As to the rank and file of the police I have this to say--they are
unsatisfactory, and the Police Commission did not get at the real
causes. Do Commissions ever get at real causes? Are they not merely
excuses to give "face" to Government? What is the use of examining
innumerable witnesses none of whom have probed the subject? Answers to
difficult questions are not got by asking, but by personal experience:
by a man or men capable of understanding what they see and finding out
the causes.
Pay has something to do with the poorness of the material, but in Burma
at least it is not the principal cause. That cause is that the police
are disliked, and they are disliked because they are part of a legal
system which is disliked and disapproved of. The police are considered
almost as enemies of the people. To rehabilitate the police and get
really good men into it the whole criminal system requires amendment.
When the people like and admire the Courts they will like and will
enter the service of those Courts. Now they will do neither. A
popular Government may be a good Government; an unpopular Government
cannot possibly be so.
Further, it is said that the Burman takes badly to discipline and will
never, therefore, make a good policeman nor soldier.
That he takes badly to discipline is true, but what is the reason?
That he is essentially different from other people? That is absurd.
The reason of it lies in his past history, his environment and
education.
When we took Upper Burma it was hardly an organised nation at all. It
was only a mass of villagers which acknowledged a king over all. There
was no national army--because no need for one--and no large industries.
The Burman has been a free man and he has the religion--or want of
religion--of a free man. He has never had priests to rule him, to
force on him reverence and obedience as virtues, to destroy his
individuality. Therefore he has lived free. And nowadays, although he
is lectured enough on his want of discipline, the advice is given in
the wrong way and apropos of the wrong subject.
He ought in the opinion of his critics to be a good policeman or a good
soldier, or a good employé for the rice merchants in Rangoon, and he is
not. Therefore he is lectured on his want of discipline. "That is to
say," thinks the Burman, "I am lectured and abused in order that I may
be a more useful tool in the hands of a foreign Government, or a more
profitable servant to a foreign merchant--who will reap the benefit."
That is what he thinks and rightly thinks, for the advice is so
prompted and so meant.
He has yet to learn that discipline in act is necessary to enable him
to attain his own ideals, to create and maintain his own
self-government, and to establish industries that will compete with the
foreigner's. He must himself establish organisms in order to succeed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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