Arakan: - One Who Preserves and Takes Care of Their Own Nationality.

Publication by Arakan Action Association (AAA.)

Arakan  Past – Present – Future

BY JOHN OGILVY HAY, J.P.

Arakan Library was founded by a group of Arakan Action Association (AAA) in exile in Thailand from Burma in 2007 doing to voice for the knowledge, the people democratic and human rights.

 

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Arakan Action Association (AAA)

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8. His Honour trusts that the inhabitants of the wealthy districts of Patna and Gya will come forward, and, by subscribing to the proposed loan, secure to themselves the benefit of a railway through their district.

9. I am to inquire whether it has been contemplated to carry the rail to the river-side; and whether, if there was this means of traffic, for which the East Indian Railway, rates might prove too heavy, being able to take to the river, this might render the scheme more acceptable to the zemindars of the districts concerned.

10. I am to request that you will submit a copy of the “Engineer-in-Chief’s” Report, No. 1623, dated 25^th September 1875, on this railway. – Statesman and Friend of India.

             Why should such a useful work be delayed? Money can be had in abundance if the public are only applied to for it, and the state of the Government finances need not be the obstruction.- Ed. A.N.

Chittagong and Arakan.

‘Arakan News,’ 27^th October 1877.

             As at present constituted, Chittagong is the bane of Arakan, and Arakan is the bane of Chittagong; were they worked under the same head authority, they would be mutually helpful to each other, or rather, being one and the same, they would prosper together. (This remains true to the present day, 1892, only Chittagong belongs to Bengal, Arakan to Burmah. Hence their antagonism instead of brotherhood!)

             We have not seen the Administration Report, or the Government of Bengal’s resolution thereon referred to by the ‘ Pioneer’ in an article which we give among our extracts; and we there fore tale the grounds of the following remarks from his article.

             One of the principal outcries from Chittagong is, the “local labour is hard to get. It is not that men are scarce in Chittagong. The reason is that nearly every one has some land of his own – even labourers and domestic servants have their plots of land to work on.” Now, how is this? Just this: the population of Chittagong is so large that it cannot support itself, and the value of land, and the consequent rent of the same, is so high that the wage to buy the land or to pay the rent cannot be earned in the district itself. Then, how are these sums provided? Why, by migration to Akyab, where there is no indigenous labour, and where the lazy Arakanese will rather pay away every rupee he can do without than trouble himself to work even for his own profit. As is well known, the rice-trade of Akyab has been a perfect mine for the working classes of Chittagong. Though wealth has come into Akyab, it has not remained here. Yearly, at different stages of the rice-trade – at the sowing, at the reaping, at the shipping season – shoals of Chittagong coolies come down to do the labour of these various stages. They generally come here piccless; they one and all of them go away with money, and many of them, like the Sircars, coolie-Mangees, and brokers, go away with wealth – the result of peculation and chicanery unfathomable by even the sharpest Europeans or Arakanese with whom they come in contact. The gains of many of these men have been made by such nefarious practices that they fear holding the money in any way but in land, and this in most cases is benance in the names of their bai-brothers, fathers, mothers, wives, and children. This is one reason why land is dear in Chittagong – there is so much competition for it. Then again, almost all the servants in Akayb (till within the last few years, when some Madrasees have been coming in ) are from Chittagong; they come here for a few months, earn good wages, spend as little of that on themselves as they possibly can, but by peculation endeavor to get as much otherwise out of their masters as will feed them. Cooks particularly are the most pcculant of the fraternity, and many a sore day have of houses with this genus to meet their extortionate cheating propensities. These men, too, return to their moolluks with money, and all endeavour as much as possible to invest it in land; if not, their earnings in Akyab enable them to pay the rents of their holding as tenants, living in idleness, and keeping their families for some months till it is time to go back to Arakan to repeat the game of spoliation. Yes; Akyab is a prey to the Chittagonians, who look upon it as the vulture on its victim, and scrape it to the bone. Then again, “the resolution winds up with the conduct of the zemindars; and, with few exceptions, they are a worthless lot. Their only excuse for the apathy they showed during the troubles of the cyclone is their indebtedness, and their utter inability to exert any influence over the people either for good or evil.” What else could be expected of them, if the proprietors of the lands have earned them in the way we have here described? The wealth brought from Arakan has bought out all the respectable zemindars, and what have you in their place? Men who have made their way from the lowest by lying and stealing, and invested all in land; and, without spare means, or a sufficient revenue from their purchases, have little more than to supply their own wants.

             The courts here could tell of many men who have been enriched here at the expense of their employers. Lately a broker decamped, said to have got advances from his employer to the extent of Rs. 80,000 the greater part of which has doubtless gone to Chittagong, where it is probably invested in property in any one’s name but the real owner’s. So there is no getting hold of it, and the police seem to be perfectly helpless in arresting the fugitive.

             Now the remedy for all this, in our humble opinion, is the amalgamation of Chittagong with Arakan, and their connection with each other by a railway. This would spread population which will not migrate by sea, giving them land in abundance in Arakan on terms not open to them in Chittagong – terms which, if they could only be understood by the people, would be largely and eagerly availed of. This would decrease the population of Chittagong, but at the same time it would, we think, help to equalize the cost of labour. It would be lowered in Akyab; but at the same rates they would avail of employment in their own districts, where at present they cannot earn the wage received in Akyab. We purpose returning to this subject again.

The Trade of Chittagong.

             The trade of Chittagong, which town was declared a port in 1822, and prospered as such till the Bengal famine year, now keeps on declining. In 1873-74 the gross tonnage of the port was over a million; this last year it has fallen to 80,862. Every now and then the Bengal Government hopes that something will turn up to revive the Chittagong trade. (The jute trade of Eastern Bengal has lately revived it.) A demand for rice was expected, which never came off; and now they are putting their trust in salt, the stocks having been greatly reduced by the cyclone. Then Chittagong has always a lot of extra produce to get rid of, if it could, and tea-gardens are springing up everywhere; but the communication of the division are bad, and local labour is hard to get. It is not that men are scarce in Chittagong, the reason is that nearly every one has some land of his own – even labourers and domestic servants have their plots of land to work on. The traffic difficulty will vanish when water communications are improved; but the schemes which were under consideration in Sir George Campbell’s time are nothing more than schemes still. The Lieutenant-Governor, however, promises to do what he can in the way of special engineers and grants-in-aid of road-cess expenditure. The cyclone and storm-waves are blamed for an increase of crime in the Noakhally division – flotsam, jetsam, and disputed property of all sorts, often leading to the illegal settlement of ownership. In the Chittagong district, arson is a favourite crime; every quarrel ends with a fire. The people of the division are notoriously addicted to civil litigation; they go to law whether they have a cause or not. Neither the recreation they find in civil justice, however, nor the interruptions of a cyclone and storm-wave have kept them from being discontented. Public feeling, says the Lieutenant-Governor in his resolution on the Administration Report, has been unsettled. The efforts of the Government to recover and reassess lands held illegally should have been made with tact and discretion; but in some cases the shortcomings of an officer have earned for him a reprimand from Calcutta. But it must not be supposed that the ill-feeling between the people and the officers of Government has not been improperly represented in some quarters; there was a deliberate attempt to distort and magnify a real, though not a great, grievance, and the failure of this attempt was by no means due to the caution always shown before it was forwarded by outsiders. Some time ago the people of Chittagong were represented as having a tremendous thirst for education. During the year under notice their thirst was quenched a little, perhaps, by the cyclone and storm-wave, which damaged school. The official resolution winds up with the conduct of the zemindars; and, with few exceptions, they are a worthless lot. Their only excuse for the apathy they showed during the troubles of the cyclone is their indebtedness, and their utter inability to exert any influence over the people either for good or for evil. – Pioneer.

Mr Kirkwood on developing Chittagong, and connection it with Akyab.

‘Arakan News’, 10^th November 1877.

             In an article in the ‘Calcutta Review’ of October 1877, entitled “The Wastes and Water-ways of Chittagong,” Mr Kirkwood of the B.C.S., who for a short time held the post of collector of Chittagong, has endeavored to set forth the benefits to be derived by connecting the rivers of the Cox’s Bazaars subdivision by means of a series of cheap canals capable of admitting the usual native boat traffic. Had Mr Kirkwood contented himself solely with setting forth, for the information of capitalists, the ease with which the work could be accomplished, and the liberal profits certain to accrue to those daring enough to embark their capital in the scheme of opening out tea-estates along the sinuous windings of the Mata mori, Bagh Kali, and Rezu, his article would have attracted little attention in this quarter; but, unfortunately, Mr Kirkwood has held out promises that are fallacious, and his article discloses a sad ignorance of the country bordering on the Chittagong frontier which would be expected only in an uncovenanted officer of the Punjab or Madras, and raise grave doubts in our minds as to the wisdom of those who first thought of intrusting the affairs of this mighty empire to the omniscient competition wallah, who is generally supposed by his admirers to have completed his education in all sublunary and other matters about that period of life when other less gifted mortals are about to commence their studies. Mr Kirkwood having satisfactorily, as far as we know, conducted his canal through the Cox’s Bazaar subdivision to Mangdu (Moung-daw) on the Naaf, and established there a Rosherville for the consumption of tea and shrimps, and the further delectation of the Bengali gent of the period, draws the following some what hasty conclusion: “The southern part of the Chittagong district and the northern part of Akyab would thus be linked by a series of sheltered water-ways to the civilization of Bengal, of which the town of Chittagong may now be said to be the most southern outpost. A cheap and sheltered water route, waiting the two civilizations of Bengal and Burmah, could not fail to benefit both provinces.” We are truly thankful to find that Burmah has been admitted within the pale of civilization. The civilization of the Naaf township, however, about the lowest in the province, is all that Mr Kirkwood’s canal would give him access to. To reach the Akyab district by boat from the Naaf river, it would be necessary to go out to sea and run for the mouth of the Mayoo, a distance of fifty miles as matters now stand; and to join the Naaf and Mayoo rivers a canal would have to be taken either across a range of hills 800 feet high at their lowest point, or be carried for fifty miles along the narrow strip of country between their base and the sea, a work of no small difficulty in either caser. To hear Mr Kirkwood, however, it would seem as if his petty system of district water-ways was not only to open out the wastes of Chittagong, but to join them unto the whole civilization of British Burmah. A slight and China via the Kachen hills and Yunan: it was a pity to stop short so soon.

             The ignorance which exists in what ought to be well-informed circles regarding this ill-used part of the Empress’s dominions is really lamentable, and we do not wonder at some people pooh-poohing a railway when individuals can be found who will cut a canal to the foot of a hill 100 feet high and say, Now, come over with your boat and merchandise, we have joined our civilization separate. It may be thought that we are too hard on the Reviewer; but the truth is, that when a man writes for a periodical of some influence, we expect him to be at least ordinarily well informed, and we have no patience with a man who can talk in so flippant a style of a gentleman who has had a far longer experience of the country, and who, if anything, is rather before the age than behind it. With an earnestness which Mr Kirkwood will probably consider “demure,” we urge him to learn to believe that there are at least as many hard-thinking, well educated men outside the service to which he belongs as there are in it; to think otherwise is certainly to indulge in the “rose-coloured vision of a dreamer.”  There is one paragraph in the article, however, which has an interest for those who believe that it really is desirable to connect Arakan to Chittagong by either a good road or railway, and that is the following: “But the subdivision does boast the remnants of a road, running north and south, which, even in its ruins, dwarfs to insignificance the tracks furnished by an engineer of to-day. During the first Burmah war there sprang into existence, probably under the auspices of forced labour, a road which, judging from its mutilated carcass, must have been indeed a mighty work. Scorning to search for a gap through which to creep, it flung itself on the low hills through which it had to pass, and declining to climb, it clove them with deep broad cuttings, which the continued action of the hill torrents on the sides and roadway has not yet made useless for foot or horse traffic. It traversed the valley land on either bank of the rivers with embankments 10 feet high and roadways 30 feet broad.” We, too, on this side can still trace the vestiges of such a road, and any one writing on the subject ought to have been acquainted with its history, particularly a man in Mr Kirkwood’s position. We think he is in error in saying it sprang into existence during the first Burmese war, and if he will refer to XIX of the Selections from the Records of the Government of India he will find its history – that its construction was ordered by a governor whose farseeing in the matter of roads and railways as necessary for the development of the whole empire has not been equaled; and had his ideas been carried out, all that Mr Kirkwood with his water schemes, and the “old gentleman,” to whom he sneeringly refers, with his railway schemes, have proposed, would have been accomplished years ago. That he, that able administrator, the lamented Lord Dalhousie, saw that it would be necessary to join the barbarism of Burmah to the civilization of India is quite certain; but why, it may be asked, during all these years, has no one come forward to urge the Imperial Government to complete a great work which was evidently abandoned on hasty considerations and imperfect data? Surely the work is an Imperial one, and not simply local. Again and again it has been urged on Government and ignored. As pointed out by Mr Kirkwood, over 50,000 men annually leave the Chittagong districts for three or four months of the year, to plough and reap in Akyab or help in the rice godowns; but of these hardly a single man ever settles in the country to take up the waste lands that are to be had for the asking on every side. Owing to this want of permanent immigration the cultivation of the country shows hardly any increase since the annexation of Pegu; from 1854-55 to 1867-68 there was an increase of 43,736 acres only. It has been asserted by many that the Bengli will not settle here because he dislikes the capitation tax, but we doubt it. The real reason we believe to be that he cannot induce his family to come with him. Though, if a good road had been constructed years ago the tide of emigration would imperceptibly have crept along it, and the Bengali would, so to say, have woke up some morning to find that he was an Arakanese. Easy communication of some sort between the two districts is required :  a canal is impossible, or nearly so, and the next best thing is a good road, if not a light railroad; were either constructed, we feel sure that the land opened out would soon repay the Government. As put by Mr Kirkwood, the district of Akyab as well as Cox’s Bazaar subdivision is a Government estate, and it is the duty of the landlord to improve that estate. This can be best done by opening out the country in such a way that the dense population of Chittagong (600 to the square mile) shall be spread over these areas where the population is all but nil.

Government Finance For Railway Works.

‘Arakan News,’ 17^th November 1877.

             We have on several late occasions drawn attention to the evident desire of Government to encourage the construction of provincial railways, and we particularly referred to a circular letter by Colonel Fraser, chief engineer to the Government of the N.W. Provinces, pointing out the terms on which Government were prepared to work: It is proposed that they should be constructed by funds raised in the districts which are to benefit by them, the residents thereof being invited to subscribe for the shares. On the Government are to guarantee 4 per cent interest. This is with the view of giving the local subscribers an interest in the local work, and to discourage the construction of any work but what the subscribers acquainted with the localities could recommend as necessary and likely to pay. The reason given is satisfactory in theory so far as it goes, but how will it work when put in practice? It is said the shares are to be transferable by the holders, and we cannot see how they could be otherwise – then we would ask, Is it likely that shareholders who can readily make 12 per cent out of their money, and various higher rates, according to the security, up to 30 or 40 per cent, will be content to hold on to the 4 per cent when they can do so much better? The subject of borrowing in India, either for railways or other public works, is so clearly dealt with by the ‘Friend of India and Statesman,’ that we cannot do better than transfer our contemporaries’ remarks to our columns, and we would ask our readers to consider them carefully. It will be seen from these that, in the negotiation of the late loan, the Government have lost 5 per cent by raising it in India, and this would have been saved had it been issued in England. Again, in the present state of exchange, the money being required in India, it could have been brought out at a premium of about 12 per cent, so that Government would have made a clear gain of 17 per cent. Our special object in directing attention to this is to apply it to a project in this quarter which has long held fire, but which, having the hearty approval of all loval authorities, we see no reason why it should be longer delayed, and we trust it may be expected shortly to take some definite shape and action. We allude to the construction of a railway to connect Akyab with Chittagong, to extend in time to districts farther to the north. Instead of insisting that the money should be raised in the province, or even a portion of it, as it would be impossible to raise the whole let the loan be negotiated in England: the saving thereby, as pointed out above, would pay four year’s interest, during which the work could be finished without any charge for interest being added to the cost, as was the case in most of the first guaranteed railways. Suppose the line to extend for 200 miles this, taken at the cost given by Colonel Fraser - £ 5000 per mile – would require a million sterling, or in Indian currency a hundred lakhs. This may appear a large sum, but consider the object that is to be gained by its outlay. Last week we referred to an article in the October number of the ‘Calcutta Review’ by Mr Kirkwood, formerly collector of Chittagong, in which he showed that the population in the northern part of that division was about 600 to the square mile, while in the southern part bordering on Arakan it was only about 160. Here in Akyab we have a still smaller percentage – say about 26; while the unoccupied lands are rich, and suitable for the cultivation of any produce – say tea, coffee, cotton, tobacco, indigo, &c. Now the principal object of the railway at first would be to spread the dense population of the northern parts of Chittagong over its southern and less occupied lands, and also over the rich wastes of Arakan. To do this should be the interest of the proprietors of the soil, and it seems unaccountable that they should not long ere this have taken steps to accomplish this desirable result.