A Walk Through The Woods
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AMONG INSURGENTS: WALKING THROUGH BURMA
By Shelby Tucker
Penguin, Price: Rs 295
In 1985, an intrepid Swedish journalist working with the Far Eastern Economic Review began an extraordinary 18-month journey with his pregnant wife Karen through Nagaland, Myanmar (from west to east) and then into Yunnan Province. The journey took seven months, produced a bonny baby (who seemed to thrive on difficulties and sleep through the adventure, much of it through insurgent and leech-infested lands) and a powerful book, Land of Jade, which must rank as one of the all-time classics of travel, insurgency and of human endeavour, courage and endurance — the last qualities to be attributed to the Kachins, the Wa and other groups who have fought for their people for decades and been bloodied in the bargain.

Bertyl Lintner was the burly Swede who undertook that journey. In the process, Lintner, who lives in Thailand and follows India’s Northeast closely, earned the ire of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (I-M). That book opened with the persistent delays which plagued their secret trek from Kohima (where he spent weeks in a tiny room) to the NSCN headquarters at Kesan Chanlam near the India-Burma border. When that camp was attacked by tough Burmese Army regulars, the Nagas scattered and ran. It was the Kachins who repulsed that attack. The I-M cadres at the time, Lintner noted, were poorly equipped and had built no protective bunkers around the camp believing that God would protect them. Divine protection did not come.

All contemporary books on Kachinland must run the gauntlet of comparison with Lintner’s tales. Shelby Tucker, also crossed Burma, from east to west, this time; he also produced a book but no babies; his companion was a hulking Swede (an army regular) named Mats Larsson. They did not meet the Nagas. But they did run into “Castro”, the name they gave to Arabindo Rajkhowa, chairman of ULFA. Those were the early days of ULFA, before the KIA came to an arrangement with New Delhi and agreed to drop training and sustaining the Nagas, Assamese and other rebel groups.

At their journey’s end, Shelby and his companion ended up in the custody of the Indian government in Arunachal Pradesh. This part is one of the most enjoyable sections as the duo are examined and cross-examined by intelligence officials and end up by striking a friendship with their guards and with Judicial Magistrate Narayan S. Meyan. If we are to believe Tucker, he helped write Meyan’s judgement (who cannot respond as he is conveniently dead), finding them guilty of illegal entry and seeking their ouster from the state.

Actually, apart from the Meyan ruling, Shelby was rescued through a combined effort involving his desperate wife, a team of concerned friends and American diplomats in India and members of the US administration. The ‘Save Shelby’ campaign roped in even the man who rose to be the US secretary of defence (William Cohen), then a Senator on a defence committee that was looking at an Indian defence plea for $29 million in aid. No prizes for guessing what the Senator told the Indian ambassador about the American captive and the 29 million bucks: our man for our money.

This richly textured narrative of war and tragedy, of valour and the power of nature, is a magnificent human tale. It sets the framework for a land of deep tragedy and a people of abiding courage.

There are close encounters with Kachin rebel leaders, including Seng Hpung, the thoughtful and sensitive deputy foreign secretary of the Kachin Independence Organisation. And Shelby is gracious enough to acknowledge his own blundering, insensitive ways which exposed the KIA column escorting him and Mats to danger numerous times. He comes across as a man of extremely mixed emotions, and sounds suspiciously like a Bible-thumping Baptist in some passages when he turns up his nose at the imbibers of country liquor among the cadres and his own companion! He hints too at a missionary background in India for, surprise of surprises, he speaks Hindustani!

Tucker gives long lectures to Hpung on Indian history. In between, he scrambles to safety, much like Indiana Jones when he finds himself trapped on a cliff face, hanging on for dear life to a strand of rope, swinging in the air before saving his skin, without, for a change, endangering others.

In between, he weaves into his tale the stories of the missionaries of earlier decades who took their people, the little-known Lisus, from valley to valley, mountain fastness to fastness. These are stories that are virtually unknown, the stories of the Morses — grandparents, children and grand children as they escape to the “Hidden Valley,” away from the wrath of the Burman Army. But flight does not save either the missionaries or their flock. Today, the Lisus live in Arunachal Pradesh, in Burma and in the Yunnan province of China, spread over thousands of kilometres and embracing centuries of history.

Tucker and company do not encounter the Nagas. But they do run into ULFA and its chairman a number of times who proceed to give them, what appears to be from the writer’s notes, a very garbled version of Assam’s history. The fact that they keep insisting on the Ahom side of history only goes to show how this group does not recognise the greater sweep of history: Assam existed before the Tai-Ahoms came in the 13th century. ULFA’s leadership comprises Ahoms Rajkhowa (and his close aides) and the Motoks or Muttocks (Paresh Barua, Anup Chetia and others). So, Tucker, do cross-check what you’re told about the Northeast; you’ve done a pretty exhaustive job on the Kachins. Why stop there?

But as we close this book, one question comes back to irk us: Who is Shelby Tucker? One of their Indian friends told his wife: “Somehow you’ll have to convince them that he is exactly what he is, and that won’t be easy. They won’t believe that he’s a lawyer because he doesn’t work in a law office. They won’t believe that he is a writer, because his books aren’t published.”

What is he “exactly”? An adventurer, aged 53, who decides to travel across Burma because he was offended by its closed border policy? And why does it take over a decade to publish this very readable book? The blurb tells us that Tucker has acted as General Counsel for the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, that he’s lectured on the Kachins and the Burmese civil war in Britain and to the US National Security Council.

He’s quite a mystery, our Mr Tucker. He practised law for many years (how many and where?) and I’d like to place him again with Bible-thumpers from the Deep South when he launches into his anti-military junta campaign in the book. This begins to spoil the story, his view that Burma is divided into two worlds: one, the very holy and good of the anti-junta warriors, brave, honest soldiers; the other, the nasties, who, like leeches, crawl out, suck the blood of their people and even disembowel pregnant women. The world isn’t divided into black and white, Mr Tucker; there are many colours of the rainbow. I guess there are enough nasties in the world you inhabit too; maybe you decided you won’t look at them.

There are other questions: funds for this journey which took just three months while Lintner’s took a year and a half. Perhaps, he’ll give us some answers in his next book. But the mention of his name the other day got a former foreign secretary to snap, “Ah, yes, I remember the fellow, he sneaked into Arunachal Pradesh.” And a senior honcho at the Home Ministry, said, yes, he too had read the book, and smiled an inscrutable, Burmese (?) smile.

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