Chapter 1
Democracy, the demise of socialism
and Aung San amnesia

In the broadest sense, legitimacy of the Burmese State is bound up with the Buddha dhamma. Conceived of as impersonal, this has no boundaries and exists even without being represented by human beings. In a more narrow sense, however, legitimacy of the State centres upon persons with particular qualities and particular states of mind whose remains, when they die, exercise a powerful allure for inheritors of their ideas. In modern Burmese politics, legitimacy is crucially linked to human beings engaged in the national independence struggle, and in particular Aung San. It is through him that modern Burmese ideas of nation and nationhood have been translated.

Ever since his assassination together with his cabinet ministers-to-be on 19 July 1947, just prior to national independence, Aung San has been officially commemorated by the Burmese government as the spiritual father of the Burma army, and as the leader and architect of the independence struggle against British capitalism and against Japanese fascism.[1] The three main national holidays, celebrated continuously since 1948, all commemorate episodes in the unification of Burma by mean of Aung San's leadership: Union Day on 12 February is the day he rallied the diverse ethnic groups represented at Pinlon to join in support of the Union of Burma; Resistance Day on 27 March (today called Armed Forces Day) is the day he led the struggle against the Japanese; finally, Martyrs' Day on 19 July commemorates his assassination and that of his colleagues. His portrait resides in many homes and offices. Many places have been named in his memory, including the National Sports Stadium, the chief market in Rangoon, the National Park, and streets all over the country. Until recently, the Burmese currency invariably carried his portrait.

The high esteem in which Aung San has been held by the Burmese public has proved difficult for the military regimes who came to power in the 1962 military coup to handle. Though Ne Win made attempts to diminish Aung San's stature early on, in the end he decided that it would be more useful to construct his authority upon Aung San as spiritual father of the army.

Aung San's double role, on the one hand, as representative of the emergent indigenous government and, on the other, as representative of the protesting students against illegitimate foreign regimes, caused the SLORC regime inheriting power from Ne Win to rethink the way it positioned itself in relation to political heritage. During the March 1988 protests, a question mark arose over who actually perpetuated the political tradition of Aung San. Was it the military regime that had inherited the instruments and ranks of the army and were guided by Ne Win, or was it the students who opposed them and carried Aung San's portrait into the streets?

Leaving Oxford, England, Aung San Suu Kyi's accidental visit to Burma in March 1988 to nurse her mother, the very month when the protests began, prompted one observer to refer to her as ‘truly an accidental tourist politician’.[2] It drew her into the centre of the controversy over the army's manipulation of Aung San's imagery for its own legitimisation. Today, Aung San is claimed by the democratic movement his daughter came to lead. The regime's marginalisation of Aung San since 1989 must, in part at least, be read as the result of the success by the opposition in eroding the army's legitimacy by demonstrating ambiguities in Aung San's political heritage that were not in favour of the regime.

Aung San Suu Kyi and the Aung San factor

Aung San Suu Kyi's image in Burma cannot be understood without appreciating what is widely known as ‘the Aung San factor’. As one journalist defined it, the Aung San factor is that ‘most citizens can believe that Daw Suu Kyi can rightfully use her father's memory to call attention back to 1948 and to draw on political history and traditions that touch a collective and familiar chord in the hearts of all the people’.[3] He is also

(c) ILCAA 1999 - Gustaaf Houtman. Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics. ILCAA Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia & Africa Monograph Series 33, Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 1999, ISBN 4-87297-748-3, p 015/392

commonly referred to as ‘the Burmese equivalent of George Washington’.[4] The Aung San factor reaches deep into the core of the regime itself, as even the soldiers placed to guard Aung San Suu Kyi had to be frequently changed in case their loyalty to the military would be overcome by the presence of Aung San Suu Kyi, as Victor's interviews her former guards also indicates.[5]

Aung San is Aung San Suu Kyi's father, and she refers to herself as ‘my father's daughter’.[6] He is her main inspiration, and her main political asset. She was born a little over two years prior to Aung San's assassination. Burmese often refer to the striking resemblance she bears to him. Though her photographs were briefly available for sale between 1989–90, they are now banned by the military. Nevertheless, the army's own elevation of Aung San as hero means that they cannot avoid her appearance as a child in the greatly popular Aung San family photographs.[7] She recognizes her popularity as derived from her status as daughter for she said that ‘I serve as a kind of unifying force because of my father's name’, but also because she perpetuates her father's reputation for selfless and uncorrupted dedication to the cause of the Burmese people. She says, ‘I am not interested in jostling for any kind of position’.[8]

Aung San was the initial reason for her entry into politics, for, as she says ‘when I first decided to take part in the movement for democracy, it was more out of a sense of duty than anything else. On the other hand, my sense of duty was very closely linked to my love for my father. I could not separate it from the love for my country, and therefore, from the sense of responsibility towards my people’ [E19]. ‘I'm doing this for my father … My only concern is that I prove worthy of him’ [ZH8]. Also, she says that ‘I felt that I always had his spiritual support’.[9]

After the war Aung San was, in British eyes, a new and young element in Burma's politics which they did not like at all. They were used to the old guard of politicians such as Ba Maw, who played ball with the colonial authorities. After the war they preferred to deal with them rather than with Aung San. This situation is replicated here, for the regime initially saw Aung San Suu Kyi as a young upstart of little significance. Later they saw her as an irritation and as the main focus for opposition to their government. Unlike the British government, who eventually came round to negotiating with Aung San, the regime has still to see her as a legitimate opponent with whom one negotiates. Targeted by ultra-conservative members of the military, she runs the same risks of assassination as her father.

To Aung San Suu Kyi, Aung San's struggle represents clean politics for she says, ‘when I honour my father I honour all those who stand for political integrity in Burma’ [ZH9]. His memory was, in her words, ‘the guardian of their [the people's] political conscience’.[10] She did not initially aspire to be involved in politics and said herself that her intention when she arrived in Rangoon in March 1988 was ‘to start several libraries in my father's memory’.[11]

Her entry into Burmese politics began with her first major speech at the Shwedagon to the Burmese public, in which she quoted her father's support for the fight for democracy and freedom [ZH11] and also his views on the organization and correct behaviour of the army, who should uphold the highest values and not impede democratic reform [ZH12]. Indeed, repetition of history, namely the renewal today of the repressive environment her father fought against, motivated her to characterise her contemporary struggle as ‘the second national independence struggle’ [ZH10]. It should be noted that this first speech took place at the very same pagoda, namely the Shwedagon, near to which the remains of her father was interred, and where he had made some of his earliest, most inflammatory speeches against the British.

When Aung San's wife, Daw Khin Kyi, died on 2 January 1989 at the age of 75, this meant a State funeral in memory of her not only as wife of Aung San, but also as mother of Aung San Suu Kyi. By this time, the army already felt Aung San Suu Kyi had betrayed them. It was an orderly and disciplined event

attended by about 100,000 people during which Aung San Suu Kyi clearly was the focus. At this point it became apparent that Aung San could no longer be the unambiguous spiritual leader of the regime, for his daughter had become too influential and had begun to claim back her father's political heritage. She was now free from her duties nursing her mother and could dedicate herself to the democracy struggle.

Her own commemoration of her father provided the regime with its reasons for placing her under house arrest in at least two respects. First, she proclaimed that the close connection Ne Win proclaimed to have with Aung San was, in the opinion of her father, a negative connection; she argued that Aung San distrusted Ne Win, that Ne Win was not inheritor of the army, and that he was an improper leader for the country who was chiefly responsible for the country's state of deterioration. Without mentioning Ne Win by name, Aung San Suu Kyi had already criticised him as early as 8 August 1988, prior to the Saw Maung period: ‘It is the belief of the majority of the people of Burma that the army is being manipulated and misused by a handful of corrupt fanatics whose powers and privileges are dependent on the survival of the present system.’[12] However, Ne Win's smiling appearance at the dinner for Armed Forces Day caused Aung San Suu Kyi to openly criticise him as responsible for the problems in Burma, and in a press conference on 26 June 1989 she charged that ‘General Ne Win, [who is] still widely believed to control Burma behind the scenes, was responsible for alienating the army from the people, fashioning the military into a body responsive solely to him …’. Also, ‘the opinion of all our people’ was that ‘U Ne Win is still creating all the problems in this country’.[13] In another June speech she said that U Ne Win ‘caused this nation to suffer for twenty six years’, and that he ‘lowered the prestige of the armed forces’.[14] In interviews on 1 and 8 July she said she thought Ne Win was behind SLORC's refusal to hold dialogue and that she did not think ‘there will be free and fair elections so long as U Ne Win is at the helm of power’.[15]

However, her chief criticism of Ne Win, widely interpreted as having resulted in her being placed under house arrest, was made on 13 July 1989 when Aung San Suu Kyi questioned whether the army was in line with the wishes of Bogyok Aung San or Ne Win, which according to Saw Maung ‘indicate(s) that there was personal hatred, prejudice, incitement to make people misunderstand the Tatmadaw’.[16]

Her fierce criticism of Ne Win's relation to Aung San was at least a contributory factor in the de-emphasis of Aung San by the military, in addition to the fact that she was Aung San's daughter claiming his heritage. Whether this break with her father on the part of the regime will in retrospect be seen as a good thing, is a question I cannot entertain at this point, except to say that a shared image of Aung San may help when the moment comes for reconciliation. Once under house arrest, she continued her criticism of Ne Win. In August she said the NLD had ‘enough of the shadow boxing – let us get at the real enemy’ and called him ‘a megalomaniac’ who does ‘anything to keep himself in power’.[17] October saw the publication of her statement about her father's dislike, distrust and demotion of Ne Win.[18] Much later, in 1997, however, she refused to unambiguously identify him for causing her to be under house arrest.[19]

Aung San was indirectly involved in her house arrest in a second way: it was imposed on 20 July 1989, the day after Martyrs' Day. On 19 July she was prevented from going out as Rangoon was awash with soldiers seeking to prevent any form of gathering. At that time she said that her party ‘had no intention of leading our people straight into a killing field’.[20] Nevertheless, the following day Aung San Suu Kyi insisted on

paying her respects at her father's tomb along with her numerous political followers, despite warnings from the regime that they would permit her to go only in her private capacity as a family member [ZH13].[21] Win Htein, her personal assistant put the reason for her house arrest:

July 19 was Martyrs' Day, in recognition of the 1947 assassination of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's father. Previously, that occasion was quite an open affair. The immediate families were invited and they attended the ceremony. Following that, the general public joined Martyrs' Day to pay homage by putting flowers onto the tombs of the leaders. But this year the SLORC restricted each family to only two persons. It was a provocation and we knew it. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi announced that she would attend the ceremony anyway with her own family as well as with NLD leaders. Because of that, she was detained the next day. I was also taken from this residence the same day.[22]

Aung San's memory sustained her during her house arrest. She describes how during that time she frequently looked at her father's picture hanging on a wall in her living room, and thought ‘Well now, it's just you and me – but we'll make it’.[23] Though the conditions of her house arrest were officially lifted six years later in July 1995, she has never been fully free to move around since then. Nevertheless, the regime was pleased when, upon her release and in a conciliatory gesture, she attended the official ceremony in commemoration of her father.

However, the thought that the image of the national martyr should have been appropriated by his daughter for the political opposition caused great consternation with the military regime. The regime's fear of her is nowhere more evident than in the vast number of official press reports, editorials, news items and speeches made by regime journalists in the official media to discredit her.

Aung San – first democracy, then socialism

If Aung San's role in the lineage of Burmese politics has a double-take, a dual inheritance that permits him to be claimed both, by members of the military regime and by the democracy movement, this is but a reflection of a degree of ambiguity in the political ideology ascribed to him. The speeches and writings attributed to him can be used to justify arguments on both sides. Nevertheless, as I will show, the military regime, as currently constituted, has a very weak claim to Aung San's heritage. That they know this today is evident in the way that they have soft-pedalled Aung San since 1989.

With one document excepted, namely ‘Blueprint for Burma’, Aung San has consistently presented, and is generally understood to have intended, Burma's political development to follow the order of: national independence – unity – democracy – socialism.

Blueprint for Burma [24]

‘Blueprint for Burma’ represents the army's best argument for claiming Aung San's heritage. This was the early plan attributed to Aung San at the age of twenty-six sometime in January and February 1941, while he was being trained in Japan by the Japanese army, and while jointly planning the invasion of Burma.

Blueprint does not contain references to socialism, and so is not denigrating of it. However, it is uncomplimentary, to say the least, about democracy, as it advocates a ‘strong state administration as exemplified in Germany and Italy [in the 1930s]’, the pursuit of a ‘eugenic policy’, setting up of ‘racial units’, and dividing our people into ‘backward’ and ‘administered’ sections, where ‘all the backward people must be raised to one level’. It argues that ‘there shall be only one nation, one party, one leader’, and ‘no parliamentary opposition, no nonsense of individualism. Everyone must submit to the State which is supreme over the individual’. Burma's economy was to rely on Japan based on ‘exchange of mutual goods such as Japanese manufactured goods for our raw materials and rice’, and ‘Japanese investment in Burma, preferential treatment for Japanese goods, joining the yen block will be part of our new economic life’.

The army has often cited this document to show the relevance of their actions. One can understand why, when we read that it says ‘all questions of the state … in fact, all such questions revolve around the

central necessity for national defence’. It is dependent on Japan, for ‘we shall have to build a powerful Army, Navy and Air Forces, and here the help of Japan is imperative’. Here also ‘in administrative as well as judicial and financial matters, the rule of authority more than the rule of law should prevail’.

However, for such a supposedly crucial document, it is peculiar, to say the least, that Blueprint was published not until March 1947 in The Guardian, more than six years after it was supposedly conceived and almost one-and-a-half years after the Japanese had left, when the views it expresses were no longer fashionable. Certainly, Aung San had revised his views by 1946, when he said that Asian concepts of unity ‘must not be like the Co-prosperity Sphere of militarist Japan’.[25]

Nevertheless, we can surmise from the fact that Aung San does not seem to have denied its contents in the three months between its publication and his death that it is likely to have been, though painful for him later, probably a document which he did indeed write.[26] The purpose of writing the document, however, was most likely intended by him only for consumption within the Japanese army and was severely edited by the military officers in charge of Aung San, in whose possession the document was found. It was not originally written for consumption in Burma, as otherwise it would have been published before. Furthermore, it was written while Aung San had literally been kidnapped by the Japanese army. It was, more likely than not, an attempt to fit Burma into overall Japanese discourse, so that Japan might be swayed to act and expel the British; it was not, in my view, an ideological statement of Aung San's views.

It is also more than likely that its publication was initiated by Aung San's political rivals to detract from his reputation as the political leader to inherit Burma's national independence. The date falls between a number of significant moments in Burma's political history. It occurred six months before the elections and in the month prior to its publication Aung San had negotiated the Pinlon Agreement. Also, a few months before, U Saw had been wounded by an attacker, which he presupposed to be Aung San's doing. Its publication was likely, therefore, an attempt to discredit and embarrass Aung San.

There are many pointers that suggest that the contents of this document, which was found in possession of one of Aung San's Japanese superior officers, had not been under Aung San's personal control. The fact that this document glorifies Japan (including proclaiming the lineage of the emperor unbroken as opposed to the ‘inferior’ broken lineages of Burmese kings) is out of character with Aung San's other writings. Furthermore, Aung San himself did not include this document in his collected speeches, suggesting that he himself disowned it as irrelevant to his views on Burma.

Aung San's democracy

Prior to the war, the revolutionary students and many other Burmese were sceptical of democracy. After all, it was a democratic country, Britain, that had occupied their country. In this way, in the 1930s and early 1940s, democracy was greatly disliked by most of those who were later to become Burma's leaders. Indeed, the heroes of the students at the time were Mussolini, Hitler, and the Irish revolutionary leaders, while Japan was looked upon as a friendly fellow Asian country that was potentially a liberator of Burma. U Nu, widely regarded as an exponent of democracy, in his 1935 inaugural speech at the Student Union stated ‘I dislike democracy, where much time is wasted in persuading the majority and in trying to get the consent of the majority. Democracy is good in name only … It cannot work in the period of dictatorship of Hitler and Mussolini.’[27] In 1936, U Thant, later Secretary-General of the UN, said that ‘democracy is lovelier at a distance. Seen at close quarters, it is nothing to sing hymns about.’[28]

However, the Japanese occupation of Burma radically changed the opinion all Burmese nationalists had of democracy, for ‘the resistance against the Japanese militarism was proclaimed in the name of democracy’, and ‘the freedom of Burma was demanded in the name of democracy and the rule of law in the family of nations’.[29] Originally the Japanese offer to help found an army marked the creation of a viable instrument to

fight off colonial yoke and attain national independence, but already before the invasion began in December 1941 many Burmese nationalists were disillusioned, and this was compounded in the course of the occupation by what Burmese deemed offensive behaviour by Japanese army personnel.[30] As this resistance against the Japanese built up it was eventually translated in the founding of the Anti-Fascist Organisation (AFO) in August 1944. This changed the opinion these young nationalists had of democracy, and resulted in widespread support for it.

After the return of the British, all parties – even the communists – agreed that democracy was the political system Burma would aim for. At the AFPFL Party Manifesto on 25 May 1945 a democratic constitution was envisaged for the government of independent Burma.[31] Socialist democracy would protect the poor through nationalisation of the important means of production. Full socialism, however, was to wait until after democracy was implemented, for ‘however anxious we may be to set up socialism in our country, her present economic position is such that socialization at the present stage is by no means possible’. In short, Aung San set forth his view that, after national independence was attained, democracy should precede true socialism.[32]

From the mid-1940s, though he retained a hand in the Peoples Volunteer Organization, which was seen by the British as a threat because it had the attributes of a military organization,[33] Aung San was preoccupied with Burma's national independence at that time as primarily a civilian political rather than a military problem. He left the army and refused offers from the British for a senior army role. Indeed, in early 1947 he was talking even of retiring from politics altogether after the transfer of power.[34]

In the absence of an external enemy, once the struggle against colonialism had attained its political momentum, he saw the role of the army as being in the barracks. Aung San, since he founded the army himself and had some control over it, did not see countries or armies as the primary danger, but rather political systems such as fascism and capitalism, which had produced the occupation of Burma by the Japanese and the British respectively. His speeches were directed at addressing these evils in order to safeguard local representation in government. This, he realised, could only be guaranteed by democracy that would permit local representation, as against government forcibly imposed by overseas countries.

Aung San launched the concept of ‘new democracy’ [dImiukersIAqs\] on 25 August 1946 in his speech to the AFPFL ‘It is clear that Aung San cannot win’ [biul\K¥op\ eAac\Sn\:kmeAac\Niuc\lui>AtiAlc\:Pæc\.K¥ôpI].[35] In this very section, he also unambiguously says that ‘socialism can only be attained after democracy’ [dImiukersIôpI:mH SiurHy\ls\zc\: òPs\Niuc\ty\]. In a speech nine months later he described ‘new democracy’ as ‘although not entirely free of capitalism, is not capitalistic’, is ‘somewhere betwixt and between’, is based on ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’ and where ‘the greatest number wields the greatest power’. If the old democracies had succumbed to underhand manipulation by ‘capitalists and big business discreetly assuming power’ the constitution of this ‘new democracy’ would ‘place power in the hands of the masses through their elected representative from top to bottom’ so that, ‘if they have no confidence in their representative they must have the power to recall them’.[36]

On 23 May 1947, less than three months before his death, Aung San gave a speech which made his thoughts on democracy very clear. He distinguished ‘true’ [dImiukersIAss\] from ‘sham’ democracy [dImiukersIAtu]

Only when the ‘State’ is there by the people's consent, only when the ‘State’ identifies itself with the people's interest in theory as well as practice can there be true democracy. Any other kind of democracy is sham. Only true democracy can work for the real good of the people, real equality of status and opportunity for every one irrespective of class or race or religion or sex. Not every democracy is true democracy. Some are imperfect democracies concealing in democratic guise the dictatorship of the capitalist class. True democracy alone must be our basis if we want to draw up our constitution with the people as the real sovereign and the people's interest as the primary consideration. Democracy alone is the basis upon which the real progress of a nation can be built. There may be such other ideologies as Socialism and Communism, but they sprout from the same parent

stem of true democracy. They are only seeking its wider connotation. They are not satisfied with democracy in its political denotation. They seek to extend it over the economic sphere’.[37]

‘Sham democracy’, according to Aung San, is produced when power is retained against the wishes of the people.

Power is a coveted and valuable thing. Once grasped it is not readily relinquished. We have seen possessing classes contending among themselves for power. The people never come into it. The people come only when they can be used as a lever, ‘in the name of the people’. The words ‘people’ and ‘democracy’ and so on are used freely, but not sincerely. They are only catchwords to hoodwink the people into placing power in the hands of those who are supposed to use that power in the interest of the people, but who eventually use it in the interests of the ruling classes against the interest of the people.[38]

With these concepts of ‘true’ and ‘sham’ democracy, Aung San aimed for local representation in government and managed to broker a degree of unity between the various political factions and to a limited degree with the ethnic minorities as reflected in the Pinlon Agreement. He proceeded to argue when he expelled the Communists that democracy was the third way in Burma's political path, between two extremes, communism and capitalism or fascism. This kind of politics, he said, is like the Buddha's Middle Way. There was no room here for a military government.

However, his assassination on 19 July 1947, meant that he could take democracy no further in terms of concrete implementation, as he did not live long enough to experience national independence.[39] His assassins were linked to U Saw who had attempted to sway the British to support his leadership at National Independence. In 1997, at the fifty year commemoration of the assassination, it was revealed that U Saw was merely a pawn in a plot attributed ultimately to British intelligence. The revelation was based on evidence supplied, in particular, by an interview with U Kyaw Zaw, Aung San's closest friend during their training in Japan, who lives in exile in China.

That Aung San himself, as Martyr of the country and founder of the army, was unable to personally engage himself as a civilian in implementing democracy meant that the latter was immediately disadvantaged. Had he been part of the process, as founder and leader of the army who had chosen civilian life by preference, Burma's history might have taken a very different course.

Ne Win and ‘lightning rod democracy’

Critics of democracy have argued, pointing at the Blueprint, that really Aung San did not believe in democracy. They point at what they see as an anti-democratic disposition on the part of Aung San and other political leaders prior to National Independence. Also, critics have pointed out that the concept of democracy is not actually used in the 1947 constitution.[40]

Nevertheless, against this stands the fact that most nationalists changed their view of democracy around the time of the foundation of the Anti-Fascist Organisation in August 1944. At that time Aung San began to regard democracy as a vital element in Burma's self-governance, a view that persisted right up until his death. To Aung San, democracy was a system that would make impossible for a government to be in power that totally disregarded local representation, as had Japanese fascism and British colonialism. In this sense, democracy was having unanimous appeal right across all political factions in Burma. Furthermore, as regards the Constitution making no mention of democracy, Britain does not have a constitution, yet is still a democracy by all accounts.

Aung San was appointed the first General (Bogyok) in the Burmese army, and Ne Win the second. In the publications Is trust vindicated? Ne Win has himself depicted alongside Aung San with the caption ‘After the General [Aung San], the General [Ne Win]’. Both received their military training in Japan. Ne Win's biographer wrote that as Bogyok Aung San had ‘fallen on the march – as a good soldier would’, so that ‘only Bogyok Ne Win remained’.[41] Ne Win is portrayed as preordained to fill in for the vacancy left by Aung San. Ne Win is widely regarded as an anti-democrat for obvious reasons, for he performed the 1962 coup against U Nu's elected government and suspended parliamentary democracy. The paradox, however, is that because he had inherited democracy from Aung San and supposedly walked in his footsteps, Ne Win never eliminated democracy from view entirely. Indeed, democracy was, in my view, a vital element in his political path with a meaning that shifted in the course of his career.

Just prior to taking charge of the caretaker government, Ne Win and his officers still declared themselves committed to the national ideology of ‘freedom, democracy, and socialism’, in that order, as formulated in the Meiktila Defence Services Conference of 21 October 1958. In this, their role was to ‘restore peace and the rule of law, to implant democracy, to establish a socialist economy’.[42]

If these aims were along Aung San's originally specified order, and were adhered to when power was returned to the elected U Nu government in 1960, Ne Win, after his 1962 coup attempted to implement a socialist system directly, by-passing democracy. As Kyaw Zaw said in his interview, after 1962 Ne Win and his group ‘passed over the second stage – democracy, and to suppress democracy they started to shout “Socialism”. The Socialism which Bogyoke [Aung San] advocated was the genuine one in which the country becomes rich, peaceful, united and developed, and not that like Ne Win's “socialism”, which dropped our country to the LDC (Least Developed Country).’[43]

However, this did not mean that democracy was eliminated from the political path or, indeed, that it was rendered politically meaningless thereby as an ideal; it merely signified Ne Win had indefinitely postponed its realisation. Writing of the Ne Win regime in 1966, Trager views Ne Win as having placed it at the end of the political path. He conveys Ne Win's views as being that ‘we can help the Burmese to have what they say they now want – unity, order, socialism, and democracy’.[44] Just as in the protests of the late 80s and the promise to hold elections, democracy still had much value to military politics, but it was reduced to a mere promise, a utopian ideal that they were unprepared to give a chance unless their hand was forced. At the time of Ne Win's resignation such a situation arose, and he then finally advocated multi-party elections.

In the English version of his biography, Maung Maung, Ne Win's biographer, justifies Ne Win's coup by denying the ability of democracy as understood by U Nu to work. In a speech he gave to the Revolutionary Council on 30 April 1962 he declared the Revolutionary Council to be ‘deeply disillusioned with parliamentary democracy’, which had been ‘tried and tested in furtherance of the aims of socialist development’ but has not only ‘failed to serve our socialist development but also, due to its very defects, weaknesses and loopholes, its abuses and the absence of a mature public opinion, lost sight of and deviated from the socialist aims, until at last indications of its heading imperceptibly towards just the reverse have become apparent.’[45] However, this by no means resulted in Ne Win throwing democracy out altogether from the political path, for even then the Revolutionary Council also stated that the new political path must develop ‘in conformity with existing conditions and environment and the ever changing circumstances only such a form of democracy as will promote and safeguard the socialist development’.[46]

Maung Maung then went on to cite Aung San's very unrepresentative ‘Blueprint for Burma’ as proof that Aung San also thought the military should have a central role in Burmese society, forgetting that there is no evidence that Aung San ever personally endorsed Blueprint as the political path for Burma. Aware that he had only one document by means of which he could justify military government, Maung Maung excused the omission of socialism in this document saying that Aung San ‘did not use the word “socialism”, for he was in Japan, among military leaders who had no great fondness for the word’.[47]

After 1962, the army positioned itself at the heart of socialism. Socialism, in turn, came to be used as an excuse for army business ventures. In Ne Win's concept, as expressed in The Burmese Way to Socialism, the army has a special role as it ‘will also be developed to become national armed forces which will defend our socialist economy’. This peculiar use of an army, in the absence of external enemies, to ‘defend our socialist economy’ suggests that the centralisation of the economy in the Burmese Way to Socialism was no more but an instrument for the army to attain control of the State. It was, so to speak, Japanese militarism as inherent in the Blueprint rather than Aung San's concept of socialism that Burma inherited in this way.

Such weak justification for constructing the socialist path on the basis of military strength was to play puzzle with Aung San's words and was to stretch the limits of credulity. Nevertheless, in the first ideological statement The Burmese Way to Socialism it was again affirmed that what the military was doing was merely to

take further Aung San's original plan, for ‘we, the peoples of the Union of Burma, shall nurture and hug a new patriotism as inspired by the words of General Aung San’.[48]

Ne Win, in pretending to follow Aung San, had not only jumped to socialism in Aung San's political development path, but he still kept up the pretence of developing towards a democracy. He knew that his version of socialism was unpopular and that people might tolerate it only if he kept to Aung San's heritage, and only if he promised attainment of democracy eventually. And promising democracy is what he did.

Aung San's insistence on democracy, and Ne Win's declaration that he would adhere to Aung San's words, means that the democratic ideal has been undeniable and inescapable even in Ne Win's army-centred politics. On the anniversary in 1966 of the coup on 2 March, celebrated as Peasants Day, General Ne Win himself promised that ‘true democracy’ would emerge and that power would be transferred to the people.[49] In 1967 serious food shortages occurred, accompanied by civil unrest. In the following year, Ne Win emphasized in his Burmese speech that ‘I will make democracy flourish’ [dImiukersIkiu Tæn\:ka:eAac\ lup\my\].[50] Ne Win formed the Internal Unity Advisory Body of thirty-three civilians to report to him by 31 May 1969 with recommendations for future structure of government. Nevertheless, nothing was done with these recommendations and no substantive arrangements were made to implement democratic reforms.

Cynics would say that these were all mere gestures Ne Win made towards his plan to broaden membership of the elitist cadre of the Revolutionary Council, and in developing the BSPP to become a mass movement. By the time the BSPP held its first congress from 28 June to 11 July 1971, it brought together 1,200 delegates and was looking forward to increase its membership country-wide. However, when on 23 July 1988 Ne Win finally gave his resignation speech at the emergency BSSP congress, he admitted his socialist experiment had failed, and said ‘since it is our belief that the answer to the question – a multi-party or a single-party system – can be provided by a referendum, the current congress is requested to approve a national referendum … if the choice is for a multiparty system, we must hold elections for a new parliament.’[51] In this speech it was clear that Ne Win did finally admit the failure of socialism, as in the same session it was proposed that the country would open up to foreign investment and foreign businesses, spelling the end of BSPP socialism.

This persistent reference to democracy as an ultimate goal of the Ne Win regime indicates that Ne Win knew that his version of army socialism did not gel with the political ideas prevalent at the time of national independence, in particular with the plans for Burma after the Japanese occupation by Aung San and the other nationalists. Furthermore, they indicate that, in order for people to tolerate his version of socialism, he knew that he periodically had to hold out the promise of democracy while reorganising his power base just to keep up people's hopes while he was vulnerable. Finally, the 1988 reference clearly indicates Ne Win's own admission that army socialism – the way he conceived it – had failed as spectacularly, if not more so, as U Nu's democratic government at the time of his coup.

Democracy under U Nu had only fifteen years not to work, but by 1989 Ne Win's socialism had been suffered for twenty-seven years, and people were considerably worse off than when he took power. The view that Ne Win used democracy as a carrot all the way through the period of military socialism is confirmed when one looks at the BSPP's The Burmese Way to Socialism. Here it is quite clearly stated that democracy cannot be faulted as a political system at all for, as an antidote to feudalism, ‘parliamentary democracy … happens to be the best in comparison with all its preceding systems’. The military could only justify the immediate implementation of socialism by saying that they were promising an even better system than the parliamentary democracy system that had so far failed as implemented in Burma.

parliamentary democracy has been tried and tested in furtherance of the aims of socialist development. But Burma's ‘parliamentary democracy’ has not only failed to serve our socialist development but also, due to its very defects, weaknesses and loopholes, its abuses and the absence of a mature public opinion, lost sight of and deviated from the socialist aims, until at last indications of its heading imperceptibly towards just the reverse have become apparent.[52]

It concludes that ‘the nation's socialist aims cannot be achieved with any assurance by means of the form of parliamentary democracy that we have so far experienced’ and that ‘it must develop in conformity

with existing conditions and environment and ever changing circumstances, only such a form of democracy as will promote and safeguard the socialist development’. This is what it calls a ‘socialist democratic state’. However, we soon realise from The Constitution of the Burma Socialist Programme Party (2 July 1962) that the BSPP as the national party was to operate ‘on the principle of democratic centralism’, by which was really meant ‘intra-party democracy’. Its aim was to change society by attempting to ‘first reorientate all erroneous views of our people’. The main point of justifying socialism was that Burma was a special case requiring a special and uniquely Burmese approach.

For the above reasons, we can safely conclude that Ne Win's vision of democracy represented by no means an elimination of democracy from view. Instead, it was but a transposition of the place of democracy in Aung San's political path, in which priority was placed upon socialism. Ne Win's covert aim with the introduction of socialism, as in many military governments, was to centralise the economy so that the military could exercise and maintain complete control. The democracy element has nevertheless remained a perpetually present element in Burmese political ideology, which the army has seen fit to place into the indeterminate future, carted out only when the army's grip on the country proves to be insufficiently strong and when they felt vulnerable. Promises of democracy are thus characteristically made, but never seriously implemented.

Democracy was thus but a lightning rod to the regime, that served to placate its detractors when it suited them. Since 1962, despite continuous assertions to the contrary, the military have remained disinterested in taking positive steps towards the implementation of democracy. Since 1988 the army proclaim similar qualifications to the BSPP that are threatening, once again, to infinitely delay democratic reform, thus depriving it from its rightful place in modern Burmese politics.

NLD democracy

The March 1988 protests initially started as a small ‘teashop brawl’, but was soon transformed into a major protest movement rising up against the greatly unpopular military junta. As Nemoto[53] points out, it was later, in particular during the 8.8.88 uprising, that the mood changed from an ‘anti-Ne Win’ to a positive ‘pro-democracy’ stance. This protest goes under the generally accepted (including SLORC-SPDC) term as ‘the 88 affair’ [88 Aer: AKc\:]. Some who refer in particular to the students who were at the core of it, refer to it as ‘the 88 student affair’ [88 ek¥ac\:qa: Aer: AKc\:]. The NLD, when drawing attention to the arising of pro-democracy support, refers to it as ‘the democracy uprising’ [dImiukersIAr:eta\puM].

Lintner points out that Ne Win himself had given the most significant impetus to the democracy demands after his famous resignation speech on 23 July 1988, in which he held up the prospect of multi-party elections.[54] Nevertheless, demands for democracy were intrinsic to the protests already very early on. Already in the student protests as early as 14 March there were demands for democracy.[55] Certainly the concept of democracy was reflected in the names and policies of the 220 parties which emerged and registered in Burma [Y4].

SPDC disciplined democracy

The SLORC regime, aware of this pervasive idea of democracy throughout post-independence history, had a most interesting reaction to press reports that criticised it of impeding implementation of democracy. It showed itself aggrieved that it was seen as ‘undemocratic’, and asserted the astonishing claim, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Burma has been a democratic country unbroken from the time of national independence.

Some persons of Daw Suu Kyi's NLD are resorting to various means to create misleading impressions on the Government by implying that it is a government that does not desire democracy and that suppresses people desiring democracy. We are informed of their spread of news and propaganda campaigns through media services of the West bloc, which are biased, and their writing letters to other nations in the hope of winning reliance. What is actually needed is to understand the stand of the State Law and Order Restoration Council. It is a government taking responsibility for transitional period. Its main duty is peaceful transition. The allegation that those desiring democracy are being suppressed is meant to attract attention and obtain help from powerful democracies.

It is a false and frivolous allegation. The State Law and Order Restoration Council is a government bringing a democracy into being. It is a government establishing a multiparty democracy system for peaceful transition. Every person in Myanmar desires democracy. The reason is that Myanmar has never been depleted of democracy. In the AFPFL era, there was

parliamentary democracy. In the Lanzin Party [BSPP] era, there was socialist democracy. Democracy had flourished under the respective programme. Currently, the State Law and Order Restoration Council Government is seeing to a political transition directed toward multiparty democracy. The Government, responsible for this period, will proceed within the bounds of laws, rules and regulations.

Deterrent action will be taken against any person or organisation not adhering to rules and laws promulgated by the Government and for any act to oppose and deter projects and objectives of the Government. It is meaningless to shout at the top of their voice that those desiring democracy are being suppressed. Stability of the State and rule of law are of primary importance today. The Government must curb and prevent any act to jeopardise objectives of the nation. Therefore, what the NLD planned to do from 27 to 29 September had to be curbed.[56]

Given the continuities from Ne Win politics, SLORC may be forgiven for thinking that it had inherited ‘democracy’ from the Ne Win regime, and that it had to defend these concepts from unruly parties such as the NLD who, elected by a majority vote, were threatening to upset this form of, for want of a better term, ‘perpetually postponed’ or ‘lightning rod democracy’.

Today, the SPDC concept of ‘discipline-flourishing democracy’ is characterised as accompanied by (1) ‘rights to freedom exercised within framework of law’, (2) ‘compatible with political, economic and social structures of State’, (3) ‘in line with historical traditions, customs and culture of nationality’, and it is (4) ‘especially democracy that brings benefits fairly for all nationals within the framework of national solidarity’.[57]

Aung San Suu Kyi is reported to have told a foreign-based Burmese broadcast station, ‘we are very afraid of what “the Burmese Way” means when Ohn Gyaw speaks of the “Burmese way to Democracy”. We faced the Burmese Way to Socialism for 26 years under Gen Ne Win's regime. We don't expect democracy through the military's way.’[58] U Kyi Maung, alluding to Saw Maung's reference to ‘guided or limited democracy’ along the lines of the Indonesian system, wittily characterised it as ‘the military's misguided democracy’.[59]

Democracy as intrinsic to Burmese politics

Of course, Silverstein is right when he says that ‘the irony of Burmese politics is that, however they have been organised, all leaders have championed democratic rule, even those who seized power illegally and destroyed it’. Even the post-1962 military ‘feels obligated to pay lip-service to it’.[60] Since the collapse of socialist and communist states in Eastern Europe, SLORC and later the SPDC, have decided that socialism is no longer a viable goal, and have instead decided to emphasize democracy, but by reserving the central role for the army, it would not appear to be substantially different from its earlier concepts of ‘central’ and ‘intra-party democracy’ except for the apparent abandonment of socialist ideology.

So the question that arises is, if socialism – or, ‘socialist democracy’ based on army-orchestrated ‘central’, ‘guided’ or ‘intra-party democracy’ – has failed, how will a new concept of army-orchestrated democracy possibly fare? As Nawrahta, one of the regime's journalists put it, ‘Myanmar is now in a transitional period from an old era to a new era … A socialist era has definitely passed by now. To say that the new era is a democratic era, the fact is we are not yet in a democratic era.’ The State, he says, has only just begun to ‘shape the new age’.[61]

In placing her father's quest for democracy up-front, Aung San Suu Kyi is not asking for radical change at all, for evidently democracy was the initial plan laid out at the time of national independence under Aung San, whose political philosophy the army have proclaimed to espouse since national independence. And it was Aung San's political philosophy that was subscribed to by the Ne Win regime since the 1962 coup, included as a concept in the Burmese Way to Socialism and promised by Ne Win upon his retirement in 1988. Democracy was then defended by SLORC to the extent of holding the elections and permitting the NLD win, and it is now finally promised by the SPDC.

In this context, given the agreement of all parties, it is difficult to argue the case that democracy is not suitable for Burma by virtue of some variety of ‘Burmese’ or ‘Asian values’. What is evidently controversial, from the point of view of the SPDC today, is not NLD demands for democracy, but NLD's view that the

army should not a priori have the central role it has appropriated for itself, as it has in all forms of ‘democratic’ government since the 1962 Ne Win coup. Aung San Suu Kyi has used Aung San's concept of ‘sham democracy’ for the forms of democracy proposed by the SLORC and the SPDC [Y42] because of the army's insistence to have the lion share of representation in the new constitution.

Aung San amnesia

The popular view since independence had always been that General Aung San was ‘the father of the army’. After the coup, to this was added was that, if Aung San was its father, then General Ne Win ‘developed the army to maturity’.[62] The current regime continues to describe Aung San as its father, and as the father of national independence, but this has become a hollow cliché as Aung San was no longer given the respect he had been given by previous regimes.[63]

Ne Win's experiment with socialism lost its appeal after it failed in Burma, and its breakdown in Eastern Europe and the USSR. The army now cannot use the excuse of a ‘socialist’ centrally planned economy to justify its power base. Subtract from Aung San's political path socialism, and you only have national independence, national unity and democracy left. The failure of socialism meant that the democracy segment of Aung San's political path came into full view once again. The regime, if it wanted to avoid the socialism with which Ne Win had equated Aung San, also had to avoid him for fear of democracy. It had to backtrack to square zero to totally reinvent new political ideology through which it might justify a central political role for the army.

To justify itself as rightful heir of the Burmese political lineage the regime desperately needed to tone down Aung San's profile in Burmese politics. In short, there was little alternative but to practise Aung San amnesia. To my knowledge, until 1987 virtually all notes carried the Aung San imprint. Aung San amnesia already began under Ne Win, for under his Chairmanship in 1987 demonetization and the introduction of the 45 Kyat and 90 Kyat notes began the process of Aung San amnesia. The 45 Kyat note carried the face of Thahkin Hpo Hla, the leader of the 1932 oil strike, and the 90 Kyat note carried the face of Saya San. New notes printed subsequent to 1988 replaced these personalities with the lion as the principal icon. The most recent 500 Kyat note introduces the war hero Maha Bandoola who so valiantly fought the British in the First Anglo-Burmese War. New currency notes printed since 1988, with one exception, therefore, no longer bear Aung San's image.

After the 1989 Martyrs' Day anniversary incident, that resulted in the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi and the imprisonment of NLD leaders, Martyrs' Day became a low profile national event, no longer attended by the Prime Minister and the majority cabinet ministers, and only attended by the information minister.[64] National Independence Day speeches are normally replete with references to Aung San's selfless dedication for the good of the country. For example, State Peace and Development Council Chairman Senior General Than Shwe's message on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee Independence Day 1998 made no reference to Aung San, and instead stressed efforts of the many ‘national cultures of Myanmar’, and also put the struggle for national independence back into the Konbaung era.[65] From 1989 onwards the talks that teaching staff at Rangoon University used to give on Aung San in schools in the days leading up to Martyrs' Day ceased. Editorials on Aung San used to appear every two weeks or so, and quotes were placed in virtually every newspaper taken from Aung San's speeches – these too were discontinued.[66] It is difficult not to conclude, as one author points out, that the regime have been ‘trying to tarnish the image of Gen. Aung San’.

The junta always complains very loudly that General Aung San was assassinated by a British government conspiracy. However, from the time of the BSPP to the ruling military junta, no top military leader has paid respect to Martyrs' Day on July, 19, when Gen Aung San and other national leaders were assassinated. They are never interested in attending the Martyrs' Day ceremony. In the past, Burmese people anxiously awaited the sound of sirens, which would sound on Martyrs' Day at the time that Gen Aung San was assassinated. This allowed them to pay their respects to their national heroes, and they would observe one minute's silence. Under the junta there are no more sirens as the national sign of sorrow. This clearly means that the junta has been trying to tarnish the image of Gen Aung San.[67]

Moreover, although the 1989 Armed Forces Day was still referred to as Resistance Day and celebrated Aung San's going out to war to liberate and unify the country,[68] later these too lost their references to Aung San. The Aung San Museum in Nat Mauk, the restored house in which Aung San was born, and which was once the pride of the Ne Win government, has been virtually emptied of exhibits and left neglected.[69] The second Aung San Museum in Rangoon, first set up by Ne Win in 1963, is the large house at 25 Tower Leìn Street [tawålin\:lm\:], later renamed as ‘General Museum Street’ [biul\K¥op\ òptiuk\lm\:] in which Ne Win briefly lived until he gave it to Aung San, who lived there between May 1945 and July 1947. This is largely unadvertised and unknown, and when I visited it in August 1998 I was the only visitor. On top of the house is a dkði%qaKå Buddha shrine. Though principally a Buddha who ensures safety against fire, some of the people associated with the museum related to me that Aung San supposedly meditated there before going out to fight the Japanese.

Also, military leaders have increasingly expressed publicly criticisms of Aung San. General Saw Maung's last public speech on 27 March 1992 criticised Aung San for not resolving the ethnic minority question prior to national independence.[70]

This suggests that, when it comes to the issue of who assassinated Aung San, one has to wonder whether, in practising Aung San amnesia and in treating Aung San Suu Kyi as it has, it is not the regime that is re-assassinating Aung San, if not the man, than at least his image, his ideas on democracy and his role in bringing about national unity. The regime substituted Aung San with army and culture, as implied in the Myanmafication programme. In this, Japan plays, today once again, an important supportive role. There is an important question here as to whether Japan's role in discovering and training Aung San and his army in 1940, is not now being re-enacted at the cultural level, about more of which below. Furthermore, political controversy has been inflamed by abandoning Aung San's views on politics, in which he strongly argued against reserving a central role for either ‘culture’ or ‘religion’ in the sense of Buddhendom [budÎBaqa] (cf. Buddhism, budÎqaqna).[71]

Aung San reclaimed

The army lost its legitimacy when they cut themselves off from Aung San. As daughter of Aung San, and as principal leader of the democracy movement, Aung San Suu Kyi was their biggest threat. Aung San Suu Kyi's leadership strikes at the heart of the image they attempted to nurture of themselves as the leaders and custodians of the country. She inherited the image of her father, the image that the army had worked so hard to distil and purify. Her image was purified even further once she stood up erect for more than a decade against the entire machinery of State deployed to silence her. This prompted them to find new military heroes, such as Maha Bandoola, and impersonal symbols that had no children alive who might query their lies as Aung San Suu Kyi had done.

Though the first symptoms of Aung San amnesia began to set in during the final days of the Ne Win regime in 1987 – well before the democracy movement started its protests –this was greatly hastened by the democracy protests. Appropriation of Aung San as the icon of the opposition, in turn, seems to have served to further hasten his marginalisation by the regime. Those students most active in encouraging the protests saw Aung San as having been a student leader in his days and a rebellious young person fearlessly questioning authority and quite insubordinate to the illegitimate foreign invaders of Burma. This was reason enough for his portrait to be carried prominently in the protest marches by students even before Aung San Suu Kyi appeared on the political scene.[72] Indeed, one of the regime's journalists retrospectively called this ‘political defiance’ programme ‘Bogyok Aung San's Programme’.[73]

Of course, this does not mean that Aung San's legacy was actually erased from collective memory. For example, a collection of articles on Aung San recently came out edited by Ni Ni Myint, wife of General Ne Win, and leading figure of the Myanmar Historical Commission. Intellectuals in Burma interpret this volume as a reminder to this regime of the public's desire to see Aung San's views on democracy finally implemented.

If erasure of Aung San in Burmese collective consciousness is impossible, the very fact that it is being attempted is to awaken the desire to play Aung San's heritage up even more on the part of the protesters. In other words, the army's carefully orchestrated image of Aung San as the country's hero, and as the original architect for the country's path of socialist development right up until 1987, fell straight into the lap of the democracy movement who re-appropriated him and for whom Martyrs' Day has become a rallying cry for the democracy movement [ZH13].

It proved impossible to retain Aung San, for his daughter's manifestation became equated with him. In 1989, rumour spread that the design of the 1 Kyat note had been secretly altered by its designer, in which Aung San was redrawn to resemble Aung San Suu Kyi. Supposedly, the designer was a supporter of Aung San.[74] Upon discovery, the regime ordered printing of that particular note to stop, and Aung San ceased to be represented on currency notes from then on.

The denigration of Aung San Suu Kyi

Blaming her for their woes, since 1989 the regime has concentrated on destroying Aung San Suu Kyi's image. They attempted to delegitimize Aung San Suu Kyi as Aung San's daughter, and to assassinate her character as unpatriotic, having more in common with the British than with the Burmese. At the mundane and least serious level, this includes scrutinising her finances in detail to find evidence of ‘alien’ support from ‘enemies of the state’ and renaming her.

Frequent allusions are made to her by the regime's leaders and the regime's journalists avoiding her name – Aung San Suu Kyi – as a matter of policy.

According to Myanma customary law and Myanma Dhamma Rules, a bad and evil offspring shall not have the right to get inheritance from one's parents. The Bogadaw [wife of a European] has lost her right to inherit her father's name ‘Aung San’. According to English custom there is no reason to even call her Suu Kyi. She should be called Daw Michael Aris or Mrs. Michael Aris.

In what bad and evil manner did the Bogadaw [wife of European] behave to lose the right of inheriting her father's name? The most simple answer is that in the plot to assassinate her father, it was the Englishmen who pulled the strings from behind the scene and provided assistance and it is because Suu Kyi had married an Englishman and given birth to two sons … The fifth obligation of the children towards their parents is to safeguard own race. As for Suu Kyi, who is the daughter of no ordinary person but a National Leader, instead of preserving the race of her parents, the Myanmar race which the father greatly loves, she destroyed it by mixing blood with an Englishman.[75]

In press briefings ‘her jailers cannot bear to speak her name’ and would refer to her as ‘the factor’ or ‘the very specific problem’.[76] If her name is used, her father's name elements, Aung San, are frequently left off, except in some editorials where the purpose is to question her integrity as Aung San's daughter. Most popularly she is referred to as Mrs Aris (her husband's family name), but she has variously been referred to as puppet doll, puppet princess, puppet girl, axe handle, ‘The Veto Lady’, ‘Mrs Race Destructionist’ [ZO14], lady, ‘England returnee miss’, democracy princess, that person, that woman, or occasionally Suu Kyi or Ma Suu. Lately she has been referred to as ‘Mrs Suu Kyi Aris’,[77] but the regime's journalists are not beyond innovating by calling her ‘Mrs. Michael Aris’, a reference acceptable in American, but not in British English.[78]

One of the more interesting references is Bogadaw [biul\keta\]. This is intended to mean ‘wife of a European’.[79] In part, however, given the regime's association of Aung San Suu Kyi with the Anauk Medaw

[‘Mother of the West’] spirit,[80] this could also be interpreted as a word-play on spirit medium nat-gadaw.[81] Since Bo means both ‘European’ and ‘officer’, Burmese people readily jump to the interpretation that it is the officers' wives to whom this applies, who are joining their husbands in corruption, whereas on Aung San Suu Kyi they have tried to find evidence of corruption for years, but have been unable to unearth it.

This contrasts with the terminology of the opposition. In Burmese she is affectionately known as ‘Auntie Suu’ or Daw Suu [edÅsu], and by elderly generation with a claim to have known her as a child, she is known as Ma Suu [msu] (lit. ‘Elder Sister Suu’). However, speaking her name in public is dangerous in Burma as it immediately alerts military intelligence to the topic of conversation. In English, therefore, as eavesdropping on foreigners is inevitable, she is sometimes referred to as ‘The Lady’.[82]

Everybody here calls this place by the same name, not 54 University Drive. Certainly not Aung San Suu Kyi's home. The mere mention of her name's been enough to get people arrested. Instead they come to The Lady's House. We're going to The Lady's House, they say, or I'll meet you at The Lady's House.[83]

The regime's reason for avoiding Aung San as an element of her name is therefore very different from abbreviation of her name by the Burmese people in general. Just as the regime removed her house number to confuse visitors, though everyone knows very well where she is located,[84] so they also remove elements from her name to avoid people locating her in history alongside her father. The Burmese people keep the full name in their hearts, as they do her address, though they may pronounce it as a gesture of endearment or to avoid detection in abbreviated form. The regime, however, avoids reference to the Aung San element in her name so as not to link her to Aung San. Reference to the Aung San element is only included in contexts where her link with Aung San is ridiculed or where they have no choice but to use her full name in order to identify her without ambiguity to a foreign audience, for whom it would be difficult to comprehend their cryptic, alternative naming practices, and to whom these practices would anyhow be offensive. The issue of naming in Burmese society is an interesting one,[85] and it is possible to speculate that one of the reasons why Burma has such large intelligence services is because, without compulsory rules for representing parents names in children (there is no system of family names – all names are, in a sense, first names), and because of the ease with which people rename themselves, the authorities have great difficulty keeping track of Burmese citizens and their family relations.[86]

Reporting Aung San Suu Kyi

Alternative naming of Aung San Suu Kyi is evident in the reporting in the national press of the motorcade incident. A blockade had been placed around Aung San Suu Kyi's home on 27 September 1996

to prevent the NLD from holding the All Burma Congress of the National League for Democracy to celebrate the eighth anniversary of the founding of the party. In the wake of the 20 October 1996 student protests, the first major student protests since 1990, the regime began a crackdown, which included the arrest of U Kyi Maung under suspicion that he had spoken to the student leaders. Aung San Suu Kyi announced she would resume her weekend talks to the public outside the barricades on 2 November, and supporters of the regime harassed NLD sympathisers making their way to this venue. This presaged the attack which took place the following week on 9 November when NLD members were attacked on two separate occasions on the same day by groups of men identified as SLORC-paid United Solidarity Development Association (USDA) members. In the attacks U Tin U sustained a small cut on the face when his windshield shattered, and Aung San Suu Kyi's car was hit with an iron bar which left a large hole. Riot police and soldiers stood by without intervening, except to arrest three NLD supporters.

After the NLD reported the attacks for consideration by the police, the following account was published by the regime of the attack. Note that it refers to ‘Suu Kyi’, without the Aung San:

Last Saturday, 9 November 1996, she had cheaply organizable persons, fanatics and awalas gather … On getting in front of the Bahan Basic Education High school No 2 at Kaba Aye Pagoda Road at about 3.45 p.m., about 200 persons opposed to Suu Kyi threw stones at the motorcade … Suu Kyi will get into trouble if she thinks that every group she sees is her supporters. Upon reaching the stage of being hit by stones openly she will have to exercise a restraint. It is difficult to allege specifically who are opposed to Suu Kyi, for Suu Kyi has caused trouble to various strata of society … As Suu Kyi is becoming more and more apparent as the one trying to destroy all these prospects for stability of the State with her fangs, it is rather difficult to indicate what sorts of people do not want her.[87]

Another article, responding to the NLD's claims that the USDA attacked the motorcade referred to Aung San Suu Kyi as ‘the woman’.

It is clearly a deception on the part of the woman [Aung San Suu Kyi] and her co-conspirators to have more Western pressure on the Na Wa Ta [SLORC] that they cursorily, dishonestly and rather brazenly accused the incident was the work of the government. In other words, it was just a deliberate attempt with low-down plot hatched to damage the political prestige of the steady and mature government which handles political problems so plainly and gently, though it happens to be called a military government.[88]

I will later deal with the foundation of the USDA and the nature of its activities. Suffice here to note that Aung San Suu Kyi compares them to Hitler's Brown Shirts.

‘She is a foreigner’

The regime felt Aung San Suu Kyi's entry into the political arena posed serious dangers to its legitimacy. The authorities initially tried to keep the name of Aung San ‘pure’ by discrediting his daughter as illegitimate and as a foreigner who had cheated on Burma. The regime-controlled mass media attempted to discredit Aung San Suu Kyi by divorcing her from Aung San, and to ‘disinherit’ her from the link to what they claim is their own spiritual father. In particular, they proclaimed her alliance with ‘the west bloc’ and her ignorance of Burmese ways. This was in spite of Aung San Suu Kyi having spent the formative years of her life in a Burmese home environment, between her birth in 1945 right up until 1964, when she would have been nineteen years old, including the last four years in India living with her mother who held the appointment of Burma's Ambassador to India.[89] Her independent life abroad did not begin until 1964, when she went to Oxford to take her degree.

However, the 1962 coup and the hope that Burma would eventually change, kept her mind actively focused on the country, in particular in her studies and writings. Burmese connections provided vital points of contact. For example, after her studies she worked as research assistant for Hugh Tinker, the Burma scholar at the London School of Oriental and African Studies, and stayed with Ma Than E in Algiers and New York while working for the United Nations. Her marriage in 1972 to Michael Aris, a Buddhologist, gave her a new reference point. Michael Aris conducted his research in Bhutan, where they lived for the two years after their marriage. Motherhood then took up a considerable part of her life, as with any mother. However, she soon returned to Burma-related affairs. She catalogued Burmese books for the Bodleian Library between 1975–77,[90] and by 1984 had a book on her father published. This was followed by a children's book on Burma in the subsequent year. From 1985 she then performed several years of research at Kyoto and this resulted in substantial publications focusing on Burma. In 1988, as she was about to

further develop her studies on Burma in the field of Burmese literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, when she was taken to Burma by her mother's illness. Upon marriage she furthermore made Michael Aris promise that her country would come before him, which he accepted.[91] The story since 1988 is, of course, tied to Burma beyond question, as she cared for her mother, who had suffered a stroke, for three months full-time.

Therefore, it is quite clear to any casual observer that, though she has not lived all her life in Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi has certainly not only spent her formative years in a Burmese environment, but also chose to be preoccupied with Burma and Burmese life throughout her life. Furthermore, she has taken care of her Burmese family with diligence. It has been politically expedient for the regime, however, to deny this fact. One example is an article entitled ‘The unforgettable 19th July’, published the day prior to Martyr Day on 18 July 1996 by Bo Daewa. After saying that it was ‘according to concrete proof and significant evidence we can never forget that it was the British who assassinated our Leaders on 19 July’, Aung San Suu Kyi is represented as married to a British long-nosed person, living decadently in the West until manipulated by British forces to cause trouble around the time of Martyrs' Day [L6]. Racial continuity with Burma supposedly broken, she has joined the British race and according to this reasoning even her own father would have assassinated her [L7]. Bo Daewa continues saying that the 19 July Martyr Day problem was caused by foreign elements controlling her [L8]. This editorial tug-of-war over the commemoration of Aung San on Martyrs' Day was written to intimidate anyone wanting to march with Aung San Suu Kyi to her father's tomb on Martyrs' Day 1996.

Another example is the article which says that ‘if only Thakhin Aung San were alive, I do not know whether he would kill or exile his daughter who married an Englishman’.[92]

I have wanted to write this for a long time, but I was unable to do so. I was inspired to write this after reading Ma Shwe's article – on 28–5–96. My mother, who would be over 100 years old if she were still alive, once asked, ‘Hey, where are Thakhin Aung San's [Aung San Suu Kyi's father] children and what are they doing?’ I answered, ‘Mother, they live in England and I heard they are married to English people. My mother said, ‘Oh – what kind of kids are they? I am very sad to know that they have discarded their father's country to live in England and marry the English. They have no regard for their father or their country. If only Thakhin Aung San were alive, I do not know whether he would kill or exile his daughter who married an Englishman.

My mother told us when we were young that U Phan was a head coolie, a colonial era usage, engaged in carrying sand and gravel from the Shwebo canal. A lady laborer named ‘Ma San Set’ was in his laborer group. Ma San Set was attractive and had a pleasant personality. An English officer, who knew a little Burmese, approached U Phan and said he wanted ‘Ma San Set’. U Phan said, ‘Hey, Ma San Set, the Englishman is giving preference to me and my work. I know he is doing it because of you. I feel bad and I do not agree. You do not like him because he is from another race, so why don't you quit this job?’

Ma San Set replied, ‘My goodness, I couldn't even work peacefully as a coolie and now that this Englishman is after me I cannot continue to work. Uncle Phan, I cannot become an Englishman's wife so I am quitting my job tomorrow. I would rather sell roasted beans and jaggery, it would be more dignified than being a foreigner's wife and rich.

The poor Ma San Set's spirit is commendable. She knew that she would be rich and her life would be secure if she had married the English officer, but she still preserved her country and her own status. We should be proud of her strong will.

I feel, today's Myanmar [Burmese] ladies do not think of Ma San Set as an example, but instead envy Ma Suu Kyi. I see frequent advertisements in the newspapers about Myanmar ladies marrying English, American, and other foreigners with parental consent. Their parents might think it is prestigious to be married to a foreigner and I do not know whether they can feel proud of their race and religion.

I do not know they feel that marrying a foreigner like Ma Suu Kyi, the daughter of a national leader, is a prestigious act, or if it makes them feel great, proud, and able to use foreign things, or if they think the English and the Americans are better.

I would like to shout from the road junction, Myanmar ladies do not envy the race-destruction act!

Invariably, the regime seeks to delegitimise Aung San Suu Kyi with this cheap propaganda within the community. In fictitious stories, they portray her as seen through the eyes of kindly Burmese people who, in the course of a social chit-chat, deliver damaging blows to her reputation by pointing at her consort with foreigners and her betrayal of the Burmese cause. Most of these are written under pseudonyms by members of the Psychological Warfare Department of the Ministry of Defense to give the impression that all kinds of people from all backgrounds dislike Aung San Suu Kyi. It is but an extension of the earlier BSPP attempt to blame foreigners, in particular Indians and Chinese, for the failure of the Burmese way to socialism.

Rather than step back and strike a deal with what had evidently become a truly popular politician, the army instead identified Aung San Suu Kyi as national enemy Number One and has sought to eliminate her. This is somewhat surprising, for, as a perceptive Japanese journalists once asked spokesmen for the regime

at a press conference, ‘we have learnt that the SLORC has worked with lots of former rebel groups and you have been successfully working together. So my question is why you cannot work with NLD people or the leaders of NLD?’ To this, the SLORC responded that the armed ethnic minorities accepted SLORC's claim to supremacy whereas the NLD did not.

What had happened with national armed groups is that when we sent some feelers their response always is that they are agreeable to the Three National Causes that the State Law and Order Restoration Council has laid down that is the non-disintegration of the Union, non-disintegration of the national races and the perpetuation of our sovereignty. And apart from that they all of them are agreeable to join hands for the development of their respective areas. That is what we had got before hand, before starting our meetings with them. But concerning with some of our internal politicians, some are quite temperamental and … most of them … are not talking about the development of the country but talking about sanctions and other things, so these a[re] the things … hard to assess [on] the government side whether to take the next step or not.[93]

The fact is, the regime can do deals with drug barons such as Khun Sa, but it is unwilling to even talk to Aung San Suu Kyi. Indeed, Martin Smith has pointed out that after the 1990 elections the regime has reversed its priorities. It built bridges with the ethnic minority groups, its former enemies, but has sought to positively undermine the NLD, the party it originally formally permitted to operate.

Indeed, in many respects, Burmese politics have gone full circle since 1988. During much of 1988–89, for example, Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) was a legally-registered party which successfully went on to win the 1990 general election (Burma's first in three decades), whereas ethnic insurgent forces, such as the New Mon State Party (NMSP) and the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), were being denounced by the SLORC as ‘bandits’ or ‘terrorists’. Now, by contrast, the situation is almost reversed, and it is the NLD which the state-controlled media is describing as ‘treasonous,’ and armed opposition leaders, such as the NMSP president, Nai Shwe Kyin, or much-derided ‘opium kingpin,’ Khun Sa, who are being feted by government officials in Rangoon.[94]

This is how Aung San Suu Kyi could remark that ‘it seems very strange to me that they're prepared to talk to armed insurgents but not to legal political parties’.[95] The regime now proclaims that all ethnic groups except one, the Karen, have ‘returned to the legal fold’, but the cease-fire peace agreements must be seen as temporary and extremely vulnerable to dissolution.[96] Furthermore, the army's decision to resist input in decision making from other parties, means that it has to take sole responsibility for the enormous toll that Burma has had to pay. Not least, it has been involved in bringing drug barons out into the open in Burmese society, doubling the size of the army since 1988, closing virtually all educational facilities for seven years out of the past ten, and serious new health problems emerging, including a severe HIV epidemic fuelled by destitute refugees in search of a livelihood. A whole generation of youngsters has been lost because of their folly, and Burma will not recover for a generation or more from this set-back.

In sum, the protests in the name of democracy and Aung San Suu Kyi's political ascent could only further hasten the process of Aung San amnesia already under way on the part of the military; it meant the return of a martyr to the Burmese people. This provided an impetus for the regime to rewrite history, as we will momentarily show.

Democracy and socialism – loka and lokuttara

Neither socialism nor democracy is what it appears in Burma, for both are perceived and legitimated through Buddhist terminology. Democracy and socialism have been understood in Burma as two elements in a Buddhist path. In this respect, the most important is the association between democracy and the ‘transcendent’ [lokuttara], and between socialism and the ‘mundane’ [loki]. Both associations are clearly evident already in Aung San's speeches (see chapter 12).

The BSPP's The System of Correlation of Man and his Environment [lUNHc\. pt\wn\:k¥c\tiu>f Avmv qeBatra:] (17 January 1963) explains socialism in terms of what is variously referred to as ‘the Correlation of Mind and Matter’ and as ‘the Philosophy of humanism based on the system of dialectical objective-realism’. In the introductory paragraphs socialism is equated with a ‘mundane [loka] view’ [elak Aòmc\] and as concerned with the ‘mundane affairs [loki] of human society’ [elakIer:òPs\eqa lU>eBac\ APµæ>Asv\:kiu]. This is followed immediately by a chapter on ‘the three realms [loka]’ [elak 3 på:] that make up the Buddhist idea of the world-sytem. More strongly, in chapter 5 it is argued that ‘our party's reflection is that it is concerned with mundane [loka] affairs. It is not concerned with transcendental affairs [lokuttara]. That is why it is our Party's view that it is not right for us to view with a transcendental perspective. Only a mundane perspective is

suitable … These are conventional truths.’[97]

As a mundane philosophy, based on ‘conventional truths’ that subordinates politics to the mundane sphere, socialism was cut to fit the Buddhist template of loka. This was clearly an attempt to distinguish socialism from U Nu's earlier democracy politics that referenced politics as working to the attainment of lokuttara, namely to overcome material distinctions in this world and to attain nibbana. If BSPP discourse aspired to attainment of substantive material control over loka, to U Nu the goals within loka were ultimately subservient to lokuttara.

I shall later come back to how at the heart of both socialism and democracy is byama-so tayà, a form of Buddhist social meditation at the boundary between loka and lokuttara – it serves loka, but helps attain lokuttara. Since 1994 this has also become the credo, through Mangala Sutta, for the SLORC and the SPDC. The problem for the latter, however, is that it would like to keep the loka constraints that favour central control by the military, but it has no attractive ideology – democratic or socialist – that legitimates it and that bridges the divide between its loka disposition, and the legitimating lokuttara principles. In other words, it is using loka to create a country prison without permitting a lokuttara escape from it in the name of freedom.

National independence and freedom

Let me here further home in on a local debate concerning the nature of freedom and national independence, for these are crucial prior concepts to even the building of political structures. They were prior in Aung San's path, and they are also prior in the political path of the current SPDC. It is the different attitudes to these that sum up the divide between exponents of the conservative militarist and the reformist democratic viewpoints. Both are intrinsically related to the Buddhist concept of the transcendent (lokuttara) and nibbana.

Martyrs' Day

To Aung San Suu Kyi Martyrs' Day represents the most important national day. As I have shown, her father's legacy it commemorates is inextricably intertwined with her own struggle. If the regime prefers to forget about Martyrs' Day, this is exactly because to her, and to the democracy movement, Martyrs' Day has come to reflect the inseparability between the spiritual and the political.

This year's Martyrs' Day, which commemorates the assassination of my father and eight associates, coincided with the full moon of the Burmese month of Waso, which marks the beginning of the rainy season Buddhist retreat. The National League for Democracy arranged a ceremony for offering food and robes to fifty monks for the sake of merit to be shared between those who have passed away and those who have been left behind. It was an occasion that afforded us with an opportunity to reflect on the three aspects common to all conditioned things: anicca (impermanence), dukkha (suffering) and anatta (the unresponsiveness of objects to one's wishes) and on nirvana, the unconditioned, undefiled state where anicca, dukkha and anatta become extinct. Spiritual matters are as much an integral component of the fabric of human existence as politics, which has to do with how man relates to others of his kind. Whether we like it or not, the spiritual and political will remain part of the design of our lives.[98]

Here I would like to demonstrate how, because he inherited the vocabulary of political struggle from the early generation of monk resistance leaders, which was a Buddhist vocabulary, Aung San could not avoid perceiving and representing the political struggle in spiritual terms as pertaining to the supramundane (lokuttara). I shall later focus on the interrelationship between national unity and the quest for nibbana in Aung San's discourse, but here I would like to focus in particular on the conjunction between national independence and the prospect of attaining loki nibbana, namely the penultimate stage in the release from samsara, the mundane cycle of existence.

Lut-lak-yeì

To understand colonial and post-colonial politics it is crucial to appreciate that in the Burmese language there is no clear distinction between ‘national independence’ and ‘freedom’, as both of these are rendered as lut-lak-yeì [læt\lp\er:].[99] National independence was formally declared in 1948 as the result of the first struggle against the British and the Japanese, but this did not actually result in ‘freedom’ in the long-term. Aung San Suu Kyi therefore characterises the ‘the present … national crisis’ as the struggle for the

attainment of freedom, namely as the ‘the second struggle for national independence [lut-lak-yeì]’ [Y19][ZH10]. She relates this to her father's speech, in which he proclaimed that ‘democracy is the only ideology which is consistent with freedom’.

I have dealt with the significance of enlightenment and nibbana for transcending and reconfiguring the boundaries of the State (See App. I.6). In the vernacular, the highest concept of lut-lak-yeì is linked to Buddhist ideas, namely of transcending the cycle of rebirth (samsara) and the attainment of nibbana. In that sense, then, both national independence and freedom – through lut-lak-yeì – are related to mental culture. Hence, mental culture is both an instrument for personal fulfilment and a nationalist political instrument, for it achieves both. As I will show later, this correlation between politics and mental culture is furthermore vital to understand Burmese thinking about other concepts – such as martyr, Freedom Bloc (Htwet-yak gaìng) and Wunthanú village associations –these mix freedom in both a personal and a national sense.

Loka nibbana

In vernacular political discourse, Aung San Suu Kyi is not far off associating Martyrs' Day with nibbana, for to Aung San attainment of national independence and democracy was indeed that, namely nibbana in this mundane world. To Aung San, national independence represented ‘mundane nibbana’ (loki nibbana elakI nibèån\), or as this Burmese Buddhist concept has sometimes been translated, ‘a pleasant state in the human realm’ [lU>elakÒqayaweòpaeqa AeòKAenX].

Loki nibbana is a Burmese term that is not found in the Pali texts. Aung San first used this concept in the speech ‘The ceremony opening the U Wisara Statue’ [¨I:wisarek¥ak\Rup\Pæc\. pæµAKm\:Ana:Ò] in early October 1943, where he says ‘as the national independence attained so far is not yet permanent because we have not yet won this war we are unable as yet to enjoy the taste of national independence, of loki nibbana’.[100] This was the very year in which the AFO was founded, and it represents Aung San's idiom for political resistance while living under conditions of severe repression.

Aung San did not use this without cause, for the struggle against colonialism in the 1920s was led by Buddhist monks. This included the very martyr (azani) monk U Wisara (c.1888–1929), whose statue Aung San unveiled when he first used this concept. As a monk, U Wisara conceived the goal of the struggle for national independence from the British in terms of loki nibbana.[101] He characterised the British as ‘wrong-viewed’ in a Buddhist sense, and encouraged the monks and the people to attain ‘right view’ by meditating jointly to ‘eliminate the mental defilements so as to attain nibbana’.[102] While in Rangoon in 1923 the Sangha Samegga of which he was a member exhorted its members to preach ‘The Four Noble Truths of Loki Nibbana’ [elakInibèan\qsßael:på:] in which the path to freedom from samsara and national independence coincide under the headings of the Four Noble Truths. The fourth – namely the cessation of suffering – represented his idea of loki nibbana:

1. The Truth of Suffering, P. dukkha sacca (The truth of suffering of the country tiuc\:òpv\Sc\:rµmæµòpak¥puM)

2. The Truth of The Origin of Suffering, P. samudaya sacca (The causes of suffering of the country tiuc\:òpv\Sc\:rµòKc\:fAûkac\:rc\:)

3. The Truth of The Cessation of Suffering, P. nirodha sacca (The path to freedom-national independence of the country tiuc\:òpv\læt\lp\er:tra:)

4. The Truth of The Path of Way Leading to The Cessation of Suffering, P. magga sacca (Loki Nibbana – the attainment of freedom-national independence of the country tiuc\:òpv\læt\lp\òKc\:x elakInibèan\)[103]

Indeed, in at least one of the nationalist songs, namely The Song of National Independence [læt\lp\er:qIK¥c\:],[104] a Pali phrase through which Buddha had indicated the path[105] is translated that states that ‘the Noble Buddha has now attained the golden and noble land of nibbana [òmt\sæaBura:qKc\ kiuy\eta\òmt\ýkI:mHaeta. læt\lp\er:Siutµ. nibèån\eræòpv\òmt\kiurKµ.epôpIx]’. To this the reply is ‘Lord, as for us we have not yet attained lut-lak-yeì. Please give us lut-lak-yeì [Bura:tpv.\eta\tiu>mHaeta. læt\lp\er:kiumreq:påx]’.

In ‘Minister of Warfare’ [ss\wn\ýkI:] (7 October 1944), Aung San remarked, under a section entitled ‘to arrive at loki nibbana’ [elakInibèån\qiu>erak\rn\], that national independence has not yet been attained, and says that in spite of this, ‘if we can overcome the suffering, we will be able to attain loka nibbana’

[dukðSc\:rµAepåc\:mH ek¥a\nc\:Niuc\j cåtiu>kiu elaknibèån\ sKn\:qiu>erak\Niuc\epmv\].[106]

In ‘The two kinds of revolution’ [eta\lHn\er:NHs\m¥oi:] (28 March 1947) he urges ‘the battle for national independence is not yet finished … Let us from today, saying “starting from today, till the end of life” (ijjatagge anupedan), take the vow to work with all our strength so that we might attain nibbana in the mundane plane (loki nibbana)’ [dåeûkac\. tiuc\:òpv\lUTukyen>ksj (Azêteg©på%ueptM) Siuqliu elakInibèan\erak\qv\ATi Ac\Aa:sukiu etac\.tc\:eAac\ lup\påmv\hu ADi™an\ñpûkpåX].[107] The expression ijjatagge anupedan were the Buddha's last words before he entered parinibbana as expressed in Mahaparinibbana Sutta.

Aung San therefore expressed Burma's struggle against colonialism and fascism by means of an inherited Buddhist idiom from an earlier generation of monk freedom fighters, for whom national independence and freedom were represented by one and the same goal, attainable through mental culture, namely loki or loka nibbana. Before Aung San characterised it thus, this concept had already been used to translate the final goal of socialism, in the sense of a classless society, in the works of Thahkin So and Ba Thaung.

After Aung San's assassination the concept continued to be popularly used. For example, some time in 1950 a Burmese author published an account of Marxism as being similar to Buddhism. Marxism, like Buddhism, he held, supposedly does not postulate the concept of ‘I’, and ‘the emergence of Marxism is instrumental … for the effulgence of Buddha's accredited “Anatta Sasana” [dispensation without self] and for the speedy attainment of Loka Nibbana, called the Sa-Upadisesa Nibbana (Heaven on earth) and Lokuttara Nibbana (Nibbana beyond the world)’. He viewed Marx himself as a sotapanna and as a bodhisattva, to which the English Buddhist Francis Story, who had no sympathy for such admixture between Marxism and Buddhism, took exception when he wrote a reposte in 1952, arguing that Marxism was, in fact, materialistic in outlook and therefore ‘wrong-viewed’.[108]

The nibbana that Aung San describes is in the popular imagination often represented as ‘the city’ and as ‘the country’ of nibbana in prayers accompanying the water libation ceremony at the end of an act of Buddhist charity. Though this is popularly believed the equivalent of a ‘kind of indestructible country or city’ and some believe that it is a place where ‘those who have passed into it lived happily with mind and body free of old age, sickness and death’, it in fact represents successful accomplishment of a complete and permanent transformation of the mind by arahat and Buddhas in their last existence, with the consequence that there is no longer a next existence, since there has been annihilation of all ignorance and its related mental defilements. Loka nibbana, however, is but one kind of nibbana. Lokuttara nibbana, is another kind, where additionally also has occurred the extinction of the five bodily factors (khanda), so that there is no longer any physical existence – this involves the complete ceasing of being.[109]

Going as far back as the Pagan Period, it has long been part of Burmese political tradition for royalty to pray for the attainment of nibbana at the end of their grand acts of charity. Furthermore, out of compassion for the world, it was not uncommon for political leaders to take the vow to become a Buddha (i.e. as bodhisattvas) out of mercy for their subjects, the inhabitants of this world; they aimed to remain in this world longer to achieve some political objective. They would postpone their personal entry into nibbana so as to eventually build up the strength to take the masses across the threshold of samsara into nibbana. If this was the prerogative of aristocracy in the past, in Burma of the 1920s and 1930s a transition was gradually made which democratised the concept of nibbana as being within reach of every person. This culminated in the democracy period of U Nu, where vipassana centres were sponsored all over the country.

Freedom repressed

Hence, when Aung San Suu Kyi says that Martyrs' Day provides an opportunity for reflection on ‘nirvana, the unconditioned, undefiled state where anicca, dukkha and anatta become extinct’, is of great significance, as it touches the national sentiment that Aung San had also evoked in his speeches on national independence-freedom (loki nibbana). Though national independence was attained after Aung San's death, the flavour of loki nibbana in the sense of freedom was enjoyed all-too-briefly. After the army contributed to the fight for national independence, it eventually stepped back into political power at first in 1958, and later

in 1962, and in the name of national independence they eliminated freedom. The Four Freedoms were no longer formal part of political ideology, and elections were no longer practised.

However, between 1958 and 1962, just as we find overt acceptance of democracy, so the army still held to this ideal of freedom in a spiritual sense. In 1958 there was much insurgency and quibbling among political factions within the country, and the army proposed that order and law needed to be restored. They expressed the freedom as having essentially a spiritual flavour.

The Union of Burma has passed her eleventh year as a Sovereign Independent Republic and is now entering her twelfth year. In the early days of Independence hopes were bright in the hearts of all citizens of the Union that, free at last, they would enjoy the fruits of this freedom to the utmost. They thought to themselves: ‘Now free from anxieties over food, clothing, and shelter, we shall be able to go in peace to work or to our pagodas and monasteries. Far, far better is our lot now than when we were subjects under imperialist rule.’ So they hoped and their happiness knew no bounds. But these hopes were soon drowned in a sea of trouble and a sense of insecurity overwhelmed them.[110]

Eventhough the people could not ‘enjoy the fruits of this freedom to the utmost’, and were ‘unable to go in peace to work or to our pagodas and monasteries’, the army nevertheless continued to hold up this spiritual goal of freedom until the 1962 military coup. The National Ideology and Our Pledge, known as the ‘First Phase of Ideological Development’, was made at the Defence Services Conference, Meiktila, 21 October 1958:

Man's endeavour to build a society set free at last from anxieties over food, clothing and shelter, and able to enjoy life's spiritual satisfactions as well, fully convinced of the sanctity, dignity, and essential goodness of life, must proceed from the premise of a faith only in a politico-economic system based on the eternal principles of justice, liberty and equality. This is our belief. We would rather give up life than give up this belief. In order to achieve the establishment of such a society, we have resolved to uphold this belief forever in this our sovereign independent republic of the Union of Burma.[111]

By 1988 it was clear to all observers that, in spite of its strong promise to uphold this belief, the army had not been able to set people free, even from anxieties over food, clothing and shelter, let alone from enjoying ‘life's spiritual satisfactions’ and from experiencing ‘justice, liberty and equality’.[112] The army's promise that the people were ‘to enjoy life's spiritual satisfactions’ was only true in so far as it supported the meditation traditions which had informally been permitted to grow unhampered, so that dissenters and those who experienced the mental distress of having their property nationalised, had somewhere to go to resolve their problems.

After the 1991 monastic boycott against the regime – the first against a government in Burmese history – it became evident that the army was no longer a defender of the spiritual realm – not even a neutral by-stander – but rather an attacker. The last and only element of freedom left, namely in the monastic order, came under threat. At this point, spiritual freedom and spiritual resistance, the only domains not to have been nationalised, were also under serious threat.

Today, when Aung San Suu Kyi encourages a ‘revolution of the spirit’ she is encouraging several things. She reminds the army that Aung San's spiritual struggle (of attaining loki nibbana) is as yet unfinished. After the army had a crack at it for twenty-six years, she cannot accept the army's promise that it will eventually deliver ‘spiritual satisfaction’ and ‘justice, liberty and equality’. Aung San, having been proclaimed as the spiritual martyr for the democratic cause, in this sense bears out Aung San Suu Kyi's saying that ‘whether we like it or not, the spiritual and political will remain part of the design of our lives’. As the ‘second independence struggle’ is taking shape, the struggle for true national independence conjoint with freedom, so also does the spiritual dimension to this struggle necessarily evolve. Aung San Suu Kyi has now taken up her father's mantle in the struggle for loki nibbana, the ‘revolution of the spirit’. Can she rival the army in attaining Machiavellian control over loki, over the physical domain now called Myanmar? As long as the army views ‘freedom’ as implying the loss of ‘national independence’ to foreign interests, the fight will be a difficult one – the Burmese people, however, are hoping that she will deliver both kinds of lut-lak-yeì.

[1] In Burmese he is known as ‘the father of Burma's national independence’ [òmn\ma.læt\lp\er:PKc\ýkI:].

[2] In Burma people commonly refer to her as ‘an accidental politician’ [ýkuMýkiuk\òPs\laeqanuic\cMer:], a concept she used for herself first. See also (Mya Maung 1992:144).

[3] Victor (1998:105).

[4] Victor (1998:7).

[5] Victor (1998:103–6). See also Stewart (1997:100).

[6] ASSK (1995:206).

[7] ‘At stalls in Yangon and Mandalay which specialise in selling pictures of famous Buddhist monks, one popular item is a photograph of Aung San, the leader of the Burmese independence movement, with his family. Dandled on Aung San's knee is his baby daughter, Suu. With a bit of prompting, the stall-holders will also sell photographs of Aung San Suu Kyi as a grown up; these are kept under the counter.’ (‘The prisoner of University Avenue’. The Economist, 28.01– 02.02.1995)

[8] ASSK (1995:201).

[9] ‘Patience, pragmatism pays off for “The Lady”’. The Nation, 01.11.1995.

[10] ASSK (1995:37).

[11] Victor (1998:32).

[12] ASSK (1995:205).

[13] Amnesty International (1989:40) cited in ASSK (1995:343).

[14] ‘U Ne Win is one of those that caused this nation to suffer for twenty six years, U Ne Win is the one who lowered the prestige of the armed forces. Officials from the armed forces and officials from SLORC, I call upon you to be loyal to the state. Be loyal to the people, you don't have to be loyal to U Ne Win.’ Aung San Suu Kyi in June 1989 speech cited in Kanbawza Win (n.d.:97).

[15] Amnesty International (1989:59) in ASSK (1995:347), ASSK (1995:225).

[16] Saw Maung (1990a:54).

[17] ‘He's done enough to ruin the country. I think it is time to be stopped. He's very easy to understand in a way, he'll do anything to keep himself in power. A megalomaniac.’ (Time, 14.08.1989); Kanbawza Win (n.d.:93–94).

[18] ‘My father was very worried about how this army could be misused and he said a lot about it. He made this point; that this army was not founded for the use of one man or for one group. It's for the country, it's for the people. He didn't think much of General Ne Win, and he never trusted him a lot. My father stopped him from becoming commander of the army, had him removed and demoted him to quartermaster general at one point.’ Time ‘Whoever shoots me’ cited in Kanbawza Win (n.d.:96–97).

[19] ‘AC: Was Ne Win the one behind your incarceration in 1989? ASSK: I don't know. But it is a fact that I was incarcerated after I started criticising him for the ruin he had brought on the country’ (ASSK 1997b:23).

[20] ‘Avoiding a “killing field”: Suu Kyi arrested for “endangering the state”’. Amnesty International, Briefing, September 1990; Alan Clements's Burma: the next killing fields? (1992:33). In 1996 came the concept of ‘The pipeline killing field’, linking the concept to the Unocal gas pipeline which would traverse the Karen, Mon and Tavoy lands, to forced village relocation and forced labour (‘No petrol dollars for SLORC’. FBC, 06.06.1996). By 1997 ‘the killing fields’ became linked in the press to the regime's attempt to gain credibility by setting up nature and wildlife reserves (‘Nature groups work with Junta in Burma's ethnic killing fields. World renowned wildlife groups are working with … military regime on huge conservation projects on sites being cleared by systematic slaughter of the Karen ethnic Minority …’ Adrian Levy et al. London Observer 23.04.1997). Because of the HIV problem it also became linked to ‘the killing fields of the global sex industry’ (‘Sex, slavery and kids.’ The Toronto Star (Final Edition), 28.08.1996).

[21] Nawrahta (1995:83).

[22] Burma Debate May/June 1996; the regime's view of the situation was published in ‘Destiny of The Nation-24’, a series of articles by Nawrahta (NLM) two days before Aung San Suu Kyi's release.

[23] Victor (1998:108).

[24] Published in Silverstein (1993:19–22). I am grateful to Kei Nemoto for my discussion with him on this document.

[25] Aung San. ‘Problems for Burma's freedom.’ In Aung San (1971:34).

[26] The document is proclaimed to be based on a notebook which is a ‘a true copy of Mr. Sugii's without any amendment or supplement’. The document does not carry Aung San's signature and was obtained from his ex-army trainers. However, though supposedly based on the original Aung San's hand-scribbled notes, the version published was actually an edited copy of a copy. It was Mitsuri Sugii, furthermore, not Aung San, who seems to have abandoned several drafts. Though this document is proclaimed as ‘the almost perfect copy [i.e. of the version around February 1941] which can tell us the real idea of the late General Aung San for the reconstruction plan of Burma in those days’ (i.e. around February 1941), there are some obvious discrepancies.

[27] Butwell (1969:19,23).

[28] Thant (1956).

[29] Maung Maung (1959:92).

[30] Cady (1958:448–453).

[31] Trager (1966:68,368n1).

[32] Aung San's address at the AFPFL Convention, Jubilee Hall, Rangoon, 23.05.1947 in Silverstein (1993:154) and Aung San (1971:295).

[33] Governor of Burma to Secretary of State for Burma, 20.06.1946. In Tinker et al (1983–84:571).

[34] Sir Hubert Rance to the Earl of Listowel. In Tinker (1983–84,II:362).

[35] Sagaìng Han Tin (1985:172–73).

[36] Aung San's address at the AFPFL Convention, Jubilee Hall, Rangoon, 23.05.1947 in Silverstein (1993:155) and Aung San (1971:300–1).

[37] Ibid, in Silverstein (1993:153) and Aung San (1971:295–96).

[38] Ibid.

[39] Kyaw Zaw (n.d.:82–84).

[40] Callahan (1998a:51–53).

[41] Maung Maung (1969a:194).

[42] Caretaker Government (1960:534); See also Trager (1966:181–82).

[43] Kyaw Zaw (n.d.:75). This ordering of priorities between national independence, unity, democracy and socialism is recognized in Minye Kaungbon (1994:10, 30–31). See also Nawrahta (1995:106–7).

[44] Trager (1966:211).

[45] Maung Maung (1969a:296).

[46] Ibid.

[47] Maung Maung (1969a:298).

[48] The Burmese Way to Socialism, 30.04.1962.

[49] Tinker (1967:388).

[50] lup\qa:òpv\qU>en>s¨\x 28x9x68X Maung Maung (1969b:d).

[51] Lintner (1991:118).

[52] The Burmese Way to Socialism, 30 April 1962)

[53] Nemoto (1994:20).

[54] Lintner (1989:126).

[55] Lintner (1989:14).

[56] Yangon's Press Conference (3), Rangoon, 01.10.1996.

[57] Excerpts from the address delivered by Lt-Gen Khin Nyunt, Secretary-1, State Peace and Development Council, at the closing ceremony of the Special Refresher Course No 3 for Officers of the Development Department at 12.30 hours on 21 November 1997, at the Central Institute of Civil Service, Phaunggyi.

[58] Win Htein. ‘Burma's forced resignations – the final onslaught?’. The Irrawaddy, Vol. 6, No. 6, 15.12.1999.

[59] Saw Maung (1990b:158); U Kyi Maung in ASSK (1997b:199).

[60] Silverstein (1989b:7,17).

[61] Nawrahta (1995:134).

[62] Saw Maung (1990b:48, 52).

[63] òmn\maNiUc\cMf læt\lp\er:PKc\ýkI:biul\K¥op\eAac\Sn\:X lup\qa:òpv\qU>ens¨\qtc\:sax 12-2-89X In Saw Maung (1990b:32).

[64] Kyaw Zaw (n.d.:76).

[65] NLM, 04.01.1998.

[66] I am grateful to Kei Nemoto for pointing this out.

[67] Moe Aye. ‘Denying the anti-fascist revolution in Burma?’ The Nation, 26.11.1998.

[68] See Saw Maung's speech in Saw Maung (1990b:76).

[69] I am grateful to Kei Nemoto for pointing this out.

[70] Callahan (1996a:48).

[71] See Houtman (1990a).

[72] This included demonstrations in Mandalay (Abbott 1990:169).

[73] Nawrahta (1995:82).

[74] I am grateful to Kei Nemoto for relating this issue to me.

[75] Po Yaygyan. ‘Adrift and washed ashore’. NLM, 09.05.1997.

[76] Asiaweek, 02.06.1995.

[77] Embassy of the Union of Myanmar, Ottawa. ‘Political demonstration resolved peacefully’. Myanmar News Release, Vol.10, No.17, 29.07.1998.

[78] Kyaw Myint Naing. ‘Who is opposing and destroying the people's wish?’. NLM, 02.09.1998, p. 5.

[79] ‘The Bogadaw, alias the so-called democratic leader, who is in Myanmar for a temporary period and who is dancing to the tune of the imperialists, carries on insulting the race that the Myanmar people could no longer tolerate.’ (‘More faithful to a foreigner than one's own nationality’. Kyemon, 25.07.1996, p. 6). ‘No matter how she tries to cause disturbances and to destroy Myanmar and put her under domination of aliens, all her efforts will be in vain. That no patriotic Myanmar could value Mrs Michael Aris (Bogadaw Ma Suu Kyi) and would care about any alien interfering in Myanmar's internal affairs has been firmly expressed by the following People's Desires …’ (Thet Shay. ‘Myanmar people will do Myanmar s politics by themselves’. NLM, 16.11.1996); ‘‘The US Government is increasing the momentum for Myanmar's destruction by using its influence to install its puppet Bogadaw Suu Kyi--a woman who destroys her own race.’ (Taungdwin Bo Thein. ‘The US, a country surrounded by enemies.’ Kyemon, 06.07.1997); ‘It is like this. The puppet troupe led by the political stunt star Bogadaw has expressed its enthusiastic welcome to the blatant, shameless encroachment of the US Government, incompatible with its status, upon the sovereignty of Myanmar, by allowing the use of not less than US $ 2.5 million for funding the instigation of disturbances in the country and supporting KNU insurgents led by Bo Mya, called by the colonialist group as remnants of the ethnic rebels at the border, gangs trafficking in opium and smuggling timber and gemstones and internal traitorous elements who are the CIA spies.’ (Pauk Sa. ‘Running away without being banished and coming back without being invited’. NLM, 24.06.1997).

[80] ‘As the name, the West Medawgyi, applies she resorted to all tricks of the lower way.’ (Thanlyet. ‘Harm caused by one s own deed, being caught in one's own trap – all should beware! NLM, 25.11.1996).

[81] ‘According to Myanma customary law and Myanma Dhamma Rules, a bad and evil offspring shall not have the right to get inheritance from one's parents. The Bogadaw has lost her right to inherit her father's name “Aung San". According to English custom there is no reason to even call her Suu Kyi. She should be called Daw Michael Aris or Mrs. Michael Aris.

In what bad and evil manner did the Bogadaw behave to lose the right of inheriting her father's name? The most simple answer is that in the plot to assassinate her father, it was the Englishmen who pulled the strings from behind the scene and provided assistance and it is because Suu Kyi had married an Englishman and given birth to two sons … The fifth obligation of the children towards their parents is to safeguard own race. As for Suu Kyi, who is the daughter of no ordinary person but a National Leader, instead of preserving the race of her parents, the Myanmar race which the father greatly loves, she destroyed it by mixing blood with an Englishman.’ (NLM, 09.05.1997).

[82] It should be pointed out that from Victor's interviews with SLORC officials and intelligence personnel it is evident that ‘The Lady’ is a reference SLORC officials also use to refer to Aung San Suu Kyi in relation to journalists such as Victor herself (Victor 1998:7,144). Indeed the regime it was publicised her foreign connections in the English national press using the title ‘The Lady's privileged foreign connection’ (Victor 1998:106).

[83] Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Radio. Report aired on 17.12.1995 on CBC's “Sunday Morning Report” by Dick Gordon in Rangoon (BurmaNet News, 02.01.1996).

[84] Victor (1998:27). However, another interpretation for the removal of the number is that it represented 5+4=9, a lucky number the regime did not want to see associated with Aung San Suu Kyi. Another interpretation is that they removed the plaque in order to perform loki pañña (magic) on it.

[85] For an analysis of the principles underlying the Burmese personal naming system, see Houtman (1982).

[86] It is well-known, for example, that especially in the 90s inexperience intelligence staff made serious errors in identifying relations between family members. Since the policy in Burma is to repress family members directly or indirectly associated with dissidents, there have been many inappropriate arrests and suspicions as the result of perceived family continuities in names.

[87] NLM, as cited in the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, 12.11.1996.

[88] NLM, 15.11.1996.

[89] On the Burmese and Buddhist nature of her upbringing see Stewart (1997:25–29).

[90] Stewart (1997:58).

[91] Stewart (1997:54).

[92] Chan Mye Khin. ‘Want to shout from the road junction’, NLM, 30.06.1996 (BurmaNet News, 17.07.1996).

[93] Yangon's fourth news briefing, 01.11.1996.

[94] Smith (1996b:6).

[95] ASSK (1995:254).

[96] Bruce Hawke. ‘Burma's ceasefire agreements in danger of unraveling’. Jane's Intelligence Review, 01.11.1998.

[97] The System of Correlation of Man and his Environment, pp. 56-57 (see also p. 26).

[98] Aung San Suu Kyi. ‘Political, spiritual struggles inseparably linked’. Mainichi Daily News, 04.08.1997.

[99] I am indebted for the idea that in Burmese national independence and freedom are conceptually linked to an anonymous Burmese intellectual. However, here I work out the implications of this for Aung San and Aung San Suu Kyi in my own way.

[100] Originally published in bma.eKt\ 05.10.1943; Sagaìng Han Tin (1985:74).

[101] elakInibèan\qsßael:på:tra:X qKc\læc\x Aazanv\AqH¥c\¨I:wisarx rn\kun\x ¨dån\:saepx 1971x m¥k\nHa 65-67X

[102] Ibid, p. 42.

[103] Lwin (1971:65–67). See also Sarkisyanz (1965:125) and Kodawhmaing (1938:181).

[104] See emñmi>miu:ûkv\x ny\K¥µ>Pk\Ss\Sn\>k¥c\tµ.eqæ: zatiman\et:qIK¥c\:m¥a:x rn\kun\x qIhmc\:x 1981x m¥k\NHa 148X

[105] nema et budÎwirt†owipémuet†aqix qbèDiqmîaD p!i põpeNÏaqiîtœem qr%MBwX

[106] Originally published in bma.Kt\ qtc\:sa 01.10.1944; Sagaìng Han Tin (1985:123).

[107] Aung San (1971:241).

[108] Francis Story. Buddhism answers the Marxist challenge: an analytical comparison between the scientific doctrines of Buddhism and the tenets of Dialectical Materialism, in theory and practical application. Rangoon: Burma Buddhist World Mission, 1952, p. 2.

[109] Mingun (1990–96,1:272–74).

[110] Caretaker Government (1960:535).

[111] Caretaker Government (1960:534).

[112] Citing Aung San, the importance of meeting basic needs was re-emphasised by Saw Maung (1990b:341,243).