A little Myanmar in the Andamans

Emerald green Webi is nowhere on the tourist map, but it is home to the Karens, who came here from Burma across the stormy Andaman Sea more than 90 years ago

September 08, 2018 04:15 pm | Updated September 24, 2018 01:21 pm IST

 Rev. Lugyi Memorial Hall in Webi village, named after the priest who encouraged the Karens to move to the Andamans in 1925. Photo: K. Murali Kumar

Rev. Lugyi Memorial Hall in Webi village, named after the priest who encouraged the Karens to move to the Andamans in 1925. Photo: K. Murali Kumar

From a nondescript junction on the bumpy Andaman Trunk Road, which runs across the Andaman archipelago, a narrow road curves through churches, plantations and abandoned fields. A metal bridge rattles from the weight of vehicles, and the stream beneath swells with water turned murky by the monsoon rain.

Lush tropical forests roll down the banks of the stream, which encircles a village. Set in a clearing and amidst shimmering green paddy fields in neat squares, Webi is one of 12 villages in Middle and North Andamans where the minuscule Karen community lives.

Webi is nowhere on the tourist map. But John Aung Thong’s mind is swirling with ideas. “We can start a museum that tells the tale of our migration, our culture. We could start a restaurant with traditional Karen food. We want people to learn about us.”

 Farmers in a paddy field. Photo: K. Murali Kumar

Farmers in a paddy field. Photo: K. Murali Kumar

The Karens migrated across the Andaman Sea all the way from Myanmar more than 90 years ago and set up home here. A former research assistant, Thong used to help scientists look for undiscovered endemic species on the Andaman archipelago. Today, he is focussed on preserving and helping his 2,500-strong community. John has converted his home into a homestay, which he has called ‘Koh Hee’ (Island Home). Its shelves are packed with books and articles on the Karens, and on its walls hang models of traditional baskets, boats and threshers, as they would have in Myanmar a century ago. The village has one other Karen home converted into a homestay.

The Karens hope that one day this village will draw tourists, the largest drivers of the Andaman islands’ economy. With tourists, they know, will come livelihood. “We need to reach out to the mainstream world and tourists. We can live off our traditions and culture, and this way, we can preserve it too,” says John.

Hidden village

From the balcony of John’s traditional two-floored house, built of wood and umbrella palm by his father in the 60s, the village of Webi unfolds in all its serene beauty. There are paddy fields where seven varieties of rice grow, brought from Myanmar by the original migrants. There is a small nursery, tucked away in a corner with over 30 medicinal plants and herbs, many of them from Myanmar. On the road bifurcating the village, children make their way home from school on cycles or on foot. In their bags are books in the Karen language, taught in just two schools in all of India. From somewhere in the still evening I can hear the beats of the latest Bollywood and English songs and smatterings of conversations in Karen.

The nearly century-old Webi (which translates to ‘hidden village’ in Karen) is a neatly preserved slice of the old Burma that lay roots in these islands in April 1925.

The arrival of the Karens to the Andamans was serendipitous. A British priest in Myanmar was sailing back from the U.S. in the 1920s when he decided to stop in Port Blair to meet a cousin, who was then the chief commissioner here. On his return to Myanmar, he published a short note about a British scheme to sponsor a year’s rations for anyone willing to move to the isolated islands to work in the massive timber trade that had been started there.

Among those who read the advertisement was Reverend Lugyi. He convinced his parishioners that this would be a good opportunity. “He saw it as a fresh start for people with hard lives in Myanmar. He came with them and found that the land was good and our way of life would not be threatened,” says Saw Ahasway Rowgi, the 60-year-old grandson of Rev. Lugyi, who is now the priest at the church his grandfather founded in 1925.

It was in April that year that the first batch landed on these shores. A year later, another 50 families came. Webi, surrounded by forests and rivers, was chosen for its isolation: the community wanted to shield itself from ‘old enemies’ and potential new ones.

Their isolation and reticence (Karens believe their name derives from the Burmese words for ‘shyness’ and ‘politeness’) have helped them preserve their culture through the tumultuous turns of history that shaped the islands: they have stayed untouched by the brutal, three-year Japanese regime (one elderly Karen told me it could be because “we looked like them, and so they trusted us”), by the skirmishes between the new mainland settlers and indigenous tribes (whose populations dwindled dramatically), by the exit of the British, and by the rapid building of settlements after Independence.

Home words

Now, the Karen community is 2,600 strong and spread across Mayabunder (in the northern part of Middle Andaman), and one lone village near Diglipur on the northern tip of the island chain. This last was established by two women who rowed though the night in search of fertile land for their people.

But as the younger generation sets its eyes on glitzy resorts and bigger towns for work, or goes to other islands whenever summoned for their famed diving skills, and as marriage outside the community becomes more common, the Karens have started looking at ways to preserve their culture.

 A student practising Karen at the Government Secondary School, where the language is officially taught. Photo: K. Murali Kumar

A student practising Karen at the Government Secondary School, where the language is officially taught. Photo: K. Murali Kumar

The Government Secondary School (GSS) in Webi, whose halls are painted with bright cartoon characters and inspiring quotes, was started in 1928 by the Lugyi family to educate the newly-settled community — but now, it’s a potent symbol of their heritage.

For nearly five decades, the Karen language was not formally taught here. This was not a problem initially, as the language was being spoken at home by village elders, all first-generation settlers, explains Saw Mollo, 59, who studied in the school as a boy. But in 2008, when Mollo was posted as a teacher in the school, he, and many others, realised that the younger generation could not fluently read or write Karen. “We’d done well as a community to preserve the spoken language. But without textbooks, reading and writing Karen would surely fade,” he says.

 At a Government School in Webi village. Photo: K. Murali Kumar

At a Government School in Webi village. Photo: K. Murali Kumar

Separated from their erstwhile homeland by kilometres of a stormy Andaman Sea, and with no cultural exchange, the language had been stagnating: the only reading material was the Karen Bible. Folk songs were slowly dying out and entertainment was Bollywood songs and films.

Mollo and a few other teachers convinced the district administration, formed a committee, and published the country’s first textbook in Karen in 2010. Since then, two more editions have come out.

At GSS Webi, Karen is officially taught as a language till Class V. Today, 78 children study the language here. As the students chatter in English or Hindi or recite the multiplication tables, I can also hear the notes of Karen songs and poems wafting in from somewhere in the school.

In 2015, Karen students performed a folk dance before a large audience in New Delhi. Karen songs were hard to find, and so teachers and students had come together to create a new song for the occasion.

The school may have resuscitated the language, but there are administrative threats to its survival. There may be Karen textbooks, but hardly any Karen language teachers.

There are just 10 from the community on the rolls of government schools, many of whom teach other subjects as well. “Within two years, five will retire, including me,” says Mollo. “We need to find ways to keep the language alive through generations.”

This is where community-led initiatives are helping. Some five elderly speakers are being selected in each village to teach Karen grammar to students (many study in private schools where the language is not taught), and the church has also begun a language programme. Then, there is the Andaman Karen Craft Centre, a cooperative of barely 10 women engaged in reviving traditional arts and foods. They are also recording old folktales and songs as performed by the older generation.

On a rainy Saturday afternoon, the women gather in a small shed by the Trunk Road, and they neatly lay out bunches of mangrove ferns, ginger stalks, fruits and vines they grow on their farms or collect from the forests around their villages. Visitors — speakers of Tamil, Bengali, Telugu and Jharkhandi tribal languages who make up the patchwork society of island settlers — examine the produce curiously. Much of it is foreign to them; and Karen women explain how these ingredients must be cooked.

 Women sell mangrove ferns, ginger stalks, fruits and
vines near Andaman Trunk Road. Photo: K. Murali Kumar

Women sell mangrove ferns, ginger stalks, fruits andvines near Andaman Trunk Road. Photo: K. Murali Kumar

“Our culture is disappearing for reasons we can’t control... traditional ways of making baskets, weaving, our folk tales, they are all fading away,” says Saw Zachious, who with his brother John founded the craft centre. It is funded by Dakshin Foundation, a Bengaluru-based non-profit.

He is interrupted by a Bengali woman who complains of a shooting pain in her leg. Having learnt traditional medicine from his father, he advises her on remedies, and fixes an appointment. “We can no longer remain a shy community. We have to engage if we have to preserve,” he says.

Among the most famous Karen stories is the myth about their origin: the story of Htaw Meh Pa. He lived in an unknown land in the north, and killed a wild boar that was ravaging his farmlands.

Magical ancestor

Meh Pa made combs from the tusks, and soon realised they had magical powers: each time he combed his hair, he shed a few years and returned to his youth. He thus remained nearly immortal, and bore hundreds of children who become the Karens. In their quest for more fertile land, they headed to the south, to these islands, and somewhere along the way, Meh Pa went missing in the woods. Many Karens believe he is still around.

The myth may be an allegory for the present. The search for Meh Pa may lead the Karens back to their community. Decades of persecution has meant that the seven-million-strong Karen community is now spread across 48 countries — the Karens of the Andamans are now reaching out to these brethren.

Zachious has travelled to Thailand and Myanmar in search of lost relatives, writing letters to villages where his grandfather had once stayed. “They live hard lives in Myanmar, and there is peace for us here. Though time and distance have separated us, there is a warmth in the community that reconnects,” he says.

Naw Ahmay, 60, a teacher and social worker, describes the many years she spent trying to trace her estranged sister, who had migrated back to Myanmar with her husband’s family in 1967-68. “Finally, I went to Myanmar in 2013 in search of her. I traced her family to a remote village. It took some time to reach there, but I found that she had died a year earlier,” says Ahmay, dressed in a traditional sarong worn for Sunday church.

“But I met her children and grandchildren and now I have a family in Myanmar I can keep in touch with.”

Internet is patchy in the Andamans, but for Ahmay, social media has been her line to the community. She has since been to Myanmar twice, and has brought back dictionaries and traditional clothes, Burmese language magazines and CDs, and bits and pieces of cultural knowledge — all building blocks of a shared identity.

“If we don’t know where we’ve come from, we’ll never know who we truly are,” says Ahmay.

mohit.m@thehindu.co.in

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