“On the road to Mandalay, where the flyin’-fishes play, an’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ‘crost the Bay….by the old Moulmein pagoda, lookin’ eastward to the sea, there’s a Burma girl a settin’, an’ I know she thinks of me”
This was Rudyard Kipling’s Burma: a land filled with all the romance of the mystic orient of the 19th century.
In 1885 the British invaded Upper Burma, annexed it, and made it a part of India. The last ruling king, Thebaw and his Queen, Supayalat (along with her scheming, power hungry mother, Queen Alenandaw), were exiled to India.
Queen Alenandaw, recognizing that the easily manipulated Thebaw was not heir to the throne and seeing his attachment to her strong-willed daughter Supayalat, persuaded the dying King MindonMin to appoint Thebaw, a son by one of his lesser queens, next King of Burma.
The weakling Thebaw, in love with Supayalat, fell under the influence of Alenandaw and agreed to the murder of the entire royal family, which numbered around 500 princes and princesses and other royals. A massacre of such a proportion was unprecedented in Burmese history. The bodies were buried in a mass grave on the palace grounds. As the corpses swelled in the heat, elephants were brought in to trample the mounding earth. The resisting creatures, trunks trumpeting with deafening bellows, were forced to trample on the bloody carnage.
With Lower Burma tucked into their belt, the British used the massacres as an excuse to invade Upper Burma. In fact, the real reason for the invasion was that the French--with the persuasion of Alenandaw--were cozying up to Thebaw, and the British feared losing an area vital to the crown’s interest.
What the British found in Burma were ruby mines in Magok, silver in Saigain, and jade, tin, copper, teak, oil, natural gas and rice, just to name a few of its resources. Under British rule, Burma became the #1 exporter of rice around the world. If India was Britain’s “Jewel in the Crown,” Burma certainly was the “Gold” that held that jewel in the crown.
At the beginning of World War II, two men, Ne Win and Aung San, joined forces with 28 other young Burmese and invited the Japanese into Burma and drove the British forces out. In 1945, Aung San, et al, realizing that the Japanese were even worse taskmasters than the British, on a pretext to take on the British, marched the entire Burmese army into the British camp and joined forces with them to crush and oust the Japanese invaders.
In 1948, Burma got her independence from Britain. But prior to this, there were Round Table conferences in London, Paris, and Simila, where delegates from Burma, fought fiercely for Burma’s proper recognition by Britain as an independent country from India, and an acknowledgement of its ethnic groups, including a new race, the Anglo-Burmese, who were the children of British and Burmese unions. (The Anglo-Burmese, proportionately were the largest ethnic group of volunteers in both the World Wars).
After independence, and while a constitution was not completely operational, General Aung San was assassinated with much of his cabinet. The government was never able to gain complete control over Burma, as there was much strife between some of the ethnic groups, such as the Karens and the Burmese. There was also constant conflict at Burma’s border with China.
In 1958, Prime Minister U Nu gave temporary power to the military, with General Ne Win at the helm, to restore order. After 18 months, the government still remained weak, and in 1962, General Ne Win seized the country in a bloody coup.
Ethnic cleansing became the order of the day, by the xenophobic socialist-minded Ne Win. A once rich country was brought to its economic knees by these policies.
Chinese and Indians were expelled, along with European Catholic nuns and priests and other Christian denominations. Currency values were changed over night, shops were seized and nationalized with no compensation given to the owners and in the blink of an eye Burma became one of the poorest nations in the world.
The day was August 8, 1988, and students organized a pro-democracy march to bring attention to the plight of Burma. But the world watched in collective silence as over 3,000 people were gunned down on that day on the streets of Rangoon. It was a bitter pill for us who love Burma to see the attention that was given to Tiananmen Square a few months later. Burma had lost as many or more of its sons.
Following the massacre, universities were closed, people went missing, more property was confiscated and the military got an even tighter grip over the suffocating population. A changing of the guard occurred and General Ne Win was replaced by General Saw Maung. Saw Maung did what dictators do best--he changed the name of the country to “Myanmar,”saying that Burma was an old British name. In fact, the country had been known as “Bama Pye, Nation of Burma,” long before the British took over. The Burmese Bama became Burma in English writing.
Saw Maung, however, did agree to free elections! Into this chaotic scene came Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of the murdered General Aung San. Since her father’s death, Suu Kyi had lived most of her life abroad. She barely spoke any Burmese, had married an Englishman, and raised her sons in England. She returned to Burma to visit her dying mother. Under the influence of her communist aunt, Suu Kyi remained in Burma and, after her mother’s death, began to garnish support from the Burmese public and ran for office in the elections permitted by Saw Maung.
Even though Suu Kyi and her followers were under house arrest, so they could not campaign, they won the elections by a landslide. She and her party won 392 out of the 485 seats. The military refused to give up power, saying that the newly elected party with Suu Kyi at the head were not prepared to govern, and the same xenophobic policies of Ne Win were continued.
Aung San Suu Kyi has been in and out of house arrest ever since. Though she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, it has made little difference to her status as far as the dictatorship is concerned. There have been a succession of revolving generals at the helm, with brutality and suppression still the flavour of the day. The latest “leader” is General Soe Win, another military hardliner.
The massacres at the Mandalay Palace in 1885 were just a shadow in Burmese history as compared to the thousands upon thousands who have vanished from the land of dreams, under the oppressive boot of Burma’s socialist agenda.
Burma is now on President Bush’s list as a terrorist nation--and Kipling’s Burma, where “temple bells [were] callin” has vanished like ether, into the mists of time.
Sandra Carney, born in India, is Anglo-Burmese, of British birth. She became an American Citizen in 1972 and has enjoyed living in the U.S.A. since 1967. She inherited her interest in politics from a family heavily inculcated in the politics of their times. Because of her mixed heritage, she is keenly interested in all that goes on around the world and is fiercely protective of her adopted country, the U.S.A.