There were quite a number of ways in which Europeans in India used to believe, without any evidence, that Asiatic bodies differed from their own. You can only rule over a subject race, especially when you are in a small minority, if you honestly believe yourself to be racially superior, and it helps towards this if you can believe that the subject race is biologically different. In short, the whole thing was bunkum.īut why should the British in India have built up this superstition about sunstroke? Because an endless emphasis on the differences between the ‘natives’ and yourself is one of the necessary props of imperialism. The early Europeans in India knew nothing of it. The final blow was the discovery that the topi, supposedly the only protection against the Indian sun, is quite a recent invention. They happened to Asiatics as well as to Europeans, and were said to be commonest among stokers on coal-burning ships, who were subjected to fierce heat but not to sunshine. Again, when cases of sunstroke occurred (for they do occur), they did not seem to be traceable to any occasion when the victim had taken his hat off. To begin with some Europeans (for instance sailors working in the rigging of ships) did habitually go bareheaded in the sun. But I soon noticed other facts that conflicted with the prevailing belief. My own disbelief in all this dated from the day when my topi was blown off my head and carried away down a stream, leaving me to march bareheaded all day without ill effects. The Eurasian community, anxious to emphasize their white ancestry, used at that time to wear topis even larger and thicker than those of the British. Some people, not content with cork and pith, believed in the mysterious virtues of red flannel and had little patches of it sewn into their shirts over the top vertebra. Take your topi off in the open for one moment, even for one moment, and you may be a dead man. (The pith helmet is called a ‘topi’, which is Hindustani for ‘hat’.) The deadly rays filter through the envelope of cloud just the same, and on a dull day you are in danger of forgetting it. But how about the rainy season, when one frequently does not see the sun for days at a time? Then of all times, the old-stagers told me, you should cling to your topi. How about the early morning, when the sun is creeping over the horizon and the rays are parallel with the earth? It is exactly then, I was told, that they are at their most dangerous. This astonished me, for obviously the rays of the sun are only perpendicular round about noon. ‘Natives’, their skulls being thicker, had no need of these helmets, but for a European even a double felt hat was not a reliable protection.īut why should the sun in Burma, even on a positively chilly day, be deadlier than in England? Because we were nearer to the equator and the rays of the sun were more perpendicular. When I was in Burma I was assured that the Indian sun, even at its coolest, had a peculiar deadliness which could only be warded off by wearing a helmet of cork or pith. It was supposed to be something dangerous to Europeans but not to Asiatics. Till recently the European in India had an essentially superstitious attitude towards heat apoplexy, or sunstroke as it is usually called. Nearly everyone, including nearly any doctor, would have predicted that large numbers of these men would perish of sunstroke. This sounds a very small point, but it is of considerable social significance, and twenty or even ten years ago it would have been impossible. The last day of the month is 11 hours, 26 minutes, so the length of the days gets 50 minutes longer in August 2022.READING recently a book on Brigadier-General Wingate, who was killed early this year in Burma, I was interested to note that Wingate’s ‘Chindits’, who marched across Upper Burma in 1943, were wearing not the usual clumsy and conspicuous pith helmets, but slouch hats like those worn in the Ghurka regiments. In Topi Topi, New South Wales, the first day of August is 10 hours, 35 minutes long. Sunrise and sunset times, civil twilight start and end times as well as solar noon, and day length for every day of August in Topi Topi. August 2022 - Topi Topi, New South Wales - Sunrise and sunset calendar
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