India and Myanmar Friends or Just Neighbours

India and Myanmar: friends or just neighbours?
Author(s): I.P. Khosla

Source: India International Centre Quarterly , MONSOON 2003, Vol. 30, No. 2 (MONSOON
2003), pp. 64-80
Published by: India International Centre
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23006107
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LP. Khosla
India and Myanmar: friends or just

neighbours?
I
the military government's treatment of Aung San Suu Kyi,

Myanmar1knownis tonot often
her many inandthe
followers news.
admirers But every once in a while,
as Daw Suu
Kyi, does make the headlines.
She is harassed by goons or even attacked while travelling to a
meeting or public function, as happened most recently on 30th May,
2003. Then she is taken into custody or placed under house arrest by
the military authorities, for her own protection, as they say. There is a
tough message from the US government, expressing concern for her
safety and well-being, a call to release her and all other political
prisoners, and for fundamental progress towards democracy and
respect for basic human rights. As in a well-rehearsed chorus, this is
echoed by several western nations starting with the UK. There is
pressure on the government of India to do something, express concern,
call for her release, and urge upon the military government the need
to restore democracy.
During the last five years, more successfully than in earlier
periods, such pressure has been resisted. Experience has shown that
the interests of the US and its western friends in Myanmar are not all
the same, if not diametrically opposed, to those of India.
India's relations with Myanmar, and the best way to promote
friendship and India's undoubted interests have been conditioned
by history. Till recently the question whether we could be friends or
remain just neighbours seemed inextricably entangled with the

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i. P. Khosla/ 65
positive and negative aspects of that history. Only in the last three
decades have the two sides begun to leave all this behind.
II
of King Thibaw, the eleventh and last ruler of the Konbaung

A good dynasty
placeundertowhich
begin this
Myanmar story
had lived throughis
133 in
yearsMandalay with the exile
of unprecedented greatness and imperial expansion.
On the evening of 29th November 1885, the twenty eight year old
king was escorted by British soldiers of the 67th Hampshire regiment
from his summer palace, accompanied by his queen Supayalat, three
young daughters and a small entourage of courtiers, and several trunks
full of royal costumes and valuables. He had come down the steps of
the palace, shaken the hand of General Harry Prendergast,
Commander of the British forces; perhaps it was the first time he had
ever shaken hands with anyone in his life. Then he wanted to walk,
of which he had not done much. Eventually an ox-drawn contraption,
more of a cart then carriage, took Thibaw and his family towards the
jetty three miles away, on the river Ayeyarwady. The procession got
lost and took a two-mile detour. They finally arrived, and went up
the narrow gangplank to where the steamer 'Thooreah' was anchored,
from where the royal party was taken to Ratnagiri on the West Coast
of India. King Thibaw never returned to Rangoon.
The third and last British war on Myanmar had ended with the
annexation of the entire country on 28th November, a day earlier. . It
was a short war, non-violent and only two weeks long. The only
violence was when some of the crowd looking on while Thibaw was
taken to the river threw stones at the British troops escorting him.
The first two wars had exhausted the powers of resistance of the
Konbaung kings; but the British unopposed entry into Mandalay was
unique. In the earlier encounters they had found Myanmar a tough
nut to crack.
Some of the earliest and most difficult encounters between the
rising power in India of the East India Company and the equally
ambitious Konbaung kings were during the rule of King Bodawpaya
(1781-1819). Under his predecessors, the power and reach of the empire
had grown continuously. They had repeatedly repulsed the armies of
the Manchu emperors, destroyed the capital of Thailand, and added

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66 / India International Centre Quarterly
Laos, parts of Manipur and of Assam to their territories. Bodawpaya

himself added Arakan and the rest of Assam; his next step would be
into Jaintia and Cachar, which the Company declared as their
protectorates. Clashes developed and the Myanmar king seemed
enveloped in military confidence and political arrogance. He dreamt
of conquering India, of restoring Buddhism to the land of its birth.
For the men of the Golden City and the Court, "their home was the
centre of an expanding empire, their King a universal monarch, a
chakravatti over many subject peoples."2
The British did try diplomacy. They sent one mission after another
to the Myanmar Court, under Michael Symes, then Hiram Cox, and
then John Canning, designating them 'Ambassadors'. The Court
treated them contemptuously, giving them the protocol status of agents
of a trading company. They were made to kneel before the throne,
and follow local customs and culture. On one of his missions, John
Canning left prematurely because of the 'insolent violence' inflicted
on him. And when the British decided on war, that first war took two
years to win (February 1824—February 1826). By comparison, the
battle of Plassey had lasted just one day.
It was expensive. The Myanmar forces fought with competence
and a flair for the unexpected. The British and Indian forces suffered
severe casualties, losing three-quarters of their men. In one case the
Indian forces mutinied and were shot. And there were no Mir Jafars.
The Konbaung Court was shocked by this defeat, the biggest
setback since the dynasty was established in 1752 by Alaungpaya. It
went into decline and the British should have found the second war
of 1852 a walkover. It was not. After a year of difficult fighting, the
Court refused to cede any territory by agreement, so it was annexed
by proclamation; and it took till 1857 to pacify that territory. In other
parts of the empire there were collaborators who were given rewards
in the form of trading rights, contracts, the perquisites of office, and
honours. In Myanmar there seemed to be none. The people seemed
uniformly hostile, blaming natural disasters on the British, welcoming
every item of news about their reverses in India.
In the sixty years of 1826-1886 that it took to annexe the whole of
Myanmar, the British found little or no sign that among the Court
and the nobility, the senior officials and rural chiefs and monks, there
were those who would be both subservient and loyal. After November
1885, bands of armed men, several thousand strong, joined or led by
nobles, senior officials, monks, royal army, held sway over most of

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I. P. Khosla / 67
the countryside. By April 1886 this was an organised campaign to

restore the Myanmar prince to the throne. Mandalay was attacked;
rebel armies even entered the royal compound where British officers
were quartered. The British increased the numbers of their forces,
especially the Indian forces, the level reaching 40,000. Tens of
thousands of villagers were relocated, whole villages burned,
summary executions carried out, and still it took ten years to pacify
the countryside.
During those sixty years there was a debate about the best way
to administer Myanmar: about the expenses and other disadvantages
of annexing more territory, about whether the best way might not be
to use the super-structure of the state machinery already in place. The
British could have used a more pliant member of the royal family;
this was not easy since Thibaw had slaughtered the eighty persons
closest to him in line, following a royal tradition; some members of
the existing Council of State, the nobility, the Governors or Myowun,
and the hereditary chiefs or Myothugyi. But none of them were pliant,
and the British decided to replace the entire super-structure.
Ill
step. From December 1885 to February 1886 the British took

Thibaw's
apart exile
the entirewas theof institutions
structure first and symbolically
of political and the most important
administrative authority, disabled them in an attempt to destroy the
whole complex of social organisations that brought the people
together, and dismantled the religious hierarchy by taking away all
its powers. Members of the royal family who were not exiled to India
were sent south, as far away as possible from Mandalay, and banned
from returning. The nobility, the highest-ranking persons after royalty,
had houses within the walled city near the palace. All were razed to
the ground, with their occupants forced to join the common people
outside. The royal agencies and the army were rendered powerless
and disarmed. In the countryside the myowun and myothugyi, noble
and hereditary governors and chiefs who had enjoyed enormous
power, lost both status and position. Monks had been organised into
a Myanmar Bhikku Sangha with a hierarchy, and powers of control
over the monasteries and their own kind, and access to the court. All
this was gone; the monks were to be treated exactly as other citizens.

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Elaborate court records, hundreds of palm leaf manuscripts, contained

details of relationships and genealogy; they were used to verify the
status and entitlements of each one of the members of the Court and
the nobility. All were burned on the day the British entered Mandalay.
Later it was said that drunken soldiers had done it. There was now
no way that even a semblance of the old order could return.

This is where the Indians came in. For the British, it made good
sense to replace the Myanmar State—by one run almost entirely by
Indians. This had started in 1852 at the end of the second war. There
were the soldiers and labourers and factory workers. After 1885 the
inflow was massive. At the very top of the state structure were, of
course, the British. And with the passage of the decades some Burmese
also came in, particularly the hill people and the Christians; and there
were some Chinese. But the centrepiece of the scene was the presence
of Indians at all the middle and lower levels of the state machinery.
By the end of the century, the entire Yangon police was Indian, and
their presence expanded. By the 1920's and early 1930's, they were
manning the PWD, the road transport and the railways and the ports;
the medical and engineering services, the post and telegraph—you
could not make a phone call unless you knew Hindustani. In Yangon
itself, they comprised over 50 per cent of the total population. And
totaling over a million, they constituted seven per cent of the total
population of Myanmar.
And they were there in the villages, as landlords, often absentee
landlords, causing even more resentment than they did in the towns.
The British had embarked on a well thought-out policy of extracting
agricultural surpluses from Myanmar, converting it into what has been
called a colonial extractive economy3; the focus was on rice, with
timber as the second. The rapid expansion of acreage required could
only be done with the help of imported capital, which the Chettyars
were in the best position to provide. So the Chettyars came, and the
British set up legislation under which unpaid debts quickly led to
land forfeiture; and so the Chettyars started owning the land. During
the world economic depression of the 1930's when the the prices and
demand of rice crashed, large numbers of landowners had to part
with their land. By 1937, nearly half the total cultivable land of lower
Myanmar was in the hands of noncultivators and half of this was in
the hands of the Chettyars. Resentment grew and there was violence.
In 1930-31 a rebel movement against the colonial power led by a monk,
Saya San, turned into country-wide violence against the Indians—

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i. P. Khosla / 69
which Indian troops were used to suppress, doubling the resentment.

Periodical outbursts of violence against the Indians culminated in
another large-scale riot in 1938.
It was not surprising that, second to getting rid of the British,
and it was a close second, came the Myanmar nationalist desire to get
rid of the Indian. This expressed itself at every level. When the
Japanese army entered Myanmar in 1942, it was Aung San and his
Burma Independence Army which played a significant role in chasing
away the resident Indians, though many left on their own. Half a
million Indians left the country Including some Karens, Chinese, and
the British, the entire administrative structure had gone. Of course
after 1945 they tried to come back, and many succeeded in doing so;
but by then the authorities had imposed restrictions and the flow back
was limited. "As Burma was nearing independence, it became more
and more evident that the main preoccupation of the Burmese leaders
was not so much the British as the Indians."4
To give some random examples, Aung San himself, on his way
to London for talks on independence, stopped in Delhi and told
Jawaharlal Nehru that the Indians in Myanmar—Indian vested
interests—were not in favour of Independence, but all the rest were.
Two months later at the March 1947 Asian Relations Conference, the
delegate from Myanmar was saying, "Burmese national policy of the
future must always be shaped by the ever present fear of being
swamped either by Indians or by the Chinese."5
And many years later, long after most of the Indians had left,
Daw Suu Kyi, the daughter of Aung San, was able to write of the
Burmese growing" through diffused xenophobia fed by a well justified
apprehension that their very existence as a distinct people would be
jeopardized" by the racial threat—the threat from Indians and Chinese
who "set up homes with Burmese women, striking at the very roots
of Burmese manhood and racial purity."6
In the years just before and just after Independence, the squeeze
on the Indians was unrelenting. Laws were passed to prevent the
Indians coming back, to control immigration, to stop them getting
citizenship, to prevent land alienation, to nationalise land, and to
prevent the alienation of property other than land. There was a lull
during the late fifties; and then after the Ne Win government came in
1962, the squeeze was intensified. He nationalised all external and
internal trade, the rice and tobacco industries, travel agencies,
newspapers. Of the few remaining Indians, most left.

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All this led to representations to the government of India by the

Chettyars and other Indian interests, through influential organisations
like the Nattsukotai Chettyar Association. But the measures were not
sudden or harsh. It took from 1948 to 1964 to implement them. In the
early years, the local official's resentment of the Indian presence was
frequently expressed in the way they were implemented. Yet this was
not so at the political level, where the claims of leniency often overrode
strictly legal case disposal; and the wisdom of statesmanship as well
as the warmth of high-level friendship for India were apparent in the
exchanges that took place.
On the Indian side there was a great deal of understanding for
what the authorities were trying to do. It was clear from the start that
the measures might affect a few Chinese, but their main target was
the Indian community. They were nevertheless, as the Ministry of
External Affairs annual report for 1956-57 says, "not allowed to
interfere with the cordial relations existing between the two countries."
Even more understanding was the statement made by the Deputy
Minister for External Affairs in Parliament on 25th August 1960.
Our nationals do experience a number of hardships as a result of
land legislation and various other legislative enactments in Burma
which apply to Indian nationals, other non-Burmese nationals and
also even to Burmese nationals. Since there is no discrimination at
all, there is no point in our taking up this matter with the govern
ment of Burma.7
And Jawaharlal Nehru gave no sign that the depth and intensity
of his friendship for U Nu was in any way influenced by the treatment
of the Indians in Myanmar.
The large Indian presence and the resentments it generated were
problems left behind by history; it is difficult to see how either side
could have handled them better. The trust and good faith displayed
in this mutual interplay at the political level was no doubt due in
some part to the cultural and civilisational commonalities built up
over the centuries.
IV
that when two countries have common sources of tradition,

We need religion,
not look beyond
culture, no India'sthoseneighbourhood
matter how important sources to realise

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I. P. Khosla /71
in the panoply of their current self-image, that condition is not

sufficient or even necessary for good relations. At worst this can lead
to talk of cultural imperialism. At the least effective, such common
sources are marginally helpful in understanding the views of the other
side; at best they can form an additional platform to build a close
relationship. During the freedom struggles of the two neighbours, as
the leaders of the struggles came to know each other better; and for a
decade and- a-half after Independence, this was the best that worked
for the common Buddhist heritage and the ancient cultural links
between India and Myanmar.
According to the Glass Palace Chronicles, composed on royal
command after Myanmar was defeated in the first war against the
British, the kings of Myanmar were kshatriyas and owed their origin
and descent to the Ganges valley, the home of Buddhism. The later
Konbaung kings extended this, asserting their connection to the Pagan
dynasty founded by Anawrahta (Aniruddha), of which Kyanzittha
was one of the greatest rulers.8 Beyond that they found a connection
to the Sakyas of Kapilavastu and to Gautama Buddha himself. The
chronicles say Buddhism came to Myanmar through two missionaries
sent by the Emperor Ashoka. Another tradition has it that it came
even earlier, through two merchants, Tapusa and Bhallika, who were
given eight hairs of his head by the Buddha himself so as to spread
the faith, and the hairs were enshrined at the top of the Singutara hill,
where the Shwedagon Pagoda was later built by the Pagan kings.
These traditions are held by the people with great conviction and
strength today, despite a century and a half of British and other western
efforts to demonstrate that no historical evidence supports them.
The origins of the traditional legal system certainly go back to
the treatise of Manu. But this, was so not just in Myanmar but in
Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia also. The same is the case with
language. While the impact of Sanskrit was not deep, that of Pali was.
"The impact of the Pali language and literature on Burma has been
profound. They contributed in a massive way to the evolution of a
Burmese vernacular literature by the fourteenth century A.D."9 The
affinity between the decorative and sculptural art, especially of the
time of Pagan between the two countries has been the subject of a
growing literature.
In any event, by the eleventh century, Theravada Buddhism with
Pali as the language of the scriptures was firmly established in
Myanmar. This had strong elements of Hinduism. The Pyu dynasty

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kings (seventh century) gave themselves Indian titles: Surya Vikrama,

Hari Vikrama, Jayachandra Varman. They built their capital with thirty
two main gates on the model of Indra's legendary city of Sudarsana.
The pre-Buddhist gods and goddesses or nats, spirits of nature,
continued to be worshipped, now with selections from the Hindu
pantheon. Saraswati was Thayethadi; Siva was Paramizwa; there was
Vishnu and Indra. And down to the nineteenth century, Brahmin
priests were regularly employed to advise on ritual and ceremony,
which gods to worship, what was the position in the varna of each
resident in the capital area. By then the people had been divided into
four social classes, each being tied to one of the four varnas: the rulers
Kshatrias, the priests Brahmins and so on. When Manipur was
conquered, there was a particularly large influx of Brahmins and
astrologers and astronomers, of texts on science and medicine in
Sanskrit and other vernacular languages of India, for this purpose.
When the Court wished to promote the image of royalty and
royal life to consolidate a sense of identity among the people, drama
companies were sent around the countryside, to enact, always, the
Ramayana. Early in the nineteenth century a separate Ministry of
Theatre was created for this purpose. The belief in culture as the
foundation, that "the most important determinant that for centuries
had played a role in Indo-Burmese relations was the cultural factor"10
is, therefore, understandable. This is often an over played sentiment.
It is better to see the concord on common cultural sources, between
those who fought for freedom in the two countries, as one of the
platforms on which the good relations of the immediate post
independence relationship were built.
Myanmar, was a great admirer of Jawaharlal Nehru and the

Aung San himself,
direction deeply
taken by the freedom suspicious
struggle in India. One of theof the Indians settled in
main demands of the leaders of the Dobama Asiayone, the association
of Thakins led by Aung San and U Nu, was separation from India.
There was pressure from several quarters, led by the Indian settlers,
that this be rejected. On one occasion in 1927 the Indian National
Congress (INC) passed a resolution disapproving the separation
proposal, which was subsequently and wisely reversed. Once the

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i. P. Khosla/ 73
separation was agreed, and then when it was formally implemented

in 1937, the leaders of the Myanmar freedom movement regularly
sent delegates to the sessions of the INC. In 1935 at the first conference
of the Asiayone, the INC programme in its entirety was copied and
added to the agenda. There were other influences too, Marxist,
Japanese, the British Labour Party; but the Indian was the most
predominant, given the situations the two movements were facing.
In a 1939 conference of the Asiayone the current programme of the
INC was again adopted in its entirety. And the Thakins regularly
attended sessions of the INC, including Aung San himself.
Apart from the common struggle for freedom, dreams of Asian
unity, an Asian federation or even an Asian union were in the air on
both sides. Once the cold war began there were, in addition to the
continuing questions of decolonisation and economic development,
the all-embracing issues of world peace and cooperation. U Nu was
regularly in India to talk informally about all these matters with Nehru.
In April 1949 he was in Delhi to ask for help in dealing with the
multiple insurrections that had erupted in Myanmar. A
Commonwealth offer of good offices, in which India was also a party,
had already been rejected by him. And India did help, providing arms
and arranging a Commonwealth loan for the purchase of more arms
and consumer goods. Within two years thereof Myanmar and India
had signed a Treaty of Friendship.
Three months later, in October 1951 U Nu came again for ten
days mainly to talk about the Peace Treaty with Japan. He referred to
the close relations between the two countries and announced that
Myanmar, like India, would sign a separate treaty with Japan. In 1953
Nehru and U Nu were on a joint tour of the common border to see
how security could be improved. A year later Nehru was in Yangon
on his way to China; and a little later, March 1955, U Nu was in Delhi
for a chat on the international situation in general, and then a month
later Nehru went to Yangon for the same purpose. Six months on, and
U Nu was in India, the first leg of a world tour. The two were constantly
in touch, exchanging views, agreeing on how to tackle world issues,
and no doubt touching on bilateral matters as well.
For bilateral relations were not trouble-free at this time. The
Indians in Myanmar continued to press the government of India to
take up their cases, though this was not allowed to go out of control.
After Myanmar signed a border agreement with China in November
1960, U Nu did seem to hold it out a model which India could emulate

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for an amicable resolution of its own border problem with China; and
the Western extremity of that border was several miles inside Indian
territory, so that India lodged a formal protest with both China and
Myanmar. Here again both sides worked to smooth out the wrinkle.
Soon after signing the agreement with China U Nu was in India to
explain, saying that agreement has "no significance whatsoever vis a
vis India's border problem with China." In turn, Nehru responded by
accepting that in the case of Myanmar "they do not want to do
anything which might injure our interests"; and even added that the
Myanmar China agreement could even be considered helpful since it
was signed on the principle of the watershed and the Macmahon line
which was India's view also.
In all these high level visits, going on year after year, sometime
twice a year, there was no fanfare, no joint declarations, no agreed
texts of any kind. They just met and talked as friends. In fact the very
first India Myanmar Joint Communique was issued on 5th Septembe
1964. By then U Nu was no more in power, and Nehru was no mor
And reading the text of that communique, with its long list
dignitaries on whom calls were made by the visitor to Myanma
Sardar Swaran Singh, the references to 'free and frank exchange o
views' and to the 'broad unity and identity of approach' disclosed b
the talks, and the weddedness of both to a long list of principle
equality, mutual respect and so on, it is clear that neither Nehru nor
Nu would have thought it could contribute anything useful to the
friendship and understanding.
The nature of the relationship between the two leaders ca
perhaps best be understood from the letter Nehru wrote to U Nu wh
the latter announced his decision to resign from premiership in 195611
Your not being Prime Minister creates a little void for me and, I
have no doubt, for many others ... it is a comfort to think that
whether you are Prime Minister or not, you will be there as a tower
of strength not only to your country but to others also.
After the sixteen-month caretaker government of Ne Win, whe

U Nu came back to the premiership in 1960, Nehru delivered a speec
flowing over with happiness. U Nu came to Delhi in November tha
year to be greeted with the words:
when you come here, you not only bring the perfume of your coun
try but also an air of serenity, of calm, of friendliness ... how you
have developed these qualities, I do not know,

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I.P. Khosla /75
but in this Janus faced world, one evil face, one good,
"when you come, the evil face recedes, and only the good face is
evident, and our spirits rise within us and our hopes also rise...".
VI
today; and to suggest the solution. Most westerners would put it

It seems
this way. simple enough to understand Myanmar's big problem
There is, on the one hand, the military in power, ferociously
brutal. It is conducting, as the Amnesty International report of October
1993 says (to give just one example among many) a reign of terror
characterised by fear, intimidation and widespread human rights
violations. On the other hand there is the gentle Daw Suu Kyi who
strives for democracy as part of an integrated non-violent social and
ideological system which will provide the people with the protective
coolness of'peace and security.12 The first must hand over power to
the second. All international sanctions will be lifted. Investment into
and trade with Myanmar will bloom. Prosperity and peace will go
hand in hand.
The Economist put it well in 1997:
Political freedom tends to go hand in hand with economic free

dom, which in turn tends to bring international trade and pros
perity. And governments that treat their own people with toler
ance and respect tend to treat their neighbours in the same way ...
Democracies seldom, if ever, take up arms against each other.13
The substance of the matter is more complicated. At

Independence Myanmar did not have a state, in the sense of the ruling
institutions that have a generally uncontested monopoly on the use
of legitimate power, which ensures political order and economic
progress and social cohesion, while controlling and regulating non
state bodies. There was the political leadership, and nothing below.
The Japanese occupation and the civil war that followed had displaced
the state created by the British, that elaborate superstructure for giving
political and economic direction, manned largely by the British and
the Indians. There was nothing to take its place, for every institution
from pre-colonial times had been dismantled. The public services
therefore faced a void. So law and order broke down; the crime rate

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multiplied. There was virtually no police and no administration to

deal with this. In the countryside, parallel governments run by Bo
(powerful local bosses) emerged. They had their own militias, their
own administrative organisations, for ensuring order and collecting
taxes. The central government could not collect taxes; and if it did,
the money went largely on defending itself from attack.
Sundry organisations tried to seize control of Yangon at that time.
The Communist Party of Burma (CPB) went underground in March
1948, and gathered armed men for rebellion. The Peoples Volunteer
Organization, formed by Aung San as a 100,000 strong militia to assist
in the transition to Independence, broke up after his death. Some went
and joined the CPB, others went into rebellion on their own. By
October 1948 the Karen National Union took up arms against the
government with (unofficial) British support. In the north Chinese
Nationalist forces (KMT), driven out of south China by the Peoples
Liberation Army, entered and established bases to which arms and
supplies were air dropped by the US.
VII
Independence.
Most serious of all, there were the minority states wanting
In it's colonial times Myanmar was divided into two regions:
lower Burma, also called Burma proper or Ministerial Burma, the broad
valley of the Ayeyarwady, a fertile and well watered plain; and the
hill areas, an unbroken arch of upland on the east, west and north of
the valley, which was called the Scheduled or Frontier areas. Before
British rule this neat division into two did not exist. But at the end of
sixty years of colonial rule the minorities, the Shans, Kachins, Chins,
Karens, Mons and so on, did think of themselves as separate peoples.
When they tried to assert this after Independence through insurrection,
Myanmar was plunged into a full-scale civil war. At one time during
this war the rebels were within a few miles of Yangon.
The military forces in Myanmar came into their own during the
civil war of 1948-52. They were not initially united. In 1948 three
battalions defected to the CPB; other smaller units joined minority
rebel groups. But some units remained loyal: Ne Win's 4th Burma Rifles,
some Karen, Kachin and Chin units. They fought the insurrection and

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I. P. Khosla/77
gradually pushed it back. And as they did so, they established the
state machinery to administer the liberated areas. Political and party
leaders were often in nominal control; but the threat of a breakdown
of law and order persisted for years after the rebellion was over, and
the only available instrument for dealing with this was the military
During the years 1948-62 all civilian governments were dependent
on them for continuing in office. During those fourteen years there
was never a time when some level of coercion was not needed to
keep the nation together. And the military learned during those years
that if the state is left to the civilians, it will again be threatened with
disintegration.
After the civil war of 1948-52 came the crisis of 1958, which
reinforced what the military had learned. U Nu's party, the AFPFL,
had split. Each splinter started offering concessions to the communists
and to the minority separatist movements, in order to gain support in
Parliament. An amnesty order of August 1958, which served the same
purpose, exonerated all surrendering rebels, including criminals, so
that law and order started breaking down. The economy slowed
because of the uncertainty. And on 26 September 1958 U Nu turned to
General Ne Win to assume control of the government. The results
were quick to come. There were well-publicised successes against the
rebels. Law and order was generally*restored. Prices came down and
the economy picked up.
But that 1958-60 caretaker administration was also used by the
military to further centralise their own role as the core of the state. A
publication of 1960 called "The National Ideology and the Role of the
Defence Services" put forth the main aims of the military as the
restoration of peace and the rule of law; the consolidation of
democracy; and the establishment of a socialist economy. Military
officers were assigned to the Ministries in Yangon and the
administrative machinery in the districts. Serving ahd retired defence
personnel were brought together in a National Solidarity Organization,
the aim of which was to build up support for the caretaker
administration throughout the country. The slogan of Dhammantaraya,
Buddhism in danger, the title of a booklet published at the time, was
used to promote the idea that the government was defending the
religion of the people.
In early 1962 it was the same forces at work: the political parties,
unable to keep the country together; and the military, which had to
step in to do so. U Nu had won a landslide victory in elections held in

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February 1960; but he showed no ability to lead the country out of the
endless demands of the minorities for greater autonomy. He promised
statehood to Arakan, then to the Mons, who were not even a distinct
or contiguously resident population. The Shan, Kachin and Chin
leaders demanded the same, and the uncertainty began all over again,
while in the midst of that U Nu himself went into a 45 day Buddhist
retreat. In mid-February 1962 a federal seminar began in Yangon at
which were present U Nu, other government leaders, and the minority
community leaders. The demand of the latter was statehood with
powers equal to those of the Myanmar central government. This
clearly presaged the eventual breakup of the Union, and U Nu gave
no sign that he was going to put a stop to it. His speech was to be
delivered on March 2. It never was delivered because early that
morning the military seized power in a coup that had now no pretence
of being temporary. The constitution was set aside, Parliament was
dissolved, the Supreme Court and High Courts abolished, and there
was no talk of a caretaker government or a return to the old system.
VIII
from that forty years ago. The military are in control of every
Myamar'spartsituation today
of the state machinery; is innot
they are, effectdifferent
the State. They in certain essentials
believe they have rescued Myanmar from disintegration three times,
and they are the only ones capable of doing so in the future. And of
course they have got accustomed to the power, privileges and perks
that come with control of the state. There are the forces of the
opposition, which have neither the skills not the experience to ru

the machinery of government so as to ensure the cohesion of
country. This is a combination of politicians of different hues, lead
of the minorities, and former rebels. Many of these are supported
external forces, leading to further suspicion by the government. Th
is little doubt that handing over power to them would lead to
eventual disintegration of the country.
However, there are some changes. The movement for t
restoration of democracy in 1988 showed that the military can be m
to yield. If there is prosperity and economic growth, popu
resentment against the government can be controlled; but an econo
slowdown such as happened in 1987 and led to that movement, co

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i.p. Khosla/79
lead to another movement of the same kind. The overwhelm

victory of the National League for Democracy in the 1990 election
showed how much support it commanded in comparison with
party set up by the military which did incredibly badly So a movemen
for democracy is waiting in the wings, and Daw Suu Kyi's repeate
calls for more sanctions, tougher measures against the governmen
that would lead to a down turn in the economy, are designed precis
to bring this on to centre stage.
Another change is the global pressure for democracy, led by th
US. The breakup of Myanmar would not trouble the US much. In
recent past the breakup of states, the USSR, Yugoslavia, Ethiopia, h
well served US interests. China is also content with the current
situation. If the status quo continues, their trade and access to the
Indian Ocean and influence in Myanmar will continue. If the military
comes under pressure it will, as in the past, turn to even closer relations
with China, as it did in the years after 1990.
The one country whose interests are badly served by the
continuation of the present confrontation within Myanmar is India
Sooner or later, political agitation against the government will increase.
If the military cracks down many of the agitators will arrive at th
border with India, and pressures will build up on the government o
India to give them shelter. This will lead to a reaction from the military,
slowdown of the cooperation along the border and in infrastructure
projects that has been so painfully built up over the last five years;
and an increase in the influence of China. If it does not, the
disintegrative forces set in motion would certainly build up tension
in our northeastern border areas. It is important for our future
relations—for the consolidation into a lasting friendship of mutual
ties that have often been those of 'just neighbours'—that the forces
within Myanmar learn to work together.
It is obviously necessary for the military and the democratic
movement led by Daw Suu Kyi to come together; for civilians,
particularly those who are seen to be independent of the military, to
get into the higher and more responsible positions in the state
machinery; for the military itself to hand over real power, in a
graduated manner, to forces that are not under its control, to work
towards the separation of power, on which any democratic system
has to be based. It is equally necessary for the democratic movement
to internalise a far more convincing commitment to the unity and
integrity of Myanmar than it has done so far. It needs to demonstrate

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its independence of external forces; and to accept that for years to

come the military will retain the right to step in if a crisis of federalism
occurs; and that this whole process of a gradual transfer of real power
to the civilians will take years to happen. To demand that forty years
events should be undone overnight is either unrealistic or asking for
trouble.
Notes and References

1. Myanmar is here used throughout for the country, which till 1989 was known
as Burma; hence some of the pre-1989 texts quoted would refer to Burma.
2. Thant Myint-U, 77\e Making of Modem Burma, Cambridge: Cambridge Univer
sity Press, 2001, p.79.
3. See Frank N. Trager, Burma, From Kingdom to Republic, London: Pall Mall Pres
1966, Chapter 7
4. Ton That Tien, India and South East Asia, 1947-1960, Geneva: Librairie Droz, 196
p.157
5. Report of the Proceedings and Documentation of the First Asian Relations Conference,
New Delhi, March-April, 1947, Asian Relations Organization, New Delhi, 1948,
p.96.
6. Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear and other writings, India; N'ew Delhi: Pen
guin Books, 1991, p.103-104.
7. Quoted in Ton That Tien, see n.4 above, p. 165.
8. A bizarre turn to the heritage game was provided in December 1991 by General
Saw Maung, then Chairman of the ruling SLORC (State Law and Order Resto
ration Council). About to tee off at a golf tournament he started shouting, "I am
the great King Kyanzittha, I am the great King Kyanzittha." He was replaced
shortly thereafter by General Than Shwe, the present Chairman, which led to
the release of a number political prisoners.
9. H.B. Sarkar, Cultural Relations between India and Southeast Asian Countries, In
dian Council for Cultural Relations, New Delhi, 1985, p.287.
10. Swatantra K. Pradhan, New Dimensions in Indo-Burmese Relations, Rajat Publica
tions, New Delhi. 2000, p.234.
11. U Nu resigned three times, once for ten days in 1948, then for about nine months
in 1956-57, and (the last time before military coup of March 1962) again from
October 1958 to February 1960.
12. Aung San Suu Kyi, see n.6 above, p.177.
13. The Economist, April 12-18,1997, p.15.

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