Burma at the Turn of the 21st Century

–2–The Cheaters: Journey to the Land of the Lottery

19 [The anthropologist] is also working within the limits imposed by the culture of the people he is studying. If they are pastoral nomads he must study pastoral nomadism. If they are obsessed by witchcraft, he must study witchcraft. He has no choice but to follow the cultural grain. —E. E. Evans-Pritchard During the two days of my journey deep into the Burmese archipelago of the lottery, I wasn’t able to stop thinking about the short but striking story by Shway Yoe (1963:528–30), alias James Scott, concerning the introduction of the lottery to the suffering Burmese kingdom of Mandalay. After two Anglo-Burmese wars and the British occupation of several provinces, the weak young king Thibaw (r. 1878–1885) was left with a drained treasury and a kingdom reduced to just the northern part of Burma. The days for what was left of independent Burma were numbered: not only were mercantile and political forces in London and Calcutta lobbying for its invasion and annexation, but the kingdom was in a deep financial crisis and the monarchy was bankrupt. Thibaw tried different methods to replenish the royal reserves. Beginning in 1879 he issued lottery licenses in exchange for cash. The capital rapidly filled with lottery offices for the ruler had granted their management and their bene fits to ministers and other high royal officials. The officers had to manage their individual lotteries on their own, and so they began to compete seriously with –2– The Cheaters Journey to the Land of the Lottery Guillaume Rozenberg Translated by Annabelle Dolidon Part 1: Spirituality, Pilgrimage, and Economics each other in order to attract gamblers, using methods that were more or less legal: shows in offices, drinks, cigars and betel for gamblers, and even threats if the gamblers bought their tickets somewhere else. The lottery rage devastated the capital. Neither buyers nor sellers were to be seen in the bazaar. Cultivators sold off their farming stock and implements, and launched all their money in the state lotteries. Fathers sold their daughters, and husbands their wives, to have a final try for fortune, until the lottery managers issued a notice that they would give no more tickets in exchange for women. (Shway Yoe 1963:530) After some time, however, because of lack of money or disillusionment, the fever subsided. King Thibaw tried other means of procuring money, but he couldn’t prevent the fall of Mandalay in 1885 and the end of the Burmese monarchy. It was as if the entire society, feeling that it was on the brink of catastrophe, rushed to its end and gave itself, through the game, a great dramatic , exultant finale. Can history repeat itself? An observer of Burmese contemporary society, and Burmese people themselves, cannot help but be struck by the invasion into their daily lives of lottery practices. Since the midnineties, a spectacular intensi fication of lottery practices has occurred in Burma. Everywhere in the country —in the streets, in homes, in monasteries, in shops, in popular papers and magazines, and on the phone—people think and speak the lottery. A good part of Burma’s 50 million people live according to the rhythm of the draws. Some will say that this is the symptom of a social pathology linked to the economic crisis the country has been going through since 1997, after a toobrief moment of euphoria. Burmese people themselves favor such an interpretation and frequently explain their all-consuming passion by the lack of anything to do because of the sluggish economy and general underemployment. Moreover, the illegal lottery bankers find a comfortable income in the game at a time when opportunities for economic investment are limited and risky. There is no need to be a Burmese scholarly expert to guess the political reasons behind the phenomenon. Here again many Burmese seem aware of the game’s implications and clearly understand, in this matter as in others, the way they participate in their own subjection. Through their betting on the outcome of the Thai and Burmese lotteries, they cast a particular but striking light on the la-boetian paradox that has been questioned a thousand times but never entirely solved: that of voluntary servitude. In effect, contemporary Burmese society never ceases, in one way or another, to confront the observer with this paradox. 20 Guillaume Rozenberg Although current psychological, economic, and political conditions can be used...