On Thursday night, Reiss 103 played host to royalty – more specifically, Burmese Shan Princess Inge Sargent. “I was told to tell about my life, so I will,” she began. But this princess is not the stuff of fairy tales. She is also a teacher, author, activist and mother of two. She explained that once she spoke in front of a group of Girl Scouts, and one voiced her disappointment that Sargent was not wearing the requisite flowing ball gown expected with royalty. But the title, the money and the power mean little to her, because, she said, they can be lost in an instant. “I’m a really good example of that,” she said.
Sargent was born in Austria, and came to the United States in 1951 as one of the first Austrian Fulbright scholars. She studied at a women’s college in Colorado, and was one of three international students there. In an effort to “stay connected with the world,” she began to frequent the International House in Denver. There, she met, and later became engaged, to a young Burmese man, Sao Kya Seng, studying at the Colorado School of ines.
In addition to being a mining student, Seng happened to be the Shan prince of Burma. Sargent had no idea of his identity, nor was she made aware of it until their honeymoon cruise ship dropped anchor in Rangoon in 1953, when masses of people gathered to meet their boat and celebrate their arrival. Sargent recounted, “There were so many people all dressed up. I asked [my husband] `Are they having a festival?’ He didn’t answer.” What was her response when she finally got an answer out of him? “Oh, I wish you had told me earlier – I would have worn a different dress!”
After adjusting to the shock of having the title of “princess” thrust upon her, Sargent settled into a happy life in the Shan states of Burma; however, she was by no means a complacent aristocrat. She helped her husband bring about political and economic changes in their region of Burma. “We were kind of like this little Peace Corps,” she said. One of their main focuses was health reform. She explained that the Shan, an ethnic group that makes up 40 percent of the population of Burma, did not consume dairy products. This made it hard for the people to receive the proper nutrients, and their health was failing because of it. To combat this, Sargeant went around to villages, handing out powdered dairy products on a regular basis and convincing the Shan to eat it. She says that this incited a drop in the child mortality rate of the Shan states. Sargeant said she always did her best to help her people, and in turn, was completely accepted by them. She recounted that a Shan woman once asked her “are you sure you don’t have any Shan in you?”
Unfortunately, her idealistic contentment did not last. In 1959 the Shan states were given the choice to take their independence or stay as part of Burma. Sargent’s husband was opposed to the independence of the Shan states, and, in 1962, was murdered in a coup by pro-independence military leaders, who denied having killed her husband. She was placed under house arrest for two years, and then smuggled herself and her two children out of Burma. Of this experience, she said “it was one of the hardest things I did, but I did it.”
She traveled with her children to her parents’ home in Austria, with three suitcases and no money. She lived there for two years, then moved back to Colorado, and got her teacher’s degree from University of Denver. In 1991 her book Twilight Over Burma: My Life as a Shan Princess was published. She and her second husband now work for Burma Lifeline, which raises money for the 1 million Shan refugees living on the border of Thailand.
Incidentally, the punishment for possessing her book in Burma is 17 years in prison. “For writing it – that is a different story,” she said. But as for the Burmese government’s opinion of her, she said, “I am beyond caring, whatever happens, happens.” She recounted a story of a nephew who traveled to Thailand, and was shot at. The nephew was only wounded, but his baby son, who he was holding at the time, was killed. Despite the obvious danger, she, too, has traveled to Thailand. “If they shoot me, they shoot me.” But of Burma, she said, “I cannot go back. I escaped once, and that was quite enough.”