One of the major regional allies of the Jawaharlal Nehru government was Myanmar, where the decisive phase of the Second World War was fought in Southeast Asia and the Japanese were defeated. But Myanmar, or Burma as it was known then, remained far from attaining stability. Burma’s leaders like U Nu forged close working relations with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and participated in the non-aligned summit of 1955 in Bandung. Despite its growing regional presence, all was not alright with the country internally as its economy failed to come out of the ravages of World War II and internal power struggle. As Burma hurled towards a major crisis, Konkani-speaking Eric Gonsalves, a 1950 IFS recruit reached the Indian embassy in Yangon where Rangiah Subra Mani, a former ICS, was serving as the Indian ambassador. Excerpts from Nehru’s First Recruits by Kallol Bhattacherjee follow.
More than half century before the Rohingya crisis was to be unleashed in 2017, the first major persecution of ‘foreigners’ took place in Myanmar in 1963. The issue was dealt with by Gonsalves and his colleague Pascal Alan Nazareth. That year, Ne Win, unable to handle the gigantic economic problems facing Myanmar, took some drastic measures without caring for the human miseries that his steps caused. For many decades during the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, Myanmar’s business sector was dominated by Indians. It was easy for Indian businessmen from the north, south and west to be in Myanmar. Tamils were a prominent community in Myanmar at that time. The Indian community had vast experience of conducting business, and they dominated sectors like timber and agriculture. Nearly a million Indians resided in Burma—as Myanmar was known then.6 Indians were no longer foreign to Myanmar and had contributed to creating a multicultural country which already had deep roots with India due to its rich Buddhist heritage. But there was a problem between the Indians and the Burmese which was witnessed by the Indian diplomats posted in Myanmar.
Kallol Bhattacharjee
Nehru’s First Recruits
HarperCollins, 2024
Washed by the mighty Irrawaddy, Chindwin and Salween rivers, Burma produced an enormous amount of rice, and the Tamil Chettiars emerged as crucial in this rice trade. They gave loans to the rice traders and would use the British administration to their advantage at times when the money was not returned. In the process, they earned a reputation for being tough on the native Burmese. The entire Indian community was smeared by that reputation rather unfairly when the Burmese were faced with an economic downturn in the late 1950s.
However, the military rule, in search of finding a solution to the economic woes of Myanmar, zeroed in on the ‘foreigners’ and private entrepreneurs. The atmosphere of intolerance escalated just before the demise of Nehru in March–April 1964, when Myanmar nationalized shops. Private businessmen were served notices, and the Indian settlers were asked to leave. What happened next was nothing short of a tragic spectacle. A large number of Indians who were leaving had several requirements. They wanted to travel safely and did not want to be detained by the authorities in Yangon, but they also wanted compensation, as the Myanmar government had taken over their businesses. The Burmese military ordered a strict order to strip Indians of all their jewellery. The measure went to such an extent that even women wearing wedding rings were asked to surrender the rings. Naturally, there was uproar within the local Indian community which was not a weak minority. Indians were present in all sections of the Burmese economy, and they were vocal. However, India’s stock had suddenly fallen in the backdrop of the war with China and the Burmese military felt nothing could stop it from carrying on with its bizarre economic plans. There were several occasions when the might of the Indian state was stretched to the extreme and the expulsion of lakhs of Indians from Burma was truly one of the biggest crises that India had to deal with after independence alongside the Sino-Indian War of 1962 and the Liberation War of 1971. What made the Burmese crisis particularly dangerous were the vast number of people who were affected by it and the problem of transportation that existed as thousands had to be transported by ship.
Gonsalves, who is now in his mid-nineties and resides in Bengaluru, recounted how as a thirty-five-year-old chargé d’affaires he saw the rising anger among the community as well as within the embassy which was largely manned by young officers in their twenties. Diplomatically, India had suddenly become an isolated power. It was well-known that Delhi was in disarray after the humiliating defeat of November 1962 and no high-profile former ICS officer turned ambassador wanted to serve in Burma in such a hostile situation. That left the young officers to deal with the situation as best as they could. ‘I am sure an officer acting on his own in a similar set of circumstances today would have the riot act read,’ said Gonsalves, recollecting the measures that the Indian Embassy in Yangon took in 1963–64 to deal with the challenging situation that the Indian population of Burma had to endure because of the whimsical economic policy of the Ne Win administration. Without guidance from New Delhi Gonsalves, who had the embassy under his command, came up with a solution to the crisis facing the Indian community. As the chargé d’affaires of the mission, he promised that the mission would safeguard the valuables of the Indian community.
In response, thousands of Indians queued up outside the Indian Embassy with their precious jewels and gold items. So, Pascal Alan Nazareth, a younger colleague of Gonsalves sat on a chair with pen and stickers, and each item that the Indian community brought in was carefully documented and packed away in the lockers of the embassy. There was a real fear that the families were about to be robbed of their family heirlooms by the Burmese state, which had earlier made their lives difficult. The embassy did not turn them away and instead took the items for safekeeping. This was done without consulting the Burmese authorities, who were surprised by the Indian Embassy’s action, which they could not stop. Within three days, the embassy collected gold and jewellery worth more than Rs 2 crore from the Indians—a substantial amount for that time. Outside, chaos reigned as many Indians were herded to the Race Course in Yangon, and a mad rush ensued to dispose of property at a distress rate as fear spread all around about impending doom. Indian diplomats also faced greater insecurity and had to live at an isolated house near the Shwedagon Pagoda, protected by the Buddhist monks who lived nearby. The Burmese intelligence kept a close watch on the visitors and the Buddhist monks acted as ‘watch dogs’ safeguarding Gonsalves and his colleagues. The Burmese authorities agreed to discuss the matter after the embassy had acquired the valuables that were deposited with a branch of the People’s Bank in Burma. The Indian Foreign Secretary Yezdezard Dinshaw Gundevia came to Yangon at this time to oversee the situation and during the discussion tried unsuccessfully to convince the Burmese government to stop the campaign. He didn’t succeed, but the Burmese agreed in principle that the valuables belonged to the Indian community.
According to the oral history of Gonsalves preserved at the Indian Council of World Affairs, the Indian population in Burma at that time was around 10–15 lakhs. The shape of that forced exodus can be compared only with the Rohingya crisis of 2017, which similarly consisted of more than a million Rohingya refugees being displaced from Myanmar’s Rakhine province by the military junta. The Indian population expelled from Burma during the hostile period of 1962–64 was comparable in size but did not attract as much attention as the Burmese did not target Indians with the same brutality that they unleashed on other ethnic minorities like the Rohingyas and ethnic groups like the Chins and Karens. But the economic hardship was equally intense.
The Indian Embassy in Yangon had the responsibility of sending them back, and Gonsalves says that finally at least 3 lakh Indians were sent back from Burma. In view of the very large number of people stuck in the crisis, a decision was taken to transport them via ship. Soon a ship was requisitioned from the Haj service of the Government of India for the task. The ship belonging to Mogul Lines was found to be lying idle and was pushed into ferrying passengers from Burma to Calcutta. The journey over the turbulent Bay of Bengal took around three or four days. The extent of the operation can be assessed by the fact that the ship was still plying when Gonsalves returned, ending nearly three years of service in Burma in December 1964. By that time, over sea and overland, around 3 lakh Indians had been transferred back home. A good number of them were given loans in India against the receipts they had got by depositing jewellery with the Indian Embassy in Yangon. Many of them returned to Chennai, then known as Madras and with all the items that were not available in socialist India, set up the Burma Bazar of Madras, where the items that they brought along were much sought after.
Thus was born Burma Bazar, one of the oldest grey markets of India where people from all over India would come shopping for foreign consumer items before the era of liberalization dawned in the 1990s.
The sights of that time stayed with Gonsalves forever. India would go on to evacuate nationals from many countries over the subsequent decades, including from Iraq in 1990 and from many countries like Libya, Ukraine, Yemen and Sudan in the twentyfirst century, but the evacuation of 1963–64 was far more difficult because of the lack of infrastructure and resources. ‘Indians had to leave in ships and many left overland through difficult terrains, leaving their homes and established lives behind,’ recollected Gonsalves speaking to this author. After the airlift of Indians from Kuwait during the 1990 Gulf war, the operation with Air India became known as the largest evacuation in the Indian history. Gonsalves did not maintain numbers back in 1963–64 and says that with the 3 lakh Indians relocated back, the operation from Burma was indeed the biggest refugee relocation that the Indian government had overseen till date. In the context of the subsequent similar operations, Gonsalves seems to be correct.
The action of the Ne Win government triggered a humanitarian crisis, which mingling with the bitter after taste of the defeat of the 1962 war, created a dysfunctionality that came to symbolize India. The tragedy unleashed on the Indian settlers in Burma was further amplified by the fact that throughout the early 1960s, the Nehru administration took several measures to help Burma irrespective of the hostile measures that Burma was planning against the settlers. A year before Nehru’s demise, in May 1963, Burma was hit by cholera. India was one of the first countries to rush to help Burma, and the Indian Red Cross gave one lakh doses of the cholera vaccine, half of which were offered as gifts. After touching the height of fame in Bandung, the Nehru era drew to a close through the military setback of 1962 and the humanitarian crisis unleashed against Indian nationals by the Ne Win government of Myanmar. Gonsalves feels that subsequent history did not give the exodus from Burma enough attention though it probably is the biggest humanitarian tragedy with few parallels in Indian history and diplomacy. The biggest setback of Nehru’s prime ministership was the defeat in the Sino-Indian War of 1962, but that was not the problem that Nehru was occupied with on the day of his death. On 13 May 1964, Nehru instead wrote to Ne Win urging him to ‘generously accept’ those Indians who wished to stay on in Burma and become a part of the Burmese society. He also argued for the safe return of those who wished to come back to their homes in India. ‘If these people are to come away to India, I am sure Your Excellency will agree, they must be enabled to come home with at least part of their assets to enable them to start afresh in India.’ Nehru promised Ne Win that a senior Indian official would be sent to Burma to ensure smooth repatriation of those who wanted to return. Four days prior to Nehru’s demise, Foreign Secretary Y.D. Gundevia thus arrived in Yangon to deal with the Burmese rulers.
