but had to flee during World War II. The temple context of the Bay of Bengal has been useful, a regional and global perspective, connecting stretched across the north-eastern and eastern had become a place to gather, celebrate especially in the study of early-modern trade, the series of peasant uprisings in the Irrawaddy coastlines of the Bay of Bengal. Burmese holidays, and to speak in Burmese, religion, and migration to the Arakan region. river delta region to the histories of Madras, It would not be the first time that Bengal which was for many, their mother tongue. In fact, much of Burma’s colonial history might Calcutta, Chittagong, and the Andaman was used as a reference to understand Ghosh’s Calcutta was in some ways more be better understood as a chapter in the Islands reveals the potential that the Bay of rebellion in British Burma. Authorities in connected to Rangoon than it was to Delhi, broader history of Bay of Bengal connections Bengal model offers to Burma Studies. The Rangoon also attempted to connect the 1930 as result of the characters’ life experiences with Burma. The establishment of British Burma Rebellion of 1930-1932 erupted in the Chittagong Armoury Raid to revolutionaries in and movement across the Bay of Bengal. authority over India and neighboring territories rice paddy fields of the Irrawaddy river delta Bengal and Burma. Burma’s most celebrated alongside and across the Bay is one moment region at the height of the worldwide depression ‘political monk’, U Ottama, was also linked to that provides insight into these connections. and the maturing of anti-colonial nationalism sympathetic political groups in British India Bay of Bengal as a region British India’s creation of British Burma in the throughout the British Indian world. Galvanized and other parts of Asia. Viewed from this late 19th and early 20th centuries amplified by a mixture of socio-economic, cultural, angle, there is much room to consider how in its own right pre-existing ties across the Bay but introduced and political grievances, rural rice cultivators, anti-colonial movements and sentiments in For Ghosh, Burma is a place of reference new linkages that altered the intensity of that political monks, and grassroots activists took British Burma were associated with groups and for the book’s main protagonists who move interaction. Cultural, financial, transport, their frustration out on colonial infrastructure conversations beyond its borders. While the beyond its borders, circulating across the educational, legal and penal infrastructure and local representatives of the colonial state. Burma Rebellion of 1930 is almost exclusively Bay of Bengal, but remain emotionally, produced the means to support exchanges and Officials at the time regarded the series of examined within the context of Myanmar’s psychologically, and culturally connected networks across Madras, Bengal, the Andaman uprisings as a political movement aimed at national history, exploring how it was viewed to it despite settling in different locales Islands and Burma Province. At the same time overthrowing the British and resurrecting the by, and connected to, overseas communities and despite official borders. Read from this this very same infrastructure inspired acts of now defunct Burmese monarchy, which had in Calcutta, Chittagong, and the Andaman angle, Ghosh’s The Glass Palace captures resistance and empowerment that sought to been dismantled following the annexation Islands – where convicted rebels were sent the essence of what scholars refer to as weaken the connections across the Bay of of the kingdom in 1885. By 1930, rumors – is one key thrust of future research. ‘inter-Asian referencing’ and provides Bengal border-zone. circulated that a prophesized min-laung readers with a more nuanced understanding (or pretender king) had returned to reassert the Maitrii Aung-Thwin, Associate Professor, of how we might understand what being country's sovereignty and restore Buddhism, Comparative Asian Studies Program/Asia ‘Southeast Asian’ or ‘Burmese’ entails. Creating a rebellion compelling many to believe that the alleged Research Institute/Department of History, The promotion of inter-Asian referencing leader of the rebellion, a former healer and National University of Singapore. and the revival of interest in the connections topography grassroots activist named Saya San, would [email protected] between (and across) South and Southeast Resistance to the establishment of these protect them from harm via his magical Asia is a welcome return for scholars in the infrastructural systems is one way to trace incantations, charms and protective tattoos. Notes field. Scholars have long recognized the the interconnections across the Bay. Rather As local police forces were unable to cope with enduring interaction between the two regions than treating the histories of the Burma the size and breadth of the outbreak, Rangoon 1 Hall, K.R. 2010. ‘Ports of Trade, Maritime and the renewed attention towards the Bay of Rebellion (later called the Saya San Rebellion authorities requested military support from Diasporas, and Networks of Trade and Bengal reminds us of the continuity of broader of 1930-1932), the Chittagong Armoury across the Bay in order to restore order. Special Cultural Integration in the Bay of Bengal interconnectedness.1 At the same time, Raid (1930-1931) in Bangladesh, and the counter-insurgency legislation and emergency Region of the Indian Ocean: c. 1300- inter-Asian perspectives have also attempted Malabar/Moplah Rebellion (1921) of southern powers provided the Burma government with 1500’, Journal of the Economic and Social to transcend the regional distinctions that India within the context of their respective the rationale to arrest and prosecute detainees History of the Orient 53(1-2). earlier area-studies approaches might have national histories, we might take them as under the jurisdiction of special tribunals. 2 Amrith, S.S. 2013. Crossing the Bay of Bengal: the Furies of Nature and the sustained. Just as scholars of borders and part of a connected history of the Indian At first, local authorities were convinced Fortunes of Migrants. Harvard University borderlands have shifted attention to those Ocean, the Bay, and the infrastructure that that a Revolutionary Bengali Party had radical- Press. 3 terrestrial spaces within and alongside nation linked border-zone communities. ized student groups in Rangoon and added 3 Anderson, C. 2013. ‘The Age of Revolution boundaries, the adoption of the Bay of Bengal The Burma Rebellion of 1930-1932, provides local nationalists to a broader network of in the Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal, and as a unit of study achieves something similar a case example of how the Bay of Bengal revolutionaries that stretched across the Bay South China Sea: A Maritime Perspective’, by allowing scholars to re-conceptualize might serve as a more appropriate spatial and of Bengal. While this narrative was contested International Review of Social History 58.