Pagodas and paradoxes

A fascinating, if depressing, read, Bertil Lintner’s The Golden Land Ablaze provides a thorough analysis of the troubles in contemporary Myanmar

- Thangkhanlal Ngaihte

My home in the bustling town of Lamka, officially called Churachandpur, in Manipur, is about 60 km from the Myanmar border. Yet, the country, which was officially called Burma until 1989, always feels distant and dreamy. In the 1980s and’90s, we grew up listening to melodious Zo songs originating from the Tedim area of the Chin Hills.

Enraptured by movies such as Tui Bawsa Kiluak Kik Theilou, we paid a hard-earned Rs 5 to watch them in video halls.

As for the people, the ones I remember best are the Tahan traders who came selling fancy tape recorders in our village. They spoke our language but had a different accent. We always knew we were the same people though we lived on this side of the border and they on the other side. The 2021 military coup in Myanmar and the state of anarchy unleashed in its wake, followed by the 2023 Manipur communal flare up that is also unresolved, made me realise how little I know about the sleepy country next door. I can't make out who is fighting whom, and for what. Some blame “Burmese refugees” for instigating the Manipur crisis, making it sound like the streets of Churachandpur are overflowing with such immigrants, Those of us who live here are left wondering where those refugees are hiding.

Bertil Lintner’s The Golden Land Ablaze largely does not address these immediate questions, though it covers incidents until at least April 2024. What he does provide is a thorough analysis of the background and context that conspired to make the messy Myanmar of today. The book makes for a fascinating, if depressing, read. Lintner writes in lucid, accessible prose and the country comes across as a place marked by paradoxes. A land of jade and natural wealth yet endemically poor and impoverished; a land of Buddhism, the most nonviolent of religions, yet perpetually racked by killings; a country with a large literate pop-