Department of History, National University of Singapore

Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for
Democracy by Gustaaf Houtman
Review by: Hugh C. MacDougall
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Sep., 2000), pp. 430-432
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of Department of History, National University
of Singapore
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20072275 .
Accessed: 16/06/2014 18:43

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Cambridge University Press and Department of History, National University of Singapore are collaborating
with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Southeast Asian Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.60 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 18:43:57 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 430 Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 31, 2 (2000)

exclude them from the special category of bumiputera; they did not, in particular, create
provisions to guarantee them the rights to the lands that they had occupied long before the
arrival of other groups and they did not provide any of them with the modern education
(which they did for the children of Malay elites) that would have provided leaders and
intermediaries of the sort that are only now beginning to emerge after an enormous and
?
probably irreversible amount of dislocation and deprivation have occurred consequences
that have left the Orang Asli at the bottom of the ethnic socioeconomic hierarchy of
Malaysia.
The government (that is the central political authority) of Malaysia would probably
? like the Penan in Sarawak ?
dispute all of this and claim that the Orang Asli have been
helped out of their primitive ways into theMalaysian mainstream. The authors being (with
one exception) non-Malaysian Westerners, are sensitive to the claims that the critics of
Malaysian development are mainly Western outsiders whose real purpose is to keep Malaysia
backward and inferior to theWest and who, in any case, have no right to criticize after what
some countries (notably the US, Canada and Australia) have done to their own indigenous
populations, by responding that itwould have been better if such a book would have been
written by the Orang Asli but they are not yet in a position to do so.
Malaysia and the Aboriginal People succeeds admirably in terms of its goals and
limits. It is clearly written and aimed at a general audience, including aMalaysian one.
It is not intended to be a theoretical contribution to the literature on ethnicity, post
colonial studies, globalization, postmodernism or development, although the latter is
clearly defined. Scholars might wish for more in the way of comparison and theory, but
only so much can be done in a book of this scope and purpose, and the general assertions
are well supported and illustrated with examples. It is also intended for university classes
and would be an excellent choice for courses in anthropology, sociology, economics,
geography or political science that are concerned with what is happening to indigenous
peoples today in general or in Southeast Asia in particular.

University of Nevada, Reno Robert L. Winzeler

MYANMAR

Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National
League for Democracy. By GUSTAAF HOUTMAN. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of
Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 1999.
ILCAA Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa Monograph Series No. 33.
Pp. 392.

In this long and

extensively documented monograph, the author contrasts the
"Myanmafication" efforts of the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) in
Burma with the "mental culture" employed by the embattled opposition leader Daw Aung
San Suu Kyi and fellow members of the National League for Democracy (NLD). The
monograph quotes and/or summarizes virtually the entire corpus of government and
opposition statements and documents (in both Burmese and English) since the present

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.60 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 18:43:57 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Book Reviews 431

crisis began in 1988, and for this it will prove valuable to researchers who would not
otherwise have easy access to them.
Almost two-thirds of the book is devoted to an analysis of government statements and
attitudes since 1988. Houtman explores in detail many SPDC efforts to cloak itself in a
mantle of national unity, including the revision of standard English transcriptions of
Burmese place names (e.g., Myanmar for Burma), the identification of the regime with
Buddhism, and the political co-opting of anthropology and archaeology in support of its
claim to represent true Burmese patriotism. Also considered are the SPDC's difficulties
in exploiting national hero Aung San without inadvertently invoking his oppositionist
daughter.
The remainder of the book explores the thesis that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her
followers in the NLD have turned to a different conception of Buddhism, especially that
of "vipassana" meditation, both as a personal response to oppression inflicted by the
regime, and as a weapon in the struggle for freedom. The author contrasts the authority
(ana) that forms the basis of the regime's assertions to legitimacy, with the influence
(awza) employed by the NLD. The NLD approach, he suggests, may be more authentically
Burmese and Buddhist than that of the SPDC regime. In seeking to define this "mental
culture", Houtman stresses two principal sources: the contemporary Buddhist scholar
Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah and Konbaung era official Yaw Atwin-wun Hpo Hlaing; it is
not clear that either has been especially influential in the formulation of Daw Aung San
Suu Kyi's thought.
Houtman devotes comparatively little attention to the SLORC/SPDC's military
predecessor, although the quarter-century rule of Ne Win's Burma Socialist Programme
Party (1962-88) both set the ideological tone for, and was if anything more repressive
than, the present regime. Nor does he consider the changes (with winners and losers) that
have resulted from the embracing of a nominally Capitalist system entailing significantly
?
increased contacts. Finally, many features of the present government isolationism
foreign
and rejection of foreign "influence", efforts to identify the regime with Buddhist values,
assertion of special Burmese or Burman racial virtues, and use of hyperbolic language ?
have been characteristic of Burmese governments (and their response to foreign pressures)
for centuries and are by no means the invention of the present regime.
The appearance on the Burmese scene of a leader like Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who
is both fluent in English and eloquent inWestern terms, and clearly devoted to the cause
she has adopted, has since 1988 moved Burma from a forgotten Cold War backwater, to
a central focus of public international concern. This concern has united much of the
international community of Burmese in political exile and of Burmese students with
vocal Euro/American spokesmen for human rights, and has led to economic and other
sanctions imposed by many Western democracies.
Unfortunately, in this reviewer's opinion, Houtman's monograph seems more a part of
the campaign for political democracy in Burma than a dispassionate analysis of the two
currents of thought it describes. All too often, he writes in polemical terms, in which the
present Burmese regime seems to represents ultimate evil while its NLD opposition stands
for essential virtue. Government statements are routinely described sarcastically (while
critics, even obvious pamphleteering, seem accepted without question). However one may
sympathize with this point of view in political terms, it seems out of place in a scholarly
document. The monograph would also be more useful had it provided an index to this

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.60 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 18:43:57 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
432 Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 31, 2 (2000)

material. And I regret that the author seems to dismiss rather summarily the work of other
scholars, such as Robert Taylor, who do not share all his conclusions about Burma.
Despite these reservations, however, Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics is a
valuable tool for Burma scholars seeking to know what both the SPDC regime and the
NLD opposition have said over the past decade, both to domestic audiences in Burmese,
and in English to the outside world. Burma scholars will want it on their shelves, and will
turn to it often.

Independent Scholar Hugh C. MacDougall

Eleven Mon Dhammas?t Texts. Collected and Translated by NAI PAN HLA in
Collaboration with RYUJI OKUDAIRA. Tokyo: The Centre for East Asian Cultural
Studies for Unesco. The Toyo Bunko, 1992. Bibliotheca Codicum Asiaticorum 6. Pp.
xxxvi, 620. [Text in Mon, Introduction and Appendices in English]

It is now nearly forty years that unhindered research work of Burmese scholars as well as
those from other countries had practically ceased in Burma/Myanmar or had been reduced
to a minimum. And it was in 1978 that the last volume of the Journal of the Burma
Research Society (JBRS) was issued by the renowned scientific organization before its
absurd destruction. Since 1911 this appreciated journal had presented the results of indigenous
and foreign studies accessible to scholars all over the world. Therefore the friends of
peoples of Southeast Asia, especially of Myanmar with her numerous ethnical groups, are
always glad to encounter publications with a topic from this region. And they are grateful
to Japanese colleagues for having created possibilities for some scholars from Myanmar to
continue their studies abroad and to publish their findings in valuable publications.
One of them is the volume under review, no. 6 of the series Bibliotheca Codicum
Asiaticorum, manufactured in the way Japanese books are famous for: excellent paper
quality, careful printing of texts and reproductions, and strong binding. The book consists
of the following three main parts: 1. Foreword, Preface, Introduction with References and
Bibliographical Notes to the texts (pp. i-xxxvi); 2. reproductions of handwritten copies
of Mon Dhammas?t Texts I-XI (pp. 1-535); 3. Appendix: Translations and Synopses
(pp. 537-620).
In the Introduction the editor ? occasionally in a somewhat chatty way that leads to
some superfluous repetitions ? gives a short survey of the history of Mon civilization
and culture as known from own historical sources as well as the results of the research
work of indigenous and foreign scholars (pp. x-xix). On pages xix-xxix he describes the
main subject of this book, viz. the origin and development of legal texts in general and
the Mon Dhammas?t Texts in particular. This important category in Burmese and Mon
literature which originated in Buddhist Myanmar, suffers from "unjust neglect", as
Andrew Huxley has convincingly pointed out in his contribution to The Journal of Burma
Studies (Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University, vol. 1 [1997],
pp. 1-17, here p. 1). The notion Dhammas?t is a loanword in Mon language, has the
Burmese equivalent Dhammas?t (in phonetic transcription: Dhammathat) both derived
from Sanskrit Dharmas?stra (Mon version) and Pali Dhammasattha (Burmese version).
It refers to the M?nava-Dharmasastra as can be seen in the text names Manu Dhammas?t

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.60 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 18:43:57 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions