Living Silence in Burma (4 page)

To give just one example, the legend of the Mahagiri (King of the Mountain) spirit claims he was originally a handsome and strong blacksmith with a growing reputation for his might. The king worried that the blacksmith might eventually try to usurp the throne, so he devised a plan to get rid of him. The king married the blacksmith’s sister, and after some time asked the blacksmith to come to the palace so that he could confer an official title on him. The poor blacksmith arrived suspecting nothing, and was immediately hurled into a fire and burned to death. Upon hearing his anguished cries, his sister was overcome with grief, threw herself in the flames and died too. The brother and sister spirits were so angry at the king’s betrayal that they killed anyone who came near the tree in which they had taken up residence. The king had the tree cut down and discarded in the river. The trunk floated downstream to the territory of another king, who decided to give the spirits a proper home. He built them a shrine on Mount Popa and had images of the pair carved, covered in gold and attired in courtly robes.
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Mount Popa is an old volcano which juts straight out of the plains behind the ancient capital of Pagan, and the two
nats
became known as the protector spirits for Pagan and all who came to worship them. Eventually, the Mahagiri
nat
became the household guardian spirit, with
many rural Burmese even today presenting coconut offerings for him in their homes.

The cultivation of the
nats
, which represented separate and uncontrollable sources of power, marked a symbolic challenge to the kings, who were trying to unify power under their own rule. Burma’s first empire-building king, Anawrahta, went so far as to chain up a set of the thirty-seven
nat
images in a cave to signify that their power had been contained. Beginning with Anawrahta, Burmese kings promoted Theravada Buddhism, which emphasized the need for each individual to focus on his or her own spiritual path in order to achieve a higher rebirth and, eventually, freedom from the cycle of birth and death altogether. Kings served as the patrons of the Buddhist religion, supporting the Buddhist clergy and commissioning the construction of pagodas and monasteries.

Although Burman kings ultimately depended on the threat of force to maintain their rule, they were still believed to have obtained such high positions because of meritorious deeds in their past lives. Moreover, through their support of the monkhood and pagoda-building projects, they were seen as providing spiritual benefits to their subjects.

Burman kings often waged war in the name of Buddhism, and Anawrahta invaded the Mon kingdom in lower Burma in 1057 with the justification that the Mon king had refused to give him a copy of the Theravada Buddhist scriptures. After sacking the Mon capital, he moved large numbers of Mon scholars and monks back to his capital in Pagan to disseminate Theravada Buddhist teaching and culture. The Burmese script and Burmese literature were subsequently developed from Mon, which had its origins in the Pali and Sanskrit languages of India. As Theravada Buddhism spread throughout the plains, monks began teaching boys in the villages to read and write so they could deepen their knowledge of Buddhist teachings. As a result, literacy in pre-colonial Burma was widespread.

Like the predominantly Buddhist Mons and Arakanese, Burmans later associated the rule of their kings with the glorification of the Buddhist faith. After the British conquered Burma, some of the most prominent resisters were monks, who felt that their religion was being slighted.

British rule

British merchants first entered Burmese waters in the 1600s, and they soon began to exchange weapons in return for trading concessions. In 1824, the British seized the Tenasserim and Arakan regions (now south-eastern and south-western Burma), after Burman forces entered
British-controlled territory in pursuit of fleeing political opponents. The British went on to annex lower Burma in 1852–53 and central and northern Burma in 1885–86, in part to counterbalance growing French influence in the region.
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The British originally ruled Burma as an appendage of India, but they also brought with them Western notions of states as fixed and bounded, and they quickly set about delineating their territory. Parts of the mountainous ‘frontier areas’, which had never been under any lowland kingdom’s direct rule, were mapped into Burma and many hill populations ended up split between Burma and neighbouring countries.
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This was of little concern to the colonial officials, who relied on existing princes, chiefs and headmen to collect taxes, but otherwise rarely interfered in local affairs. In the plains, however, the British ruled directly, banishing the king and his immediate family to exile in India.

In the mountainous areas, after initial resistance to British rule had been quelled, acceptance of colonial government was surprisingly widespread. In part, this was because the British froze local rulers’ power, rather than eliminating them. While most Burmans bitterly resented colonial domination, some Karens and other upland minorities considered the period of British rule as a golden age, because lowland armies no longer came through on war campaigns against neighbouring realms.
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Moreover, the colonial regime allowed missionaries to establish schools and hospitals throughout the country, including in the hill areas, providing hill peoples with much-appreciated access to education and healthcare. Many Karens, Karennis, Kachins and Chins converted to Christianity.
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The British also encouraged ethnic minorities to join the colonial defence force, which was organized into ethnic-based battalions, while limiting and later dismissing ethnic Burman troops.
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From the British perspective, by keeping the peoples in the hills divided from the people in the plains, it was easier to maintain control.

The British were able to generate substantial revenue from Burma’s rich agricultural lands and natural resources. Besides exporting great quantities of rice, the colonial government and the British East India Company focused their energies on extractive industries such as teak, petroleum, tin and gems. To move these goods, they established a network of roads, railroads and river transport. Eager for more manpower, they encouraged the immigration of Chinese and Indians, particularly men. Indian peasants flocked to newly opened cultivation areas in lower Burma, while Indian clerks were brought in to staff the civil service and to serve in the defence force. Many Indians and Chinese also created
niches for themselves in the commercial sector, transporting goods and setting up their own shops and businesses.

In the plains, the British government introduced a civil service and legal codes so that administration and justice would operate efficiently and uniformly. Although determined to maintain law and order so business could flourish, the British also believed that the new system offered the Burmese an improvement over what they saw as the arbitrary exercise of power by kings and their officials in the past. Nevertheless, most Burmans were not happy to be under foreign rule, and the colonial government faced opposition from several quarters. During the first years of British occupation, guerrilla forces sprang up throughout the countryside to attack British troops and their garrisons. Even after the rural revolts had been quelled, resentment simmered.

Monks and lay people were particularly incensed by what they perceived as British disrespect towards Buddhism. The British refused to take off their shoes in monasteries, as was required by local custom. Many Burmese were also upset that the colonial administration would not instal a new religious patron to replace the banished king. In 1906, the Young Men’s Buddhist Association, modelled on the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), was formed to address religious and social issues. In 1917, the more political General Council of Burmese Associations (GCBA) was established. This association set up chapters around the country and provided gathering places for monks, intellectuals and others committed to nationalist causes.

U Ottama and U Wisara, two monks who had travelled abroad, took up politics to promote the protection of Buddhism. The colonial government arrested them for making seditious speeches against the British, but the arrests served only to increase their support. To protest against the colonial government’s regulation forbidding the wearing of monks’ robes in prison, U Wisara engaged in a hunger strike, which lasted 166 days, until his death.
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This ultimate sacrifice profoundly moved many Burmese who had not concerned themselves with politics before.

Resistance to the British in the early days tended to look to the past for inspiration, recalling the days when Burmese kings had promoted Buddhism for the benefit of all. As students began to return from studies in the West, however, they brought back new ideas about representative government and democratic practices. Lending libraries opened with wide assortments of books. Those with a thirst for knowledge could plunge into Western philosophy, history and economics. Over time, Burmese demands shifted from seeking the restoration of the monarchy to
calling for the establishment of an independent Burmese state with a modern form of government.

University and high-school students played an instrumental role in developing a new political consciousness, which combined a commitment to Buddhism with a desire for independence and a progressive form of government. In 1920, students organized a strike when the colonial government proposed to establish Rangoon University, but limit entrance to an elite few who would be trained as bureaucrats for the colonial regime. The students demanded wider access and a more comprehensive curriculum. On 5 December 1920, they gathered at the symbolic centre of Rangoon, the Shwedagon Pagoda, where relics of the Buddha were believed to be enshrined. Refusing to return to school until their demands were met, they camped out at the pagoda and set up their own classes. Finally, the administration relented, but the strike served as the impetus for the development of National Schools, Burmese-run institutions which were independent of the British educational system.

Resentment about being treated as second-class citizens in their own country led a group of students to begin calling themselves
thakin
, or ‘master’, to emphasize that Burmese were the rightful rulers of their country. The
thakin
movement, which also encouraged wearing traditional homespun clothing rather than Western apparel, was formalized through the establishment of the Dobama Asiayone, or ‘We Burmans Association’, in the early 1930s. As local chapters formed throughout the country, they became hubs of political activity.
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In 1936, student demonstrations broke out again after two university students, both of whom later became prominent political figures, were expelled. Nu, the head of the student union, publicly called for an overhaul of the university’s teaching staff and curriculum. Aung San, the editor of the student magazine, refused to divulge the identity of the author of an article entitled ‘Hellhound at large’, which defamed one of the university administrators. Demanding their reinstatement, fellow students refused to return to classes and again headed to the Shwedagon Pagoda. The strike continued for several months and spread to colleges and high schools in other parts of the country.

In 1938, university student union members and Dobama Asiayone chapters joined with industrial workers to organize a march from the oilfields in central Burma to the capital in Rangoon. Such strikes, boycotts and demonstrations reflected the growing organizational strength of the Burmese nationalists. The newspapers, magazines and independent associations which emerged helped to spread their message.

Peasants also took action after the worldwide depression hit Burma in 1929. Burmese farmers suffered tremendously as rice prices dropped and taxes became harder to pay. Many lost their land, in some cases to Indian moneylenders. A charismatic former monk named Saya San spearheaded a mass revolt against British rule which lasted from 1930 to 1932. Thousands of armed peasants attacked colonial offices throughout rural Burma. The British brutally repressed the rebellion and publicly displayed the severed heads of some of their captives. Saya San was captured and hanged, while many more peasants died in battle, some because they had believed their magical tattoos and charms would make them invulnerable to bullets. Although the revolt was unsuccessful, Saya San and his followers’ audacity further stimulated nationalist feelings.

Nationalist passions were also aroused because of the way in which the British had privileged foreigners over the indigenous population. Many Indians and Chinese were prospering through their association with the British, often at the expense of the Burmese. In addition, some Burmese were upset that Burmese women were marrying foreign men or becoming their mistresses. Burmese anger and resentment periodically exploded in the form of anti-Indian and anti-Chinese riots.
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The British introduced new ethnic tensions to Burma, and through their exploitative economic practices turned many against capitalism. The British did eventually introduce limited representative government, however, permitting elected politicians to participate in governance. In 1923, the British handed over some minor decision-making powers to an elected domestic assembly, with the provision that the British governor could veto any decision he did not like. Burmese politicians heatedly debated whether there was any point in participating in such an administration. Conflicts also arose over the reservation of a number of the domestic assembly seats for British commercial interests, Indians and Karens living in the plains. Later, when the issue of separating Burma from India came up, some Burmese opposed it, fearing that the Burmese would be granted fewer political rights than the Indians. Nevertheless, the two countries were separated in 1937, and the British put into effect a new constitution which provided for an elected House of Representatives and an Upper House, half of whose members were elected. Although a number of Burmese politicians enthusiastically contested the elections, the British government’s continued refusal to grant full self-government infuriated many others.