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Gustaaf Houtman. Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy. Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa Monograph Series No. 33. Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 1999, 400 pp. ISBN 4-87297-748-3

This book deals with Burmese ideas about Buddhist mental culture (samatha meditation and vipassana contemplation) in the 1988 political crisis. It does so at three levels, including the general level of Burmese political terminology, and at the more specific levels of personal practice by Burma's leading politicians and their association with and patronage of particular traditions. It was written during a one-year stay as Visiting Professor at the Institute for the Study of the Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, between 1 September 1997 and 30 August 1998. The research involved three separate visits to Burma between July 1997 and September 1998. It was finalised for press in London, January 1999.

The material presented here grew out of two prior research episodes. It originally flows from my PhD thesis ‘Traditions of Buddhist practice in Burma’ completed in 1990 at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London (funded by a SOAS Postgraduate Governing Body Exhibition), for which I carried out fieldwork in Burma during the academic year 1981–82. My concern with this thesis was twofold. First, I aimed to survey various traditions of mental culture in Burma and how these practices fit in with other Buddhist practices. Second, I aimed to understand how mental culture fits into Burmese ideas about society, history, politics and perceptions of the world in general, and how it accomplishes various kinds of identity transformation.

Biographical summaries of about two dozen Burmese vipassana teachers were a major feature, and I analysed in detail the biographies of the Mahasi Sayadaw (1904–82) and Accountant-General U Ba Khin (1899–1971). These are two of the most internationalised of about two dozen nationally famous vipassana teachers, who played an important role under the patronage of ex-Prime Minister U Nu in his vision of politics and in his attempt to transform Burma's government.

The second research episode that underlies this book is the work I carried out under the Leach-RAI Post-doctoral Fellowship, of which I was a recipient in Manchester during the academic year 1991–92. Having become more aware of its evolving role in the politics of Burma since writing the thesis, at this time I stressed the political relevance of this material. I began to look more specifically at the popularisation of the vipassana traditions in the Burmese palace after the Second Anglo-Burmese War as a response to colonialism. I perceived these as a Burmese vernacular parallel to the development of anthropology in the colonial countries of Europe. The increased popularity of vipassana in Burma occupies a very similar historical time period as anthropology in the United Kingdom; both seek to come to terms with uncertainty over human and cultural identity. Furthermore, they were part of a response to shifts in colonial boundaries, and both are instruments for coping with the limits of human existence, and recast cultural and even political identities to encompass the foreigner. While one can go too far in such analogy, there is much evidence that these traditions did serve overlapping functions. Indeed, the designation ‘hermit country’ may have applied to Burma during the time it was sealed off by the Ne Win regime from the outside world, but this did not apply to the vipassana traditions, for which Burma's boundaries were permeable, as vipassana teachers and their students were permitted to come and go virtually as they pleased. It was through the travelogues of Burmese vipassana teachers abroad that the Burmese kept in touch with and learnt about the outside world.

In the course of the second half of the 1990s, evidence emerged that all three senior leaders of the National League for Democracy (NLD) – Tin U, Aung San Suu Kyi and U Kyi Maung – had indeed been practising the vipassana techniques originally taught by the two very same ‘international’ teachers whose biographies I had already extensively analysed in my thesis. They did this during their various phases of imprisonment and house arrest. Indeed, as I describe in this book, many political prisoners are finding dignity, even today, in their prison experience through these practices. They are also, at the same time, accused by the regime of adopting ‘foreign’ ways.

(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 iii

More surprising perhaps, is that it is also the Mahasi Sayadaw methods in particular that are practised by several senior retired members of the military regime, including the infamous General Sein Lwin, known for his cruelty during the uprising as the Butcher of Rangoon. Other members and ex-members of the regime are also known to have interests in various other vipassana traditions, including the current strongman General Khin Nyunt, and even General Ne Win himself.

The attention paid to mental culture on both sides of the political divide is in part due to the importance of meditation and contemplation in Burmese political culture since the colonial period. However, in part, this is also a response to the isolation experienced. On the one hand, members of the NLD have experienced severe repression by the regime and were isolated from society by imprisonment and house arrest. Senior members of the NLD and senior monks have appealed to the regime's leaders to rehabilitate themselves through the practice of vipassana. On the other hand, the military experienced isolation and fear of mainstream society. To them, these practices represent the last possible instrument for the transformation of the military hierarchy. Contemporary patronage by the military of these traditions is certainly based on its awareness of the powers of these traditions in the creation and dissolution of boundaries and in the legitimisation of state. It is not clear, however, to what extent the practice and patronage of these techniques is the result of its desire to change.

While I was carrying out my research in Manchester, I was still predominantly focused on the past, as there was scant evidence publicly available of such an involvement in mental culture by the NLD and the contemporary military. Also, the regime at that time had not yet taken such a strong interest in propagating Buddhism as it has done since 1992. So it was not possible at that time to fully make sense of the situation in Burma. The evidence that has become public since that time, and in particular since 1997, however, has permitted me to recast my earlier research to address more specifically the issue of the relevance of Burmese traditions of mental culture to the current political crisis. This book, however, should be seen in the context of my earlier work as not primarily political in nature, but as attempting to highlight the significance of vipassana to Burmese society as a whole. My next book will be the volume Contemplating insight, in which I expect to provide a more detailed historical analysis of the vipassana traditions in Burma dating back to King Mindon in the 1850s until today, and in which I expect to answer the larger question as to how the vipassana traditions evolved during the colonial period.

****

The main subjects of this book, Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD leaders, are in a much worse condition in January 1999 than when I began writing this book in autumn 1997. The NLD called for parliament to convene by 25 August, and if the regime was not to facilitate this, it stated it would convene its own. This resulted in a spate of repressive moves in which virtually all elected NLD members were arrested, and NLD offices of one township after another were dissolved in the final months of 1998 and January 1999.

In short, the regime does not tolerate any form of opposition and the prison experience sums up the state of democracy in Burma. Nevertheless, with the Asian financial crisis, the fall of Suharto, China's decision to disengage the army from direct involvement in business, with Thailand and the Philippines now advocating flexible engagement among the members of ASEAN towards Burma, and with the increasing internationalisation of legal procedures and the increasing relevance of the Internet, the political climate outside Burma has also changed much over the last academic year. For example, the application of international laws to violators of human rights, such as Pinochet, demonstrates that those who commit human rights abuses can no longer hide behind the excuse of governing by local laws and local traditions. The implications of this for Burma are now even recognized by Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, one of the prime supporters of the Burmese regime, who recently said in an interview with CNN, ‘Let's put the matter brutally. They have seen what's happened to General Pinochet. Some of the things some generals have done in Burma (former name of Myanmar) may well put them into a similar predicament.’

The SPDC generals cannot swim against this tide of events in Asia and the international arena. Nor can they turn back the clock. Sooner or later they need to take steps to defuse this political crisis that has now lasted over a decade, or it will be done for them. A first step would be for the generals to understand the ambiguities inherent in the Burmese political vocabulary they are currently employing in their English press-materials. Instead of seeking ‘reconsolidation’ and ‘national unity’, the generals should consider seeking 

(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 iv

‘reconciliation’ and ‘national harmony’; instead of emphasizing ‘national independence’ alone, there should also be emphasis on granting ‘freedom’; instead of emphasizing ‘duties’ there should also be ‘rights’. Other steps need to be taken to institute humane prisons, and to permit representation and visits to prisoners, including frequent visits from relatives and the International Red Cross. A further step would be to separate the judiciary from the arm of government and to stop treating the law as if it were a form of army discipline or as if it concerned promulgating ‘royal orders’ (yaza-that). Political prisoners should be released, and the generals should begin to work with the instruments of influence (awza) rather than authority (ana). On the basis of the goodwill thus generated, bi-lateral negotiations with ethnic minorities should be avoided in favour of setting in motion a broader-based nation-wide process of reconciliation in which the parameters should not be placed too narrowly, and during which the generals should indicate their own willingness to change.

To ensure nation-wide co-operation of all Burmese citizens in the development and modernization of Burma, it is vital that mechanisms be instituted that permit informed criticism to be expressed of the regime's policies and actions for the benefit of the country. This should not be treated as ‘confrontation’. The regime should not criminalise its critics but listen to them and act upon them for the benefit of the country as a whole. Also, the regime should reduce its military intelligence and its propaganda, and instead invest in education and in equipping people with skills. To do so effectively, it must invite independent civilian intellectuals to question current policies and seriously investigate and research all the problems that face Burma in the Twenty-First Century. For the regime to gain respect, it must be seen to act positively upon their recommendations.

The issue of Buddhism should be treated very carefully, and the turmoil resulting from U Nu's decision to make Buddhism the national religion should not be repeated. The authorities would do well to keep in mind Aung San's distinction between Buddhism as a religion (‘Buddhendom’, bokda batha), and Buddhism as an instrument for attaining to superior ethics in government (‘Buddhism’, buddha sasana); though the role for the latter may be expanded, the former should not become a template for the State.

If these are done then it is possible for ‘disciplined democracy’ still to evolve into internationally recognised ‘democracy’. If, however, reforms are not forthcoming, and the current nation-wide impetus for peaceful resolution is not harvested, then, as one journalist pointed out, the analogy of Burma as ‘the Yugoslavia of Asia’ that some Burmese army officers sometimes proclaim, may well come true. Burma may yet unfold in the same way as Yugoslavia – into disintegration. It is not too late for the younger generation of generals to salvage some good from the terrible reputation the army earnt as the result of its counterproductive initiatives over the last decade. To do so it must engage the international community more constructively than has been done hitherto. Let us bear in mind Aung San's words, who was willing to engage the international community in a constructive way, saying ‘let us … join hands, Britons, Burmans[ese] and all nations alike, to build up an abiding fruitful peace over the foundations of the hard-won victory that all of us desiring progressive direction in our own affairs and in the world at large, have at long last snatched firmly and completely from the grabbing hands of Fascist barbarians, a peace… not of the graveyard, but creative of freedom, progress and prosperity in the world’.

Though I believe the most important Buddhist dimensions to democracy politics are covered in this book, the time limit on my stay at the ILCAA has not permitted me to cover all the relevant materials as exhaustively as I would have liked. Much material has emanated in terms of speeches and interviews, undoubtedly more than I have been able to cover. I anticipate that the new information and historical interpretations available on this period will at some point necessitate revision of ideas expressed here.

For reasons of space, I have left out here chapters on the pursuit of magic by the generals, on the Buddhist dimensions to the concept of democracy and on the overlap between samatha and legal discourse in the Manu-gye.

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