Burma Redux: Global Justice and the Quest for Political Reform in Myanmar (10 page)

In the years from 1945 to 1948, nationalism was often Burmese rather than strictly and narrowly Burman. Appealing to distaste for occupation, whether British or Japanese, it focused on issues bringing people together, instead of tensions driving them apart.
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In this way it sought to build a platform from which Burman leaders could reach out to other ethnic groups. However, nested within this broad and inclusive nationalism were more focused and exclusive dynamics. Indeed, present by the end of the colonial period and aggravated by warfare sweeping the land in its sunset phase was a series of militant ethnic nationalisms. Prominent among them was a Burman attempt to reassert identity and dominion, with a strong tendency to look back to a glorious monoethnic past rather than forward to a complex multiethnic future. This nationalism, though submerged in the prospect of imminent colonial withdrawal once the Second World War ended, was a critical British bequest to the sovereign state.
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Equally present throughout was a series of minority ethnic identities that would emerge to challenge Burman dominion in the postcolonial years.

The institutional landscape in which these forces played out was strikingly empty. For Furnivall, a central theme was always the dissolution of local institutions and the social dislocation that resulted. Thant Myint-U also places institutional weakness alongside ethnic nationalism as a key colonial legacy. The British destroyed much, but put little of lasting value in its place. “With the exception of the Sangha [Buddhist monkhood], one is hard pressed to identify any supra-local institution which carried over from pre-colonial through colonial times.”
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In contrast to the Thai case, where imperial rule was never fully imposed, established institutions like the monarchy were not maintained to provide equilibrium and continuity in turbulent times. By comparison with the British imperial record in other parts of Asia, such as Ceylon, India and Malaya, colonial structures in the army, police, civil service and judiciary were “singularly fragile,” with a history of barely 50 years in the Burman core.
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They were largely brushed aside by the Japanese in 1942. In consequence, one of the most potent legacies of British rule was recourse to violence to subdue a restive population, overt during pacification campaigns but always present.

As Burma moved from dependence to sovereignty in the late 1940s, the disintegration long identified by Furnivall as the determining factor for its future prospects shifted to center stage. Britain, he contended in 1931, had boxed in anarchic capitalism in Burma through an application of force assembled outside the territory, building not a steel frame for a social order, but rather steel bars for an economic system.
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His own paternalistic proposal of transitional foreign mentorship was already outdated by the time it was made in the late 1940s, and power passed decisively into the hands of indigenous leaders.
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The central task facing them in January 1948 was to build both the nation and the state so visibly absent by the twilight of the colonial period.

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Dominion and dissent

At 4:20 on the morning of January 4, 1948, amid fanfare and expectation, Burma threw off the dependence that for decades had been its political condition and confronted the world as a sovereign state. Dominion no longer rested in British hands or Japanese, and the country was not even a member of the British Commonwealth. In formal political terms, the future was now a matter for Burmese people alone to determine. At the same time, however, the new Union of Burma was ravaged not only by warfare conducted on its territory in brutal and devastating campaigns that saw first Japan drive out Britain and then Britain evict Japan, but also by social disintegration occasioned by colonialism and capitalism. The task facing political leaders was thus substantial and complex, for as well as guiding the ship of state they needed to build a nation to provide ballast and stability. This chapter examines the 40 years from 1948 to 1988 that saw them largely fail on both counts. It looks first at democratic Burma from 1948 to 1962, second at revolutionary Burma from 1962 to 1974, third at socialist Burma from 1974 to 1988, and finally at Burma in revolt in the middle months of 1988. It argues that the campaign for dominion that properly exercised the political class was pursued so aggressively by governing elites that far from unifying the nation in the state, it ultimately had the opposite effect of provoking widespread dissent and triggering both regime collapse and still greater social dislocation.

Democratic Burma

At the start of its democratic journey, Burma was identified as one of the most promising postcolonial states in Asia with good political and legal institutions, plentiful natural resources, solid infrastructure, and excellent human capital.
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In April 1948, Thompson’s conclusion to a balanced survey was upbeat: “Storm clouds undoubtedly hang on Burma’s horizon, but at the moment they seem neither very near nor very black.”
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In 1965, Nash set a detailed analysis of village life against a backdrop of the country’s great “potential of success.”
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In 1979, William L. Scully and Frank N. Trager wrote of “This once potential Camelot.”
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However, the destructive effects of warfare that leveled much of the country, plus partisan tension expressed tragically in the assassination of wartime leader and independence hero Aung San, indicated that development was always going to be difficult.
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At a superficial level, AFPFL Prime Minister Nu, student protester in the 1930s and nationalist leader in the 1940s, could not hope to fill the void.
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As Donnison put it in 1956, Aung San “alone was able to unite his people, speak for them, and give expression to their spirit as no one else had done since the days of Alaungpaya.”
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Tinker wrote in similar terms.
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At a deeper level Burma, a new country of some 17 million people, simply faced enormous political, economic and social challenges. In April 1947, a correspondent for
The Times
predicted that “Only some form of dictatorship, either of a man or a party, can bring order to Burma and maintain it.”
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In 1949 Furnivall wrote that, “the members of the new Government were just ordinary men, bubbling over with ideas and good intentions, but representative of modern Burma under British rule and with the inevitable limitations of their education and environment.”
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In actual fact it took fewer than three months for the new state to be threatened by what Maung Maung called an “epidemic of insurrections,” and less than six months for it to become embroiled in civil conflict.
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In key respects this was merely an extension of colonial experience, marked throughout by violence and in the final years by a proliferation of
tats.
Extensive militarization in the Second World War left Burma awash with arms and greatly compounded the problem, making nascent democratic authority subject to contestation on a broad front. By the time Aung San was killed, even the PVO had veered toward communism and away from the more moderate position taken by AFPFL leaders. Clearly not everything was bleak for Burma’s emergent establishment, and across much of the land local militias played critical roles not in challenging the state, but rather in defending it. Indeed, in many places government-sponsored “peace guerrillas” were agents of order.
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Nevertheless, from the moment of independence two major internal challenges threatened destruction. One was communist mobilization with parallels in other parts of postcolonial Asia. The other was ethnic rebellion, also found elsewhere but taking a notably complex form in Burma.
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The first major revolt flourished an ideological banner. In March 1946 the important CPB split into Red and White Flag factions, and in July of the same year Red Flag leaders went underground to launch an insurgency. However, the more potent CPB challenge came at the end of March 1948, when the White Flag faction also moved into insurrection. From mid-1948, Muslim Arakanese, Karen, Kachin and Mon forces also fomented rebellion, with the Karen National Defense Organization in the vanguard.
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In 1948–49 it succeeded in capturing key territory and communications facilities. At the end of January 1949 it even closed in on the capital city, and Nu was said derisively to head only the “Rangoon government.”
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Furthermore, army mutinies feeding many insurgencies depleted military forces charged with defending the young democracy. Callahan writes that “by the time Gen. Ne Win assumed the position of armed forces commander in chief in February 1949, he commanded fewer than two thousand troops, many of whom were of questionable reliability.”
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While not every insurrection posed a mortal threat, some did. Evaluating the situation in August 1949, Furnivall argued that “There is little danger that Burma will go Communist, but great danger that it may go to pieces.”
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During the course of 1949 and into 1950, however, government units and local leaders managed to turn the tide on the fragmentary and divided forces they faced.
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“Rebel bands are still at large in the hills, but they do not now threaten to disrupt the Union,” wrote Edward M. Law Yone and David G. Mandelbaum in October 1950.
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They argued that Burma was poised to become “a model of reconstruction in southern Asia.”
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Callahan notes that across much of the nation “alliances between center and upcountry leaders to pacify the countryside led to accommodational processes that began bringing more and more rural and local politicos into Rangoon on a regular basis.”
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The stage was apparently set for a more assured period of political and institutional consolidation. Norman Lewis’s
Golden Earth
, a 1952 travelogue, reports on this moment in Burmese history.
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Indeed, as the 1950s unfolded, many parts of the state registered significant progress. Tolerably fair general elections were held in 1947, 1951–52, 1956 and 1960. Parliaments assembled and governments were formed.
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A state bureaucracy was rebuilt and an indigenous judiciary put in place. In reaction to the perceived ravages of liberal imperialism, efforts to construct the kind of social democracy envisaged by Aung San and other independence leaders were made through nationalization of some of the economy, creation of a string of government agencies, and installation of cooperatives in urban and rural areas.
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In many policy domains, state functions were revived and set to work. Growth eventually took the economy back to prewar levels of activity, and education and social sectors experienced expansion. A Burmese welfare state began to emerge.
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Civil society developed through a vibrant associational culture.
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Village life picked up, and essential land reforms were implemented.
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Surveying the scene in 1953, Maung Maung pointed to encouraging factors associated with Nu’s August 1952
pyidawtha
(happy land) program of welfare reforms.
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In 1956, Janet Welsh testified to the “astounding progress” registered by Nu’s AFPFL government.
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In 1957, Tinker argued that “Of the nations of South East Asia Burma offers the most hope for the eventual foundation of a successful social democracy in the years that are to come.”
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However, behind this façade of progress the harsh reality was that the political and administrative spheres both functioned poorly, and each was marked by corruption and popular distrust.
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Furthermore, over time party and government structures became increasingly divided, and constantly exhibited only limited capacity to perform routine functions.
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Local implantation of political parties remained haphazard.
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In peripheral parts, ethnic claims made chiefly by Karen leaders in the late 1940s came to equal prominence elsewhere in the mid-1950s.
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In particular, both Arakan on the western seaboard and Shan State in eastern uplands bordering China, Laos and Thailand, were riven with demands for either autonomy or secession.
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Hostility to Burmanization policies associated with the AFPFL often played a key part. Against upbeat assessments made by other contemporary writers, Furnivall wrote that it was a miracle Burma survived down to 1953, and Cady’s conclusion was little different.
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Planning a fieldtrip in the closing months of 1957, Pye sensed that the country was “entering its time of crisis,” and on the ground a few months later found people “anxious to talk politics, to express their concerns with the fate of their land.”
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At the end of 1958, when political problems were all too visible, John H. Badgley held that Burma’s constitution was in danger of collapsing under the pressure of rapid change, and that control could pass to “the most unified social element.” His evaluation was that “Only the military and the Communists now have such national-oriented, disciplined groups.”
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