Book Review - Burmese Days

“Burmese Days” by George Orwell. Harper and Bros. London. 1934.

“Burmese Days” was George Orwell’s first stab at the novel format. Most of his writing took the form of political essays, and this leaves a studied reader with the advantage of knowing where the stood on most issues. Many of Orwell’s books were written for the “Left Book Club” of London though Burmese Days was very difficult to publish due to fear of libel suits and prosecutions from the Home Office. Eric Arthur Blair had to adopt the nom-de-plume of George Orwell because of these fears. Orwell/Blair’s politics screams a path through the narrative of life among English expatriates in rural, colonial-era Burma, never letting the reader doubt that imperialism is at its heart a racist, destructive and gangrenous force to everything it touches.

The story centers around the main character of John (in some editions this was changed to James) Flory. Flory is a lumber merchant in colonial Burma, based in the tiny village of Kyauktada, isolated inland, far from home. The story takes place during an undisclosed time period, though it seems to be somewhat after the First World War. Flory has difficulty dealing with the other expatriates in the village and is a bit of a social “odd-potato” at the club, seen dismissively as a crypto-Bolshevik by most. An orphaned young lady from London arrives in the village to stay with her aunt and uncle, the Lackersteens. The Lackersteens are the personification of “Pukah Sahibs,” the self-aggrandised colonial masters of India. Flory predictably falls in love with young Elizabeth Lackersteen, and conflict ensues. He has to try and blend in with the colonial-master lifestyle, despite his own honest inklings. He tries his best, but politics conspire against him. He gets credited for heroism during a colonial rebellion but his philandering and his lack of singular loyalty to his class and race eventually leads to his downfall.

The main cultural conflict in the book is the relationship between the white European colonisers and the native Indians/Burmese. Burma, now the Union of Myanmar, at the time was a part of British India. The relationship is a closed, festering wound that infects both parties for the worse. Flory tries to circumvent the conflict by learning Burmese, befriending the local surgeon and his servants. Rather than removing himself from the troubles, it makes him a focus of chauvinistic distrust. He can’t maintain regular friendships with other Europeans because his loyalty is always to be in doubt. His surgeon friend, Dr. Veraswami, enjoys the status of having a white friend, though this later arouses jealousy and makes enemies among his co-nationals. Racism and imperialism poisons every aspect of public life and begins to rot the souls of those that live under the umbrella of these two serpents.

The relationship is one of pure domination; a rape that the English would call an honoured duty. The club is a haven for Europeans, where they can isolate themselves in a tower and overlook their dominion in smug superiority. They reminisce about the good old days when they could treat their servants with more severity and rue the day if the natives ever lose their benevolent hard-working masters. It is in the club where officials, merchants and military police meet to discuss policies and keep fresh the bonds of class that govern the colony.
It’s not enough that the English believe their own propaganda, but the natives have to be made to understand it as well. Flory drinks with his friend Veraswami and they have a conversation familiar to anyone who’s ever discussed Third-World development. Flory echoes Tacitus in complaining that ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. He complains that British have arrived in Burma, stripped the land of its wealth and left nothing but prisons. Dr. Veraswami, the chief of the local prison, complements the British on the wonderful prisons that they’ve brought to his homeland. He points out the savagery that inhabited the country prior to the arrival of Anglo civilization. The direction of the conversation is familiar to most people, but reading it coming from the mouth of a native makes it sound all the more servile and de-humanised. Veraswami is incapable of respecting himself and his countrymen because of the constant bombardment of the message of colonial racial superiority. It affects his ability to deal with other Burmese and makes him painful to read.

The nominal antagonist of the story, U Po Kyin, is a minor magistrate who conspires against Veraswami in order to promote himself. The pool in which he swims is a dark swamp of colonial politics. When he plots against Veraswami, he reasons (correctly as it turns out) that
“If Flory were a friend of the doctor, it could do us harm. You cannot hurt and Indian when he has a European friend. It gives him – what is that word they are so fond of? – prestige. But Flory will desert his friend quickly enough when the trouble begins. These people have no feeling of loyalty towards a native.”
He uses the corruption of the colonial culture towards his own ends and the evil of the structure is what allows someone like him to flourish. The all-encompassing oppression of “the system” is reinforced by being internalised by the subject races.

Flory’s love for Elizabeth is also corrupted by the same system. Elizabeth wants what her uncle and his wife have. She wants a house, wealth and status. She was denied these in her native England when her father died, and was unable to secure them in Paris with her mother. Her hope is that by arriving at the backwoods of civilization, she’ll be able to enjoy these, she’s hoping for a middle-class English life-style though outside of England. As far as she is concerned, Kyauktada has a population of only a dozen or so people, the natives are more scenery than humans.

Flory on the other hand, interacts with the natives and speaks their language. His best friend is Dr. Veraswami, he bought a native girl from her parents to share his bed (a secret from Elizabeth) and he is very close to his servants. He’s still internalised the racism of the day, but is aware that racism is destructive and morally wrong. Orwell himself was born in India, was a military policeman in Burma for many years, spoke the language, even sported Burmese-style tattoos on his hands. He personally also had servants of the kind he describes in Flory’s employ. The morality of keeping serving classes was a frequently recurring motif in much of his writing.

Prestige is what U Po Kyin wants and fears, and is what he uses against Flory to ruin him, in order to ruin Veraswami. U Po Kyin corrupts Flory’s bedroom servant, and makes her accost her master outside of the church in the second last chapter. She moans and wails, demanding money to buy something nice, and Flory is publically disgraced for keeping a native girl in such a state. Elizabeth won’t be with Flory because of this heinous disgrace, and so Flory goes home, shoots his dog and then himself. Dr. Veraswami, in a final act of friendship certifies the death as a shooting accident rather than suicide, that he may keep prestige in death despite being robbed of it in life.

Prestige, pride, esprit de corps, and loyalty to class, race and country are the building blocks of the colonial regime that Orwell describes. This made for a lethal fertilizer that grew only poisoned fruit. The assignment of this essay was to explore the two cultures interacting, the English colonial and the native Burmese, but it’s important to note that the two cultures interacted in a completely one-way direction. Most of the Europeans knew nothing of Burma, nothing of the Burmese language, and often would insist on renaming their servants that their names be easier for them to pronounce. The Burmese were forced to deal with the political reality of the colonials, but the cultural interaction was minimal. There was neither literature nor science, nor academies, nor art nor music, only banks and prisons. The Burmese adapted to the worse aspects of the British Empire. Rather than two cultures meeting and interacting along their most laudable attributes, the singular nature of colonialism brought only poison and the worst of both worlds.