Burmese Society Research Articles

Development and Dilemmas of Mass Democratic Identity Construction in the Context of the Myanmar Coup: An Analysis of Political Narratives

This study examines the process of mass democratic identity construction in Myanmar and delineates the distinct characteristics of the government's political narratives during the period of Myanmar's democratic reform. The research finds that Myanmar managed to establish a democratic identity that continues to exhibit resilience in the aftermath of the coup. This resilience, observed at the level of political narratives, can be attributed to the transcultural features of ideological construction and the prominent influence of Buddhism, both well-suited to Myanmar's deep-seated social and religious foundations. However, following the coup, the loss of agency by the original narrative source, combined with the long-standing issues within Burmese society, has resulted in several political dilemmas hampering the development of democratic consciousness. These dilemmas are characterized by an immature democratic political culture, underdeveloped civil society, and frequent ethnic conflicts. The underlying reasons for these challenges can be traced back to the limitations of democratic political culture during Myanmar's democratic reform period and the absence of historical and cultural foundations in the country's democratic political system, which may constrain the long-term development of democratic consciousness following changes in the power structure.

The Necessity of a Polycentric Federal Democracy in Myanmar

Abstract The military coup of February 1, 2021 ended Myanmar’s nominal transition to democracy. That transition had begun with the 2010 election under the military-drafted 2008 Constitution. The coup and post-coup Myanmar’s crises are the tip of the iceberg of a long endured political crisis about how to build an inclusive political system that respects the ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity of Burmese society at large. This article argues that the 2021 military coup itself may be a much-needed event for the future history of Burma: the coup has provoked resistance across ethnicity and religion to an unprecedented level.

Editor’s Note: Special Issue: Gender and Social Change in Myanmar

Editor’s NoteSpecial Issue: Gender and Social Change in Myanmar Jane M. Ferguson The Myanmar military’s 1 February 2021 coup d’etat of the elected government quickly provoked widespread protests, namely the Civil Disobedience Movement and the Spring Revolution. During the earliest days of these manifestations, people of various gender identities were at the forefront of the demands for political change. They made use of numerous creative tactics to fight the military’s political imposition and to bring their grievances to the public sphere. Following the government’s brutal suppression of the nonviolent protests emerged the organization of People’s Defense Forces. In the years since, fighting, repression, and resistance continue. Now, as ever, it is imperative to interrogate how gender—as produced, experienced, and mobilized—operates across cultural fields, and relates to social transformation in Myanmar. Using nuanced, dynamic methodologies, the four research articles in this special issue of The Journal of Burma Studies take up that challenge. They reconsider gender in varied contexts of social activism, everyday practices, identity politics, and religious histories. Gender discourses in Myanmar are reforged through the work of many different agents, from renunciants to punks, to revolutionaries, and to keyboard warriors. Powerful ideologies are confirmed, [End Page 1] reinvented, and modified in complex and often contradictory ways. Superstitious Fabrications? The Revolution’s Secret Weapon Two articles in this special issue foreground a seemingly anomalous protest strategy: using some pieces of cloth to fight an armed-to-the-hilt military. Through their creative use of women’s htamein (sarong-like skirts), protesters have drawn attention to—even weaponized—a specific gender taboo, a taboo which is sometimes considered particular to the region. In their article for this special issue, “Our Htamein, Our Flag, Our Victory: The Role of Young Women in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution,” Marlar, Justine Chambers, and Elena use an intersectional approach to explore how status is interrogated by other types of difference, namely those of gender, age, and class. They argue that during past decade, Myanmar has witnessed important shifts in gender roles, and these present new vistas for solidarity and ways to imagine a more democratic political future. As they argue, the movement’s use of htamein and menstrual pads were part of a public rallying strategy. Through these methods, protesters stand in defiance of the patriarchal and misogynist ideologies of the military. On a related vein, Aye Lei Tun’s article in this issue, “Deconstructing and Reinforcing Gender Norms and Cultural Taboos in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution,” offers experiential accounts from the movement and explores the use of htamein in the Spring Revolution. The article also pivots to analyze how some of the activists’ symbolic attacks mobilized a repertoire that included sexist ideologies as part of their strategies to shame high-status members of the government, as well [End Page 2] as their families and associates. In sum, social transformations are inextricably gendered, and these times of tremendous upheaval demand further questioning. Let’s not skirt the issue raised by both articles: what is special about these items of women’s clothing and absorbent plastic pads in Myanmar, and what makes them so powerful? The general explanation is as follows: mainstream culture in Myanmar, as with that of other societies in the region, treats women’s genitalia and menstrual blood as dirty and polluting. They are therefore considered disgusting, off-limits, and treated with disdain. By contact or even mere association, women’s skirts, nether garments, and menstrual pads carry this taboo as well. In Buddhist temple compounds’ stupa enclosures, posted signs explicitly prohibit women from entering; their bodies are deemed to have the nefarious power to harm sacred relics. Menstrual blood has a contemporary enemy vivant: men. Any contact with a man is perceived to obliterate his hpon, or his special masculine energy. According to anthropologist Melford Spiro (1991), Burmese society locates presence of hpon specifically on a combination of the “sexual anatomy” and a “psycho-spiritual entity”; in short, as argued, the penis is a noble golden flower whereas the vagina is an ignoble polluting organ (Spiro 1991:534). Floral stigma notwithstanding, ideas about hpon and its threats have a profound impact on everyday life...

Creating Demand and Creating Knowledge Communities: Myanmar/Burmese Buddhist Women, Monk Teachers, and the Shaping of Transnational Teachings

The importance of Abhidhamma (higher doctrine) in Myanmar Buddhist society is well known. However, it is only within the last century that this doctrine has become more accessible to the laity, and specifically to women devotees. Today, women make up the majority of monks’ devotees in the country. Indeed, as this article argues, a major role in increasing the Abhidhamma’s importance and visibility in Burmese society has been played by women. Although monks such as Ledi Sayadaw (1846–1923) reworked the teachings to make them more accessible to the laity, laywomen seem to have played an active role in creating a “demand” for learning the more difficult Buddhist teachings that were previously only available to monastic elites. It may be difficult to find individual female authors or references to women in texts written by monks during the earlier part of the colonial era, yet we can find examples of women displaying agency as part of larger groups. This fact complicates the notion of individual agency that is usually focused on in current research. During the colonial era, a considerable number of literate women were part of a “growing reading public,” and I argue that Burmese laywomen created a “demand” for learning Buddhist doctrine, with monks then creating a “supply”. My suspicions grew regarding women’s “demand” for learning, from multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Myanmar at a village monastery near Meiktila in 2014, and at a suburban house monastery in the San Francisco Bay Area during various visits beginning in 2010. I found that after observing the same teaching monk in both places that one woman student was responsible for creating these “knowledge communities” after creating a “demand” to learn the Abhidhamma. I was also able to learn how this monk’s doctrinal content and pedagogical methods of his teaching practice had been impacted not only by the different teaching environments, but also by the female students at the two sites.

The campaign of the lost footsteps: the pacification of Burma, 1885-95

ABSTRACT What Rudyard Kipling called the ‘campaign of lost footsteps’ was the longest campaign fought by the Victorian army. The conquest of Upper Burma, an area of 140,000 sq. miles with a population of four million, took only three weeks in November 1885 and was accomplished with minimum cost. However, the removal and deportation of the Burmese King and dismantling of all traditional authority dismantled led to growing resistance to British rule leading to an increasingly difficult guerrilla war. Though the Burmese guerrillas were characterised by the British as mere bandits or dacoits, many were former soldiers along with Buddhist monks. The extremely difficult nature of campaigning in the terrain and climate of Burma was not sufficiently appreciated by the War Office, who viewed the conflict as a ‘subaltern’s war’ and ‘police’ work. Intended regime change was also not accompanied by any consideration of the likely implications. Prolonged insurgency necessitated deploying a force far larger than originally intended; though order was finally secured by 1895, the campaign proved destructive of Burmese society while British recruitment of hill tribes into the police and armed forces sowed the seeds for future divisions.

Southeast Asia. Women in Southeast Asian nationalist movements: A biographical approach Edited by Susan Blackburn and Helen Ting Singapore: NUS Press, 2013. Pp. 334. Maps, Photographs, Bibliography, Index.

Women in Southeast Asian nationalist movements: A biographical approach Edited by susan blackburn and helen ting Singapore: NUS Press, 2013. Pp. 334. Maps, Photographs, Bibliography, Index. Susan Blackburn and Helen Ting's anthology, Women in Southeast Asian nationalist movements, tells fascinating stories of 12 women who have been socially, politically, and militarily active in anti-colonial and independence struggles in seven countries in Southeast Asia from the early twentieth century to the present day. Each chapter is devoted to the life story of one or two women, most of whom have been forgotten or undervalued, despite considerable contributions to their respective struggles. What readers will see in this book are vivid and colourful stories of these women as independent journalists and writers; as professional military and intelligence officers; as fervent and stubborn guerrilla fighters in jungles; and as capable educators, propagandists, and politicians. As a whole, this anthology challenges conventional, male-dominated national histories, and convincingly shows that the histories of anti-colonial and independence movements in Southeast Asia cannot be written without recognising the considerable contributions made by women. What is particularly successful about this book is the method used in each chapter: a biographical approach that focuses on an individual's life story. In taking this classic and recently reappraised approach, the book successfully sheds light on the lives of a number of women, adding nuance to our understandings of decolonisation in Southeast Asia and further complicating long-standing discussions of relationships between women and nationalism. For example, Chie Ikeya tells the story of a forgotten woman (chap. 1), an independent and prolific Burmese writer and journalist, Daw San, who founded a popular weekly newspaper in the 1930s. Beyond simply introducing her life, Ikeya analyses the reason behind the amnesia, locating it in Daw San's unconventional attitudes and ways of life, which challenge existing norms concerning gender and femininity in Burmese society (p. 40). Most chapters, like Ikeya's, aim at shedding light on forgotten women and their roles in history, but some intend to reveal new aspects of well-known women. Micheline Lessard, for instance, focuses on the life of Nguyen Thi Giang, who, in today's Vietnam, is generally remembered in a dramatic and romanticised fashion as a tragic lovelorn woman who committed suicide after witnessing her husband's execution (chap. 2). In this chapter, however, she is depicted as a capable and professional propagandist and intelligence officer, who was even specifically watched by French intelligence due to her prominent roles. Lessard, thus, describes her suicide less as that of a tragic wife than as an officer in sheer despair (p. 70). In addition, this book's biographical approach is useful in analysing these women's motivations for joining their movements. To be sure, some were hard-core activists, like Nguyen Thi Giang, who from the beginning hoped for the independence of her homeland from French colonialism. However, several of them joined their movements for non-ideological and non-political reasons. Vatthana Pholsena tells the stories of two Laotian women who joined anti-colonial revolutionary movements in Laos largely as a result of their desire for a better education (chap. 8). In such cases, as Pholsena aptly describes, more politically-inspired motivations, whether faith in communism or hope for the liberation of women, matured progressively over the course of their struggles (pp. 207-8). This approach also reveals that family contexts often had crucial impacts on the lives and careers of these women. Welyne J. Jehom (chap. 7) provides a glimpse of the life of Lily Eberwein, a Western-educated and English-speaking Eurasian, who, following the early death of her Eurasian father, converted to Islam, adjusted to her mother's social and cultural contexts, and adopted Malay culture, language, identity, and, eventually, the political movement against the cession of Sarawak to British colonialism. …

The Village System and Burmese Society: Problems Involved in the Enforcement Process of the Upper Burma Village Regulation of 1887

Many historians who have written about the administrative changes implemented in Upper Burma at the end of the 19th century have focused on the village system and the Upper Burma Village Regulation of 1887. They emphasize the transformation of the precolonial local administration, particularly the abolition of the position of myothugyi as an outcome of the introduction of the village system. However, their descriptions pay little attention to local society, simply regarding it as a passive subject affected by colonialism. Thus, in order to elucidate the relation between the colonial administrative policy and local society, this article re-examines the village system and illustrates how the system developed at the district level, by focusing on the early arguments. After investigating the arguments of the central government and district officials on the village system, the article highlights the significance of additional regulatory rules introduced in 1890, and the case of the Shwebo District to reinforce the article’s arguments.

Burmese Community's Beliefs on Inconsolable Crying.

Burmese Community's Beliefs on Inconsolable Crying.

Myanmar. The authority of influence: Women and power in Burmese history. By Jessica Harriden. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 2012. Pp. 370. Index.

The authority of influence: Women and power in Burmese history By JESSICA HARRIDEN Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 2012. Pp. 370. Index. doi: 10.1017/S0022463413000489 The authority of influence provides an overview of the development of Burmese women's role in their country's history. The author appears to include some ethnic minority women such as Olive Yang, Kokang state patroness during the 1960s, and a few representatives of other major minorities such as the Karen and Shan in this review. The book may have begun life as a doctoral thesis which has been slightly revised. Although it was published in 2012, the main perspective of the writing appears to be prior to the 2010 elections and the subsequent initiation of the reform processes, the major focus is on the misdeeds of the former military government. The author skips through many centuries of Burmese history up to the colonial takeover from 1826 up to 1885 with a general rendition of the historical trajectory, but without, however, contributing any innovative insights. The main conceptual framework appears to be that Burmese women (read also ethnic minority women) occupy a subordinate place in both Burmese history and society, but exert influence on their menfolk through their marriages and family connections. One feels like remarking, is this not also the way of the world in other societies both in the past and currently? The author singles out a few historical exceptions such as Queen Me Nu, consort to King Bagyidaw, and Queen Supayalat, consort to the last Konbaung dynasty monarch, King Thihaw, whose uncharacteristic accessions were marked by the usual distasteful bloodletting resulting in the loss of the kingdom to the invading foreign forces. No new perspectives are however given to the reader about these historical figures and their rather pedestrian interpretation and portrayals are standard fare. When one arrives at the redoubtable, revolver-toting, drug-smuggling Olive Yang, about whom there is already a very good biography, one might be forgiven for anticipating that at last the author will have found an exciting, atypical female to examine critically. But alas, Olive is passed over with only cursory treatment despite her very modern lifestyle and lesbian film-star lover. The author's description of some of the women involved in the exile movement and the long-running civil war promised greater reward and some of the information proferred about these females is revealing. However, not enough is made of this information and in the final analysis the author admits that they too were unable to rise to real power in their movements, but were mostly relegated to that subordinate role of influence without power which she sees as the province of most Burmese women. …

Towards a national culture: chinlone and the construction of sport in post-colonial Myanmar

Chinlone (cane-ball) is a game that involves one to six players who form a circle and aim to keep a ball afloat using primarily their feet, thighs and other parts of the body (with the exception of the hands). Lacking an opponent, the game is regarded as cooperative rather than competitive, and has held a place in early Burmese society as far back as the early thirteenth century. The transformation of chinlone into a national sport parallels efforts to integrate the nation following independence from British colonial rule in 1948. As part of a larger programme to conserve, construct and codify a national culture, chinlone provided nation-builders with a physical activity that was deemed authentically Burmese while amenable to modern definitions of sport. Attempts to discipline chinlone through the standardization of rules, playing courts and approved techniques illustrate priorities of cultural heritage management that would embody the twentieth-century conceptions of Burmese national identity. At one level, contemporary chinlone is both the product of and a response to the projects of modernity that pervaded Asia through the encounter with colonialism. At another level, chinlone has also been conceptualized through its association with religious festivals that mark the Buddhist calendar cycle. This paper explores the shaping of sport in colonial and post-colonial Myanmar, arguing that both representations of chinlone are engaged in and enabled by ideas of the modern.

At the Margins of Empire: Feminist-Nationalist Configurations of Burmese Society in the Hindi Public (1917–1920)

Embedded in early twentieth-century discourses on modernity, feminism, and nationalism, and written for the newly emerging woman reader, Rameshwari Nehru's Hindi account of Burmese women was an experiment in ethnographic writing. Along with the speeches she delivered in Burma (all reprinted in the Hindi women's periodical Stri Darpan), she also used the ethnography to call for the social and political mobilization of Burmese and Indian women. Nehru revisited the relationship between India and Burma in the gendered and elite terms of Indian (mostly Hindu) nationalism and social feminism. In describing a supposed intact social structure found in Burma, her motive was to portray a woman subject that was not modeled on prevalent conceptions of “the Western woman,” but that originated in the neighborhood of the colonial present. In the process, as this paper argues, Nehru appropriated colonial discourses on Indian and Burmese womanhood, while she also absorbed Burma into her vision of Indian nationhood and imagined sisterhood.

Understanding Prostitutes and Prostitution in Democratic Burma, 1942–62

Prostitution in Burmese society, as in many South East Asian countries, is a taboo subject. Unlike prostitution in countries such as Thailand, however, prostitution in Burma does not attract strong media or scholarly debate. The state and the media in Burma, during both colonial and post-colonial periods, have tended and tend to see the problem of prostitution as one of ‘others’. Colonialism, a decline in morality and the corruption of women influenced by modernity or Western culture have often been portrayed as the culprits. This article analyses the Burmese terms for prostitutes and examines how prostitution was portrayed by the print media between 1942 and 1962, during which time the press was thought to have enjoyed a certain degree of freedom. Seen as a threat to the British troops during the colonial period, prostitutes were subject to controversial medical screenings; yet, seen as victims of modernity during Burma's parliamentary period (1948–62), they were often left on their own to ‘resurrect’ their morality.

Muslim Identity and Demography in the Arakan State of Burma

Burma (or today’s Mayanmar) is a country of many nations – many races, ethnicities and religions. Racism runs deep and acts like a double-edged knife cutting through the fabric of the Burmese society, justifying hostility against disparate groups that have nothing in common either in language or in religion. And no group is treated as inhumanly as the Rohingya people of Burma, who live in the northwestern Arakan (Rakhine) state, bordering Bangladesh. The Burmese military government has denied them their citizenship rights declaring that they were a legacy of the British Colonization period whose forefathers had immigrated from Bengal (today’s Bangladesh). Its draconian measures and unfathomable atrocities and harassment have forced millions of the Rohingya to live either as stateless people in its own soil or as unwanted refugees elsewhere. In this paper, the author examines the Rohingya issue tracing their history of settlement in Arakan and shows that far from the propaganda of the Myanmar regime and racists within the Burmese and Rakhine society, the Rohingyas are the Bhumiputras (Adibashis) – the genuine children of the land of Arakan. The author opines that the only way Myanmar can survive and evolve into a civilized state is not through the brutal and savage arms of injustice, denial, xenophobia, abuse and oppression of the minorities but a federal democratic framework that genuinely protects all ensuring their human rights and equality without any discrimination.

Introduction: Communities of interpretation and the construction of modern Myanmar

In the past 120 years, the idea of Myanmar (Burma) has come to be known, produced, and understood through a variety of perspectives that reveal particular and sometimes contested perceptions of the Burmese past, present, and future. One has only to take a cursory glance at our 'living' bibliography to view firsthand the numerous ways in which the subject of Myanmar has been delineated by a wide range of scholars, officials, and commentators over time and space. (1) From the proclamations of kings to the official communiques of colonial officers; from the 'classical' architecture of Pagan to the paintings of Sein Myint; through the study of nat (spirits) to the roles of Buddhism--the idea of Myanmar has emerged through a complicated mixture of historical, cultural, and political forms that have been continually shaped by an array of agendas, intellectual influences, and personalities. The discourses that characterise what has been generically spoken of as 'Burmese' are exemplified by the rich exchanges over its histories, institutions, memories, and cultures. Lively debates in scholarship, media, and in local teashops have produced often divergent views about what constitutes the social, political, and cultural domain that is known today as Myanmar. (2) The articles in this symposium represent an attempt to reflect upon the various ways through which predominantly English-writing scholars have produced the idea of Myanmar while suggesting ways in which differing interpretations might be examined together. (3) A useful approach to consider might be found in the concept of 'interpretive communities', in reference to what literary scholars identify as groups of readers (or interpreters) who share distinctive ways of defining, debating, and thinking about their texts. (4) Contributors to 'reader-response' theory have drawn our attention to the processes of interpreting, the strategies employed, and the contexts that produce interpretations rather than the differences in the interpretations themselves. (5) Simply put, our attention might be directed towards understanding how commentators have defined, categorised, and structured Myanmar and its vicissitudes. Examining how a writer's particular experiences can influence how Myanmar is 'read' recognises the diverse processes that lead us to ask certain questions, privilege certain approaches, and utilise certain methods. Attending to the role of those experiences (educational, political, geographical, cultural) and the various ways of writing about Myanmar enables us to examine differing interpretations on somewhat more equal footing while recognising their contribution to its larger epistemological history. For particular groups, the terms employed for describing the Myanmar they encountered may have stemmed from particular discourses of power-relations, such as the terms available to fourteenth-century Chinese emissaries, conceptions of Social Darwinism that informed colonial administrators at the end of the nineteenth century, or more contemporary terms associated with democracy, sanctions, and the 'war on terror'. At the same time, other communities of observers may have conceptualised 'their' Myanmar as a struggle against elites, the British, the Japanese, and even the state itself. In today's context, particular ideas about acceptable forms of governance, political ideology, and notions of legitimacy structure the debate over what Myanmar is, what it has been, and what it may become. (6) This recognition that many communities contribute to the construction of what we might call modern Myanmar draws attention to how shared socio-cultural, intellectual, and political experiences can play an important role in shaping how we understand the process of interpretation, the construction of meaning, and the writing of texts. (7) Travelogues in the nineteenth century paint particular images of the landscape reflecting not only what was deemed symbolic and significant of Burmese culture, but the particularly benign nature of the imperial project's encounter with Burmese society. …

The census and women's work in Rangoon, 1872–1931

The colonial census was a bureaucratic device which provided an essential abstraction from social reality, a ‘statistical fix’ designed to map individual social groups in space. This paper considers the contradictions associated with colonial knowledge systems as reflected in the census grafted onto Burmese society in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It attempts to chart the general adoption and adaptation, in the Burmese context, of a classificatory scheme which categorised labour as either productive or unproductive. Colonialism introduced new attitudes towards work and labour which reinforced patriarchal values which contrasted with more egalitarian Burmese socio-economic systems. The paper suggests that a simple classification of women workers as either productive or unproductive in the Burmese census between 1872 and 1931 resulted in the devaluation of their status as workers. This devaluation was a function of both real economic transformation taking place in the empire and changes in census classification, reflecting a gendering of occupations that undermined the cultural norms of Burmese society. The material result was that women became statistically less visible as economically productive workers. Such ascriptions of value to women workers were largely informed by moral considerations originating in England.

Karaoke Fascism: Burma and the Politics of Fear

Monique Skidmore, Karaoke Fascism: Burma and the Politics of Fear, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004,264 pages.Skidmore did difficult fieldwork in Burma during 1996, a period of increasing turmoil as students and others openly demonstrated against the current regime. Her research was, ostensibly, to understand the idioms of emotional and psychological distress used by various Burmese communities, and to explore the role of religion and medicine in conceptualizing and mediating such distress and as pathways for action (p. 8). Rather than focussing directly on these topics, Skidmore directs our attention to the all encompassing fear that Burmese have to deal with on a day to day basis and the consequences this has for individual Burmese as well as for Burmese society. Researching fear is not easy, as Skidmore asks, How does one research fear when doing so produces the very emotion in question, both in the research and the informants? (p. x), something she explores most completely in her third chapter.To get to this exploration, Skidmore first provides a brief introduction to Burmese history and a sketch of the resistance activities in Rangoon in September 1996. These activities are juxtaposed with places of refuge that Burmese Buddhism provides, both physically and spiritually. The third chapter then explores the fear that Skidmore faced and the Burmese continue to face. Here Skidmore argues that her experience of fear and her understanding and analysis of her embodied fear allows her to intuit the experience of Burmese people whom I have come to know. In so doing, I argue that emotional knowledge arising from similar (never identical) circumstances can be important, in this case, necessary, for an analysis of fear in everyday lif e (p. 35). These three chapters are compelling but difficult reading. After finishing part of a chapter I would have to put the book down because of the overwhelming awfulness of the situation that I was reading about.In the next four chapters, the focus shifts to the contexts that the Burmese must interact in and the role of the government and its military in defining these contexts. Skidmore discusses the way the military define spaces and the thin veneers of modernity and conformity as well as the tensions created by the juxtaposition of modernity, fascism and terror. These chapters also include accounts of how people deal with the situations created by propaganda and the continuing inability to trust people because of informers and the consequent self-censorship that this entails. For her analysis, Skidmore draws on scholars of modernity and fascism, particularly Benjamin and the Frankfurt School (p. 84). I found these chapters equally difficult to read but more because of the analyses than the content. In the end, I was not convinced that drawing parallels between the situation in Burma and high modernity in Paris and Nazi Germany provided any enlightenment about the Burmese generals and their behaviour or the situation that the Burmese people face. A more meaningful comparison would have been to place the Burmese situation in its Southeast Asian context of political violence with discussions of similarities and differences with Cambodia under Pol Pot and Indonesia in the aftermath of Sukarno's defeat in 1965, the annexation of East Timor, or, more recently, the end of the Suharto period. …

The State and the City: 1988 and the Transformation of Rangoon

modern Southeast and East Asia, cities are most often initial point of impact between forces of state and society. Rangoon (Yangon) , capital of Union of Burma (Myanmar) and its largest city, is a place with many coexisting and conflicting identities. As such, it offers a subject of study with rich opportunities for understanding interaction between military regime and Burmese society in period since State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) junta seized power in September 1988. Although in terms of design modern city (especially Central Business District and townships lying between it and Inya Lake) was creation of British colonial rule, it was not simply a colonial metropolis, like Jakarta (Batavia), Manila or Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). Rather, Shwe Dagon Pagoda, where relics of Historical Buddha and three earlier Buddhas are said to be interred, gives city status as a ritual and devotional centre, a place with cosmological as well as political, administrative and economic significance. Rangoon was also site of independence movements during British colonial period that vested it with a tradition of revolutionary nationalism, a durable legacy that post-1988 military regime has found difficult to neutralize. The massive popular demonstrations of 1988, which caused collapse of Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) regime of General Ne Win, came exactly half a century after demonstrations of 1938-39 against British, led by students, nationalist Thakin Party, and politicized workers (the so-called 1300 Revolution, since that was Burmese Era year in which movement took place). During both periods, Shwe Dagon functioned not only as a Buddhist holy site, but also as a public space for political activism. University students established strike centres around Shwe Dagon during colonial period. Aung San Suu Kyi, independence leader Aung San's daughter, made an important speech on west slope of pagoda hill on 26 August 1988, in which she described upheavals of that year as the second struggle for national independence.1

J. S. Furnivall and Fabianism: Reinterpreting the ‘Plural Society’ in Burma

Buried in an obscure journal published in Burma is a letter addressed to its readers commemorating the tenth anniversary of the publication. The editor had asked one of the publication's founders, a well-known former Indian Civil Service (ICS) officer turned progres-sive reformer, to pen a few lines. Years later, the writer achieved acclaim as an ardent supporter of Burmese nationalism and independence and one of the founding scholars of Burma and Southeast Asia studies. These were his words of inspiration to an audience that comprised mostly educated Burmese:Burma did not lose its independence because the rulers of Burma came into conflict with the British Empire, but because they had not sufficient wisdom to preserve their country; they did not know enough of Burma or of the outside world. And it will not again be capable of independence until Burmans know enough of Burma and of the outside world to guide its destinies.In essence, the Burmese were responsible for their own colonisation because they lacked ‘wisdom’ and only through gaining this elusive knowledge could they be free. This opinion was based on nearly three decades worth of first-hand observation of Burmese society. The author was J. S. Furnivall.

Relocating the Interlocutor

Taw Sein Ko, born in Moulmein in 1864 to a merchant from Fujian and a Shan princess, rose to a high position in the British colonial administration in Burma. A talented linguist and a prolific writer, his views on Burmese society, archaeology, ethnology, Buddhism, law and history circulated in English-language journals, books and pamphlets in Burma, China and Britain. This paper, seeking to draw out the role of non-Europeans as both cultural intermediaries and knowledge brokers in colonial South East Asia, sees Taw Sein Ko as a translator, negotiator and interlocutor between and across cultures – Burmese, Chinese and Western. His writings reveal a man who modelled himself in the Confucian tradition of the enlightened civil servant, while rejecting all that had corrupted that tradition in Qing China; in his economic outlook he embraced the utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill; while in his love for, and appreciation of, Burmese literary and material culture, together with his promotion of Buddhist education, he showed himself to be an early proponent of ‘Asian values’.

Land Tenure Reform in Upper Colonial Burma

This article is an attempt to use settlement reports in order to clarify what kind of land tenure was introduced by the British colonial government and what conflict it brought about in Upper Burma. There is little research on cultural conflict between Burmese society and the British colonial government regarding law and social order. Because the most of the existing research on the economic history of colonial Burma focuses on exploitation of the Lower Burma delta, which had been very thinly populated jungle before the colonial period, the author intends to contribute to our knowledge about social transformation from kingdom to colonial society by focusing on Upper Burma, which had been the center of population and economics in pre-colonial times.The British colonial government's Upper Burma Land and Revenue Regulation of 1889 provided two kinds of tenure by which people could hold land: one was state land; the other non-state land. State land meant land belonging to or at the disposal of the government and consisted of (a) land hitherto termed royal land under direct control of the king, (b) land which had been held on condition of rendering public service, (c) island and alluvial formations in rivers, and so on. In sum, state land was intended to correspond to royal land. On the other hand, non-state land was all the land other than state land.Land tenure was formally declared by the settlement officers during settlement operations; but the settlement officers met some difficulties, for cultivators in Upper Burma often made claims against their declarations. As a result, in settlement operations, discretion of the settlement officers were widely admitted. The settlement officers often reported that if they had observed the Regulation of 1889, they should have declared state land, but did not so.In sum, the British government did not only translate the royal land of pre-colonial times into state land, but also forced the new land tenure system on Upper Burma, where people had lived for centuries. The author concludes that there was a conflict between the concept of Burmese land tenure and that of British colonial government.