Burma: Census of India 1901 Vol. I - Khamkoo

—
5° REPORT ON THE CENSUS OF BURMA.
and social forces that have been at work during the past decade have been able to
materially alter the relative strength of the two sexes. In provinces which labour,
whether deservedly or not, under the suspicion of female infanticide, it is a matter
of some moment to be able to assign causes for and to justify any marked disparity
in the sexes which is to the disadvantage of the weaker. In Burma thisgruesome
factor does not come into play, but it is incumbent on us, nevertheless,,
to investigate the causes which have operated to bring about what would not, under
normal conditions, be expected in a province like Burma, namely, a marked preponderance
of males. I look upon the preponderance as abnormal, because there
appears to be an almost universal tendency for the proportion between the sexes
to move in favour of the weaker vessel according as the woman rises higher and
higher in the social scale. In European countries, almost without exception, the
censuses show more females than males (in Sweden in 1890 and in Norway in
1 891 the proportions rose as high as 1,065 and 1,092 females respectively to every
1,000 males), whereas in Asia it is the exception, not the rule, for the females to
outnumber the males, and the same is the case in Africa. In his Statistik and
Gesellschaftslehre, Professor Georg von Mayr gives the following figures for the
four continents :
Continent-
FemaIes to
.ever y
1,000 males.
Europe ... ... ... ... ... ... 1,024
Asia ... ... ... ... ... ... 958
Africa ... ... ... ... ... ... 968
America ... ... ... ... ... ... 973
The same authority goes so far as to say that, if it were possible wholly to do away
with the migration factor, one might regard the excess of females over males or
the reverse as a direct indication of the high or low estimation, as the case might
be, in which the fair sex was held in the social world.
"Warees moglich, das Moment der Wanderverschiebungen gaaz auszuschalten, so
konnte man geradezu die Thatsache vorhandenen oder mangelnden Weiberuberschusses als
Ausdruck der guten oder schlimmen sozialen Lage der Frau betrachten."
Nowhere within the limits of British India, perhaps nowhere in Asia, is the social
position of woman so assured as in Burma, and it is for us to consider why this
position is not, as it should no doubt be, reflected in the sex figures of the province
;
why, in a word, the figure for Burma is as low as 962, when in 1891 in Bengal
and Madras, where women rank far lower in the social scale, it was as high as
1,006 and 1,022. The reason is that, whatever may be done in other countries the
migration factor adverted to by Professor von Mayr cannot, in Burma, be set aside
or ignored. As we have seen in an earlier chapter, about 13 per cent, of the increase
of the population of Lower, and 3-8 per cent, of that of the population
of Upper Burma is due to foreign immigration and, as the great bulk of the
immigrants are males, the ratio of males to females is disturbed to a very appreciable
extent.
73. That it is the foreign that is the disturbing element is amply shown by the
district figures given in Subsidiary Table No IVB
^District proportions. Lower
appended to this chapter. There are 36 districts in
Burma proper; of these 20 are in Lower Burma,
where immigration has most markedly affected the population totals, and the remaining
16 in Upper Burma, where the indigenous element is stronger. Of the
Lower Burma districts all but five (Kyaukpyu, Prome, Henzada, Tavoy and
Thayetmyo) show an excess of males, while of the Upper Burma districts all but
four (Mandalay, Bhamo, Myitkyina and the Ruby Mines) exhibit a preponderance
of females. I must confess that I am unable adequately to account in Lower
Burma for the excess of males in the districts of Northern Arakan and Salween
where conditions are such as to lead one to anticipate a numerically superior
female population. It may in part be due to two causes which have been found
to operate among wild communities and which are touched upon below. In the
case of all the other districts of Lower Burma the surplusage of males can nearly
always be traced back to the presence of Indian or other immigrants. In Prome
and Thayetmyo any addition to the male population that may have been caused