Spirit of Roedean

Ursula Graham Bower belonged to the last generation of those well-bred missy-sahibs who came out to India at the start of the cold-weather season in search of genteel adventure and a husband. But unbeknown both to herself and to those about her, the gawky, ‘well-covered’, Roedean-educated Miss Bower was of that stern stuff upon which empires are built. Having arrived at a frontier outpost of Assam in the autumn of 1937 as the 24-year-old guest of a
friend housekeeping for her elder brother, she set about carving out her own niche as an anthropologist. Her chosen subject was the Nagas, a lose confederation of tribes much given to raiding and head-hunting.

Bower’s timing was spot-on. India’s north-east frontier was the ‘forgotten’ frontier, a buffer zone where few cared what the hill tribes did provided they behaved themselves and acknowledged the authority of the Raj. Thanks to an indulgent Governor’s secretary, Bower was left to her own devices and, in her own words, ‘The further I went and the more I saw of the Nagas, well, frankly, the more hooked I got’. Her forthright character charmed the previously hostile Zemi Nagas of the north Cachar hills to the extent that she came to be seen as the benevolent reincarnation of a priestess-cum-goddess who some years earlier had fomented an anti-government uprising.

Four years later, when the Japanese took Singapore and began a rapid advance through Burma, this friendship proved invaluable. With the support of General Slim, Bower was recruited as the only female member of V Force and tasked with setting up a scouting network from the local tribes. From April 1942 to November 1944 Bower and her 150-strong band of Zemi and Kuki Naga scouts acted as intelligence gatherers and as dispensers of law and order.