Andrew Martin - Flight By Elephant - The Untold Story of World War II’s Most Daring Jungle Rescue

Burma has been called an ‘anthropologist’s paradise’; it might also have been called a colonialist’s nightmare. Aside from a couple of battalions of British soldiers in Burma, the main defensive force was called the Burma Rifles, which had British officers and supposedly Burmese other ranks … except that the soldiery of the Burma Rifles largely comprised ethnic minorities – the Shans of the east, Chins of the west, Kachins of the north, Karens of the south – because the loyalty of the indigenous Burmese could not be taken for granted.

The British in Burma were buttressed in their eminence by a million Indians. In Rangoon, they operated the infrastructure: drove the trams and trains, manned the docks, and they were hated by the Burmese, either for taking the jobs they themselves might have aspired to, or for abetting the imperial power. The Indians needed the social order to remain stable, otherwise they would be preyed upon by the Burmese dacoits, or criminal gangs, and the incidence of dacoity in Burma was high. The Burmese had rioted against the Indians in 1937, hence the granting of a measure of self-government, a reform that did not negate Burmese nationalism. In 1940, it had been necessary to arrest the first Burmese Premier to serve under the new dispensation, Baw Ma, on a charge of sedition. And with the coming of war, a Burmese Independence Army would at first fight alongside the Japanese invader before switching sides. Rising nationalism on the eve of the war had been manifested in an increasing intolerance of Europeans keeping their shoes on when visiting the pagodas. The ubiquitous sign ‘Footwearings not permitted’ was ceasing to be a joke. But no alarm had been raised.

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