Ethnic Politics in Burma

States of Conflict

Ashley South

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781134129539
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines the ideas which have structured half a century of civil war in Burma, and the roles which political elites and foreign networks - from colonial missionaries to aid worker activists - have played in mediating understandings of ethnic conflict in the country. The book includes a brief overview of precolonial and colonial Burma, and the emergence ethnic identity as a politically salient characteristic. It describes the struggle for independence and the parliamentary era (1948-62), and the quarter century of military-socialist rule that followed (1962-88). The book analyses the causes, dynamics and impacts of on-going armed conflict in Burma, since the 1988 'democracy uprising' through to the 2007 'saffron revolution' (when monks and ordinary people took to the streets in protest against the military regime). There is a special focus on the plight of displaced people, and the ways in which local and international agencies have responded. The book also examines one of the most significant, but least well-understood, political developments in Burma over the last twenty years: the series of ceasefires agreed since 1989 between the military government and most armed ethnic groups. The positive and negative impacts of the ceasefires are analysed, including a study of civil society among ethnic nationality communities. This analysis leads to a discussion of the nature of social and political change in Burma, and a re-examination of some commonly held assumptions regarding the country, including issues of ethnicity and federalism. The book concludes with a brief Epilogue, taking account of Cyclone Nargis, which struck Burma on 2 and 3 May 2008, resulting in a massive humanitarian crisis.

Part I
Conflicting histories

1 Shifting identities

Pre-colonial and colonial Burma

The Pre-colonial Era

The earliest urban settlements in mainland Southeast Asia were established on the edges of floodplains and rivers, where the development of wet rice cultivation allowed the creation of economic surpluses, and the emergence of socio-political elites, and religious and cultural specialists.¹ From the first millennium (Common Era), merchants traded with the great emporia of China, India, the Indonesian archipelago and beyond. The emergent states of Funan and Champa (in modern-day Cambodia), the loosely federated Mon kingdoms of Ramanyadesa (in today’s Thailand and Burma), and their successors, the great states of Pagan (Bagan) and Pegu (in Burma), and Sukhothai and Ayuthaiya (in Siam-Thailand), were not unified in the modern sense. However, they did share similar Indianised politico-religious and economic systems (South 2005: ch. 4).

According to Robert Taylor (1987:14), in pre-colonial Southeast Asia “the monarchy, and often the monarch himself, was seen as the state.” Below the king (or in the case of two Mon reigns—the queen) was a system of vassal chieftains and often hereditary district and village headmen, all more-or-less answerable to the court. “Corve” (tax-in-kind) labour was organised at the village level, and the large infrastructure projects undertaken by the Mon-Khmer, Tai and Burman kings employed what would today be called “forced labour”. Other centres of power reflecting the stratified political order included the Buddhist sangha and the shamanistic Nat and Kalok cults indigenous to Mon and Burman communities (South 2005: ch. 1). Each Nat represented a particular territory, reflecting the administrative divisions of the kingdom, and helping to cement peoples’ identification with a particular locality (Brac de la Perriere 1995).

Cities of Gold: Thaton, Pagan, Pegu, Ava and Mandalay

It is beyond the scope of this book to sketch the complex, fascinating—and sometimes controversial—history of pre-colonial Burma. A number of writers have described the rise of the Mon civilization in lower Burma (e.g. Guillon 1999), and the later kingdom of Pagan, which flourished especially between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries (SarDesai 1994; Keyes 1995).

Better-documented is the fourteenth-sixteenth century Mon kingdom of Hongsawatoi, centred at Pegu, which briefly re-emerged as an important power in the eighteenth century (Guillon 1999; South 2005), and the Toungoo and Konbaung dynasties, under which Burma achieved roughly its present shape (Lieberman 1978, 1984). Of particular importance to state-formation in pre-colonial Burma were the wars between various Tai and Burmese kingdoms, which characterized the sixteenth-eighteenth centuries, and created a legacy of distrust (Keyes 1995; Thant 2006).

The Construction and Deconstruction of Ethnic Identity

The history of modern Burma has been fraught with violent conflict, much of which has been inspired by notions of ethnicity. Categories of ethnic identity have generally been regarded as unproblematic phenomena, reflecting unchanging characteristics, which define an individual or group of people. However, as Mikael Gravers (1999:145) notes, “historical memory is crucial to defining identity, legitimising classifications…or rendering subjective concepts of, for example, an ethnic movement authentic.” The historical record in Burma (and elsewhere) indicates that ethnicity has been understood differently—and granted varying degrees of importance—during different periods.

The nature and significance of ethnicity, and other categories of identity, have changed over the centuries—often according to political and economic circumstances. During the pre-colonial period, for example, the primary marker of individual and communal identity was position in the tributary (feudal) hierarchy, i.e. where people lived (Ava or Pegu) and what they did (peasant or prince) was of more importance in determining identity than the language spoken at home or in the market (although the linguistic element was not insignificant: see below).

Categories of identity have been constructed, and re-made, by the forces of history, as well as the manipulation of elites. However, we should not “throw out the baby with the bathwater”: ethnicity is not an arbitrary notion. Categories of ethnic self-determination are grounded in deep and shared historical experience.

Pre-colonial Pluralism

In pre-colonial Burma, ethnic, political, social and religious identities were not so fixed and unipolar as they became during the colonial period. Ethnic identity, based on language and cultural inheritance, was only one of a number of themes in social and economic life. In general, markers of identity were not self-consciously held, and—with some important exceptions (see below)—social and political issues were rarely problematised along ethnic lines.

Although most people lived in the same locality for all of their lives, they were oriented towards, and subject to, a number of overlapping centres of power and meaning. Rather than being oriented towards a single axis of (ethnic) identity, and uniform set of allegiances that determined secondary relationships, communities and individuals in pre-colonial Southeast Asia participated in multiple networks of obligation and privilege, often paying tribute to more than one centre of political-economic power—i.e. being subject to multiple sovereignties. It was quite normal, for example, for a Tai-speaking petty principality to be subject of a Mon- (or Khmer-)speaking prince, or for Karen animists—and especially Pwo Karen Buddhists—to trade with (and incorporate elements for religion from) prestigious lowland Mon or Tai city-states.

According to Gravers (1999:19), in traditional Burmese society “identity was determined by (a) whether one was a Buddhist, and (b) whether one was a member of an alliance with the ruling dynasty, that is, which place one held in the tributary hierarchy”. The key to the fulfilment of patron-client obligations was power, and the various strata of society were loosely integrated in a series of fluctuating patrimonial relations.

Since the earliest times across mainland Southeast Asia, local strong-men, often originating outside elite circles, have engaged in more-or-less commercially inspired banditry. The charismatic warlord stood in a patron-client relationship to his followers, reflecting that of the prince to his subjects. Especially if he was the leader of a peasant rebellion, the strong-man may have claimed legitimacy as a min laung pretender to Buddhist kinghood (South 2005: ch. 4; Gravers 1999).

Such dynastic arrangements within the pre-colonial state were reproduced in the structure of power relations between pre-modern kingdoms. The influence of a particular state would rise and fall, affecting its prince’s relations with neighbouring powers, and with the great metropolises at Angkor, Lopburi and Pegu. As Benedict Anderson (1991:19) notes, “states were defined by centres, borders were porous and indistinct, and sovereignties faded imperceptibly into one another.” Thongchai Winichakul (1996:73–74) describes such frontiers as natural buffers: the boundary between Siam and Burma “was not necessarily connected or joined…It was the limit within which the authorities of a country could exercise their power…the areas left over became a huge corridor between the two countries…The two sovereignties did not interface.” Scholars have designated such polities, where various centres of power are arranged in shifting, hierarchical relationships, as mandala.

The lords of smaller polities were vassals of a greater king, and “inter-state” alliances were often cemented by networks of marriage. The relative strength of a particular mandala centre would influence the degree to which populations in outlying regions identified with the culture—and implicit ethnicity—of its ruling elite.

Ethnic Identity: the “Nature-Nurture” Debate

Ethnic and other markers of identity in pre-colonial Burma were formed from a mixture of elements, ancient and contemporary. To a degree, group and individual identities were constructs—and could therefore be re-made, under the influence of changing social, political and economic circumstances. Relatively fluid concepts of identity were amenable to the influence (manipulation, even) of domestic elites, and later, foreign conquerors. The (re-)construction of identity was not necessarily undertaken in a systematic or self-conscious manner. Indeed, a Marxist (Gramscian) analysis might suggest that the roles of political-cultural elites in effecting hegemonic regimes are primarily determined by the underlying economic infrastructure.

Regardless of ideological considerations, the reification of ethnicity in late pre-colonial Burma—and especially under British rule, and since—has profoundly influenced the relationship between the state and society, and the country’s historical development. Thus, the importance of understanding the nature of ethnicity.

Academic debates have focussed on whether ethnic identity is an innate (primordial) characteristic, or—in part at least—a (modern) social construct. In The Ethnic Origin of Nations, Anthony Smith (1988:11) reviews the development of nationalism, and the related concept of ethnic identity, in the context of emerging modern bureaucratic capitalism. While many accounts (e.g. Benedict Anderson) share:

a belief in the contingency of nationalism and the modernity of the nation…there are also difficulties with this view. For we find in premodern eras, even in the ancient world, striking parallels to the ‘modern’ idea of national identity and character.

Smith (ibid. 17) demonstrates that many contemporary nations and nationalist movements are closely related to, and often derived from, highly durable “primordial” ethnie, collective cultural cores, composed of “myths, memories, values and symbols.” Indeed, “in order to forge a ‘nation’ today, it is vital to create and crystallise ethnic components.”

Nevertheless, the forms in which ethnicity is expressed and mobilised are subject to particular historical (“situational”) processes. This mix of “primordial” and “modern” elements in the formation of ethno-nationalist identity may be illustrated by the case of the Mon.

Case Study: Mon National Identity²

Over 1,000,000 Mon-speaking people live in Burma and neighbouring Thailand, where today they constitute an ethnic minority. However, this has not always been the case. From early in the first millennium CE, for a period of more than a 1,000 years, Mon and Khmer kings ruled over much of mainland Southeast Asia. Across Northern and Central Thailand until six or seven hundred years ago, and in central and lower Burma for another three centuries, the bulk of the population spoke variations of Mon. The classical period of Mon history came to an end in 1757, when the great Burman warrior-king Alaungphaya defeated the last Mon ruler of Pegu (Hongsawatoi). Thousands of his followers were driven into exile in Ayuthaiya (Siam), where they settled in the border areas adjoining Burma.

Mon civilisation had been among the most influential in pre-colonial Southeast Asia. Significant aspects of the language, art and architecture, political and legal arrangements, and the religion of the great Thai and Burman civilisations were derived from Mon society, which acted as a vector in the transmission of Theravada Buddhism and Indianised political culture to the region. This civilising role helps to explain the enduring prestige attached to the Mon heritage across mainland Southeast Asia. Mon nationalists have looked back to the classical era as a golden age, a source of inspiration and legitimisation (see Chapter Two).

However, as noted above, ethnicity was only one factor among several in determining identity in pre-modern Southeast Asia. As Victor Lieberman (1978:480) has demonstrated, the “Mon” kingdoms of lower Burma were in fact expressions of something more complex: “the correlation between cultural, i.e. ethnic, identity and political loyalty was necessarily very imperfect, because groups enjoying the same language and culture were fragmented by regional ties.” Lieberman demonstrates that religion, culture, region and position in the tributary-status hierarchy all helped to determine personal, group and regime identity in pre-colonial times. As authority was vested in the person of the monarch, it was he—rather than any abstract idea of ethnic community—that commanded primary loyalty. A Burman king could act as the patron of Mon princely clients, and vice versa.

For example, the leader of the last great Mon uprising in pre-colonial Burma, the Smin Daw Buddhaketi, who drove the Burmans from Pegu and ruled much of lower Burma from 1740–47 (Gravers 2007:9–10) may actually have been a Karen (PaO) or Shan speaker. More important at the time, however, were his (probably fabricated) royal credentials, and status as an aspirant Buddha (or min laung). The Smin Daw drew support from various “ethnic” groups, while Burman, Karen and Mon clients of a “Burman” king opposed his rebellion. Lieberman (1978:480) does, however, concede that the edicts of King Alaungphaya made a clear ethnic distinction between his own (Burman) followers and those of the Mon (or “Talaing”, as they were derogatively called by the Burmans). Indeed, ethnic polarisation accelerated rapidly under Alaungphaya.

Lieberman’s insights relate to those of the anthropologist Edmund Leach, in his classic, Political Systems of Highland Burma (1954). From his detailed study of Shan and Kachin societies in northern Burma, Leach concluded that unchanging characteristics are not necessarily essential attributes of identity. Rather, apparently distinctive cultural elements, including modes of political organisation, may be adopted by individuals or communities, depending on their relationship to other socio-political groups, and to the environment. Thus, peoples of seemingly different linguistic and cultural identity may participate in the same social-political system, the particular variations of which are determined as much by local ecology and relations with neighbouring groups, as by any essential elements of ethnicity.

Lieberman and Leachs’ caveats notwithstanding, Mon and Burman ethno-linguistic identities were well-established before Europeans began to arrive in significant numbers in Southeast Asia, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Although the adoption of such ethnonyms did not imply that individuals or communities subscribed to a homogenous political-cultural identity, people nevertheless represented themselves as either “Mon” or “Burman”, depending on the political situation. Kings, colonialists and modern politicians have used such ethnic labels to mobilize and control power bases.

The Colonial Experience: the Consolidation of Ethnic Identity

British rule in lower Burma lasted for more than a century, from 1826–1948 (not including the Japanese occupation of 1942–45). However, in upper Burma, the Burman-populated heartlands around Mandalay, the Karenni and Shan States, and the northern Kachin hills were not colonized until the late nineteenth century. (Technically, the British and King Mindon recognized Karenni independence in 1875.) In practice, the more remote highlands were not effectively administered from Rangoon until the early twentieth century, if then.

Colonial Classifications

During the British and Japanese periods, Burma was affected by huge social, political and economic changes, most of which are beyond the scope of this book. The creation of a modern, bureaucratic state involved processes of administrative standardisation and the objectification of previously fluid and hazily defined social realities, such as the concept-category of ethnicity.

As Robert Taylor (2006:9) notes, “whether intentionally or not, the consequence of the policies pursued by the British reified ethnicity and made religion an issue in the politics of Myanmar. This was the result of both acts of omission and acts of commission.” Elsewhere, (1982:8) Taylor criticizes the “orientalist” fantasies of colonial rule:

This ascriptive conceptual mode for intellectually mapping the structure of Burma has been so widely accepted by Burma’s political élite that they, like the Europeans who created it, have tended to accept the broad ethnic categories as embodying living social formations with political prerogatives…In this century, ethnic categories have taken on a life of their own, shaping the politi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Definitions (key concepts)
• Acronyms and abbreviations
• Burmese place names
• Part I Conflicting histories
• Part II Armed conflict since 1988
• Part III State, ceasefires and civil society
• Epilogue
• Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography