Ursula Graham Bower
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Ursula G. Bower MBE |
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| Born |
15 May 1914 England |
| Died | 12 November 1988 (aged 74) |
| Education | Roedean School |
| Occupation | Anthropologist among the Nagas of the Naga Hills |
| Known for | Leader of 'Bower Force', Naga guerillas fighting Japanese armies invaded Burma |
| Works | Monographs on the Nagas and the Apatani |
| Parent(s) | John Graham Bower, stepmother Barbara Euphan Todd |
Ursula Violet Graham Bower MBE (later known as U. V. G. Betts) (15 May 1914 – 12 November 1988), was one of the pioneer anthropologists in the Naga Hills between 1937–1946 and a guerrilla fighter against the Japanese in Burma from 1942–45.
Born in 1914 in England, the daughter of Commander John Graham Bower, RN (1886–1940), Ursula Bower was educated at Roedean School; a shortage of family funds prevented her from finishing her school education and achieving her goal of reading Archaeology at Oxford. On her father's remarriage in 1932, Bower became the stepdaughter of children's writer Barbara Euphan Todd, the creator of the fictional scarecrow Worzel Gummidge. In the same year she travelled to Canada.
She first visited India and, more specifically, the Naga Hills and Manipur, in 1937, at the invitation of Alexa Macdonald, whom she had met while on holiday on Skye. and who was staying with her brother who worked in the Indian Civil Service in Imphal. It was a trip where her mother had hoped she would meet a nice husband. Instead, she fell in love with the Naga Hills and their tribes. Bower returned alone to India in 1939 "to potter about with a few cameras and do a bit of medical work, maybe write a book". She spent some years as an anthropologist among the Nagas of the Naga Hills. She took more than a thousand photographs documenting the lives of local tribes which were later used in a comparative study.
At the start of World War II she was in London, but planning to return to the Naga Hills. When the opportunity arose, she gained permission from the British administration to live among the Naga people in Laisong village, in what was then known as North Cachar. Here she won the friendship and confidence of the local village headmen, so that when the Japanese armies invaded Burma in 1942 and threatened to move on into India, the British administration asked her to form her local Nagas into a band of scouts to comb the jungle for the Japanese. Bower mobilised the Nagas against the Japanese forces, placing herself at their head, initially leading 150 Nagas armed only with ancient muzzle-loading guns across some 800 square miles (2,100 km2) of mountainous jungle. General Slim recognised the work she was doing and supported her with arms and reinforcements, giving her her own unit within V Force, nicknamed 'Bower Force'. Bower's force of Nagas became so effective that the Japanese put a price on her head. She was the subject of an American comic book entitled Jungle Queen. Her personal weapon of choice was the sten gun, two of which she wore out in action. Trained as a child by her father to shoot, she had no qualms about handling firearms and training her Naga scouts in their use.
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