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by Amitav Ghosh Published by Ravi Dayal, New Delhi (1998) Reviewed by |
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According to the chroniclers, one milestone of that visit was the signing of the Franco-Siam treaty, which saw today's Thailand returning to Cambodia the provinces of Battambang and Seam Reap, the latter being particularly meaningful for Cambodia's self-image, as the Angkor Wat temples are in Seam Reap. But as historian David Chandler has pointed out in "A History of Cambodia", Sisowath had little to do with the return of the provinces to Cambodia. He was in France more as a connoisseur. In fact, he was not vastly different from Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, the ruler of Avadh in northern India known for his poetry and fine taste in art, who saw his kingdom being swallowed by Lord Dalhousie's empire-building in the 1850s, but did not prevent that by waging a foolhardy war. When Sisowath returned, he wrote a proclamation to his people, in which he praised French planning and management which he said he wanted to use to develop his country. The tone was humble and grateful, telling his people to emulate the good that France has to offer, while hiding the anger he felt towards the French who sent him a bill for the hospitality. Kings being kings, Sisowath soon forgot his development plans, and his exhortations sound didactic when read today. But as the Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh perceptively observes in this slim volume of fascinating reportage from Cambodia and Burma, "For all the apparent servility of its tone, it makes no cultural or political concessions at all: the 'emulation' it calls for is entirely within the domain of technology and economics ...If this is the view that has come to prevail throughout South-east Asia, no one is likely to thank him for it." What has the 1906 dance tour got to do with today's Cambodia? Plenty, if one sees Cambodia through the eyes of Ghosh, whose novels include the acclaimed "Shadow Lines" and the part-anthropology, part-literature, "In An Antique Land". Ghosh sees a link which connects stories and lives in incredible ways. Ghosh picks up the thread of Sisowath's visit to France, and with rare ingenuity and empathetic understanding of modern Cambodian history, places it in the context of the return of civil society in Cambodia. Consider this: in early 1900s, a royal Cambodian ballet troupe performs in France. In 1950s, young Cambodian students, including Saloth Sar (later Pol Pot), study in France and pick up ideas that transform the Cambodian countryside into a vast graveyard. And in 1993, when civil society returns to Cambodia, the Cambodians demonstrate it through dance. Ghosh displays the irony of it all: of how the protagonists are linked; how the tragedy is, geopolitical realities apart, essentially a Cambodian tragedy. Travelling through the countryside with mine-diffusing sappers, Ghosh seeks out people whose memory plays tricks. They want to forget an immediate past but who yearn to remember, a more ancient past; they are fighting the tendency to forget everything. He meets Chea Samy, a dance instructor, who knew Sisowath's daughter, Princess Soumphady who had gone on the French tour. And when Ghosh reminds her about Soumphady, she responds with "a smile in an indulgent, misty way in which people recall a favourite aunt." But the same Chea Samy is the wife of a man whose youngest brother was Pol Pot. And it is Pol Pot's men who killed Chea Samy's dance instructor, who took over from Princess Soumphady, whom Chea Samy recalls meeting as a small girl. These coincidences--of evil coexisting with aesthetics--is what intrigues Ghosh. Pages 1 - 2 |