Much speculation has been generated by outsiders on the shift of Burma's capital from Rangoon to Pyinmana. It has been attributed to soothsayers, a fear of US invasion, general paranoia, an atavistic return to the Burmese monarchy and plain stupidity. When it comes to Burma, it seems the vaunted free presses of the world have uncharacteristically stooped to being subtly disingenuous, blatantly biased, or flippantly superficial. Perhaps it is about time the English-reading public is given a perspective that is not simply a dissident agenda or a regurgitation of the US State Department's non-policy on Burma, which, like its non-policy on Cuba, has become rather personal.
This recent shift of the capital to Pyinmana on the southern edge of the Dry Zone is not surprising at all.
Indeed, back in 1993, I said as much in an article (``I will not be surprised if the capital of Burma eventually returns to the dry zone.'')
The reasons for moving the capital to the interior, the Dry Zone of Upper Burma are historical, cultural and strategic. It has been, for over 2,000 years, the heartland of the country. This is where the country's Paleolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic and urban cultures were located.
It is where the capital of the first ``classical state'' of Burma, Pagan, and where all subsequent capitals of its dynasties (except one) have been centred.
It is the heart of the country's best literary and artistic traditions, where their present custodians live, and have lived for generations. It was the nucleus of the most extensively irrigated region of the country whose wet-rice production sustained the state and the bulk of its population, administration, culture and religion for centuries. And it is where nearly all of the Buddha-prophesied cities and the most sacred temples holding the majority of the most sacred relics of the Buddha and Buddhism are located.
The Dry Zone of Upper Burma, in other words, is the ancestral home of the Burmese people, and it is very much part of their psyche.
In contrast, although the present capital was a small port town known during ancient times as Dagon, Rangoon itself was a colonial city (in name, as well as function), it looks like one and was designed primarily to serve Britain's colonial export economy.
It was imposed as capital by and for outside economic and political interests. It had no autochthonous religious, historical, or cultural basis for being anointed the centre of Burma's culture, and has been a constant reminder of the country's colonial experience. Fittingly, it has lasted only 57 years.
In one respect, then, this is a return to Burma's historical, religious, cultural (and therefore, psychological) roots, which had been rudely interrupted by colonial Britain and is only now correcting itself.
But it also reveals current concerns, a strategic move, as the Government spokesperson said, with close and easy access to all the important towns, cities and sub-regions of the Dry Zone. It has direct access to the passes in the Shan hills on the east, to those in the Arakan Yomas at Prome on the west (thence to Arakan and the Bay of Bengal), while Pyinmana itself sits on the main highway to Mandalay, a most important hub, currently and historically.
The Dry Zone is also much closer to all the most important mineral deposits and other natural resources whose future development will be increasing, not decreasing. In short, it is mainly for cultural and historical reasons, but also for more current strategic ones, that the colonial capital of Rangoon is being dumped. It has nothing to do with soothsayers, paranoia, or fear of US attack. It's not about the US or the ``international community''!
Believe it or not, most nations in the world make internal decisions that have absolutely nothing to do with us, uncomfortable as that may be to our sensitive narcissism.
Michael Aung-Thwin is Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa