The New Nation of Burma

Institute of Pacific Relations

The New Nation of BurmaAuthor(s): Virginia ThompsonSource: Far Eastern Survey, Vol. 17, No. 7 (Apr. 7, 1948), pp. 81-84Published by: Institute of Pacific RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3022583 .

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THE NEW NATION OF BURMA

BY VIRGINIA THOMPSON

II aving regulated relations with Great Britain by ? ' the treaty of last October and having achieved

political independence in January of this year, the lead? ers of Burma have turned their eyes from London and are focussing more than ever before on the local scene.

The Burmese could hardly have assumed power at a more difficult period. The country was fought over from end to end in two campaigns and there is hardly a town that has not received major damage. Communi-

cations, never adequate even in the prewar period, have been badly disrupted; the rail network, in particu- lar, suffered serious losses in equipment, bridging, and

personnel, and the inland waterways over which much more of the country's produce was transported lack the

requisite shipping facilities.

Economic Recovery Incomplete All classes of Burmese were impoverished by Britain's

invalidation of Japanese currency after the rcoccupa- tion. Agriculture, on which traditionally two-thirds of the population depend for their livelihood and the gov? ernment for its major revenues, lost its export trade and many of its laborers and draft animals during the war. At the war's end the world's greatest exporter of rice was barely able to feed itself, and now, although paddy cultivation has staged a remarkable comeback, Burma is able to ship to a hungry world not quite half of its prewar surplus of 3,500,000 tons. Teak, of which Burma was also the world's largest exporter, has like- wise suffered from loss of markets, depredations, and

neglect during the Japanese regime. Exports of this

commodity are now only a fraction of prewar averages. The oilfields of Yenangyaung and Chauk and the Syriam refinery, owing to a combination of "denial" measures,

bombing, and delays in settling war compensation claims, have not yet resumed production. Although imports have been greatly exceeding exports in the postwar period, consumer goods are still in short supply and inflation is rampant. Burma has long had the reputa- tion of being the most crime-ridden country in East

Asia, and banditry, since the war, has taken on a new lease of life, due to the easy availability of thousands of modern weapons left in the country by the Japanese and Allied guerrilla forces.

So great has been the preoccupation of the Burmese with the independence question and so uncertain has

appeared the future to the foreign capitalists who here- tofore dominated Burma's economy that little has been done as yet towards reconstruction. The British army did helpful work, particularly in repairing the trans- port system, but its regime lasted only from May 6 to October 16, 1945. Subsequently its officers became too resentful of what they felt to be a premature return of the civil administration to cooperate effectively in re-

habilitating the country. In its turn the civil govern? ment tried for a year to run Burma without the coopera- tion of its premier political party, the Anti-Fascist Peo? ple's Freedom League (AFPFL), and in the face of widespread and sometimes violent opposition to the policy embodied in the White Paper of 1945. When this policy was reversed in September 1946 with the advent of Governor Rance, the AFPFL-dominated Ex- ecutive Council, formed at that time, gave almost all its energies to winning independence for Burma. This was done in successive steps, of which the London Agree? ment of January 1947 and the Anglo-Burmese Treaty of October last year were the most important. But this process was accompanied by a serious split within the AFPFL ranks, notably the expulsion of the Burma Communist Party (BCP) and the outlawing of the Communist Party of Burma, as well as by the formation of an opposition bloc of rightist parties?the Myochit, the Dobama Asiayone, and the Sinyetha, led respectively by U Saw, Ba Sein, and Ba Maw, all well-known

politicians of prewar days.

Attaclcs from Right and Left

Opposition on the part of these rightist leaders was due less to ideological factors than to personal antagonism towards, and jealousy of, Aung San, Burma's na? tional hero of the anti-Japanese resistance days and

president of the AFPFL. On the other hand, opposition from the mutually hostile Communist parties stemmed from profound differences in economic thinking and from their conviction that freedom for Burma could not and should not be won by diplomacy but by an armed mass revolution. Rightist opposition culminated in and was totally discredited by its instigation of the assassina- tion last July of Aung San and six of his ministers. This left the field clear for the Socialist-oriented AFPFL, now under the leadership of Thakin Nu, and for the more moderate of the communist parties?the BCP, led

by Than Tun and Thein Pe. In the meantime the outlawed Communist Party of Burma, under the doc- trinaire Thakin Soe, went deeper underground and its

Dr. Thompson is author of Thailand: The New Siam and Post-Mortem on Malaya. Last year she spent some months in Southeast Asia studying conditions there.

APRIL 7, 1948 81



current influence has dwindled to sporadic support of the Arakan separatist movement and to fomenting peasant revolts in some of the central districts.

The parting of the ways between the two less extreme leftist nationalist groups was delineated more than six months before the AFPFL came to power. It was de-

layed until November 1946 by various factors of which

many have now disappeared. Loyalty to the memory of their joint organization of the anti-Japanese under?

ground was weakened progressively by each party's claiming the major responsibility for its success. More

serious, the Communists' no-rent and no-tax campaign struck at the heart of the AFPFL's administration, which from the start had been plagued by lack of revenues. This cleavage in policy began to assume the form of a

competition between the two parties in the organization of rival peasant and labor unions. Strikes, which the BCP and the AFPFL jointly organized for the purpose of putting pressure on the British, were called off by the AFPFL when it agreed on a working basis with

Britain, but continued to be encouraged by the Com? munists. While the BCP did not oppose the elections to the Constituent Assembly, held on April 9, 1947, and even participated in them to a limited degree, it per- sisted in attempting to undermine public confidence in all the agreements negotiated by the AFPFL with the British. For its part, the AFPFL was in the parlous position of a party which, so long as it was in opposi? tion to the British, had unleashed forces that it had later to control when they threatened to get out of hand.

Inevitably this laid the AFPFL open to the communist

charge of having "betrayed the revolution" and of

"kneeling down to the British imperialist-capitalists."

Support of Minorities

Despite communist propaganda and the loss of Aung San, the AFPFL has gone from strength to strength. Probably its greatest triumph lies in winning over to

incorporation within the Union of Burma the indigenous minority groups whose numbers, complexity, and traditional friendship with Britain presented enormous

problems. The Shans, for example, number about two million and are divided into thirty-three feudal prin- cipalities of widely differing size and development; the

Karens, of whom there are approximately 1,400,000, live scattered all over Burma, are in large part Chris- tianized and have periodically suffered pogroms at the hands of the Burmans. The 360,000 or so Kachins are

organized into tribes, as are the almost equally numer? ous Chins, who present the further complication of

speaking twenty-two distinct dialects. In addition there are the Nagas and Was, some of whom are addicted to

head-hunting and many of whom have never been administered at all. Elimination of these so-called Scheduled Areas was recognized by Aung San to be

so supremely important in the formation of a Union of Burma as to make him willingly grant large concessions to their aspirations in the form of considerable

political and cultural autonomy. First through the Pang- long Agreement of February 1947 and later through drawing them into the Constituent Assembly?to which a Shan chief was elected as first president?all the minorities except a section of the Karens and some Arakanese were brought voluntarily to accept close

political association with the Burmans. Other than those Karens who prefer some tie-up with

the British Empire or a completely independent status, the only dissident indigenous element is the Arakanese, who have developed no less than three different groups of separatists. Some Muslims in northern Arakan have

expressed a desire to join Pakistan, but Jinnah has

discouraged and disavowed them. Followers of the

Buddhist monk, U Seinda, have carried on the guer? rilla activities originally directed against the Japanese with no clearly defined objectives other than those de-

riving from an intense regionalism. A third group, whose

strength is difficult to estimate and whose actions are hard to distinguish from those of bandits, is allied to Thakin Soe's communist party. The central govern? ment has repeatedly claimed the situation in Arakan to be "in hand," but it has had to dispatch thither armed and police forces as well as one of its ablest divisional commissioners.

Present Economic Aims

Although the AFPFL's main drive centered on wres-

ting concessions from Britain, Aung San found time in various speeches to outline his economic policy. After

his murder had enhanced his already great popularity by the martyr's crown, it became a sacred duty for his successor, Thakin Nu, to implement his program. A Rehabilitation Conference, convened by Aung San on the eve of his death, was entrusted with short-term

planning, while the drafters of the new constitution

(drawn up by the AFPFL committee and passed by the

Constituent Assembly in record time) embodied his

long-range policy. Of the present government's firm intention to estab?

lish state socialism there is no doubt. The republic's Parliament has been given power to nationalize "any

single branch of Burma's economy or single enter?

prise"; to expropriate or limit private property with or without compensation, as the law prescribes; to forbid the use of private property "to the detriment of the

public good"; to nationalize the land and abolish all

large land-holdings as soon as circumstances permit; to help workers to organize themselves against econo? mic exploitation; to assist economic organizations not

working for profit; and to nationalize all public util- ities and exoloit natural resources throucrh state- or

82 FAR EASTERN SURVEY



company-owned organizations. This Iast-mentioned pol? icy is somewhat modified by a provision perrnitting companies to operate if sixty percent of their capital is owned by the Union government or citizens. Foreign investors in Burma have been concerned to know just how fast and in what sequence this program is to be carried out. Already notice has been served on the teak forest concessionnaires and it has now become clear that agriculture is the first local industry slated for reform. Enterprises such as mining, which require large capital or advanced technical knowledge for their rehabilitation and operation, are likely to come much later on the official agenda.

There are obvious reasons for this primary concen- tration on agriculture. Today rice is fetching an un-

precedentedly high price in world markets and this level is likely to be maintained for some time to come. In the financial year just passed, the bulk of Burma's external income came largely from the sale of rice and the government needs great sums of money to re- habilitate the country as well as to launch new schemes like its industrialization program. Two-thirds of the

population live by agriculture: rice is the mainstay of the people's diet. A plan?inevitably for five years? has been drawn up for the early rehabilitation and eventual expansion of paddy cultivation. To implement it the government will have to tackle three allied prob? lems of considerable complexity.

Attempts to End Banditry Of these peripheral problems, perhaps the least com-

plicated is that of crime. Farmers have been refusing to cultivate fields lying at any distance from the protection of their villages. Inhabitants of bandit-infested areas have been drifting to the towns, particularly Rangoon, where the housing problem is already acute. Boats

carrying agricultural produce to the main ports and to deficit food areas have had to be protected by armed escorts. The police, who have always been un-

usually unpopular in Burma, have done some effective work in rounding up bandits, but they are widely believed to be corrupt, unreliable to any government in

power, and demoralized by political aspirations. Fur?

ther, banditry has long been the national sport of the

Burmese, enjoying a glamor due to its association with resistance to British authority and to the quick profits and the relief it affords from the monotony and poverty of village life. The political assassinations of last July drew official and popular attention to the need for drastic and speedy crime-curtailment measures. In a

strikingly rare instance of AFPFL-Communist coopera- tion, the leaders of both parties recently toured the districts exhorting bandits to surrender their arms and

persons. The previous policy of leniency towards "mis-

guided" bandits has now given way to severity. On

November 15, 1947 the mere possession of unlicensed firearms became a capital offense. Some success has attended these efforts but there remains a large quantity of arms in the hands of Communists and some hill

tribes, according to an official statement made last December.

Stimulating Trade, Industry, Agriculture The problem of stimulating production by supply-

ing inducement goods for farmers, who still lack many essential items, ties in with the government's whole

policy of economic nationalism. Specifically, it involves the large questions of imports, distribution, and industrialization. In recent months Burma has sought to re- dress the markedly unfavorable trade balance of the

postwar period by drastically reducing imports of non- essential goods and of those requiring the outlay of hard currencies. As to distribution, some of the British-or-

ganized Project Boards have been either liquidated or reoriented and are being supplemented by consumers'

cooperative societies which the government is in process of setting up in every town and village tract of Burma. It should be noted, however, that it is not the prin- ciple of a planned economy inherent in these boards which has aroused intense Burmese hostility but the belief that they were foisted on the country by the war- time government-in-exile at Simla for the sole purpose of rehabilitating British economic interests and that they have been inefficiently, expensively and, in some cases, corruptly administered.

Industrialization schemes would begin with the of? ficial encouragement of cottage industries and the

training abroad of Burmese technicians. Eventually they would include the development of hydro-electric power to compensate for Burma's lack of coal (and iron) re? sources. A modest beginning is already envisaged for a local chemical industry, chiefly to supply fertilizers for Burma's arable lands.

The third and most difficult problem involved in the agricultural rehabilitation program is one that has international complications?the questions of land ten- ure and agricultural credit. In prewar days non-agriculturists, particularly Indian Chettyars (moneylenders), owned nearly half the land in Lower Burma; about fifty percent of the tenants there changed holdings every year owing to high rents and general insecurity of ten- ure. Even before the war one hundred million rupees were required to finance the annual rice crop, of which

by far the largest part came from those same non-agri- culturist landlords and from village shopkeepers charg- ing exorbitant rates of interest. Since the British re-

occupation the government has given a subsidy for

every acre of fallow land brought back under cultivation as well as cash-and-kind loans to farmers. But neither measure has furnished more than transient

APRIL 7, 1948 83



and insufficient aid. Prewar legislation (the Land Pur? chase Act, the Tenancy Act, and the Land Alienation

Act), as well as the Moneylenders Act of 1945, the Land Disputes Act of 1946 and the Agriculturists Debt Relief Act of 1947, represents as yet incomplete efforts to get the land out of the hands of non-agriculturists and into those of cultivators and to scale down the lat- ter's heavy burden of debt. They have not solved, however, the problem of regularly supplying sufficient

agricultural credit nor have they outlined the means and methods whereby the land will be bought up and distributed.

While Burmese landowners have already voiced strong disapproval of the government's agricultural policy, the Chettyars are believed to welcome the chance to

get rid of their landholdings in Burma, provided, of

course, they receive fair compensation. However, the

Chettyar problem is linked to the vaster question of Burma's whole relationship with India which has not

yet been regulated by treaty. To a marked degree the war mitigated the Indian minority problem in Burma

by halving the number of local Indian residents and by checking the inflow of Indian laborers and capital. Recollections of the Indo-Burmese racial riots of 1930 and 1938 and of Bose's abortive Provisional Government of India, whose headquarters were for a time in Jap- anese-occupied Rangoon, have considerably chastened the Indians in Burma. They are now striving to stand in well with the Burmese. On the Burmese side, the fact that India is Burma's best customer and provisioner makes it expedient for them not to antagonize their

increasingly powerful neighbor. The far smaller Chinese

minority in Burma has never presented such economic, political, and social problems as have the Indians.

Other Handicaps and Assets

The foregoing outlines some of the immediate, ma?

jor problems facing the newest comer to the comity of nations. There are, too, other less pressing matters such as the reform of village and district administration and the reorganization of the educational system. These will have to be tackled eventually. In the realm of

intangibles there are also certain psychological handi?

caps to be overcome. Burmese nationalists are parochial and self-satisfied in their outlook and sensitive to real or imagined slights in foreign relations. It is not, of

course, their fault that the Burmese have been isolated from world contacts or that they have had little ex?

perience in the management of their own affairs. How?

ever, in contrast to the Indonesians, they have little

appreciation of the difficulties which they face, hav?

ing long assumed that the mere achievement of in?

dependence would automatically solve all their prob? lems. They are unaware of the humble place which Burma occupies internationally. Apparently they anti-

cipate, for example, that foreign capital is so eager to invest in their country that it will accept any tcrms which the Burmese care to impose.

On the bright side of the picture, the Burmese have

charm, intelligence, an aptitude for learning, and fer- vent patriotism. Their country is rich in resources which the world now needs. There is no pressure of popula? tion upon land?roughly 17,000,000 inhabitants for

260,000 square miles. Burma's budget for 1947-48 is

virtually balanced. Youthful leaders abound who are far more earnest, honest and patriotic than were their

primarily office-seeking prototypes of the prewar period. With the exception of a few dissident enclaves, the Burmans have won over the minority groups. They have achieved an amicable and generous settlement with

Britain and are preparing to enter various international organizations. Burma needs capital and techniques but even without them she can get along. In brief, the

government can afford to make some mistakes.

Within the country the AFPFL is paramount and should continue so for some time to come. Boh Let Ya, who is being groomed to succeed Thakin Nu, is, however, a largely unknown quantity and his statesmanship awaits the test of experience. A new rightist opposition is in

the process of formation among the propertied Burmese whose interests are being adversely affected by the government's social policy, as indicated by the resignation last January of wealthy Henzada U Mya from the Cabinet. This group, of which the Burmese landown-

ers, merchants, and industrialists form the core, might be supported by foreign capitalists and also by the

pongyis (monks), who have a tradition of aggressive political activity and who have been strangely quiescent since the AFPFL came to power. At the other end of the political spectrum are the Communists, whose latest overtures for reunion with the AFPFL were rebuffed and whose popular support has been visibly declining. Nevertheless, they might conceivably rally to their ban- ner all those elements in Burma which feel that the "revolution" is not going far or fast enough. Against this possibility must be balanced the personal antagonism existing between the various communist leaders. In pre- paration for assaults from both the right and the extreme

left, as well as to obviate the dangers inherent in the existence of a private army like the People's Volunteer

Organization, which Aung San had organized out of his Resistance forces during his anti-British period, a new organization is being formed in the heart of the AFPFL. This new unit, called the Marxist League, will be officially established with the merger of the Socialist Party and the People's Volunteer Organiza? tion on April 30, 1948.

Storm clouds undoubtedly hang on Burma's horizon, but at the moment they seem neither very near nor very black.

84 FAR EASTERN SURVEY



Documents

The New Nation of Burma