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Burma in Limbo, Part 1, is available here
On 21 September 1946 an attempt was made on the life of former Prime Minister U Saw on a wide stretch of Prome Road in colonial Rangoon.
The pre-war PM of British Burma and the leader of the Myochit (Patriot’s) party, U Saw was the rightwing arch rival of General Aung San who was then the vice-chairman of the Executive Council (EC) chaired by the British Governor. The EC was the interim government of colonial Burma and Aung San was effectively the first post-war Prime Minister of Burma.
U Saw’s large black sedan was just after the Myenigone roundabout when an army Jeep overtook and two of the four men inside fired many shots at the black sedan and then sped away. All of the bullets missed the target but shattered the windows.
Some pieces of broken glass cut U Saw’s face and one of his eyes was seriously injured and he ended up in hospital. Later he went to India for specialist treatment and saved the almost blinded eye but he had to spend the remainder of his life with an always teary eye. He was frightened and he was angry all the time as the injured eye constantly reminded him of that terrifying moment.
U Saw himself clearly saw that all four men in the jeep were in the uniforms of the PVO (People Volunteer Organization). Called “Pyithuyebaw” in Burma the PVO was the private militia of Aung San who had left his army in Ne Win’s hands so that he could concentrate solely on the politics. After the war Aung San had formed the PVO militia with a core group of trusted officers and demobilized soldiers from his now disbanded Burma National Army (BNA).
Obeying Aung San’s orders my father had to refuse a commission as a junior officer in the newly-re-formed Burmese Army and stayed with the PVO as a commander in Rangoon. One of his main tasks was stashing away the massive amount of arms and ammunitions his battalion had captured from the Japanese Army in secret dumps for the looming civil war between the staunch anti-British Burmese nationalists and the pro-British paramilitary forces belonging to seasoned politicians like U Saw and the militant ethnic groups like the Karen.
Aung San had foreseen and definitely expected the eruption of civil war after independence. Otherwise what was the purpose of his large veteran militia and the massive arms stockpile? And there were deep ideological cracks appearing in his motley coalition of Communists and Socialists and PVOs.
Within two years after the big war my father Htun Hla and his former BNA men had built a 5,000 strong PVO division fully armed and ready for battle in the districts of Mandalay, Myingyan, and Meikhtila, the three M region of Middle Burma. His home village is in the Mahlaing township of Meikhtila District. His division later became the 3M (Ma-Thone-Lone) Division of CPB’s Red Army during the early years of civil war. There were other PVO divisions and the total strength of PVO militia swelled to almost 200,000 men nationwide in 1947.
General Aung San also knew that the rogue elements of the British army in Burma had been secretly transferring massive loads of their WW2 arms and ammunitions to the Karens’ KNDO and U Saw’s Galone (Garuda) militia.
“Those guns are to kill us,” Aung San alarmingly remarked when he was told that the British Army had lost 200 Bren guns together with 200 spare barrels from its armament depot in Rangoon. Ever practical British army officers had the audacity to provide their thief not just the Brens but also the spare barrels, for without a spare barrel any machine gun is useless eventually.
Some of the reportedly stolen guns were later found in Inya Lake just behind U Saw’s large compound on AD Road. Most were recovered from the town of Kyaiklat the Myochit Party’s stronghold in the Delta. U Saw was quickly becoming a dangerous thorn under Aung San’s feet and he was to be removed.
According to my mother my father once told her that the assassination attempt was ordered by Thakhin Mya, the AFPFL leader responsible for the clandestine operations or the dirty works of AFPFL with the approval of Bogyoke, and he armed the men and provided the Jeep with a driver. He didn’t feel bad for his involvement but he regretted that his Bogyoke had stopped further attempts on U Saw’s life after worrying about the political fall-out immediately experienced after the failed attempt.
My father’s PVO men were then guarding Bogyoke all the time except at the Government Secretariat as Bogyoke himself didn’t want people to know that he was concerned about his own safety even on that sacred ground. “Affection of the people is enough to protect me,” Aung San proclaimed whenever serious concerns were raised about his security at the Government Secretariat.
My father really regretted that he followed his Bogyoke’s order strictly for that instance. He felt bad the rest of his life for that failed attempt resulting in U Saw’s daring revenge which killed both his Bogyoke and Thakhin Mya with many other members of the Executive Council on 19 July 1947, the date Burmese still mourn as Martyrs’ Day.
Historically U Saw has been made out completely as a vile villain and a hated traitor of the Burmese nationalist cause and then buried deep as the most notorious murderer into the dark history of Burma. The nagging question for me is if he was an insignificant man as portrayed later in our nationalist-written history textbooks why did Aung San and his nationalist followers try to assassinate him?
For the answer to that question we have to go back to the times of two Mon lords named Maung Htaw Lay and Maung Khaing back in the early years of the 19th century. Back to the beginning of the golden period of British rule for Burma especially the pro-British ruling class so that we can rediscover U Saw’s significant role in pre-war Burmese politics.
Pro-British Civil Society
The victorious British annexed lower Burma including the scarcely-populated vast delta and the small port town of Yangon in 1853 after the Second Anglo-Burmese War. While the British forces strategically occupied the high hill of the Shwedagon Pagoda for many years to come, the British army engineers rebuilt Yangon into Rangoon, the modern capital city of British Burma.
With the ancient Sule Pagoda as the centre, downtown Rangoon was laid out on the northern bank of the Rangoon River by the British as a long rectangular strip with the five main roads namely, Montgomery, Frazer, Dalhousie, Merchant, and Strand Roads running parallel from West to East with the short and narrow cross streets, named in English numerals like 28th Street, connecting the main roads from South to North.
But two of the widest cross streets were named Maung Htaw Lay and Maung Khaing. I used to live in the old house on the corner of Mogul Street and Dalhousie Road just two blocks away from Maung Htaw Lay Street and sometimes I wondered who Maung Htaw Lay was. I knew nothing more than that they were two Mon lords on the British side and the British honored them by naming two streets after them. But now I know a lot more about them from the large exile clan of their descendants now living abroad.
Prior to the British annexation, lower Burma was basically a recently conquered land of the Burmese kings from upper Burma. The native Mon who had finally surrendered their ancient kingdom to the Burmese invaders after many hundreds of years of long and brutal civil war were stirred by the arrival of the British as the colonial government started recruiting the Mon lords as local administrators. British policy then was to utilize the indigenous Mon leadership in setting up their new administration in lower Burma mainly populated by the indigenous Mons.
Burmese settlers from ever-unstable Upper Burma rapidly outnumbered the Mons and eventually swallowed them up by cross marriages. Language similarity and common religion also accelerated the merging of the two rival races. My maternal grandfather was a Burmese settler and my grandmother was the only daughter of the Mon landowner he worked for as a surveyor in the Delta.
Serving the Burmese kings before as the Provincial Lord of Dala across the river from Yangon, Maung Htaw Lay became the Provincial Lord of Moulmein for the British colonial administration in 1838 as the British took possession of Tenasserim after the First Anglo-Burmese War. Called a “Sitke” in Burmese he was officially the Magistrate of the newly-formed Provincial Civil Service with police and judicial powers.
He was also responsible for the rebuilding of Moulmein town destroyed in the earlier wars. The prominent part of Moulmein where he used to live is still called “Sitke kone” today. He retired at the age of 77. This extract is from the book “A Twentieth Century Burmese Matriarch” written by his great-great-great grand-daughter Khin Thida.
“After retirement he moved back to Rangoon area still in Burmese hands but very soon destined for the next annexation. He was again caught up in war but this time he had a great fortune of supporting religious ventures and gaining tremendous merit. His good karma and leadership abilities led him to the task of saving the great Shwedagon Pagoda from imminent destruction and sacking of its treasures by British troops in the second Anglo-Burmese War.
The great Buddhist shrine had been fortified by the British troops in the 1824 war and was again used as a fort in 1852. When he heard of the fortification and sacking of the shrine, he sent a letter of appeal directly to the British India Office in London stopping the desecration. He then obtained compensation from the British Commissioner of Burma Mr. Phayre and began the renovations of the Pagoda in 1855 with public support and donations.
He became the founding trustee of the Shwedagon Pagoda Trust and he was awarded the title of KSM by the British Raj for his public service. He died at the age of 95, bequeathing his prestige and high repute to his large family and descendants.”
One of his daughters married a son of Shwekyin Mingyi U Myat Phyu and that son-in-law Maung Khaing was the Town Lord of Dala first and later the Sitke of Rangoon after the British annexation of Yangon in 1853. With his father-in-law, the two engaged actively in civic programs rebuilding and renovating the public building, monasteries, and pagodas in Rangoon.
When the colonial City of Rangoon was planned by the British and the roads named after famous British generals, two equally famous Mon were recognized by naming two wide streets in the center of City in their honor. Even when all streets bearing English names were renamed by the nationalist government after the independence the Sitke Maung Htaw Lay and Sitke Maung Khiang Streets were not touched.
They were the first prominent members of the Burmese civil society gradually developing under British rule. One of their descendants, Sir Maung Khin, KCIE (Knight Commander of the Indian Empire), became the first ever Home Member of the British colonial administration under the diarchy reforms in the 1920s. He was the first ever Burmese to be knighted.
British Political Reforms toward Self-Rule
The colonial reforms after World War I had resulted in the diarchy from of self-government in Burma. As a measure of home rule one Home Member and two ministers, all Burmese, were appointed to the Governor’s Executive Council, the colonial government of Burma.
Sir Maung Khin was the Home Member responsible for Home Affairs, M.A. Maung Gyi was the Minister for Education and Public Health, and J.A. Maung Gyi was the Minister for Agriculture and Forestry. The rest of the Council was still British but the pipe dream of Burmese self-rule was slowly getting closer within stable and progressive British rule.
After attending St. Paul’s High School and then Rangoon College, the first institution of higher education in Burma under Calcutta University, young Maung Khin went to the Inns of Court of London to study law. He became a barrister and then a High Court judge in Burma and later the first Home Member or the first unofficial Prime Minister of Burma.
When he suddenly passed away in October 1924 another prominent descendant of Maung Htaw Lay, another high court judge U May Aung was appointed as Home Member to replace Sir Maung Khin.
U May Aung’s son Htun Hla Aung had already graduated from Sandhurst and was serving in the British Indian Army as a young Lieutenant of the Madras Pioneers Regiment and he was married to a distant cousin, Khin Khin Aye, Sir Maung Khin’s only daughter. He would eventually become the chief of Burma Police and the second-most-senior commanding officer of Burmese security forces. Our writer Khin Thida is their only daughter and a blood mix of Mon, Burmese, and Arakanese.
“Even though western-educated and highly-westernized and holding the most powerful position for a Burmese in British Burma both Sir Maung Khin and U May Aung were devout Buddhists and they founded the YMBA, modeled on YMCA, in 1906 with the objective of refashioning the valuable elements of Buddhist tradition into an articulate movement in the new context of western concepts and learning,” Khin Thida wrote of her maternal and paternal grand fathers in her remarkable book.
They were the ruling class of a new civil society benefitting immensely from the British reforms modernizing the social and economic structures of an old feudal society. That peaceful and prosperous civil society would last for more than a century till the extreme nationalists forced the British out and turned Burma back into a primitive society ruled by men with guns.
“British educational reforms were to integrate the old monastic schools of the traditional system into a general program of secular education and so a second system of education along western lines was developed beside the traditional one, even completely displacing it in the urban areas. Government and government-aided schools were established, the better ones being run by the Christian missionaries.
Also a new money economy had taken hold of the country by 1890 and Burma became increasingly prosperous, experiencing considerable growth in trade and agricultural acreage and population. The last was due to the growth of then half a million strong Indian immigrants and a smaller but significant number of Chinese immigrants mainly from the British Malaya and Singapore,” Khin Thida also wrote.
British reforms had rapidly transformed Burma especially lower Burma with an originally uninhabited vast delta into the rice bowl of the British Empire. The vast, extremely fertile, and still southward-expanding Delta teeming with wildlife like elephants and tigers and pythons would soon be cleared and land reclaimed and transformed into vast tracts of highly productive paddy land.
After the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 the export of Burmese rice grew many folds and to meet the ever-increasing demand of rice from continental Europe the colonial authorities opened the uninhabited delta of lower Burma to anyone willing to clear the thick forest and farm the virgin land normally roamed by mighty herds of wild elephants.
My Mon great-grandfather from crowded Blukyun near Moulmein was one of the village headmen who gladly took up the British challenge, relocated his whole village into the wild Delta, and became rich because of his vast land holding. With British support and Chittys’ [moneylenders’] money he and fellow Mon landowners built a rice-farming town called Moulmeingyun in the Myaungmya District of the Delta.
In the 1930s his only daughter, my grand-mother, was the elected head of the town’s pre-war Municipal Council. The rest of the council were a Scot (the police inspector), a Punjabi Sikh (the town’s only doctor), two Chinese (the rice miller and the fish monger), an Indian Chitty (the money lender), a Karen (the Baptist church leader), a Bengali Muslim (the managing agent of Irrawaddy Shipping), and another Mon landowner. By then Burmese settlers were the largest group in the township but not a single Burmese was on the Council. They were still tenant farmers and landless itinerant laborers.
Cheap money from the British banks like Chartered Bank flowed through Indian money lenders and the British trading companies to rapidly develop trade and commerce in lower Burma. The Irrawaddy Flotilla particularly was responsible for the introduction of the Indian Hundi system into the Delta.
Apart from rice, the Delta also became the main provider of freshwater fish and prawns and duck-eggs to the whole of Burma through the fish market and egg dealers in Rangoon mainly because of the Hundi system. No pesky banks, no cumbersome bills of lading, and no hard-to-get letters of credit were needed in that Hundi system of short-term trade finance.
Like the rest of the Delta our township has the criss-cross of interconnecting waterways from the nine major tributary rivers of Irrawaddy to produce plenty of fish and prawns and to raise thousands and thousands of free-range ducks that produce massive number of duck-eggs every single day. The Hundi system helped the merchants ship their excess produce into the hands of consumers nationwide.
For example the Chinese fish mongers and egg dealers in our little town shipped tens of tons of fish and prawns and hundreds of thousands of duck-eggs every day to Rangoon by the overnight ferry ships of the British Irrawaddy Flotilla Company. And they didn’t need to wait to get paid for their shipment.
Once their cargo was on board the ship, a clerk would pay them the cash for the value of their cargo, already agreed between them and their buyers in Rangoon, minus 1% commission. In turn the town merchants could pay the fishermen and the duck-farmers daily for their goods. The Irrawaddy Flotilla would deliver the fish to the fishmongers in Rangoon Fish Market and the duck-eggs to the egg dealers in Rangoon’s Chinatown and at the end of every month settle the accounts with them.
The Irrawaddy Flotilla became not just a shipping company but also a short-term financier of trade and their resident agents in the Delta towns were the most influential in the towns’ civic affairs together with the money lender Chittys.
That system helped the trade grow many folds, eventually almost every village household in our township had at least 100 or 200 ducks under their houses on the stilts by the stream banks and the humble, white-colored duck-egg become a staple for Burmese consumers. Unlike in Thailand or Australia the common omelet in Burma is of duck-egg not chicken-egg. The Irrawaddy Flotilla also made huge amounts of money from the lucrative trade finance.
And the food was abundant not just in the fertile Delta but also the whole of British Burma. My father’s generation grew taller and bigger than their fathers; just like the first generation Aussies were to their scrawny English convict fathers. Our fathers used to call the Japanese “Ngapu” (Shorties). But the successive socialist governments have slowly strangled the food chain and we born in supposedly free Burma grew shorter and smaller than our fathers from British Burma and now the average Japanese is taller and bigger than the average Burmese.
Immediately after the 1948 Independence U Nu’s Socialist Government nationalized all the large British companies including the Irrawaddy Flotilla. That stupid nationalization almost destroyed the shipping industry and also killed overnight the massive trade of fish and duck-eggs, the second life-blood of our town and the whole Delta. The trading of fish and duck-eggs recovered partly a few years later only when the private individuals were allowed to operate small ships in competition to the government-owned ships from former Irrawaddy Flotilla and these entrepreneurs brought back the Hundi system.
By 1930 Burma was the biggest rice exporter in the world by shipping out more than 5 million tons of rice annually. Post-war Burma under successive Socialist governments could never reach that figure again. That fact alone is the solid proof of the prosperity of British Burma. We don’t even need to remember the fact that Rangoon Airport pre-war then had a properly built modern terminal while Bangkok Airport had just a corrugated iron shed as a terminal. To get to Bangkok from London in those days one had to fly the BOAC to Rangoon first. Now it is the reverse; as so the reversal of fortunes between Burma and Thailand.
Lasting for only a year and half in his new position U May Aung also passed away on June 1926. Less than two years after Sir Maung Khin’s death Burma unfortunately had lost another capable civil leader. The minister for Agriculture and Forestry, Sir JA Maung Gyi, succeeded U May Aung and later became the only Burmese Governor of British Burma in 1929.
Burmese civil leaders participated in the Burma Round Table Conference in London in 1931. Daw Mya Sein, the only daughter of U May Aun,g was one of them to discuss the future constitution of Burma. The Government of Burma Act (1935) by the British Parliament finally separated Burma from India and a new constitution (the very first constitution of Burma), providing for a fully elected legislative assembly and a responsible cabinet, was established in 1937.
Apart from the elected representatives from the Burmese majority the 132-seat Legislature also had seats reserved for significant minority and immigrant groups. Twelve seats were reserved for Karen, eight for Indians, two for Anglo-Burmese, and three for Europeans. In addition there were twelve seats set aside for various ethnic communities’ chamber of commerce, four for labour unions, and one for Rangoon University.
Even though dehumanized and vilified later by the nationalist Burmese writers and the successive nationalist governments these large communities of immigrants basically built the modern Burma together with the indigenous races under fair but firm and stable British rule. The rice bowl of Burma the Delta was basically uninhibited land before the British arrival. Burmese kings or Mon kings and queens didn’t build lower Burma.
British did build Lower Burma and Rangoon. And everybody came.
Everybody meant really everyone from all corners of the earth. English, Irish, Scottish, Germans, Jews, Indians, Chinese: almost every race. Rangoon quickly became an exciting melting pot of so many races.
A particularly nasty line in our nationalist-rewritten history of Burma described these immigrants and their descendants as British-sponsored greedy foreigners who sucked the blood out of us Burmese and almost destroyed our Burmese race, and if their growth was unchecked they would eventually swallow us to the point of extinction.
“Earth shall not swallow our race, only other races will swallow our race.” was the large slogan commonly mounted on the front office wall of every immigration office in modern Burma.
Whenever I saw the thriving communities of proud Indians in Singapore or Chinese in Kuala Lumpur or Penang I was convinced that the brutal racist treatment of Indians and Chinese in Burma was one of the main reasons British Burma failed after Independence while British Malaya prospered after independence.
Changing the name Burma to Myanmar and Rangoon back to Yangon were the basic acts to destroy our century long British colonial heritage. From day one of gaining power the extreme nationalists have tried to erase that heritage completely from our history and our collective memory. Smart Singaporeans or even Malaysians would never change the names of the likes of Si-Rangoon Road in Singapore to some old Chinese names like we Burmese had stupidly done to our British-built tree-lined wide boulevards in Rangoon.
Except us Burmese everybody else in this world value their colonial heritage. No wonder the wise man of Singapore, SM Lee Kwan Yew, called us Burmese the stupids. Now hundreds and hundreds of desperate Burmese doctors, engineers, and scientists fled Burma every year to work for the Singaporeans for a pittance and the glimmer of hope that they will in time receive PR and eventual citizenship of crowded tiny Singapore with no natural resources.
After forming a coalition government with the support of the minority groups in the Legislature Dr. Ba Maw, a noted lawyer with a PhD from the French University of Bordeaux, became the first official Prime Minister of Burma. This translated extract is what Thein Phe Myint, a typical leftwing nationalist writer of that time, wrote of Dr Ba Maw’s government.
“Though his party is called Sinyetha (The Poor) Party, Dr Ba Maw is just using the poor as a stepping stone. On the one hand he tricked the public especially the educated youth by issuing a policy directive declaring not to treat people purely based on their races as whether English or Burmese or Indian, while on the other hand he became a PM by forming the coalition government with the votes of English and Indians in the Legislature.”
For some strange reason even Burmese have trouble understanding almost all the popular writers then in Burma were lefties. Their enormous influence over the unsuspecting populace is one of the major reasons Socialism and Nationalization were widely accepted in postwar Burma while Capitalism and Private Enterprise were frowned upon as the tools of colonialists and imperialists. Even decades later, in the 1960s, Ne Win’s weird “Burmese Way to Socialism” was supported by the influential politician-cum-writers like Thein Phe Myint and welcomed by the gullible people of Burma.
Thein Phe Myint as a Communist intellectual who once declared that Parliamentary Democracy was not real politics couldn’t really understand the workings of a modern democratic government like Dr Ba Maw’s coalition government.
A serious anti-Indian riot broke out in Burma in March 1939 and hundreds of people were killed in Rangoon and Mandalay. And the Legislature concluded that Dr Ba Maw had failed to solve the problem of Indian minority and passed a motion of no-confidence. He was forced to resign and succeeded by U Pu another lawyer from Middle Burma.
World War II broke out in September 1939 as Hitler invaded Poland and Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. In the Legislative Assembly U Pu’s stand was to help Britain but the Assembly passed a resolution demanding any assistance to Britain’s war effort should be conditional upon Britain’s promise to grant Burma dominium status within the British Commonwealth. U Pu rejected that popular demand and he was forced out in September 1940 and his Minister for Forestry U Saw became the Prime Minister.
A Mon-Burmese born in 1900 and also a noted lawyer, U Saw came to prominence by defending Saya-San, the ex-monk leader of 1930 peasant rebellion in court after he was finally captured by the British forces. Saya-San was hanged eventually for treason and sedition but U Saw became famous and won a seat in the Assembly in the 1936 general elections. He quickly became a minister in U Pu’s government and three years later the Prime Minister of Burma.
As an elected PM he regularly toured the countryside and his popularity rose sky-high at the grassroots level as the chaotic turbulence of World War II reached Burma when Japan entered the war by a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. He also developed a good working relationship with the new British governor Sir Dorman Smith. Citing the war as a reason the governor extended U Saw’s tenure as prime minister for a further five year term by postponing the 1941 general elections.
Then was the time the left extremes of the nationalist movement became prominent through militant strikes and long marches. Well aware of the fledgling extreme nationalist movement among the left-leaning students from Rangoon University U Saw arrested many student leaders including Aung San and charged them with sedition.
The long rivalry between pro-British U Saw and staunch anti-British Aung San had started and they would eventually collide violently in July 1947 costing them both their lives together with the peaceful future and the prosperous past of their beloved Burma.
To be continued
Ko Hla Oo
Well done, awaiting your next part.
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Thanks Plan B,
That must be the shortest post you’ve ever commented here. You usually do not agree with me, so I was surprised even though I have a rough idea where you stand.
Can you elaborate a bit more so that I and other NM readers can understand you better.
What I am trying to do with this series of essays is to paint a general background from a native Burmese point of view so that NM readers can at least grasp why and how Burma is in such a situation now.
Like you, I am also really tired of the black and white view of our Burma presented by foreign experts just from reading a lot of books about the country not from their own life experiences like you and I had to go through.
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Thanks Hla Oo, another interesting post.
Given your critical view of Thein Pe Myint, would you be more sympathetic to Maung Htin? Like you, he was also critical (for example, in Ngaba) of the anti-Indian and anti-Chinese fervor of the nationalists.
But to be fair to Thein Pe Myint, although he sought to explain (and therefore justify?) the anti-Indian riots of 1930s along class lines (i.e. Burmese labourers against Indian capitalists), he also tried to distinguish between Indian capitalists and Indian labourers. In a contribution to the Nagani Book Club (here) he praised the Indian labourers for siding with their Burmese co-labourers in the oil-field strikes, as quoted here:
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Thanks! Your article made me respect Gen. Aung San
more as a pragmatic leader who did not swallow own
hot air.
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Ko Hla Oo
You and I were born and raised in Myanmar. Knowing the history culture and the love of a heritage of our unique civilization is what we always base our advocacy on.
Those that show a complete lack of knowledge and regards for the mentioned uniqueness using standards that appear reasonable yet absolutely irrelevant are having the loudest say without having their credibility challenge.
This has gone on 3 decades and have been accepted as the norm.
However this norm is destroying what we truly love slowly yet completely.
It is refreshing to see here in New Mandala pertinent hx of Myanmar from expert like yourself.
Passionately written but not in an over the top manner .
Truthful yet very relevant to those who truly seek to understand the ongoing events as a continuum of useless careless interferences.
Countless hours of individual effort on the ground offering “patched work” solutions to problems the citizenry is facing from SPDC policy and the idiocies that shaped SPDC to present form, I come up with a simple qualifying query to every pertinent “things” concerning Myanmar.
“DOES THIS LESSEN THE SUFFERING OF THE MOST VULNERABLE IN MYANMAR AND NOTHING ELSE?”
A reasonable Humanitarian based standard.
Your present article is above this very standard.
How so?
Smply Stating the truth.
You be the judge on how many if any policy or anything to do with Myanmar so far, come close to this simple standard.
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Stephen,
Like most young Burmese of my time, I admired Thein Phe Myint and also was greatly influenced by him.
Now looking back, I slowly realized that was the direct result of the nationalist leftists’ campaign to brainwash or social engineer (to borrow from AKS’s comment) the young minds of Burma.
We were forced to study many of Thein Phe Myint’s works as our matriculation text for Burmese literature, and his books and articles and the works of other similar left-leaning writers were the only readings available.
Every other right wing or Communist literature were banned or they just simply disappeared mysteriously from the libraries and the circulation.
I can declare here with great confidence that he was the genious partly responsible for our sufferings under Ne Win’s thugs as he had given his blessings and thus the intellectual justification to that fake Socialist government and happily supported them all the way till he died.
P.S. You should read his book “Kyaw Nyein” as it basically bares his tortured leftist soul. He always tried to look every aspect of our society from only red-colored class point of view.
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Hla Oo predictably plays fast and loose with facts in his attempt at rewriting history in support of his theory that the Burmese are inherently violent and now stupid and gullible to boot. They are beyond the pale, aren’t they? They deserve everything they get, for rejecting colonial rule (entirely benevolent and progressive of course), and for rejecting capitalism and free enterprise ( perhaps synonymous in his learned opinion with colonial rule).
a. Yangon Ba Swe, writer and Socialist from the group that Ne Win also belonged to, admitted he was the shooter in the assassination attempt on Galon U Saw. He boasted he missed deliberately just as a warning to U Saw who from the PVO uniforms decided Aung San was behind it.
b. Aung San left Bo Let Ya (Thakin Hla Pe) as chief of staff, not Bo Ne Win, when he decided to re-enter the political arena. Ne Win became Commander in Chief only in 1949 when Gen Smith Dun, a Karen national, was removed.
c. The British did develop Lower Burma attracting Burmese from the North to migrate. That’s what colonialists do – develop and extract. People did appreciate trade and business that flourished in a stable and peaceful environment after pacification which took several years and punishing entire village groups that supported resistance. There are always those who resist foreign rule/occupation and those who collaborate. The Burmese were no different from other races.
d. The street names Sitkè Maung Htaw Lay and Maung Khaing were changed by the current military junta along with the Burma to Myanmar and Rangoon to Yangon changes and a few others like York Road to Yaw Mingyi Road, and not by Ne Win or the Socialist governments before him.
e. ‘Extreme nationalism’ and chauvinism have been the hallmark of the military dictatorship since 1962 and not the left wing leaders who led the struggle for independence. Indian and Chinese communities were persecuted by Ne Win who stoked up xenophobia whenever he needed to get out of a crisis (his protégés today following in his footsteps), and Hla Oo typically overlooks the persecution of the ethnic minorities, the bloody civil wars against whom he was a youthful and willing instrument of, and unsurprisingly retains his Tatmadaw view of the union.
f. Thein Pe Myint, the third secretary general of the CPB (Aung San was the first), was sent to liaise with the exiled colonial government in Simla by Thakin Than Tun in preparation for overthrowing the Japanese. He later fell from grace for bringing in the revisionist line of Browderism, but after Thakin Soe’s splinter group of Red Flag Communists went underground, became prominent again as a leader of the Thein-Than Communists.
He did not join the Communist rebellion, but instead continued his established writing career, only to return to politics as a guru and cheerleader of the Burma Socialist Programme Party founded by the military dictatorship under Ne Win in a typical trajectory of an ex-communist.
g. Left wing ideology was very influential in the national liberation struggle like everywhere else in the colonised world at the time. In Burma the younger generation of student activists rejected the old politics that worked with the colonial administration, embraced the nationalist Dobama Association, and founded the Communist and the Socialist Parties.
h. Galon U Saw was far from being seen as insignificant by the Burmese. On the contrary his role in Burmese politics and history left an indelible mark, from the defense of Saya San, prominent politician through his premiership, his wartime internment by the British in Uganda for secretly liaising with the Japanese, and culminating in his infamous role in the assassination of Aung San along with his cabinet members that sent the country on the trajectory it has taken.
Hla Oo is a good storyteller and his fictionalised accounts of events definitely are a great read. Why he, instead of sticking to what he’s good at, indulges in pontificating and rewriting history passing it off as ‘original research’ but always with a moral, and not troubling himself with any sort of objectivity needs to be questioned.
Blurring the lines between the ruled and the rulers, between colonialism and economic development, between the nationalists and the Marxists, between the radical left and the right wing ‘left’, between Aung San’s army and Ne Win’s may be genuine confusion or by design on the part of Hla Oo.
Is he simply engaging in a bit of self-promotion with a view to a comfortable retirement? Is he on the payroll of the regime through the good office of his army connections, past and present? Is he ingratiating himself to them as he is to his foreign readers who undoubtedly find his work a different and refreshing departure from the mainstream Burmese? I for one do not find him very different in his very Burmese unsubstantiated, uncorroborated accounts with embellishments, bias and moralising even if he has great stories of his army life to tell. Tall tales and cock and bull stories are after all the stuff of our childhood.
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Moe Aung,
Thanks for your many comments especially this compliment.
his foreign readers who undoubtedly find his work a different and refreshing departure from the mainstream Burmese?
This “Burma in Limbo” essay both part 1 and 2 is now ow the pages of Burma Digest, the oldest Burmese Democracy Site. I don’t even know how they got there.
http://burmadigest.info/2010/08/22/burma-in-limbo/
Maybe they see something in my writings that you don’t see or just blindly refusing to see with hatred and anger burning inside of you.
And I pray for your soul!
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The focus IS to educate the New Mandala readers here who are truly concern about the plight of Myanmar citizenry.
To unequivocally realize the present Myanmar quagmire is a continuum of west treachery.
Still ongoing as proof:
US/west continuing policy of useless sanction and careless vilification in dealing with SPDC.
Ko Moe Aung
Until such scathing criticism, on insignificant inaccuracies of one’s own, as a repeating detractor in New Mandala, become EXTINCT, the US/west policy that complimented SPDC’s own to an unconscionably perfect 100% against a hapless citizenry will ensue.
US/west will continue to ENJOY “getting away with the murder” of the most vulnerable within Myanmar as SPDC has been doing all along albeit using the useless careless policy of the west stated above as raison d’├кtre.
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Hla Oo
Perhaps congratulations are in order. Keep it up by all means.
Best out in the open, and thanks for the chance of a counter-argument to both you and NM. NM is also right in giving you a platform even if it chose to relax on its usual standards of scholarly discourse and contributions. Comment is free, facts are sacred (CP Scott).
If I were Thai and had anything to do with it, I would never ban the film “The King and I”. I would definitely want my own people to see how they got portrayed, stereotyped and patronised.
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Moe Aung,
Once I was as an extreme-nationalist as you are and maybe even more. I was violent and bloodthirsty and I ‘d done horrible things I am now not proud of at all.
BTW in my definition any nationalist who use violence to achieve his goal is an extreme-nationalist.
One thing still haunting me is all the violent race riots back in Rangoon while we were young and nationalist and religious fervor was driven to extreme by the likes of Ne Win and others.
But after living so many years in Australia and realising what a normal civilized society here is my thinkings have changed completely.
One thing I realized now is that a normal society needs to have a right balance of right-wing and left-wing ideology as the rightist dominance is bad for the social justice while the leftist dominance will destroy the prosperity.
In my opinion, Australia ruled alternatively by the conservatives and the socialists is the perfect example of that normal, balanced society.
IMHO Burma and Thailand are on the opposite extremes as Burmese politics is completely dominated by the leftists while Thai society is ruled by the right wingers. And both societies are paying heavily now for that.
I also believe strong patriotic-nationalism is racism and fascism combined.
At least I am glad that you and I are not trying to kill each other like our fathers had done in their prime, assuming you father must be a politically active too basing on your strong stance on Burma.
Burmese politicians and the army should just talk, negotiate, and compromise as there are enough killings already. And I sincerely believe that I am contributing something towards that goal.
Not war, just peace baby, ha ha ha!
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Truth is, Hla Oo, whereas you have killed I have not. You enlisted of your own free will to become a killer/cannon fodder at the bidding of your generals even if you were running away to escape from physical abuse at home. Your father was not however responsible for your PTSD. But you had to take it out on his dead hero and the daughter. Funny how you remain a loyal servant of your military masters and advocate peaceful negotiations with no hint of irony.
Race riots are the stuff of uneducated gullible people who follow populist leaders and demagogues all over the world. Indeed race and religion are the refuge of scoundrels. The military dictatorship in Burma has found this very expedient whenever they get into difficulties.
But that’s entirely different from the nationalism inherent in national liberation struggles in the colonised world. It’s when the colonisers failed to realise when it was time to get off. Churchill didn’t believe the Burmese were ready for self rule when we had been a sovereign state for at least a millennium before the British came.
Colonialists and dictators are unfortunately not in the habit of stepping down of their own accord. Churchill also said “Jaw, jaw, not war, war” when it suited him, but he was an arch colonialist who never shirked from violence when that suited him.
It’s nice to know that in your cosy little liberal democracy you are now a rehabilitated sinner. The peoples of Burma, notwithstanding Buddhism and other peaceful religions, sadly cannot afford to be totally committed to non-violence when state violence is an everyday reality.
“Burmese politicians and the army should just talk, negotiate, and compromise as there are enough killings already.”
How we would love to just talk and negotiate around the table, round the clock if needs be. Look where it’s got ASSK and the NLD. It’s a one way traffic if you haven’t noticed. Are these people ‘extreme nationalists’? Perhaps they should be. And may I ask who’s done most of the killing so far? “Not war, just peace baby” is ever so convenient when your generals demand, beyond resonable compromise, just straightforward collaboration and capitulation with a gun pointing to all our collective head. You lot are so scared that the worm will turn it’s pathetic.
Many of us came down with what I call a bad case of “Wow Syndrome” as soon as we landed in the West, some never to recover from it. I’ve lived in the West for longer than I care to remember, and I don’t stop at merely scratching the surface. It has only reinforced the world view and outlook on life that I came with.
It’s a common fallacy where people once they’ve settled in the West start thinking its wonderful ways of doing things simply ought to be transplanted or extrapolated on to their native land and all will be well. What they don’t always realise is that what these lucky people take as their birthrights were fought for and won by their forefathers shedding tears, blood and guts a long time ago. Many of them may well believe that it all evolved as a matter of course. The history of these lands in their more settled and peaceful times is still a series of progressive liberal reforms punctuated by right wing backlashes, the last one proving extremely durable so far. It is so easy to live a very shallow life in these lands.
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Moe Aung,
The pot calling the kettle black or a case of selected amnesia?
I bet you must be going back and forth freely between Rangoon and wherever in the West you’ve been living for more than you care to remember while I’ve been basically banned from Burma by the army since 1997 and put on the kill list by the Military Intelligence Service.
MIS even tried to kill me here in Sydney when I simply refused to cooperate with their drug smuggling operation while I was importing container loads of prawn meat from Burma.
What I’ve been writing here on NM also is now worth for me more than two death sentences back home while you are nicely accusing me of being a generals’ stooge. What the hell is going on Moe Aung?
Quite a few people are now asking me if you are my alter ego and I created you just to drum up controversy and thus creating publicity by persistently attacking my essays about Burma.
What I am writing seems intimate, but it is nothing personal. I am just writing what I honestly believe in after many years of suffering in this stupid affairs called Burma.
You know one thing, I must be either too stupid or rather too brave to care about my life as always. There is absolutely very few Burmese dare to express in public what they really believe in unless they are on the handsome payrolls of the likes of Sorros or NED or CIA.
You should read the hate emails I’ve been receiving privately since this Burma in Limbo series came out. At least I am glad that you dare to personally attack me on NM even though hiding under a pseudonym.
Keep up the good work by making this Burma debate alive!
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Hla Oo
Since the editors blocked my response to #13, I reckon it will remain unchallenged. Your business dealings with the Burmese Military Intelligence were explicit in The Scourge of Burma, part 6.
Moe Aung is not a pseudonym. Hla Oo is according to comment #4 in The Scourge of Burma, part 2.
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Lee Kuan Yew,an extremly self-assured man,did not call the Burmese people stupid,as a seasoned politician,he would never commit such grave mistake.
What he did was to call the SLORC /SPDC Generals STUPID.pl see link below
http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article-southeastasia.asp?parentid=79541
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Thanks Peter for the comment and the link.
I read it many times before in 2007. My interpretation is his throwaway comment widely reported all over the world basically implied that we Burmese (especially the governing generals) are too dumb to make good use of our abundant natural resources and we collectively wrecked the economy of Burma.
I am one of these stupid Burmese who, after receiving expensive engineering education, fled the country and abandoned the people just to serve another society with that education and experience provided free by the people of Burma.
I don’t think the outsiders see Mr Lee Kuan Yew totally apart from the Singaporean people even though there are many questions about his family’s tight hold on Singapore.
He is one of them and he represents the people of Singapore in our eyes same as the generals represent the Burmese society, whether the people like it or not, in the world’s eyes.
I believe a government is responsible for the people and the people are also responsible for the government they have, aren’t they. Burmese have a succession of stupid governments since English left Burma in 4 January 1948.
By the way have you ever read about Mr LKY’s calling Australians the white trash of Asia?
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/DL19Ae02.html
Grave mistake for a extremely- self-assured seasoned politician!
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Hla Oo,
Let me get this straight: you seriously think LKY is saying the Burmese people are stupid, not the generals?
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aiontay
Hla Oo is on a mission to blur the distinction between the rulers and the ruled, just in case you haven’t noticed. Plan B calls it self-flagellation, but I think only outwardly so.
Typically he blames the Burmese diaspora not on the generals who had made life in Burma definetely wanting to absolutely impossible, but on the people who had to leave for various reasons.
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Moe Aung,
Yeah, I had noticed that, but I really don’t know how you can read that interview and interpret LKY’s comments as being an attack on the Burmese people rather than the generals. I mean, I’m in the completely crazy position of defending LKY. I never thought I’d see that day.
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Aiontay and Moe Aung,
Thanks for ganging up on me.
LKY’s been having a go at successive Burmese governments by saying publicly too many times they are stupid idiots.
I still remember many years ago he openly ridiculed Ne Win for wearing a steel helmet while playing golf with him in Rangoon. Ne Win was scared of snipers and LKY thought it was ridiculous.
LKY definitely have low opinion of Burmese. Singaporean government’s policies about Burma and LKY’s actions confirmed that too.
One of them is Letting Burmese drug lords launder their dirty money through Singapore by allowing them buy inflated assets like normally unsellable condominiums and office buildings during the global downturn. I personally know one who now permanently resides in Singapore since becoming a citizen there.
Anyway please read my comment #16 carefully again and you two will see my point.
I still believe we Burmese are really stupid to believe that perverted nationalist version of our modern history for last 60 years.
The current simpleton version, “Burma was good till the English came and it was good after English were kicked out by Aung San and his army and then suddenly bad again because of Ne Win and his thuggish soldiers from the same bloody army,” is just simply a propaganda bullshit to keep us Burmese in the dark so that the ruling class, whether military or the nationalist politicians, can rule us forever.
Thanks again.
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Hla Oo
Speak for yourself. The current simpleton version of Burmese history is probably the version you used to subscribe to. I for one don’t recognise it. Perhaps you’d never tried digging a little deeper, more than just scratch the surface to see it warts and all. Certainly no excuse to embark on another propaganda bullshit such as what we get from you lately, unless you want to divert the attention away from the shameless shenanigans of the regime and put the blame on everyone else.
Not many of us will be surprised if LKY’s experience with Ne Win left him with a low opinion of the Burmese ruling class. His protégé Than Shwe seems to have outdone him equipped with a fraction of his personality or charisma.
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Hla Oo,
I read #16 and Peter’s link in #15 very carefully, which is why I asked my question (which you haven’t answered) in #17. I’ll admit, maybe the question was a bit unclear, so let me ask again: where in that interview, which have say you have read many times, does LKY say the Burmese people, rather than the generals, are stupid?
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Ko Hla Oo,
Your mention of Thakhin Mya and General Aung San conspiring to kill Galon U Saw was outrageous and unproven. Yangon Ba Swe had admitted that he and U Mya Hlaing in the guise of Pyithu Yebaw uniforms attempted the murder on U Saw under the order of Bo Ne Win and Bo Aung Gyi. It was told to Dr Kyin Hoe or Dr Win Naing of Florida, USA by none other than one of the culprits U Mya Hlaing and it’s available on the Internet. Why would a true assassin reveal his identity if he were really attempting a real murder? U Mya Hlaing told Dr Kyin Hoe that they were instructed to just injure U Saw and not to kill him so as to let him suspect Bogyoke Aung San as the culprits were in the PVO uniforms! Please check your statements for facts before being printed.
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Ko Hla Oo,
Your article is an interesting read, but you seem to glorify the annexation of Burma by the British and you have written in unnecessary length to the exploits of Maung Htaw Lay, Maung Khine and Sir Maung Khin etc, all British apologists. The Mon were a dwindling race before the British annexation of Lower Burma and Rangoon and they welcomed the British to counterbalance the Burmese presence. However, the Indian predominated Rangoon which was called an Indian city before the World War II. Indian constituted more than half of the Rangoon population in the 1930s. It was fortunate that Rangoon became the capital of independent Burma and all the races of the union could live side by side in peace. The anti-Chinese riots were instigated by the BSPP and Beijing. Both were guilty of inflaming racial riots in the 1960s. The anti-Muslim riots too were instigated by the BSPP.
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I had read alternative story that tell ‘Someone was arranging an attempt on Galon Saw’s life by using “PVO” uniforms. There is rumour that it was Ne Win who created the friction between Galon Saw and Gen Aung San. We was cunning to attacked two of his (Ne Win’s) possible rivals at the same time.
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‘There is rumour that it was Ne Win who created the friction
between Galon Saw and Gen Aung San. ‘
That remark shows the intelligence of of the commenter as
Col. Ne Win was Maj. Gen. Aung San’s third in command as
2IC was Bo Let Ya. And there were Saw Kya Doe, Saw Yee
Shoe high level Karen officers and also other Anglo-Burman
officers in post WWII Burmese army. So how can he issue
200 automatic guns (that can arm more than fire power of
a 500 men battalion with rifles). The guns were issued from
British guard and Col. Ne Win was not known to be a British
favorite.
So your rumour is a rumor either generated by Communists
or Karens who betrayed us who sucked their British masters.
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Dear M/s Moe Aung and Maung Maung,
Good to read your comments with the facts.
Kindly visit my blog below when you are less busy.
http://wunzinminraja.blogspot.sg/
Please start your reading from the oldest post about My native Golden Land.
best regards.
WZMR
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This is for the Guest Contributor Hla Oo.
Why didn’t you continue on with this “Burma in Limbo”? I’ve bought you book “Song for Irrawaddy” from Amazon and I’m now really looking forward to reading more on your “Burma in Limbo”.
Thanks
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