1 My Introductions to Burmese History: A Personal Account

I grew up in the Yangon River Delta under the Burmese Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) of General Ne Win, and became politically aware during the military’s State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) regime in the 1990s. As an adult I lived in a Burma ruled by first the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) until 2010, and then the Semi-Military Government after 2011. This government of course ended with another military coup on February 1, 2021.

My daily living taught me about these institutions and Burma's history. But in retrospect, my Karen grandfather who was a farmer, had an important impact on how I interpreted what I saw and experienced. He was the one who first told me stories of British Burma, World War II in Burma, and the ongoing Karen-Burmese fighting. When I lived on my family's rice farm in the Irrawaddy Delta, both my grandfather and father told me stories in the Karen language, and from a Karen perspective. The Karen in this narrative were the victims of decades and centuries of Burmese oppression, and the Burmese were to be feared. The only protectors in these stories were the British, who subdued the Burmese in the nineteenth century, defeated the Japanese in 1945, and relinquished colonial power in 1947. The war between the Burmese government, and our Karen minority began in 1949 and lasted until a ceasefire in 1952, and then only seemingly resumed later. In the process, the Karen villages, school systems, churches, and other institutions established with the protection of the British were nationalized, and Karen staff were replaced by Burmese sent from the capital in Rangoon.

And then at school, I heard another version of history from the teachers sent by the government’s Burmese Socialist People’s Party (BSPP) organized by General Ne Win, and after 1988 the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). The teachers blamed my grandfather's Karen people for the nation’s troubles and contended that they were stooges of the British. The British and the Karen allies in this story were ongoing threats to the unity of a great nation that was Burma. They would teach me Ne Win's “Burmanized” version of history, and their teaching was reinforced in the available radio, films, books, and newspapers. I just did not understand that at the time. But more importantly, I saw my family struggle. We were thrifty. That struggle still encourages me to preserve money for tomorrow, because tomorrow is not certain.

So, I met Burma's political regimes at various ages. BSPP ruled my first twelve years until 1988 when the SLORC military took over. I don't remember much personally about the BSPP, but I remember how we lived. In my childhood, I was unaware of any political theory, and I took for granted everything I learnt in school, the instructors’ explanations of Burmese history, the advantages of the Burmese language, and why it was important that only the military could guarantee the security of the nation. Still, I had never really heard the Burmese language before going to government schools, starting when I was about eight years old.

We moved about the Irrawaddy Delta until landing in Insein township outside Yangon, where the majority of the population was also Karen. By 1988, I lived in Yangon with my father, a taxi driver. I was in middle school in Yangon in 1988, and saw the revolt against Ne Win’s government by what is now called the “1988 generation.” A million or more people were in the streets. I was too young to participate, and my guardian father did not want me to be involved. Still for a few days, I moved with the crowd. I heard weapons firing and people fleeing into the streets. There were looters everywhere. At the time of the rebellion, Ne Win resigned, and his BSPP ceded power to SLORC. Since school was closed, we enjoyed our youth in the playground. I admired Aung San Suu Kyi, and the phrase “Democracy” entered my vocabulary, but I didn't fully grasp it.

After the SLORC consolidated political power, school finally reopened in 1990. Television also entered our lives, with the SLORC’s military propaganda films dominating. Everyone seemed to appreciate the shows. In such movies, armed groups like the Karen National Union and the Burmese Communist Party were shown as foes who harmed the state and caused poverty. Some of my friends assumed I was a rebel (or even a Karen rebel!) because of those propaganda films. I felt isolated from society because I was assumed to be a rebellious opponent of the regime. To me, rebel meant bad, and I wanted to be a good man.

General Than Shwe replaced General Saw Maung in 1992 as the head of SLORC. General Than Shwe in turn dismantled the SLORC in 1997, which then re-emerged in Burmese politics as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). This happened while I was drifting through high school. I actually had poor grades in school. I was not a very good student in school because I loved football more. My father had been a successful second-division footballer, and I adored him.

But even though I didn't do well in school, I enjoyed reading. My father bought monthly subscriptions to children's publications, cartoons, and newspapers to help me. He bought self-help books too. I enjoyed reading and was also attracted to action movies. Due to my family's low budget, we couldn't buy a TV, so we went to friends’ houses with TV as I grew older.

Soon, I outgrew cartoons and children's magazines and began reading Burmese translations of Chinese martial arts novels from which I absorbed the Chinese Yin and Yang concept. As a result, such philosophical concepts were not that new when I studied Chinese philosophy later at the university. Such narratives were embedded in the cartoon books I read in the 1980s and 1990s. I sometimes read more than six novels every day! My Burmese reading fluency was superior to my Burmese friends.

My Burmese skills improved in part because I could not afford the extra fees for the books. The private library charged us daily for books borrowed. So, I borrowed a book series of eight to twelve novels at a time. I was terrified that if I simply borrowed the first one or two volumes, someone else would borrow volumes three, four, or five. It also bothered me if I couldn't finish the series in the order they were published.

As I grew older, I read romance and science fiction, but I still really favored action novels. And so after three or four years, the little library ran out of Chinese martial arts and romance books for me to read. My life also took a turn when I became interested in politics, a risky subject for SPDC-era Myanmar. I knew about this because my father and a few elders in our quarter surreptitiously listened to the BBC. Listening to the BBC or VOA was a crime under the military regime. You could be turned in by a police spy and sent to prison for listening to anything except what the SPDC approved.

I also listened raptly to the seniors’ conversations at night. They discussed every action of the military government. I came to believe that that was every mature man's daily discourse. Interest in politics was intense, but always surreptitious. The elders warned us not to confront military personnel directly, sharing their military phobia with us all. We talked about the military leaders in hushed tones. We all knew or knew of folks who were arrested late at night and sent to prison. As for those who were released, they returned transformed, outcasts unable to rejoin society. I learnt also how the SPDC referred to my people, the Karen, as bad people, dangerous to the unity of the nation. In that context, I started remembering my grandfather's stories of life in British, Japanese, and independent Burma. That's also when I became a Baptist Christian, and I began to understand God's word.

So, after I finished the action literature and action movies, I started reading theological works, mainly from a Baptist perspective. My early Christian life was evangelical, and I wanted to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. My theological studies led me to philosophy, and so I applied for a philosophy undergraduate degree at Yangon University. But Burma's philosophy major was regarded as a flop, so most of my relatives disapproved of my choice of major. They thought I should major in accounting, medicine, or engineering, but, I wasn't qualified to do so because of my low grades.

Regardless, I liked my Philosophy classes. It was at college that I learned to appreciate philosophy. To pass a test at university, we had to memorize everything, but this was not enough for me. In the late 1990s, I traveled to Yangon's Pansodon Book Street to find old philosophy books. That’s also when I started reading philosophy literature in Burmese since I couldn't understand English yet. The Burmese books were mostly about Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and the Burmese philosophy inherited from Buddhism, and the Burmese Kings. That's when I also learnt about Plato's politics, and I learnt more about democracy. In my quest for new philosophy books, I became obsessed. I also read translations of novels which were mostly Western classics published in Burmese during the 1950s.

Regarding Burmese society, I also of course read Ne Win's socialist writings which were widely available. In these publications, he did not emphasize democracy but described the importance of military discipline, and a Buddhist-based political philosophy. Westerners believed his ideas were illogical, and they may be so. But it all made sense to me because it reflected over thirty years of policy, practice, and habits of thinking I learned in elementary, secondary school, and at the university.

I also started learning English at the university. I did this in order to read philosophical literature written in English. I also enjoyed reading Moscow-published socialist novels which were widely available. The English translations were clear and concise, so some of my English education was based on Communist ideology! Until I went to the Myanmar Institute of Theology (MIT) to study Christian theology, the Soviet works were a great source of philosophical understanding.

In 2006, I began my theological studies despite my family's financial struggles. Even though I intended to study full-time, I couldn't join the day class. So I enrolled at the Myanmar Institute of Theology’s (MIT) evening and weekend classes, while teaching physical education at the international school during the week. I was irritated that MIT did not help weekend students. Perhaps because I am continuously rebelling against authoritarianism, I grew to regard some professors as “fascists”Footnote 1 in the sense the word was then understood in Burma, even though they claimed to be God's servants.

Still, seminary study was a life-changing experience. They showed me the path to emancipation that I wanted all my life. I started to embrace justice and reject injustice. During my seminary years in 2006–2008, I also went to distant mountain villages where Karen people lived in isolation from Yangon society. Many were Internally Displaced Peoples (IDPs), and victims of Myanmar army attacks. Most had been village hopping since childhood. They lacked the education to confront the military government's evils. I chose to teach. I believed this was how I could train the next generation to rid our land of wickedness, and create the land known in Karen as Kawthoolei.

After seminary, I also taught part-time at the Yangon Karen Baptist Bible School, Myanmar Institute of Theology (BARS/Liberal Arts Program), and Institute of Religious Education (Roman Catholic Church) all in Yangon. I knew I was doing the right thing, but my family still struggled financially. My faith in God led me to find work as a consultant after Myanmar's military government relaxed restrictions on international donors. This happened after the 2008 Constitution was ratified, and the 2010 elections held. At that time, I was hired by development and humanitarian programs. It was then I became an International Non-governmental Organization (INGO) consultant. My job transported me to impoverished areas. I learned about the Rohingya and their plight, and from 2009 to 2016, I worked at Sittwe Camp and the Maung Daw Limited Communities which are near Bangladesh, and India. I witnessed the Burmese military's policies and observed their desire to dominate the country. I learned how they still sought to defend their power and authority using military traditions drilled into them by General Ne Win and his successors. That's how I learned about Ne Win's enduring Burmanization policies, and was reminded of my grandfather's experience during the Burmese Civil War after 1949 when the Karen were attacked in the Irrawaddy River Delta, where there were long-established Karen villages and towns, with thriving school systems, churches, and Buddhist temples. These were established during the colonial era with the protection of the British.

2 My Grandfather and Me

My grandfathers were both rice farmers. They lived and died on their own soil. My parents were both born in the Irrawaddy Delta and only met at their wedding. My paternal grandfather cultivated rice and lived in the colonial era before WWII, and later helped raise me. My grandfather was born about 1920. He lived through famine, forced displacement (before the UN formalized this term), and massacres. But he survived. My maternal grandfather was a talented and knowledgeable carpenter who died before I was born. My grandfathers both lived through the Karen-Burmese civil war of 1949–1952.

Both Karen grandfathers remembered British colonialism as pleasant. They saw the British as God's chosen guardians against the Burmese. Their fathers (my great-grandfathers) became Christians before my grandfathers were born. My father's grandfather was a Baptist, and my maternal grandfather’s family was traditionally Roman Catholic. But then my maternal grandfather married my grandmother, a devout Baptist Christian. Thus, they all became devout Baptists by the time my own parents were born, and never wavered.

My grandparents all had rough lives. They were poor, and World War II added to their agony. During the war, robbery and stealing soared. They didn't know what “wealthy” meant; the thought didn't enter their life. The story of their pain was told to me by the surviving grandfather when I was a boy in the Irrawaddy River Delta. These stories were filled with emotion, partiality, wrath, fear, and disobedience.

I grew up with my paternal grandfather and his bedtime stories. Karen myths, fairy tales, legends, and oral history were all incorporated. He also shared personal stories. My grandfather's bedtime stories shaped my childhood. The stories contained strong moral lessons about being a good Christian. He also taught me to be a Karen patriot who wanted to overthrow the Burmese rulers. My grandfather told me how the Burmese army stole their crops, tortured, killed, and raped the Karen after 1949. The Burmese soldiers did not spare him either, even though he was a poor farmer just trying to live his life, so he fled, too. He stated he didn't comprehend politics and couldn't fight back due to his lack of education. So, he valued knowledge and encouraged me to get educated so no one could oppress me, not even the Burmese (I still preferred football at the time!).

My grandfather instructed me to memorize the Bible Scriptures, which led to my conversion later. My granddad could read the Karen Bible but not write it because he spelled it incorrectly. He said he learnt to write in his thirties and never had formal education. But his stories and life philosophy inspired my boyhood. In my early years in the rural Irrawaddy Delta, he probably affected me more than my parents. My grandfather was a farmer and had vast farming experience. I've never farmed, but I know how to plough and grow paddy. I grew up tending to my family's cows and buffaloes (I was a genuine cowboy!). My boyhood cowboy pals were trustworthy. So, I know why farmers revolt.

In their life, farmers (and cowboys!) have feelings and experiences they never express to the world. But I wasn't a true farm lad. But I suppose I am a semi-rural/urban boy.

3 My Education

Humans need company. We learn from our forefathers and our surroundings. My grandfather socialized me and taught me about my identity, which was distinct from my neighbors, especially those of Burmese descent. At home, I spoke Karen, which set me apart in the Irrawaddy River Delta. My mother tongue is Karen, and my Burmese was lacking at that time. My early education was likewise erratic. My parents, as far as I know, couldn't decide where I should go. My early youth was spent in a rural religious school, largely taught in Karen, so I couldn't always understand Burmese terms I heard elsewhere.

Friends advised me to have contact only with other Karen. When someone in our village spoke Burmese, they were called “Payaw Poe,” which means “Burmese son” in the Karen language. So rural kids avoided their Burmese neighbors. Karens disliked Burmese in general. My earliest education was at a Christian Karen school, thus I consider my Karen roots as the deepest, even if I still enjoy Burmese language action stories! My father and grandfather realized the value of language in schooling.

The official language during Ne Win’s time was Burmese, so to advance one needed to be conversant in the language. Most Karen and some ethnic groups were denied advancement due to poor Burmese communication abilities. The logic was twisted for us, Karen. Only Burmese was the language of higher education hence only Burmese could benefit from the post-secondary institutions.

I left the Karen church school where I first learned to read at the age of eight years old, and went to the government school. Burmese was utilized as the linguistic medium. My first day of grade two at the government school was awful. The lecture was in Burmese, which I couldn't understand. The children had to memorize everything, and I couldn't write a word. My teacher smacked me. This happened to four or five students. My teacher told my mum that I needed to take an extra class to catch up. I despised my school. Every day, I awoke saddened. Nonetheless, my Burmese improved, and in fourth grade, we all took the district exam. I aced my Burmese literary exam, probably because I enjoy storytelling in any language.

In 1988, while in middle school in Rangoon/Yangon, Ne Win’s military administration was overthrown, and the schools closed. After the schools reopened, military officers would occasionally visit our school to explain their policies. The schoolmaster invited a few students. My class teacher chose me to attend them because I was quiet and respectful. I learned about the military-dominated society the officers wanted us to join.

But I was not enthusiastic about going to school back then. I preferred football and wanted to represent my school in a tournament. In addition, our education system required us to memorize everything they told us. Every year I dreaded the examinations because those who failed the exam had to redo the class. So in class, I learned to pass my tests by knowing enough facts. I didn't protest either, even when some teachers abused the Karen, and abused me with obscene words. “You Karen are rebels, and you are too!” said one teacher. I didn't object because I couldn't. That event taught me to tolerate a racist educator. My grandfather had told me about the bravery of the Karen troops who fought alongside the British, and against the Japanese and their allies in the “Burmese Independence Army” during WWII.

Not every teacher was harsh. Others taught me that racism and bigotry did not come from the bloodline, but from the society we lived in. I made acquaintances with Karen pupils as well as Burmese. But my Burmese pals were mostly sons of street sellers, food stall owners, civil officers, and religious leaders. Nobody in their families was a doctor or military officer. Our group had a lot of feelings for each other. We were a Gemeinschaft community, as sociologist Max Weber defined it.

As my father was becoming elderly and couldn't drive the taxi anymore, I had to start commuting in order to support him and our family. I couldn't always attend classes in person, so I took part-time online education courses. Still, my father encouraged me to spend my family's limited funds on education. I finished my bachelor’s degree in philosophy, and then my master's degree at the Myanmar Institute of Theology followed.

Later, under the oppressive military administration, I earned a Master of Arts in Anthropology from the University of Yangon. Taking anthropology helped me understand my country's ethnic tensions. My classmates at Yangon University were from the history, international relations, and geology departments. Many were military officers. The Anthropology Department had no military officers, but the Department was formed by General Khin Nyunt, who was the country's third biggest figure, director of military intelligence for many years, and briefly Prime Minister. The generals wanted to use anthropology to rule the highlands. In this atmosphere, and with the emergence of a civilian administration, I resolved to be a peacemaker.

In 2012, I started following the Burmese peace movement and political transformation. My most rigorous work was with the Rohingya in Rakhine State before their 2017 expulsion. I also worked for the British UKAID, and other agencies in the Karen State highlands. My academic and informal education from the University of Yangon and MIT helped me understand the society I lived in.

4 Why Ne Win and Burmanization?

Looking back on my own life and socialization in Myanmar, I know that Ne Win's policies in the 1960s paved the way for authoritarian military rule. But Ne Win’s state is also narrowly based on the Burmese people, language, culture, and Buddhist religion and so is unsustainable in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation like Burma. But in this setting, Ne Win and his military fostered Burmanization thought tendencies (what Bourdieu called habitus) which put military discipline, Burmese culture, and Buddhist religion as the only center. Such tendencies still plague Burma today. The legacy of “Ne Winism” in Myanmar society must be understood to comprehend where and how a peaceful Burma will be created.

Some say that Ne Win did not create Burmanization and did not intend to Burmanize the entire country. They think Ne Win was originally a politician simply seeking political expediency and power, and that Burmanization was an afterthought. Based on my own experiences in Burmese society, I disagree. In fact, Ne Win did create the habits of thinking that the Myanmar peacebuilders face today. This is visible in the dominant Burmese-speaking people's behaviors as well as the ethnic minorities’ habits of reverence, silence, and resistance.

I learned from my grandfather’s stories, and my own reading that after the coup in 1962, Ne Win created a national vision rooted in Burmeseness. Ne Win of course believed the stumbling block to unification was a lack of unity which could only be resolved by subordinating all other cultures to a single “Burmese” identity. Thus, ethnic people living in Burma were all subordinated to the dominant Burmese identity. Ne Win devised an ethnic model that re-defined Burmese and “the others” on his nationality lists with this vision of assimilation to a single identity under the military in mind. Notably, the Rohingya were excluded from the nationality lists, as were Chinese and Indian immigrants.

Ne Win sought to make a purified Burmese nation that would be freed of what he believed was the foreign influence of Chinese, Indians, and British. He also wanted to assimilate the Karen and other highlanders into his vision of Burmese society. His Burmanization programs aimed to create a cohesive Burmese identity. But it was a poor method that certainly did not fit with the vision my grandfather realted to me in the Irrawaddy Delta, the Karen in the mountains I later met, or among the Rohingya in Rakhine among whom I later worked. Or for that matter the dozens of other ethnic groups who, like my Karen grandfather, feared the Burmese, and certainly did not love them.

Ne Win directed his supporters to create a Burmanized society, based on policies in his BSPP “Blue Book.” His professional historians/philosophers such as U Ko Ko Maing Gyi, U Chit Hlaing, and Dr. Maung Maung created a worldview to embrace an emotional Burmese nationalism. Ne Win's policies were introduced to the country through the schools, universities, popular culture, and the military. This was the curriculum I was exposed to when I began Burmese schools at 8 years old and continued through my master’s degrees at MIT and Yangon University.

Ne Win also knew the military's power because he was a soldier. He trusted only military might and distrusted Burmese civilians or ethnic minorities. So did his political advisors and the people he tasked with implementing these policies. The Burmese army, the Tatmadaw (which means “Royal Army” in English), was the focus of his unification agenda because he perceived its historical roots in what his philosophers and historians called the great Burmese Kingdoms.

Burmanization and militarization formed Ne Win's political culture and it is still persistent today. Burma’s militarization was void of all democratic values. It was a structure that meant only other military generals could govern when Ne Win left politics, which is what happened in 1988. Even after 1988, the military continued to rely on Ne Win’s Burmanized masses for support and legitimacy. His successors just tweaked the policy to fit the new contexts. So did the new civilian NLD government of 2016–2021. And this is the world that shaped my own world view as a youth, and which I questioned as I thought through my grandfather’s stories, in my experiences with the highland Karen, the Rohingya, and finally in my PhD studies at Payap University in Chiangmai since 2017. The Burmanization that my grandfather, father, and I experienced remains deeply embedded in the military’s habits of governance and rule.