REVOLUTION NUMBER NINE

“Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny; and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge… At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.” So spoke Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India, as the nation finally broke free from colonial chains at the highly symbolic hour of 12am on 15 August 1947; as a new day dawned, so did a new chapter in Indian history. Regrettably, it was written in blood. The disaster of partition immediately followed, leaving countless warring Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims dead across the subcontinent, as the Raj split messily up into its new constituent parts. Also soon to break away was the ancient land of Burma, arbitrarily swallowed up as an administrative province of British India in 1886. Its autonomy from London came not at the administratively convenient hour of one second past midnight, but at the rather more obscure-sounding time of 4.20am on 4 January 1948, when the Burmese people awoke not to “life and freedom”, but its exact opposite. The unusual choice was not random, but had an astrological basis, with the precise ‘natal hour’ of Burma’s liberty considered its literal birth date. Just as astrology teaches human beings’ own trysts with destiny are governed by the placement of planets at the minute of their birth, so it was with an entire country. Not for Burma would there be instant, partition-style chaos – instead, stability would surely reign. In a way, it did. Sadly, it came imposed by the jackboot of a murderous military junta whose horoscope-loving Generals have ruled all things under heaven ever since.