Brill Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science

Perceptions of Ethnicity in the Politics of Burma
Author(s): Robert H. Taylor

Source: Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science, Vol. 10, No. 1 (1982), pp. 7-22
Published by: Brill
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/24490906
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Perceptions of Ethnicity in the
Politics of Burma*
Robert H. Taylor
Department of Economic and Political Studies. School of Oriental and African Studies.
University of London
Ethnie politics is the obverse of the politics of national unity in modern Burma.
Since the end of the Second World War no issue has been more permanently and
centrally on the political agenda of Burma than the question of how to cope with
demands of politicized ethnicity while simultaneously maintaining the territorial
integrity, frontier security and sovereignty of the central state. However, it has been
the manner in which most members of Burma's political élite, as well as foreign
historians and political scientists, have perceived the question of ethnicity which has
raised its ramifications to the apex of practical and theoretical concern. Because
ethnicity has generally been conceptualized as an ascribed attribute with the implicit
assumption of instinctive and primoridial antagonisms between different groups, as
has been customary in Western political thought since the rise of nationalism, rather
than as a relational attribute reflecting ecological and subcultural characteristics, a
false problem has been posed in the practice and study of Burma's politics.'
While a relational definition does not deny the existence of differentiating
cultural and subcultural traits between communities, it does not reify distinguishing
characteristics into politically determinate explanatory or behaviourial variables as
has been done by most analysts. For example, in a major work devoted to the study
of ethnicity and national unity in Burma's politics, the unique and independent
histories and requirements of the Chins, Kachins, Shans and Karens as opposed to
the Burmans are assumed.2 The present author in an earlier monograph' and manv
others writing in the European liberal nationalist tradition have assumed the same."
By accepting that the ascriptive definition of ethnicity applies at all times and in
every ethnically charged situation, most political analysts have lost sight of the more
dynamic explanatory characteristics that follow from the relational concept. By
using the relational concept, however, analysts are open to the criticism of
reductionism. of explaining all in terms of élite politics. Clearly an attempt must be
made to avoid this mistake and the surest way of doing so is to try to keep in mind
the conceptual framework in which the political élites being studied seem to be
operating.
Ethnographicallv, Burma is one of the most diverse countries in the world. The
range of linguistic, cultural and ecological variation is immense and the pre-colonial
and colonial political orders did little to narrow these differences. But during the
Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science. Vol. 10. \o. I (1982)
colonial period it became the accepted conceptual shorthand to group this great
range of geographically and/or linguistically contiguous peoples under broad ethnic
labels. Thus, it became normal to speak of the Burmans, Chins, Shans, Kachins,
Kavahs, Möns, Arakanese, Tavoyans and Karens as if they were unified national
groups with ancient historical antecedents. 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.5 Thus, the politically neutral Burmese word lu-myö, literally
meaning "kind of man" came to be translated as the emotive terms for race or
nation. In this century, ethnic categories have taken on a life of their own, shaping
the political thought and behaviour of central and regional élites.
It is now impossible to avoid the use of broad ethnic labels even while
attempting to demystify them. It is commonplace to point out that the majority of
the population of Burma is Burman and that probably the only ethnic communities
which surpass a million in number are the Karen and Shan, both of which, like the
other minorities, are divided into a variety of sub-groups.6 What is meant is that the
majority of the population share the cultural and ecological patterns of Theravada
Buddhism, the standard Burmese dialect, lowland village dwelling patterns and
settled rice cultivation, while the minority communities are distinguishable by a
variety of different patterns deriving from a contrasting but proximate ecological
area within the same internationally recognized borders.
The purpose of this essay is to suggest that the nineteenth-century conceptual
shorthand that twentieth-century Burma has been burdened with has created a
falsely conceived and thus irresolvable political issue. Whether the present
government of Burma has perceived the problem of ethnicity in the terms set out
above is unclear. Nevertheless, it has attempted to redefine the question of ethnicity
in such a way that the state will be able to cope with more manageable claims than
the highly emotive demands based upon assumptions of ethnic rights which were
encouraged between 1945 and 1962. Therefore it is possible under the present
constitutional and political structures of Burma, that ethnicity might once more
become the subordinate and generally unobtrusive political factor that it was before
the colonial period.
Between 1826 and 1941, a modern state structure was imposed by the British
only upon the areas of Burma where the more culturally and linguistically uniform
"valley" peoples—the Burmans, Möns, Arakanese, Tavovans and some
Karens—lived. Amongst the diverse "hill" peoples—the Kachins, Chins, Shans an
some Karens—the colonial state remained as remote and largely irrelevant as th
pre-colonial state had been. As a consequence, the modern nationalism of Burm
that developed as a rejection of the more powerful colonial state was most strong
based amongst the valley dwelling peoples. The Second World War and its effec
brought the consequences of the modern European state system to the hill people
causing the development of forms of nationalism among those peoples. It might
argued that ideas of separate ethnic identity, were already present in some cases, but
that there had been previously no reasons or mechanisms for their mobilizatio
Perceptions of Ethnicity in the Politics of Burma
Nevertheless, regional and local hill leaders were now encouraged to begin to
articulate their interests in ethnic and nationalist terms understood by the modern
world and increasingly shared by them.7
The prospect of independence after the war meant that the newly mobilized hill
peoples' existing authorities, if they were to have a role in the future, would have to
find a modus vivendi with the valley leaders of the major nationalist political force
there, the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League (AFPFL). As the intellectual heirs
of the European conception of ethnicity and nationalism, the valley nationalists
thought in terms of ethnicity as a cause for political conflict and created "solutions"
to the problem of political ethnicity in terms such as Stalin and Tito used, or the
conventions of the British constitution. As formalized in the 1947 constitution, the
result was a form of truncated federalism which would postpone difficult problems
till they could be dealt with over time by the processes of democratic multi-party and
federalist politics.
Ethnic politics was thus raised from the condition of inchoate aspiration to the
pivot of political action. The consequences were immense because the state's
permanence, integrity and sovereignty became a continually open political issue.
The 1962 coup d'etat, itself a direct result of the increasing politicization of ethnicity
in Burma, provided an opportunity to subordinate political ethnicity to other issues.
While the coup leaders may not have fully grasped the structural importance of their
initial act, by the time the 1974 constitution was promulgated, the political role of
ethnicity had been perceived in a different way, more like that of the pre-colonial
political universe than of the colonial one. Ironically, it appears that only by
adapting earlier forms of ethnic conceptualization, albeit in modern Marxist
political terminology, has the state of Burma been able to persist in the present
international system.
Some Western anthropologists have for more than twentv-five years been
drawing the attention of other scholars to the inadequacy of ascriptive concepts of
ethnicity to an understanding of Burma. E.R. Leach's seminal essay, "The Frontiers
of 'Burma' ", was intended to force mainland Southeast Asian historians to rethink
the assumptions that underlay Western analyses of the structure of political and
social relations between the "hill" and "valley" dwelling peoples of the area.
Although Leach studiously avoided using the term "ethnicity", his argument recasts
the issue of ethnic relations and their cultural and political significance in a
relational manner. As Leach correctly pointed out, "the modern European concepts
of frontier, state and nation are interdependent but they are not necessarily
applicable to all state-like political organizations everywhere"."
But as noted above, the problem of Western thinking that Leach highlighted
came also to shape the perceptions of Burma's leaders who had become used to the
ideas of the European state system. This problem is analogous to that of regionalism
in less ethnically diverse Thailand. Anderson notes that in Thailand, "the problem
of 'regionalism' in the Northeast . . . only becomes meaningful in the context of the
nation-state ... In a sense ... we can date the inception of the regional problem in
Siam to the intellectual shift in the Siamese view of the political entity they lived in
from a kingdom to a nation-state"." This perceptual shift developed at the same
10 Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science. Vol. 10. \'o. I 11982)
time as a shift in power relations between the centre and the periphery.
true of the "regional problem" in Siam was equally true of the "ethnic p
Burma.
A notable scholarly exception to the uncritical acceptance of European
assumptions about the basis of political and social relations in pre-colonial Burma is
Victor Lieberman's essay, "Ethnic Politics in Eighteenth-Century Burma"." While
discussing primarily the question of ethnicity amongst the valley peoples of Burma,
Lieberman appreciated the general thrust of Leach's argument as developed in The
Political Systems of Highland Burma12 and the important essays of F.K. Lehman
and Maran La Raw,13 which are cast in a similar conceptual framework. Using their
anthropologically derived concepts which emphasize the absence of hard and
permanent ethnic categories in Burma's cultural traditions, Lieberman writes that in
pre-colonial politics and war, ethnicity was of limited importance in determining
political behaviour except perhaps in times of extreme crisis or when political leaders
needed a differentiating ploy to distinguish their positions from the hegemonic
claims of their rivals.
Lieberman notes three important characteristics of social and political organi
zation in pre-colonial Burma which worked against Mon and Burman ethnic self
identification as a dominant political factor. One was the tradition of patron-client
relations which emphasized obligations to the crown or a patron as a personal, not
national or ethnic, form of allegiance. "Because authority derived from the power
and charisma of the patron, and because each of his clients was tied to him by
separate personal bonds, there was no need for a common identity among his
followers."1J A second characteristic of the pre-colonial period which obviated
ethnic identity was the nature of Theravadan kingship. The legitimacy of a king
depended not upon his ethnicity but upon his karmatic attainments and upon his
ability to wield the symbols of his position over all Theravada Buddhists." Finally,
Lieberman notes that regional loyalties also worked against ideas of pan-Monism or
pan-Burmanism in pre-colonial conditions, just as now regional and state loyalties
work against pan-Arab nationalism in the Middle East.
While Leach's and Lieberman's theses must now be seriously considered, they
do not provide an adequate basis for an understanding of the politics of modern
Burma. There are two reasons for this. First, because of the introduction of the
European idea of ascriptive ethnicity and race into the Burmese world-view, the
politics of Burma have been shaped to some degree by the idea of ethnic conflict as
conceived in Western ascriptive terms." Second, the international system and its
requirements of state sovereignty, firm frontiers and independence imposes upon
the hill and valley peoples a framework which did not exist in the pre-colonial period
or in the hill areas before independence and the consolidation of neighboring states.
While negotiations were under way after the Second World War for Burma's
independence, spokesmen for minority, ethnic, cultural or "national" communities
within its borders advanced or were encouraged to advance demands for separate
rights, opportunities and powers to protect and enhance their particular positions.
These demands were all made vis-à-vis the central state and in the nation-state's
mode of discourse. When these ethnically conceived demands were put in terms
appropriate to the state system, they then became phrased as "national" demands.
Perceptions of Ethnicity in the Politics of Burma 1 1
In the first instance the leaders of the AFPFL, the org

British bequeathed the state in 1948, were able to find co
both the ethnic leaders and to the central state. As a con
handover of power, the British kept watch over this process of minority
accommodation. Fîowever, some Karen leaders were in an uncompromising mood,
and Karen nationalism became one of the main prongs of the civil war that engulfed
Burma during the next five years. Additional politically organized ethnic movements
emerged during the next fourteen years, threatening the disintegration of the state
and a reversion to the politically dispersed "Burma" that Leach described. But the
imperatives of the international system and the interests of the modern state and
those who controlled its coercive powers would not allow for this.
In the modern international system, it is only political nations possessing
recognized states that ultimately matter. Non-political nations or ethnic groups as
such are of no concern in the international structure despite demands by their
spokesmen for recognition. Stateless nations, like the Palestinians or the
Armenians, become international political issues, not completely independent
international actors, because other states use them for their own purposes.
Therefore the sine gua non of a successful nationalist movement is the international
recognition of a state, and any state that wishes to preserve its territorial integrity
must ensure that other states do not recognize "separatist movements" as the
embodiment of a political nation with its own state and territory.
The imperative of the government in a society in which the central state élite, as
well as non-élite groups, recognizes the existence of a plurality of ethnic groups, is to
ensure that loyalty to the nation, as defined by the territorial reach of the state, is or
becomes greater than loyalty to the diverse ethnic groups. Partial associations such
as religious bodies and ethnic identity may be allowed to exist, but the individual's
greatest sense of obligation must be directed toward the not exclusive but
overarching claim of the state as defined by those who control it.
At the time Burma received independence and recognition, the degree of
nation-state loyalty by various ethnic communities and their members varied
considerably. On the whole, because of the mobilizing and politicizing consequences
of the forty-year nationalist movement against the colonial state and its institutions,
the valley peoples felt a stronger loyalty to the nation-state than the hill peoples did.
The weak notions of ethnic difference among the Burmans, Möns and other valley
peoples, except some Karens, had been swamped in the preceding years of migration
and resettlement in the Burma delta and by the greater differences which were
perceived to exist between the indigenous folk and the immigrant Indians and
Chinese that had accompanied the colonial state.
The valley élite had come to recognize the permanence of the state structure,
but they and the British differed over the allocation of control in that structure. The
post-independence civil war between the AFPFL-controlled state and the Burma
Communists was a similar type of conflict, but in a newly defined, domestic context.
The main Karen leaders, however, had created a strong sense of Karen
corporateness during the colonial era and had come to identify with the colonial
authorities' definition of what composed their security. In the absence of a British
Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science. Vol. 10. No. / (1982)
power which had provided them with opportunities disproportionate to their size
and strength within the total state structure, they sought to create their own separate
state.
One should not conclude that the primary loyalties of the other hill peoples
even of most of the Karens, were directed toward pan-ethnic (greater Kachin,
or Shan) communities or nations. Rather, because the structures of the modern
system had only recently been imposed upon them, their loyalties continued t
with clan, kin, patron and particular local affinities. Among the hill élites, t
concept of pan-ethnic community loyalty versus the central state was j
developing. Indeed, it was a concept which developed partly because of the decl
importance of the traditional leaders, as their functions were now superseded by th
modern state." The political conflicts of the 1950s and 1960s between the tradit
hill élites and the groups which controlled the central state were over the fut
attachments of the majority of the hill peoples who were as yet neither loyal t
state-nation nor to the pan-ethnic communities.
As F.H. Hinslev postulates in Nationalism and the International System.1" t
raison d'etre of the modern state is the distinction between society and governmen
By this he means that in traditional pre-state or non-state societies governed by
institutions of the clan, tribe, patron-client ties or kinship structures, the "s
principle" of governance prevails, and it is the imposition of the modern state
either an aggrandizing indigenous power centre or an imperialist external po
centre that makes for the triumph of the "administrative principle" of the mo
state. The state grows out of the enlarged problems of social control that a na
faces, but which smaller, more homogeneous social units do not. The success of
administrative principle, however, does not necessarily result in enlarged na
state loyalties, because theattempt of thestate to impose itself can, and often ha
to the emergence of a contradictory sense of loyalty by people demanding eit
their own state or control of the alien one. This is the reason empires collapse
leave in their wake new independent states which must ensure for their own surviv
that the administrative principle continues to prevail over the social principle.
In a country such as Burma, where during the colonial period the administrativ
principle was imposed only on the valley peoples, the conflict between the socia
administrative principles between the hill peoples and the state continued past
date of international recognition of the state. What had been a process of imp
rule and national response became transformed into a process of central stat
control and regional reaction. The modern independent state of Burma was
captured by a successful valley peoples' nationalist movement, and that state has
had in turn to attempt to extend the administrative principle to the hill peoples where
the social principle had persisted. The logic of the international system requires that
states control all of their territory and the people in them on the basis of the
administrative principle, and any state which does not successfully do so loses
sovereignty over part or all of its territory.
The politics of ethnicity in independent Burma has been essentially a process of
defining the major issues of state structure and control in "them-us" terms. For the
minority group elites."them" and the central state have been identified as identical
Perceptions of Ethnicity in the Politics of Burma 13
because it has been believed that the state is controlled

interests of the majority Burman community rather t
interested in the preservation of the state and their contro
politics in this way, political leaders who use the ethnic
claims about mass support and autonomous or separate p
of ethnicity very much in its Western archaic meaning." Bu
way of conceptualizing ethnicity amongst the hill peoples c
Burma's political history.
The mutual perceptions of hill and valley peoples in
were based upon conceptions of cultural differences an
peoples may have thought of hill peoples as "wild heath
did not exclude their eventual incorporation into "civil
The hill peoples seemed to have shared this view. It wa
cultural practice which divided people socially, not nece
Buddhist Shans, the distinction between them and the lo
amounted to cultural variations rather than significant cult
Nineteenth-century Western concepts of ascriptive ethn
course of Burma's political development under the Briti
finally imposed on the entirety of modern Burma after
War in 1886, it was decided to take advantage of the eco
between the hill and valley peoples in shaping the instru
was later argued that this was done to protect the hill peop
the more aggressive valley dwellers, this explanation wa
justification of decisions taken for reasons of state.
To the new British rulers, it was obvious that they woul
social control structures amongst the valley people if fo
fact that the process of war and conquest had destr
monarchical order. Even if it had occurred to the British th
such as the French developed in Annam and Tonkin, w
destabilizing system, that option was probably no longe
state in the only way they knew how, a modern state b
principle as they had done in India. Such a structure was als
extracting an economic surplus on a regular basis. Here
all important.
Amongst the shifting hill peoples, however, alternati
Either the existing petty rulers and institutions could be su
a system of "indirect rule", thus maintaining the social p
they could be supplanted with the imposition of the ad
However, the latter would be at great cost and with no
The hill peoples did not need to be controlled by the col
they pose a serious threat to its security nor could they
expropriating. The British, therefore, chose not to impose d
the modern state on the hill peoples. These practical ad
later interpreted differently by valley dwelling nationalists
The perpetuation of separate principles of social contr
Burma was felt by the nationalist élite of the valley are
Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science. Vol. 10. Vo. / II982)
strategy of divide-and-rule, keeping Burma weak and disunited so as to extend the

permanency of alien domination. Regulations which effectively denied the right of
valley nationalists to organize in the hill areas underscored such an interpretation.
Having direct experience of European concepts of ascriptive ethnic discrimination in
the customs of the British, the valley peoples found it logical to believe that ethni
citv was a guiding principle of all British social action. The practice ot the British in
seeking "martial races" from the Chin and Kachin hills to serve in the state's armed
forces and the reliance on favoured minorities, mainly Karens and Indians, to man
the key instruments of state power and authority, such as the armed police and the
judicial service, strengthened this perception.
The idea of ethnic politics was further stressed by the distribution of wealth and
political influence in the politics of the colony. The preponderance of wealth in the
hands of Indian, Chinese and British entrepreneurs, helped to convince valley
nationalists that the British manipulated ethnicity to keep their own community
down. The emphasis the British gave in the 1923 and 1937 constitutions to
guaranteeing the Indian, Anglo-Burman and Karen communities reserved seats in
the legislature, while simultaneously excluding the Shan. Kachin and Chin areas
from the control of the elected legislature and cabinet, contrary to the principle of
majority rule, indicated British attachment to the European concept of ethnic
political rights.
The education made available to the new valley élite which interpreted history
in nineteenth-century European terms provided an intellectual gloss to ethnic
politics. While the students of Rangoon University rejected the consequences of
British rule, they were none the less taught its conceptual framework. It was not by
accident that the first pamphleteers of the Dobama A.uayûn. the major new
nationalist group formed in the early 1930s, were attracted to the idea of master
races. These views only became modified in the later 1930s by an admixture of
Marxist concepts which suggested the subordination of race to class in political
action.
After the war, when the valley-dwelling nationalist élite demanded prompt
independence, the British continued to justify the prolongation of alien control on
ethnic grounds. The original scheme of post-war British policy, the 1945 White
Paper, indicated that while steps would be taken in the not too distant future for
granting fuller self-government in the valley areas, the hill areas would continue
under London's control until the hill peoples indicated that they wished to be
incorporated into the remainder of Burma.20 When the leaders of the AFPFL and
the Burma National Army attempted to press their claim for a dominant
independent role in the governing of Burma, their importance was belittled on the
grounds that various hill peoples had been more important that the valley
nationalists in defeating the Japanese.21 Even after the British government had
decided that independence would have to be granted by 1948, the alleged separate
wishes of the hill peoples were maintained as an obstacle to full independence. Once
that hurdle was overcome, through the process of the Panglong Agreement and the
Rees-Williams Committee of Enquiry, ethnicity as a political issue became a
domestic rather than an imperial question.
The authors of independent Burma's first constitution sought to "solve" the
Perceptions of Ethnicity in the Politics ot Burma
ethnie problem through the mechanisms of multiparty politics and federal structures
by giving a representative advantage to traditional hill leaders, especially the Shan
Sawbwas and the Kachin Duwas. The leaders of the hill peoples, with the exception
of some Karens, were willing to accept as a compromise the postponement of most
of the issues that divided them from the AFPFL leaders in exchange for the
preservation of their privileged positions. The leaders of the Karen National Defense
Organization (KNDO), often Christians, who were intellectually the most
Westernized of the hill leaders, were in a different position. Since they were not
traditional leaders like the Shan Sawbwas or Kachin Duwas, their claim to a political
role had to be based on arguments of the existence of a separate Karen nation.
Unwilling to undermine their own positions, the KNDO leaders rejected the
compromises of the 1947 constitution.
Once independence had been granted and the institutions of the 1947
constitution were inaugurated, the traditional hill leaders began to use the
opportunities for self and group aggrandizement made available by the new
structures. So also did some spokesmen for various interests among the valley
peoples, cloaking their local or self-interest in the name of ethnic diversity and
cultural protection. A brief review of the process of ethnic-based party proliferation
during the late 1940s and 1950s suggests what happened. A complete study has yet to
be conducted.22
The Chins are regarded as the community which has most easily adjusted to
inclusion within the structures of the central Burma state. There has been no major
movements for separation or autonomy led by any traditional leaders. The reasons
for this are complex and related to the cultural attraction of valley civilization for
the Chins.22 Politically, the absence of a pre-colonial ruling group in the Chin areas
above the level of village leader seems to have provided no leadership corps to
organize a pan-Chin movement. It is indeed noteworthy that the major Chin
political body during the 1950s, the Chin Hills Congress, was formed in 1951 by a
man with a career as a District Commissioner and an army officer, very much linked
to the central state. The proliferation of political bodies in the Chin areas was very
limited and reflected not separatist drives, but valley élite rivalries which extended
into Chin political.organizations. The Chin Hills Congress was actually absorbed
into the AFPFL in 1954, and a separate new Chin body was apparently not formed
until the 1960 election as an adjunct to U Nu's "Clean" AFPFL.
The experience of the more diverse Kachins was quite different. In their region,
there was a proliferation of organizations, reflecting not only linkages with various
factions of the AFPFL but also cultural and regional conflicts amongst the Kachins
themselves. The mixture of local interests and external symbolism in these
organizations is quite striking. The first major post-war political body was the
Kachin Youth League which was closely allied initially with the AFPFL. Affiliated
with the Kachin Youth League was the Jinghpaw National Modern Civilization
Development Association which looked to the incorporation of the Kachins into
Burma. However, the non-traditional leaders of the Kachin Youth League were
soon dropped by the AFPFL when it turned to find support from the traditional
Kachin leaders, the Duwas, at the time of the Panglong Conference in 1947.
16 Soul/wast Asian Journal of Social Science. Vol. 10. ,Vo. t (I0S2)
The non-traditional leaders were probably abandoned by the AF

reasons. Firstly, the British were insisting that the rights of their fri
be protected. Secondly, the AFPFL was interested in a speedy han
power, and consultation with the traditional leaders was simpler
processes such as conducting a referendum. Thirdly, the leadersh
had itself become more conservative in its views about Burma's future as it came
closer to controlling the state and the Communists no longer had a say in AFPFL
policies.
To co-operate with the AFPFL, the Duwas formed their own rival parties in the
late 1940s. Duwa Zaw Lawn's Kachin National Congress found its basis of support
amongst Baptist Kachins in the Bhamo region, while the Sima Duwa's People's
Economic and Cultural Development Organization found its greatest following
amongst Buddhist Kachins living near the lowlands. When the AFPFL split in 1958,
the former allied with the "Stable" faction while the latter followed the "Clean"
group. There also existed the Pawnggyawng Animist or Progressive Youth
Organization, led by Duwa Zau Rip, which claimed to be Marxist and anti
Christian. It opposed the conversion of Kachins to Christianity, an act with political
as well as religious significance.
The relationship between each of these Kachin organizations and the Kachin
Independence Council, the body which has received the most attention from
foreigners in recent years, is still unclear. The Independence Council and its military
wing, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), have pressed a demand for an
autonomous Kachin state. The major KIA leader in the later 1960s was Naw Seng
who made a name for himself during the Second World War as a leader of anti
Japanese guerrillas, in co-operation with the British military and the American OSS
Force 101.14 After independence, his unit of the central armies' Kachin Rifles
mutinied and joined the Karen insurgents. During the period of the 1960s when the
Chinese government was calling for the overthrow of the Ne Win Government, the
Chinese Communist Party apparently relied on the political and military strength of
Naw Seng's KIA forces more than on the Burma Communist Party to harass the
central state's forces." It appears that for Naw Seng the benefits of the Cultural
Revolution looked as promising as those of the Second World War and the Karen
insurgency. Since the decline of Chinese interest in northern Burma, the KIA seems
to have concerned itself primarily with the opium trade, and the demand for an
autonomous Kachin state has been heard most frequently, in a muted form, over the
Burma Communist Party's Voice of the Burmese People's radio.
Amongst the Shans, one finds an equally bewildering array of political bodies
formed since the Second World War. The degree of overlap amongst them is
unclear. What is obvious is the existence of political organizations that opposed the
traditional rulers, the Sawbwas, and the willingness of the Sawbwas both to use and
oppose the resources of the central state when it fitted their purposes. However, only
after the military "care-taker government" of 1958-60 succeeded in removing the
Sawbwas from official office did strident demands for Shan autonomy commence.
The first major post-war Shan political organization was in the Shan State
Peasants' Organization. First called the Shan State People's Freedom League, it was
an offshoot of the early AFPFL. Like the Kachin Youth League, this body opposed
the continuing authority of the Sawbwas. The organization of the Shan State
People's Freedom League was undoubtedly made possible by the opportunities
provided during the Japanese occupation for valley nationalists to tour the hill areas
for the first time since the imposition of British rule.
However, the AFPFL quickly abandoned the Shan State Peasants'
Organization in favour of co-operation with the United Hill People's Congress
which the Sawbwas formed in 1947 to protect their interests. While not opposed
the incorporation of the Shan regions into an independent Burma, the Sawbwa
extracted many privileges for themselves in the negotiations leading up to the
transfer of sovereignty to the central state. As a consequence, the Sawbwas wer
able to continue to dominate the government of the Shan state as well as to provi
all Shan representation in the central legislature until 1962. Anti-Sawbwa politic
organizations during the 1950s were relatively unsuccessful, but at least one ant
Sawbwa Shan political body, the Shan State Unity Party, persisted until the 1960
election.
Amongst one non-Shan group living in the Shan state there was organized the
United National Pa-O Organization during the 1950s in an effort to gain autonomy
from the Sawbwa-controlled administration. As the Sawbwas were generally allied
with the AFPFL, the Pa-0 organization was anti-AFPFL.
The problem posed for the central state by the continuation of the Sawbwa's
power into the late 1950s was in part ideological. The 1947 constitution stipulated
that Burma was to be a democratic state and the perpetuation of the authority of the
Sawbwas made a mockery of that claim. In other words, the social principle of
governance in one part of the Burma state could not properly coexist with the
administrative principle in the state's ideology. Also, in terms of national frontiers
and state sovereignty, the perpetuation of Sawbwa rule posed further problems. As
a ruling group that had been propped up by the British during the colonial period,
the Sawbwas' position was open to attack from two sides. On the one hand, new
political forces, represented by the Shan State Peasants' Organization, were
demanding a greater say through a democratic form of local administration. On the
other, the Sawbwa's strength was too enfeebled to allow them to resist effectively
Chinese and Sino-Shan encroachments into Burma. The abandonment of their
traditional powers in 1959 in exchange for sizeable payments and the retention of
their titles did not, however, remove their continuing influence nor allow the central
government to dominate the area. Claims that they were speaking on behalf of Shan
nationalism continued to provide the Sawbwas with a platform from which to
maintain their local authority and claims against the central state.
Amongst the Kayah group, the "Red" Karens practising Shan political forms,
political leadership seems to have remained entirely in the hands of the traditional
Sawbwas throughout the 1950s. When the AFPFL split, one group followed the
"Stable" faction and one the "Clean".
The relationship between the Karen peoples and the central state is the most
complicated of all ethnic political situations in Burma. Karen exceptions to the usu
pattern of relations have been noted frequently above. There are a variety of reasons
for this, not least of which is the fact that many Karens live in valley areas wh
others are clearly hill peoples. However, the different relationship that develop
18 Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science. Vol. II). No. / 11982)
between the valley Karens and the colonial state and other accom
institutions has created a greater problem of accommodation with the ce
for the most vocal segments of the Karen community.
Karen nationalism preceded organized nationalism among other valle
peoples. The Karen National Association, formed in 1881, took over repr
of Sgaw and Christian Karen interests with the colonial government f
American Baptist missionaries who had been so important in shaping the
a separate Karen nation. In marked contrast to the situation in Thailand
Karen community has had little difficulty in adjusting to the demands of th
state,26 throughout the years since the 1880s, some Karens in Burma
working to establish separate institutions and prerogatives. The Karen
Association itself collapsed during the Second World War, but before th
won from the British the right of separate Karen representation in th
legislature.
From 1945 to 1947, the major Karen organization, the Karen Central
Organization (KCO), was an affiliate of the AFPFL. Its leader, Saw Ba U Gyi, was a
member of the Governor's Executive Council or Cabinet, and it seemed that the pre
war and wartime distrust of the Burmans that Karen nationalism had been based
upon had been overcome. However, when the majority of the AFPFL-dominated
constituent assembly refused to grant the Karens a separate state on the grounds that
the Karens would in fact have been a minority in the area that was being claimed, the
KCO split. One group, the Karen Youth Organization within the AFPFL, accepted
the promises of good faith made by the government, while another, the Karen
National Union, opposed the AFPFL and organized a military wing, the Karen
National Defense Organization (KNDO).
In January 1949, while the AFPFL-controlled government was engulfed in the
battle with the Burma Communist Party and its armed forces, the KNDO rebelled
and was joined by mutinous Karen units of the Burma Army. Since then, other anti
state Karen autonomy or nationalist organizations have been formed, but all have
fought for the idea of a separate Karen nation. Because of the early and firm
acceptance by Christian and Western-educated Karen leaders of the notion of the
unique historical place of the Karens, the depth of their convictions has made
accommodation with the central state impossible. Only the passage of the generation
that led the Karen rebellion and a realization of the ultimate futility of the quest for
a Karen state will end the rebellion.
The political use of ethnicity since 1945 has not been limited to hill area élites.
Aung San insisted in 1945 that half of the new Burma Army be organized on an
ethnic basis to ensure that all the armed forces were not loyal to the British. Well
aware of the contest for control of the state at that time, the British Governor
readily accepted this demand. Only later did the leaders of the independent Burma
Army realize the dangerous consequences of an ethnically organized army for the
unity of the military as well as for the security of the state.
In the 1950s, using the opportunities provided by a multiparty political system
and the popularity of ethnic claims, the leaders of the Independent Arakanese
Parliamentary Group, the only really independent wealthy group in Burma's
political élite, formed the Arakanese National Unity Or

AFPFL. Initially working against the AFPFL's socialist p
group switched to support the more conservative governm
may speculate whether U Nu's disenchantment with socia
support more than his promise of a separate Arakan state go
The 1962 coup provided an opportunity to resolve the discontinuous
development of the central state's control within the borders of Burma.27 The main
point about the coup is that it was primarily prompted by the belief on the part of
the Army's leaders that the civilian controlled government of U Nu was about to
make far reaching concessions to the supposedly powerless Shan Sawbwas, as well
as to other hill area political leaders.28 The military leaders who had fought for the
maintenance of the central state against the KNDO, Chinese Nationalist troops and
other assorted separatist movements were strongly opposed to a retreat from full
central dominance.
In her study of coups and communalism, Enloe advanced the proposition that
while the 1962 Burma coup transferred power from the hands of civilian officials to
military ones, there was no basic change in the ethnic composition of the holders of
central state power.29 At first examination, this appears to be the case. Since the
majority of the Karen officer corps that had served with the British army had
defected to the KNDO in the late 1940s, the officer corps of the Burma Army was
composed primarily of valley nationalists, mostly Burmans, Möns, and Tavoyans,
who had served with the Burma Independence Army under the Japanese. Mixed
with them was a sprinkling of Chin, Kachin and Anglo-Burman officers who had
successfully made the transfer from the colonial to the independent army.
However, Enloe, following earlier analyses of Burma's politics, seems to have
misunderstood the consequences of the coup. Her interpretation was that the coup
was a failure in terms of preserving the state."" Instead, the efforts of the post-coup
government to extend the administrative principle of governance to the hill areas
through a uniform political process might be better interpreted as a major
restructuring of the mechanisms of state control and a prerequisite for its
perpetuation.
The requirements of sovereignty, frontier and state preservation are not the
concerns of the military only. Rather, they are the responsibility of the modern state
as dictated by the international system. The ability of the government to form a
political and administrative web that draws the inhabitants of its territory toward
the state determines its viability. This web of political affiliation is a nation-state,
formed from disparate cultural and ecological mixtures of clan, tribal, regional and
local groups.2' By encouraging local élites to speak in the name of politicized
ethnicity, the prt-coup governmental structures and politics of Burma continued to
recognize the political legitimacy of leaders whose claims to authority were based on
their ability to resist the state.
By denying the legitimacy of locally based ethnic claims to separate nationhood
made by traditional leaders, the 1974 constitutional structures of Burma have
attempted to remove from the political agenda an issue that in terms of the nature of
ethnicity in Burma was falsely stated.22 The present constitution and its
accompanying political organization encourage a reconceptualization of ethnicity as
20 Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science. Vol. 10. So. / (1982)
a relational attribute. While cultural diversity can be applauded and

the government, the political requirements of the central state are held
The subordination of ethnicity as a political issue obviously is not
in the current period. International intellectual trends work agains
traditional leaders and non-ethnic opposition movements seek to capit
claims. Because pluralism is held in such high regard by Western soc
any attack upon what is perceived to be pluralism is denigrated. The
serving nature of pluralist ethnic claims are rarely examined. Seen in
pre-colonial pattern of ethnic relations in Burma, and in terms of t
system, the attempt to restructure and reconceptualize the place o
Burma has considerable merit. While it would be naive to believe that
factor in the politics of Burma can become wholly insignificant, a fuller
understanding of the conceptual problems that ethnicity poses for the
comprehension of Burma's politics may clarify the situation.
NOTES
* The author would like to thank Ruth McVey, Benedict Anderson, Victor Lieberman and Micha
Adas for their critical comments on an earlier version of this paper. He alone remains responsib
for all statement of fact and interpretation.
1. For more elaborate discussions of this point, see Cynthia H. Enloe. Ethnic So/die r\. Suite Secur
in Divided Societies ( Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1980). pp. 1-h. and Charles F. Keyes. "Introd
tion". in Ethnic Adaptation and Identity, The Karen on the Thai Frontier with Burma, edited b
Keves (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues. 1979). pp. I-S.
2. Josef Silverstein, Burmese Politics, the Dilemma of National Unity (New Brunswick: Rutgers
University Press, 1980).
3. Robert H. Tavlor. The Foreign and Domestic Consequences of the KMT Intervention in Burma.
Southeast Asia Program Data Paper no. 93 (Ithaca: Cornell University. 1973).
4. Hush Tinker. "Burma: Separatism as a Way ot Life", in The Politics ol Separatism. Collected
Seminar Papers no. 19 ( London: University of London. Institute of Commonwealth Studies. I97h).
pp. 57-68: John F. Cadv. A History of Modern Burma (Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1938).
5. See for example the expressions of ethnic categorization and political consequence in Nu.
U Nu—Saturday's Son (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975) and Smith Dun, Memoirs
of the Four-Foot Colonel. Southeast Asia Prosram Data Paper no. I 13 (Ithaca: Cornell Universitv.
May 1980).
6. See "Burma: Introduction" in Southeast Asian Tribes, Minorities and Nations, edited by Peter
Kunstadter, Vol. I (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), Table 4, pp. 87-89.
7. This is expressed in the memoirs of a leading Chin who reveals how he was almost compelled by
others into thinking and acting as a Chin after the war. See Vum Ko Hau, Profile of a Burma
Frontier Man (Bandung: Kilatmadju Press, private printing, 1963).
8. The essay was first published in October 1960, in Comparative Studies in Society and History, pp.
49-68, and reprinted in John T. McAlister, Jr., ed., Southeast Asia, the Politics of National
Integration (New York: Random House, 1973), pp. 315-35. This quotation is found on p. 315 of the
reprinted version, emphasis in the original. Leach treats the Shans as a valley people as indeed they
are in his geographical and ecological terms and in the local context, but for purposes of national
political analysis, they should now be treated as a hill people. The reason for this is that their
isolation from the social and political developments of the valley peoples during the colonial period
made their leaders view their relationship with the central state in the same way as other traditional
hill elites. By ossifying traditional authority in the Shan states. British rule broke the common
political orientations that the Shan had with the Burmans and Möns in the past. Because of the
nature of the regime in the Shan states, by the early 1930s the traditional rulers, the Sawbwas, whose
number had been reduced and actual powers curtailed, while their symbolic role had been enhanced
by the British, were demanding to be treated as if their domains were equal to the Indian Princely
States. See "Memorandum of the Federated Shan States by Their Re

Mongmit State and the Sawbwa of Yawnghwe Stale, London, December, 1930" by the
Superintendent, Government Printing and Stationery, Rangoon, Burma, 1931; and Letter by H. L.
Nichols, Officiating Chief Secretary, Government of Burma, to Foreign Secretary of the
Government of India, Foreign and Political Department, 21 September 1931, both in Burma Office
File (BOF) 1506/37, India Office Archives and Library, London.
9. Benedict R. O'G. Anderson, "The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture", in Culture and Politics in
Indonesia, edited by Claire Holt (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), p. 29, fn. 57.
10. I am indebted to Dr. Ruth McVey for this point.
11. Modern Asian Studies 12, no. 3 (1978): 455-82.
12. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1965), and other editions.
13. "Ethnic Categories in Burma and the Theory of Social Systems" and "Toward a Basis for
Understanding the Minorities in Burma: The Kachin Example", both in Southeast Asian Tribes,
Minorities and Nations, op. cit., pp. 93-146.
14. Lieberman, '"Ethnic Politics in Eighteenth-Centurv Burma ". Modern Asian Studies 12. no. 3
(1978): 459.
15. This point is reiterated in Professor Tun Aung Chain's paper, "Legitimation Ploys in 18th Century
Burma", presented at the Centre for South-East Asian Studies, SO AS, 1980.
16. Lieberman also advances this idea as an hypothesis. See, op.cit., pp. 480-82.
17. In the case of the Kachins, for example, the large villages which were formed under the Duwas or
chiefs for protection from tribal feuds and wars with powerful neighbours gave way when the
central state began to impose its control over the region to more dispersed forms of settlement
nearer to agricultural sites. See Khin Mya, "The Impact of Traditional Culture and Environmental
Forces on the Development of the Kachins. a Sub-Cultural Group of Burma" (Ph.D. dissertation.
University of Maryland, 1961), p. 51.
18. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1973), especially Part 1: Nationalism, pp. 19-65.
19. According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary (Sixth Edition, 1976), ethnic in its archaic sense meant
gentile, i.e., non-Jewish, or heathen. Hence, members of an ethnic group were those beyond the
pale of religious, cultural or "national" orthodoxy, and were not justified in sharing the benefits of
membership in a select, chosen people. In a sense, the word continues to be used in this way in
America, Australia and Britain. Ethnic groups are commonly said to be composed of those people
defined or self-defined as outside the hegemonic Anglo-Saxon section of these societies.
20. Cmd. 6635, p. 11.
21. Personal Minute by the Supremen Allied Commander on Discussions to Be Held with H.E. The
Governor of Burma and Representatives of the Patriotic Burmese Forces and the Anti-Fascist
People's Freedom League on the 5 and 6 September 1945, SAC (45) 154, 4 September 194} (BOF
P&G 623/46) and SAC's 22nd Misc. Meeting, Minutes, (Verbatim Report), 6 September 1945
(especially the comments by General Slim which Lord Mountbatten had arranged to be made).
(India Office File 9C1-GS45 from Governor's Files, Simla).
22. The summary below is based upon research by the author in preparing "The Political Parties of
Burma, 1906-1979" for The Political Parties of Asia and the Pacific, editor-in-chief, Haruhiro
Fukui, Southeast Asia editor, R.K. Vasil (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, forthcoming).
23. See F.K. Lehman, The Structure of Chin Society (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1963).
24. See Ian Fellowes-Gordon, The Battle forNaw Seng's Kingdom (London: Leo Cooper, 1971).
25. See Directorate of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, "Peking and the Burmese
Communists: The Perils and Profits of Insurgency". RSS No. 0052/71. Julv. 1971 (unclassified. 5
December 1980).
26. Contrast the essays in Keyes, ed., Ethnic Adaptation and Identity with the argument of Dorothy H.
Guyot in "Communal Conflict in the Burma Delta" in, Southeast Asian Transitions, edited by
Ruth T. McVey (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978).
27. The details of the events leading up to the coup are not relevant here. For one interesting eye-witness
account, see Lehman, "Ethnic Categories in Burma and the Theory of Social Systems", op.cit.
28. For a suggestion of the Shan Sawbwas' ideas at the time, see Josef Silverstein, "Report of the Union
of Burma Constitution Revision Steering Committee for the Shan States (February 22, 1961)",
reprinted as "Burma" in. Southeast Asia, Documents of Political Development and Change, edited
by Roger M. Smith (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), pp. 131-32.
29. Enloe, Ethnic Soldiers, p. 133.
11
Souiheust Asian Journal of Social Science. Vol. 10. So. I 11082)
30. Ibid., p. 138.

31. See Hinsley, Nationalism and the International System (London: Hodder and Stoughion, 1973).
32. This point is argued further in terms of constitutional structure in Robert H. Taylor. "Burma's
National Unity Problem and the 1974 Constitution", Contemporary Southeast Asia 1, no. 3 ( 1979):
232-48.
33. Thus, when linguistic diversity appears to undermine identity with the central state, the injunction
of the use of the stale's official language must be upheld. ("Ethnic television" but no "ethnic
courts"). But just because the language of the central state is also the language of the largest ethnic
or cultural group, it does not necessarily follow that the state is acting as the instrument of the
majority. It is acting in most cases in the interest of the state and those who control it. If the
governing elite and their institutions are to survive, they cannot govern only in the interest of tht
ethnic majority. It is obviously easier to get less than half of the population who speak a great
variety of languages and dialects to learn the majority tongue than it is to get nearly everyone to
learn a minority or foreign language. Where many minority people are already partially bilingual, at
least for the purposes of trade, the state faces less of a challenge.

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Perceptions of Ethnicity in the Politics of Burma

Author(s): Robert H. Taylor

In the first instance the leaders of the AFPFL, the org

because it has been believed that the state is controlled

strategy of divide-and-rule, keeping Burma weak and disunited so as to extend the

The non-traditional leaders were probably abandoned by the AF

political élite, formed the Arakanese National Unity Or

a relational attribute. While cultural diversity can be applauded and

States. See "Memorandum of the Federated Shan States by Their Re

30. Ibid., p. 138.

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