Related Notes of Interest while on this topic

2. Military Significance of Burma:

Strategically situated, Burma interposes between the rest of Malaya and India; and also between Southern China and India. It embodies not a corridor between any of these lands, but a barrier. And yet it is accessible from Manipur, which is straddled high on a plateau on the sub-Himalayan range. This explains how the chiefs of Ava or Upper Burma tribes could so easily cross over to Manipur in war, and more significantly get vanquished or vindicated. The military significance of Burma lies in the fact that Burma is shaped like a hand, with its finger pointed southward. And most of the land is an extension of the Great Himalayan mountain mass of Central Asia, called the roof of the world. Just like the hand dividing up into fingers, Burma splits up into ranges with southward-inclining valleys between the three great rivers, Chindwin, Irrawaddy and Salween. This military significance of Burma had probably factored in the Japanese War-Room and in its military reckoning favouring the Burma campaign.

The geographical proximity or accessibility however remains a truism and has now metamorphosed into an economic campaign in terms of closer trade and economic ties through Myanmar along the upcoming international superhighway, railway and other multimode transport from Delhi to Bangkok through Burma (Myanmar) for a threshold access in the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).

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