Living Silence in Burma (5 page)

By the late 1930s, young urban nationalists were beginning to look to Asian powers for assistance in establishing an armed resistance
movement. In early 1941, student leader Aung San and twenty-nine colleagues secretly left the country. Later calling themselves the Thirty Comrades, they were given military training by the Japanese army. In January 1942, they crossed from western Thailand into Burma with Japanese troops to free the country from British rule. The British and local forces under British control unsuccessfully fought the Japanese advance into the plains and finally had to make a hasty retreat to India.

Although many Burmese initially viewed the Japanese as their liberators, the Japanese ruled Burma like a conquered territory and their military police terrorized the local population. Aung San, by then a general, and other nationalists became increasingly disillusioned. On 27 March 1945, they began a coordinated resistance movement in cooperation with Allied troops, who marched back into northern Burma from India. Burmese from many different political backgrounds joined together under the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL) to help drive the Japanese out. Once the war was over, the British tried to reinstate colonial rule. But the Burmese nationalists were insistent on independence and organized widespread strikes to make their point. With limited troops available to compel submission, the British began to negotiate with the Burmese nationalists and in January 1947 signed an agreement promising independence within a year.

British colonial rule ended with a mixed legacy for Burma. The transportation infrastructure – in the form of roads, railways and steamships for inland waterways – had been greatly extended, but much of it had been destroyed during the war. A professional civil service had been created and the idea of representative government introduced. The British encouragement of Indian and Chinese immigration, however, and the use of ethnic minorities in the colonial army and police forces, engendered new forms of ethnic tension. Because the British had governed the frontier areas separately from the plains, the peoples in the hills felt little connection to Ministerial Burma, while many Burman leaders were dismissive of the hill people’s concerns and interests.

Independence

Before the British government handed over power, it insisted that the political status of the peoples in the frontier areas be resolved. Burman politicians wanted the frontier areas to join the new union of Burma, but not all ethnic leaders were eager to do so. During the Second World War, some of the ethnic nationalities, such as the Kachins and the Karens, had fought with the British against the Japanese. After the British had fled,
there were incidences of Burman soldiers massacring Karen villagers, and Karens retaliating by killing Burmans. By the end of the war, the Burmans had shifted their support to the Allies, but animosity remained between Burmans and Karens in particular. Moreover, some ethnic leaders had hoped that the British would support their demands for independent statehood.

The one person who seemed to have the vision and diplomatic skills to resolve this problem was General Aung San. The most widely respected Burmese nationalist leader at the time, General Aung San reached out to non-Burmans. He made trips to the hill areas to meet with ethnic leaders, and organized a multi-ethnic conference at the Shan town of Panglong to come up with a political structure which both Burmans and the ethnic nationalities in the frontier areas could accept. Although the Karens attended only as observers and several other minorities were not invited, Kachin, Shan and Chin representatives participated. The concept of a federal union was agreed upon, and ethnic states were to be created with autonomy over their internal affairs.

Burmese leaders were worried that the British would renege on their promise to grant independence, so the constitution for the new union was hurriedly written by an elected constituent assembly dominated by the AFPFL under General Aung San. The constitution stipulated that the new Union of Burma would be ruled by a democratically elected parliament and prime minister. The ethnic states would have their own state councils, whose members would also serve in the union government’s parliament, and the head of each state would automatically be a member of the union government’s cabinet.

Originally, four ethnic states were to be created. The Karenni and Shan states were accorded the right to secede after ten years if they were not happy with their status in the union.
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The Kachin State was not allowed to secede because it consisted partly of territory that had been under Burman control in the past. The Karen State was to be established but, at the time of drafting the constitution, there were still serious disagreements over its boundaries. Much of the Karen population was scattered across lower Burma, but Burman leaders would not agree to incorporate these areas, which also contained significant Burman and other populations, into Karen State. The Chins did not ask for a state, and the Mons and Arakanese were not offered states. A provision was included, however, for the possible formation of new states in the future.
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The states had little real autonomy in practice, in part because they depended on financial support from the central government.
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Within most of the ethnic groups, there were people who were willing to join the new union as well as people who were adamantly opposed to it. Thus, as the constitution drafting took place, groups of Karens, Karennis, Mons, Buddhist Arakanese and Muslims in Arakan territory began preparing for armed struggle, while the leading Burmese politicians looked for more moderate ethnic representatives with whom they could forge agreements. The failure to resolve adequately the ethnic nationalities’ demands through the constitutional drafting process set the conditions for outbreaks of violence later.

Had General Aung San lived, perhaps Burma’s history would have been different. On 19 July 1947, U Saw, an ambitious senior politician, had his gunmen assassinate the thirty-two-year-old general and most of his cabinet. Apparently expecting the British to ask him to form a new government, U Saw was instead immediately arrested and executed the following year. Whether other individuals or organizations were also involved in the plot remains a mystery.
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Despite the loss of some of its foremost leaders, Burma became independent on 4 January 1948, at 4.20 a.m. This early hour was selected by Burmese astrologers as the most propitious for the country’s new beginning. The AFPFL took power with the devoutly Buddhist statesman U Nu as the country’s first prime minister.

The decade from 1948 to 1958 was Burma’s first experiment with full democracy. Citizens were able to elect their own representatives, and policies were widely debated in the parliament as well as in independent newspapers and tea shops. People could speak freely, and hopes were high that Burma would prosper. Nevertheless, Burma’s new political leaders faced enormous problems. There were not enough trained Burmese professionals, because most government posts had been held by foreigners. Many Indian civil servants had fled during the Second World War, afraid of what the Burmans might do to them once the British were gone. The country was still recovering from the massive destruction and displacement caused during the war, guns were readily available, and banditry was wreaking havoc in much of the countryside.
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Of even greater concern, several groups sought to bypass the electoral process and wrest power by force, challenging the stability of the new government. The Communist Party, originally a member of the AFPFL, split into two factions and both went underground. The Red Flag branch had decided to take up arms even before independence, and the much larger White Flag branch followed suit in March 1948. Determined to institute a communist state through an armed revolution, both groups
relocated to jungle strongholds and sought to mobilize local populations around issues of land reform. The armed People’s Volunteer Organization (PVO), which had been set up by General Aung San for Second World War veterans, also turned into an insurgent group.

Meanwhile, on 31 January 1949, Karen forces turned on the struggling government. Karen and Burman leaders had been unable to agree on the boundaries of a new Karen State and communal tensions had been growing, leading many Karens in the Burma Army to mutiny and join local Karen defence forces in an armed rebellion. At one point in 1949, the central government controlled little more than the capital city of Rangoon. General Ne Win, however, who replaced a Karen as commander-in-chief of the army, led government troops in slowly pushing the various anti-government forces away from the towns in the plains. Many of the government troops were actually ethnic minorities who were committed to the new federal union. Local militias, or
tats
, working with the socialist faction of the AFPFL, also helped retake control of some of the districts. By 1952, much of the countryside was back in the government’s hands, although it was still too dangerous for trains to run after dark. Passengers had to get off at sunset and could continue their journey only when the sun rose the next morning.

During this period, the Burma Army had to contend with Chinese troops as well. After Mao Zedong took power in 1949, anti-communist Kuomintang troops fled to northern Burma. Hoping to regroup and launch counter-offensives into China, they operated in Burmese territory with the covert support of the United States’ military but without the Burmese government’s permission. Meanwhile, the Chinese government was printing maps showing large parts of northern Burma as belonging to China, and Mao Zedong’s troops were making incursions to chase down the Kuomintang. The government in Rangoon tried to use diplomacy to settle its problems with China, while also sending Burmese troops on operations to root out the Kuomintang in Shan State. The Burmese troops acted like a conquering force, however, mistreating Shan villagers and causing many Shans to question whether joining the union had been the right decision.
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In central Burma, the government set about trying to rebuild the economy and introducing development projects. Committed to the idea of a welfare state, the government initiated a mass education programme in the rural areas and made public education free. Land reform programmes redistributed some of the land that had ended up in the hands of foreigners and absentee landlords during the colonial period. Low-interest
loans were issued to farmers, and money was allocated for communities to build wells, roads, schools and reading rooms.

Despite the government’s good intentions, many of the social welfare programmes had little impact because of problems of implementation. The national leaders saw the need to help communities, but they did not incorporate people at the community level into the design of the programmes. Thus, the projects did not always fit with community needs, and villagers felt little commitment to the programmes. At the same time, some politicians tied the provision of welfare programmes to political allegiance. If local leaders could bring in the vote for a certain politician, he would reward them with government projects.
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The concept of a legal opposition was still new and often resisted. The political parties of the day sought to monopolize power and eliminate their opposition altogether. The idea that the opposition could play a constructive role in offering different points of view had no roots in Burma. Opposition in the past had always been understood as insubordination, and politicians in the 1950s found it difficult to negotiate, compromise or work together with political representatives from other factions and parties.

Too often, politicians undermined democratic principles in order to maintain their positions. Political debates in parliament often degenerated into mud-slinging and name-calling, and some politicians even resorted to underhanded techniques to disempower their rivals. Members of the ruling party sometimes accused more left-leaning rivals of being communists and had them imprisoned, although the courts would release them if there was a lack of evidence. Politicians even tried to use student organizations as proxies in their struggles against rival political parties. In the 1950s, there were two university student unions: the Democratic Students’ Organization, which strongly supported the ruling party, and the Students’ United Front, which was more leftist-leaning and had some associations with communists. The activities of university students became absurdly politicized, with even a demand for the extension of a university holiday becoming a ‘leftist–rightist’ issue.

Meanwhile, in towns and rural areas, private armies in the pay of politicians were sometimes used to intimidate and even murder opposition party members and their supporters. Villagers found that the best way to survive the violence and political rivalries was to stay as neutral as possible, and to demonstrate political allegiance only to the party that was clearly going to win.

Nevertheless, U Nu’s government managed the country’s foreign
relations wisely. Given Burma’s geographical position between two powerful neighbours, India and China, the government adopted a neutralist foreign policy. Burma was outward-looking in its trade policies and participated actively in international affairs.
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At the same time, U Nu often intertwined his deeply Burmese religious and cultural sensibilities with the country’s politics. He devoted much energy to promoting Buddhism through sponsoring meditation programmes for lay people and organizing a Buddhist synod, which brought together monks from all over Burma and other Buddhist countries. Although the state was officially secular, U Nu was establishing himself as the patron of Buddhism in much the same way that Burmese kings had in the past.

U Nu’s willingness to place religious concerns above ongoing political crises irritated more educated, urban politicians and intellectuals but did not bother less worldly villagers. At one point, U Nu took a forty-five-day leave of absence from his job as prime minister to meditate at Mount Popa, the home of the Mahagiri
nat
discussed earlier. Despite the fact that the country was facing urgent problems, villagers in upper Burma reportedly supported his decision. Because U Nu’s horoscope indicated that this period was inauspicious for him, the villagers believed U Nu was doing the country a favour by temporarily removing himself from national politics.
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