The British "Pacification" of Burma: Order without Meaning

Author(s): Michael Aung-Thwin

Source: Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Sep., 1985, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Sep., 1985), pp.
245-261
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of Department of History,
National University of Singapore

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20070866

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The British "Pacification" of Burma: Order Without Meaning

MICHAEL AUNG-THWIN

Introduction

One of the most frequently made remarks concerning British colonialism, both in print
and in informal settings, has been the British role in bringing "law and order" to the
colonies.1 Although serious scholarship has successfully questioned this assertion for
some areas of the world, particularly India, for Burma, very little has been done. The
reasons for proposing that Britain brought law, and especially order to Burma seem to
stem from at least two factors. First, the study of Burmese law in the West is at best in its
infancy, despite recent efforts by Burmese historians.2 Second, and more importantly,
historians by and large have tended to ignore Burmese3 criteria for defining order, and
have therefore misinterpreted as simple lawlessness what were on many important
occasions traditional forms of expressing dissent and symptoms of social dysfunction, as
well as cultural and psychological ambivalence of identity, especially amongst certain
new classes created by colonialism itself. Thus what often appeared on the surface as
order after so-called "pacification" and in general throughout the colonial period is an
incomplete picture, for it was almost certainly as well, if not more so, the political,
military, and psychological inability of the Burmese to present a united front against a
technologically superior power. But because the entire colonial period cannot be dealt
with here ? although I suspect it would only further support the major thesis of this essay
? and because the British concept of "pacification" (and as a result the literature on the
subject) had established the intellectual framework and parameters for evaluating the
subsequent colonial and post-independence periods, I feel it is adequate to have centered
my arguments around the so-called period of "pacification" only. I intend to approach
this topic by first describing briefly what we might call indigenous methods of pacifica
tion, contrast it to the general pacification policies and methods pursued by the British,
observe the significance of the differences, and then conclude by showing how the coup
of 1962 could be interpreted more as a resurrection than a true revolution.
By these methods and interpretations, I wish to accomplish several things: first,
address the important issue of perspective in Southeast Asian Studies, one raised many
years ago by John Smail on the "autonomous history" of Southeast Asia; second, identify
an aspect of another, more recent concern raised by the Social Science Research Council
on what it called "indigenous conceptual systems". In short I wish to suggest that only by
recognizing Burmese criteria for determining order can we fully explain the underlying

*For example, see Percival Spear, India: A Modern History (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1961), p. 452.
2Dr Aye Kyaw, presently teaching Burmese at Cornell, has been preparing his manuscript for publication
on a comparison of Burmese and Thai legal systems and codes. Access to his published works in Burma
however remains difficult.
3Burmese refers to the national group; Burman, to the ethnic.

245

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246 Michael Aung-Thwin

reasons for several of the major upheavals during the first half of the twentieth century,
as well as the major events of the most recent two decades in Burma.
In December 1885, the British advance to Mandalay stopped at Ava, a position held by
Burmese troops. The Burmese general refused to surrender unless given a direct order by
the King, which subsequently came. Before the British forces could enter the fort to
disarm the Burmese soldiers, however, most of them had slipped away into the country
side with their arms. When the British forces finally reached Ava Fort, only a few useless
arms and a few old men remained. Finally, the British forces reached Mandalay, the
capital. Within a few days, arrangements were made to take King Thibaw and his Queen
to exile in India, where he subsequently died in 1916. The period of "pacification" that
followed the annexation is regarded by some to have lasted only a few years, from the
annexation to about 1890. From 1890 to 1942, the British imposed their colonial system,
characterized by a dependent polity, a dependent economy, an ethnic plural society, and
a coercive unity enforced by military power.4 This equilibrium was shattered by the
Japanese occupation between 1942 and 1945, after which a semblance of the colonial
order was attempted, culminating in the granting of formal independence to Burma in
1948. After experiments with Parliamentary Democracy failed, the Army staged a coup
in March of 1962 and has held de facto power ever since.
On the surface, such a straight forward historical account seems to have no hidden
implications. Yet if we accept the criterion for the first, short period at the beginning of
colonial rule namely, "pacification", an entire set of assumptions and conclusions
invariably follow. More specifically, the view that pacification lasted only until 1890 is one
offered by Sir Charles Crosthwaite in his Pacification of Burma.5 To him, actually in
charge of it, pacification implied the forceful, militarily achieved suppression of
organized, large-scale, armed resistance to what was defined as British rule. If resistance
were not explicitly articulated as "nationalistic", it was viewed as resistance to authority
in general and fell into the category of dacoity or banditry, and efforts to suppress it were
not therefore considered part of pacification. The success of pacification was also
determined by the ability of the British to collect revenue: if revenue were collectable or
promises have been made to submit revenue, then the area was considered pacified; if
not, it was "disturbed". A "pacified" society was thus measured by two primary criteria:
the absence of "significant" military resistance articulated ? preferably in English ?
as "nationalistic" or at least specifically anti-British; and second, the existence of a
successfully administered territory, defined largely in terms of revenue collection.
From this very narrowly defined view of what constitutes a pacified Burma,6 with few
or no allowances made for culturally meaningful definitions of resistance which were
largely implicit, Burmese studies inherited its intellectual framework for evaluating
colonial rule in general as well as its acquiescence of the criteria for periodizing and

4Gayle D. Ness, Bureaucracy and Rural Development in Malaysia (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1967), Chapter II. Though Ness deals specifically with Malaysia, his model of a dependent society
under colonial rule is extremely applicable to Burma.
5Sir Charles Crosthwaite, The Pacification of Burma (London: Edward Arnold, 1912). See also Dorothy
Woodman, The Making of Burma (London: The Cresset Press, 1962), Part Four. She argued however that
pacification was not achieved until the first decade of the 20th century when the last "rebel" leaders of the
Chins were captured or killed.
6For a variety of reasons, I'm referring to the core of Burma's political, economic, and cultural area,
namely Upper Burma and the Irrawaddy River Valley. Lower Burma was annexed earlier, but the problem
of pacification and meaning poses little or no problem in an area considered the fringes of Burmese society
and is largely irrelevant to the issues addressed here.

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British "Pacification" of Burma 247

interpreting the significance of recent Burmese history. To be more precise: this

interpretation of a "pacified" Burma creates the impression that the period of resistance
was rather short-lived, for only a few years of anti-British military action was obvious,
which in turn suggests dissatisfaction with the previous political order as well as some sort
of implicit acceptance of British rule in the "post-resistance" period. It further seems to
confirm (and therefore justify) the disparaging judgements of 19th-century British
accounts of the Burmese monarchy and its "system".7 More serious for Burma historians
though is that this narrow interpretation of what constituted "pacification", allowed
for periodizing and interpreting recent Burmese history within certain pre-conceived
notions of historical methodology that depicted the colonial period as one that ushered in
progressive, therefore valuable forces, that were cut short only by a retrogressive and
therefore undesirable coup in 1962, which postponed the process of modernization and
democratization begun by Britain. Not only does this approach draw a favourable picture
of Britain's "legacy" in Burma, but Burmese history was being written with a "democratic
bias".
If we argued, on the contrary, that Burma was never completely pacified, that the
period beginning with annexation in 1885-86 to at least Independence in 1948 (I would
argue actually until 1962) should be regarded as one, the latter could be interpreted as
a time when crime and psychological dysfunction were the norm rather than stability and
security; when "ethnic" animosities were the rule rather than the exception; when
religion was an extra-legal and rebellious force rather than a legitimator and integrator
of society; and a period when "mothers could not find their sons, [nor] sons their
mothers", as Alaunghpaya once said of a similar period prior to his formation of the
Konbaung Dynasty in 1752.8 From this perspective, the agrarian revolts of the early 1930s
as well as the constant political agitation and strikes that followed, the alarming and rapid
increase in the rate of serious crime in Burma during that period, the eagerness with
which the Japanese invasion was (at first) received, the obvious failure of Parliamentary
Democracy that followed the end of World War II, and the emergence of "ethnicity" as
a hindrance to the formation of a centralized state, could all be interpreted as indicative
of a disoriented society never truly pacified. To be sure, there was order during the
colonial period, but only in terms of military control and administrative function; order in
the full sense of the term ? social, economic, psychological ? was never realized, neither
in the short period following annexation nor the longer period of colonial rule itself.
Viewed from this indigenous and broader perspective, pacification and the ensuing
colonial, along with the Independence, periods in Burmese history become, at best, an
interregnum of seventy-seven years (1885-1962) in the approximately thousand years of
Burma's efforts to forge an independent tradition. More importantly, this perspective
allows one to interpret the coup of 1962 more than anything else, as an effort to restore
meaningful order to a psychologically disoriented society, thereby resurrecting a cultural
identity that had been made ambiguous (and thus its worth made ambivalent) by a period
of meaningless order.

Pacification: Burmese
There are numerous examples in Burmese history of conquest, annexation, and
pacification. We need not discuss in any great detail these events, only to summarize the
7Crosthwaite, ibid., pp. 2,13,14,104.
8Alaungmin Taya Ameindaw Mya [The Royal Edicts of Alaungmin Taya] (Rangoon: Burma Historical
Commission, 1964), pp. 219-20.

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 248 Michael Aung- Thwin

essential features and principles of indigenous and pre-colonial methods of pacification

and the assumptions underlying them. Whether it was King Aniruddha of the 11th
century, Bayinnaung of the 16th, or Alaunghpaya of the 18th, invariably certain highly
similar patterns were followed.9 First and foremost of political and economic considera
tions was the acquisition and resettlement of labour obtained from conquest. Normally,
able bodied men and women were transported back to the victors' capital and settled on
virgin or fallow land. These groups usually became hereditary retainers of the crown
(ahmudan) with service obligations (military or otherwise) to the crown in lieu of per
capita tax. After a few generations, they would become effectively part of the dominant
Burmese-Buddhist culture. Secondly, there were "religious" or "ideological" considera
tions. Justifying conquest as righteous (dhammavijaya), symbols of this righteousness
had to be provided: invariably that meant the building of a new temple, the repair of an
important one, or in contrast, the removal of sacred relics from the temples of the
conquered to be enshrined anew in those of the victors. The ideological effects of the first
act in the context of a dhammaraja were obvious; in the latter, the spiritual power of the
conquered was removed and transferred to that of the victor. But the pursuing of either
method ? a mutual recognition of what was considered expected behaviour in these
contexts?was an implicit recognition of the homogeneity, which scholars however have
mistakenly distinguished as two or more distinct traditions. (Such "cultural exchanges"
occurred normally between Mons, Shans, and Burmans.)
Where no annexation or large-scale settlement of the conquered lands occurred, a
tributary arrangement sealed the conquest. In such cases, "conquest" was rarely any
more than a show of military power and subsequent recognition of political hegemony ; no
pitched battles were fought under these circumstances. This type of pacification usually
occurred between the hill peoples (Chins, Kachins, and some Shan) and the plains people
(mainly Burmans). Such tributary arrangements included the exchange of certain items
that left no doubt as to who was the politically superior and who the inferior. Shan chiefs'
daughters went to the Burman court to become concubines, and occasionally queens of
the king. In return, the Shan chiefs received titles, regalia, and insignia of rank that
recognized their position in the political culture, where, except for the Burman king, most
chiefs were treated as primus inter pares, for they were virtually equal in strength and
wealth.10 The Burman recognition of their status which few if any could ignore provided
order in a meaningful way; that is, it made clear one's exact place in a hierarchically
concerned society, whether one was Burman, Shan, or Mon. More practically, the Shan
chiefs were required to provide a fixed levy of troops, delivered on call and a fixed amount
of tribute delivered in person on precisely designated days called kodaw ("homage" or
"fealty") days. On these days, all the king's clients paid homage to the Burman king,
renewed their oaths of allegiance, and in general made obeisance. They were also

9For the Pagan period, see Michael Aung-Thwin, Pagan: The Origins of Modern Burma (Honolulu: The
University of Hawaii Press, 1985). For the Toungoo Period, see Victor Lieberman, Burmese Administrative
Cycles: Anarchy and Conquest, c. 1580-1760 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1984). For
accounts in Burmese, see the standard chronicles, particularly Konbaungset Mahayazawindawgyi [The
Great Royal Chronicle of the Konbaung Dynasty], ed. U Maung Maung Tin, 3 vols. (Rangoon: Latimantaing
Press, 1968). Other types of indigenous sources include such works as Zambudipa Oksaung-kyan, ed. Pe
Maung Tin and J. S. Furnivall (Rangoon: Burma Research Society, 1960).
10For work on the Shans, Sao Saimong Mangrai is virtually the only person who has published in English.
See his The Shan States and the Annexation of Burma, Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, Data
Paper no. 57 (1965) and his more recent The Padaeng Chronicle and the Jengtung State Chronicle Trans
lated, Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asia, no. 19, The University of Michigan (1981).

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British "Pacification" of Burma 249

expected to show their continued loyalty at royal successions, personally appearing at

coronations to declare their allegiance to the new king by drinking the water of allegiance.
In return, at the succession of the chiefs, the Burman king formally approved the passage
of power by granting the proper titles, presents, and paraphernalia. Thus symbols of status
as much as submission of tribute on the one hand and the recognition of position on the
other, established an unequivocal relationship between the central power and the
peripheral ones. The use and preservation of these rituals and practices implied order,
while their lapse, disorder. In Burmese history, pax Birmanica was indeed accepted,
willingly or otherwise, as a reality with some meaning by most groups, most of the time.
The power structure behind this relationship between the Burmans and most minority
groups was, in addition to ideology and hostages (the Shan chiefs' daughters), the
garrisoned state. Each strategic town in the Shan States had a civil myowun (governor)
and a military officer called a sitke, supported by a contingent of troops stationed in a
fortified town. These various myowun and sitke were under a supreme bomhu min
stationed at Mongnai, the headquarters of the Burman garrisons responsible for the
control of the Shan States. The terminology deemed appropriate for this person, his
seating arrangement while in audience, the court protocol accorded him, the architecture
of his "palace" were, vis a vis the Shan chiefs, equivalent in style though not in size to that
of the Burman king in relation to his own court and princes.
Even the term ein-she-min, heir-apparent, was used by the bohmu min to address the
Shan chiefs. The arrangement was a replica, albeit on a smaller scale, of the royal court
at Mandalay. In brief, this was the indigenous, pre-colonial relationship between the
dominant power and the secondary ones.

Pacification: British
As stated above, the actual annexation itself was almost bloodless as Thibaw surren
dered without much resistance and the bulk of his army slipped into the jungles with their
arms.11 The King's rule formally ended on 29 November 1885. On 1 January 1886 Burma
was proclaimed part of Her Majesty's dominions. Temporarily, the administration of
the kingdom was provided by allowing the Hlutdaw, the Great Council of State, to
continue in power, under the guidance of Col. Sladen, political officer to General
Prendergast, chief military officer of the campaign. All civil officers, British and Bur
mese, were theoretically under the Hlutdaw's orders and an effort was made to provide
some continuity.
But this was short-lived. When Sir Charles Bernard, Chief Commissioner arrived in
December 1886 at Mandalay, he decided that certain important districts be placed
directly under him. A British officer was appointed to govern them, under Sladen, and
subsequently the Hlutdaw was dissolved. Burma was then reconstructed into fourteen
districts, corresponding rather closely to those under the monarchy. Each district had a
British Deputy Commissioner with a British police officer to assist and an armed force of
police garrisoned there. Their first duty was to get in touch with local officials willing to
serve the British and replace those who were not. From this position, they were to expand
outwards in an ever widening circle, placing police posts and introducing settled

nFor a detailed account of the period 1885-86, see Daw Kyan, Myanma Naingnan Akhye Ane 1885-86
[Situation in Burma 1885-86] (Rangoon: Sapebiman Press, 1973). For a longer period of British rule from
the Burmese perspective, see also Ni Ni Myint, Burma's Struggle against British Imperialism, 1885-1895
(Rangoon: The University Press, 1983).

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250 Michael Aung- Thwin

administration whenever possible. Their primary object was to attack and destroy the
resistance.
There were few districts in which the resistance was not active. The British at first used
the tactic of flying columns moving through the country in "search and destroy" missions,
though they were not called that at the time. But they proved ineffective, for as soon as
the column left, the area would once more fall under the resistance. Although the British
moved at will, they could find no opposition to their forces and the guerrillas struck
whenever the British were gone. Sir George White, major-general commanding the
Burma field-force, wrote that "flying columns arrive too late to save... [the villages].
The villagers, having cause to recognize that we are too far off to protect them, lose
confidence in our power and throw in their lot with the insurgents. They make terms with
the leaders by round-about guidance or systematic silence. In a country itself one vast
military obstacle, the seizure of the leaders of the rebellion, though of paramount
importance, thus becomes a source of greatest difficulty."12
In February 1886 3,300 additional men were brought over from North India and
placed in various disturbed districts. Two more levies were sanctioned as the year went
on: one from North India and the other, a Gurkha battalion, which was according to
Crosthwaite, "difficult to recruit".13 Nevertheless, the hunger for men continued to grow.
In August 1886 three more regiments of Indian cavalry were sent to Burma. By
November 1886 16,000 men were requested from the Government of India, 9,000 to be
recruited in India and 7,000 in Burma. At first the British thought that Burmans, Shans,
Karens, and Kachins would be used for the fighting. Again, the assumption behind
that thought was that the resistance was banditry and that British rule was viewed as
legitimate. But "the attempt to raise any part of it locally was ... very quickly abandoned,
and it was recruited with the exception of a few companies of Karens, entirely from
Indians", itself an obvious revelation of the real situation. Even the Commander-in-Chief
of the Madras Army transferred his headquarters to Burma as the result of this build-up.
The total British force used in Upper Burma by the late 1880s and early 1890s was 35,000
men.14
In the autumn of 1886 then, the country generally was far from being controlled. Sir
Charles Crosthwaite, who had replaced Bernard, wrote that "it had been supposed that
our coming was welcome to the people and that 'the prospects of the substitution of a
strong and orderly government for the incompetent and cruel tyranny of their former
ruler' was by the people generally regarded with pleasure. But by July, it had become
evident that a considerable minority of the population, to say the least, did not want
us..."15 Without admitting that the resistance might have had popular support, Sir Charles
Crosthwaite nevertheless wrote that "the experience of the first half of 1886 had brought
home to the Government of India as well as to the military officers in the field that the
resistance was more widespread and more obstinate than any one had foreseen".16 As a
consequence, Sir George White decided that the most effective plan to establish British
rule as well as "protect" and "gain touch" with the villages was a close occupation of the
disturbed districts by military posts.

12Crosthwaite, p. 14.
uIbid.,p. 15.
^Military Operations in Burma, 1890-1892: Letters from Lieutenant J. K. Watson, K.R.R.C, ed. B. R.
Pearn, Cornell Data Paper, no. 64 (February, 1967), p. vii.
,5Crosthwaite, p. 14.
x*Ibid.,p. 15.

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British "Pacification" of Burma 251

In the early months of 1886 and toward the end of that year, only pockets of Upper
Burma were held by the British. Mogaung, for instance, was held by a Burman Governor
who did not resist the British but neither did he submit revenue. The Bhamo district was
quiet but was not controlled by the British and did not stay quiet for long. The Katha
district, south of Bhamo was not under British control, the Wuntho Sawbwa refusing to
recognize British suzerainty. South of Katha, the districts of Ye-U and Shwebo were
under resistance leaders. Shwebo was the home of the founding fathers of the last
dynasty, so it was not only a center for organizing resistance but a symbol of Burma's
power and independence. The Shan States of Mohlaing and Mongmit were not held by
the British. In Mandalay district, only the city and its suburbs were considered pacified,
the rest of the district was dominated by three or four leaders who, even according to
British reports, "had large folio wings and acted in concert. They had divided the country
between them into definite jurisdictions, which they mutually respected."17 They
collected revenue from the villagers and were acting under the authority of the Myingun
Prince, a refugee at Pondicherry, then under the French, whose liaison was the Bayingan
(viceroy) under orders from this Myingun Prince. The district of Ava was also under a
similar state. The districts of Myingyan and Pagan were controlled by the British only
within striking distance from their respective military posts. The district south of Pagan
was called by the British, the "home of robbers and cattle thieves".18 This was, of course,
the tract where Mount Popa rests, the traditional place for legitimate rebellions against
usurpers, and under the "jurisdiction" of the Mahagiri Nats, the guardian spirits of the
royal family and the dynasty, one of whose functions was to interfere in the lives of
humans in order to protect the legitimacy of the crown. Taungdwingyi district to the
south of this was held by Min Yaung with cavalry and even elephantry. The northern
spurs of the Pegu Yomas were also controlled by two Burmese leaders. In the Upper
Chindwin area, the Sawbwas were not recognizing British authority either. Mingin,
further south, was, to use the typical British phrase, "much disturbed". Kyaukse, further
east was under three resistance leaders who were according to the British, "well known
to soldiers in 1885-86".19 Meiktila, Yamethin, and Pyinmana were also active in the
resistance. There are strong indications that even the Shans gave the resistance shelter.
Only the Ruby Mines District was securely in British hands. In short, the whole of Upper
Burma was controlled by the resistance with the exception of the pockets of British
garrisons, which by the end of 1886, totalled one hundred and forty-one.
Most of the resistance leaders had worked for the king in a high or official position.
Some were princes, others members of the court, while yet others were hereditary myoth
ugyis. That they had been in concert with each other is supported by their correspondence,
which was captured by a group of British soldiers. One of the letters read as follows: "I,
the Bayingan prince, brother of the Myingun Prince, wrote to the Chief Bo Myo U and
other chiefs in Sagain as follows. I have been to all the sawbwas, bo gyoks... [traditional
military officers], and other bos of the north, south, and east and have given orders and
administered oaths which they have taken; they have promised to serve loyally, and we
intend to drive the British from Kani and Pagyi and take Alon,.. .Dabayin.. .and go up to
Mandalay in [the] month of Tazaungmon."20 The resistance even had women agents
working amongst the British, one of whom was a maid-of-honour under King Thibaw.

"Ibid., p. 31.
?SIbid.,p. 32.
?9Ibid.,p. 33.
20Ibid.,p. 88.

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 252 Michael Aung-Thwin

By the last half of the 1890s however, the part of the resistance more strictly under
Burman leadership and representing the monarchy and the old order, had been crushed.
Military resistance in an organized fashion no longer threatened the British in large areas
of the plains, but it was only the beginning of pacification, for the Shans, Kachins,
Karennis, and Chins had to be dealt with in the hills; and in a cultural sense, pacification
had not even begun.
One of the tactics the British used to either kill or capture resistance leaders was to fine
heavily villages which refused to provide information. More effective though was the
removal or threat of removal of the relatives of the leaders from their ancestral homes
and lands to British internment camps away from the "disturbed" areas. Many resistance
leaders surrendered when this tactic was used. Another possible reason that the resis
tance declined may have been the emigration of people ? the major source of food,
necessities, and intelligence for guerrilla forces ? to lower Burma, where thousands of
acres of land were being brought under cultivation. People simply moved from a war zone
to one that was becoming more prosperous and peaceful.
The British clearly stated that they did not wish to "fight the Shans"21 and one may
presume, neither did they wish to fight any of the other ethnic groups. The geographical
obstacles of the hill areas and the subjugation of the Burmans for the moment meant that
formal recognition of British supremacy and tokens of that recognition would suffice.
Moreover, far more troops would have been required, and more forts would have to be
established in the hills. Involvement in idiosyncratic civil procedures far beyond their
abilities, both financially and in terms of expertise in tribal customs, was inconsistent with
the temporary goals of the British. So they did what the Burmans had done for centuries,
with a few critical differences.
The ultimate goal was to convince the hill peoples, tied by oaths of loyalty to the
Burmans, that a new order had indeed arrived. The British wanted to convince the
various political centers of the fact that, as one headman of Chinese at Bhamo stated
when General Prendergast arrived there, "the scene is the same; the actors only are
changed";22 and that these new actors desired the hill peoples to continue in their
customary ways, especially their political submission to the new order on the plains. Even
revenue, normally the ultimate purpose for British administration in remote parts of
South and Southeast Asia, did not play a major part in the policies toward the hill
peoples; instead, the British seemed to have been satisfied in merely asserting their
hegemony to the point of recognition by these chiefs.
To accomplish this goal, the British followed essentially the indigenous tactic of "visit
ing" each Shan, Chin, Kachin, and Karenni stronghold with a substantial military force,
and if they met with resistance (as they did in virtually every case), defeat it, then secure
loyalty from the defeated chief. If the latter had escaped or had been killed, normally a
popular successor was allowed to be chosen by the elders who promised loyalty to the
British. In some cases, even the water of allegiance was drunk. As a consequence of their
submission, the chiefs had to provide a yearly tribute amounting to that required under
the Burman kings.23 In most cases, an indemnity was also required to pay for the expenses
incurred in the war. At each strategic area, the British left a garrison of soldiers with
a political officer who was to represent British power in that locality. This was the
model for the Shans, but the British used it for all the other hill peoples also, with minor

2lIbid.,p. 148.
22Woodman, p. 335.
23Crosthwaite, p. 216.

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British "Pacification" of Burma 253

variations. The Karennis for instance submitted in a similar manner and had to pay an
indemnity as well as a yearly tribute based on the amount once paid to the Burman kings.
The treaty with the Karennis was typical. It read, "you [i.e. Sawlawi, the Chief] shall
govern the state in accordance with established custom, and as a tributary to the British
Queen whom you acknowledge to be your Suzerain".24 Similarly with the Chins. The
British wanted to show them that the "arm of the British Government was long enough
to reach them even in their mountain fortresses, and that our soldiers could remain in
their country".25
British administration of the plains areas and of the Burmans however, was far more
direct. Each of the fourteen districts was placed in the charge of two British officers, a civil
and a military one. This was exactly the way it was done in Burmese times, where the
myowun and the sitke were both in charge of each district. The British civil officer was to
work through the indigenous agency of the country, the myo ok and thugyi, subordinates
to the above two. He was to confine his efforts "in the first instance to the restoration of
order, the protection of life and property, and the assessment and collection of the
ordinary revenue.... But most of the unimportant criminal work and nearly all the civil
suits must be disposed of by the native officials, subject to the check and control of the
district officer." Nothing, however, was said of the latter's "salary", which in traditional
times, had been a share of the produce according to his rank and the revenue collected
from his charge. Moreover, under the new scheme, no appeals were allowed from any
civil decision, whereas under the monarchy, theoretically one could appeal to the king,
who saw hearing such appeals as part of his function as dhammaraja or "lord of law". Thus
with direct rule and administration of the plains and semi-direct rule and tributary status
applied to the political forces in the hills, effective military resistance in Burma, for the
time being, had been curtailed; and it was done in a remarkably indigenous fashion.
Admittedly, the term "pacification" whether in a Burmese context or a colonial
one, is a euphemism; indigenous history, no less than colonial history, had countless
occasions in which the term could have been used. Yet it was the critical differences,
not so much in terms of the means but the ends, that disallowed the British to obtain
legitimacy and therefore genuine and complete pacification.26 For the British, the
ultimate goal was revenue and its concomitants of power, prestige, and so on. The means
to that goal was primarily military, achieved in the most cost-effective way possible. The
assumption underlying both ends and means was that it was temporary, so that even while
following in large part indigenous methods of securing order, the British, despite using
some older rhetoric to "civilizing and christianizing the natives", were not xeally
interested in turning Burmese (whether Shan, Mon, Burman, or Karen) into
Englishmen, especially at this stage in colonial history.
In contrast, the goal of indigenous pacification was essentially to preserve and continue
a tradition; the means to achieve it were both military and symbolic; and the basic
assumption underlying both ends and means was that the process was anything but ephe

24/?>?d.,p.202.
25/?>??.,p.306.
26Our analysis omits the attempts by the British to implement certain aspects dealing with cultural pacifi
cation in the 1920s and 1930s. But the indigenous history ofthat period suggests that those attempts were
made not in the interests of the majority of Burmese society, and were therefore ultimately unsuccessful. See
for example, J. S. Furnivall, An Introduction to the Political Economy of Burma, 3rd ed. (Rangoon: People's
Literature Committee and House, 1957); and also his Colonial Policy and Practice: A Comparative Study of
Burma and Netherlands India (New York: New York University Press, 1956), pp. 85-98, and passim.

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 254 Michael A ung- Th win

meral, that it was meant to last at least until Metteya arrives in 5000 years, which in human
terms was eternity. This assumption was based upon the belief that Burma constituted
one Buddhist-Burmese cultural entity, where Mons and Shans were not considered
foreigners but part of that culture, whose behaviour, if considered to be "unsocialized",
should be reformed, and whose customs, if antithetical to basic Buddhist beliefs, should
be eliminated. Thus when King Bayinnaung in the 16th century forbade the "unbuddhist"
Shan funerary practice of burying with their dead chiefs, their elephants, horses, and
human retainers,27 he was "socializing" the Shans and fulfilling his role as promoter of the
Religion. The assumption was that the Burmans in their process of "pacification" saw
themselves and their neighbours as part of one homogenous tradition.
As a consequence, indigenous pacification used rituals and harnessed ideologies drawn
from a familiar Burmese-Buddhist culture common to everyone concerned, which
"explained" the use of violence and the existence of war in a theoretically non-violent
religion in the context of kamma which everyone understood. Certainly such ideology
justified rule by the most powerful, but only as long as it demonstrated that certain critical
traditions and cherished rules were not violated, and that those in power behave in a
manner befitting their status. Among other things, this behaviour included the repair of
or constructing anew temples and monasteries in the conquered area (not violating their
sanctity by placing cannons on their heights or walking on the precincts with field boots
on); establishing symbolic kinship ties with major political competitors through marriage
alliances (rather than creating buffer classes between them such as the Anglo-Burmans or
emphasizing the distinctness of ethnic groups); and insuring that meaningful hierarchy,
even if one's position in it may change, was preserved and status made unambiguous
(instead of eliminating the traditional elite at the top, rendering the clergy irrelevant,
and importing manual labourers at the bottom of society, placing the majority of the
population in structural and psychological limbo). Pacification in indigenous terms
furthermore meant preserving the (integrated) relationship between state and church
(not the refusal to confirm the status of the Thathanabaing or head of the sanghd). It also
meant that persons employed in the religious sector not only remain tax exempt but that
the traditional tax structure as a whole be preserved within a system of patron-client ties,
even though the patrons may have changed, so that the customary "perks" allotted to the
public, such as the unlimited use of forest products, remain unchanged (rather than
placing all of these under the new patron, the Queen of England, and then proceeding to
ignore the rules of patronage by taxing these traditionally free items).
In other words, although people expected the actors at the top to change continually?
for after all, that was the result of an immutable Buddhist law, impermanence ? they did
not expect the relationships between top and bottom, the principles of that relationship
itself, nor the traditional forms of articulating that relationship to change. Indigenous
pacification, then, implied a process that involved more than merely breaking the back of
resistance and establishing security for the movement of one's military forces and the
collection of revenue. It implied the integration of defeated forces into an already familiar
cultural scheme that preserved tradition and affirmed a whole set of other norms.
When the British eliminated the monarchy and refused officially to confirm the role
and status of the Thathanabaing, they disrupted the relationship governing natural and
moral order ? what Frank Reynolds and Regina Clifford have called "resplendent

27U Kala, Mahayazawindawgyi [The Great Royal Chronicle], vol. II (Rangoon: Hanthawaddy Press,
1960), pp. 304-309.

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British '"Pacification" of Burma 255

order".28 One of the two "wheels" that was critical to this relationship, the monarchy, no
longer existed, while the other, the sangha, though it survived, lost its prestige and
influence. The colonial government, even if technically it was the "state", did not and
could not fill the void left by the monarchy, for it did not understand the relationship
between state and society in Burma, steeped in an entirely different tradition with diffe
rent assumptions concerning statecraft. Rendering unto Caesar the things that were his
and unto God the things that were God's was a completely inappropriate separation in the
Burmese scheme of things.
Had the British in power followed Col. Sladen's advice not to interfere with the
Religion ? and by that it necessarily meant not separating church from state by action or
inaction, or Sir Charles Bernard's inclination for indirect rule as a protectorate, pacifica
tion in the manner described need not have occurred and the effects of it would have
perhaps been not as painful. When Sir George White, the military commander in charge
of carrying out pacification, stated that the people at large did not want the British,
that they had a real veneration for the throne and loved the religious ceremonial that
surrounded it, he was not far from the mark. But as Harvey pointed out, the Government
of India "was staffed by men who, being citizens of the modern secular state, never saw
the point...."29
Similarly, why the British did not preserve the monarchy, even as a titular power as
they often did with other rulers especially in various parts of India, I am not certain. It
would entail research into colonial policy and practice beyond the scope of this paper.
It surely would have made pacification much easier, and order, perhaps even more
meaningful. But by removing the monarch physically to India and the monarchy as an
institution, and refusing to appoint a head of the church ? which was guided in part by
their painful Indian experience of 1857-58 ? the British created, what in Burmese political
and social ideology was regarded as the ultimate reason for disorder. It provided the type
of psychological vacuum in which min-laungs or immanent kings would surely appear,
and until one did, "anything goes".
The dozen or two years of military resistance met by the British was only the tip of the
iceberg; the real effects of that action were to erupt subsequently in the first half of the
20th century. Thus, the public involvement in, and radicalism of, Buddhist monks in
politics in the 1920s could be interpreted as symptomatic of a skewed dhamma-xtdXm,
exemplified by Rangoon, the center of that dhamma-iealm, which was chosen by the
colonial power not for its cultural, mythical, and historical criteria necessary for a
legitimate exemplary center, but for administrative and commercial reasons, largely
irrelevant in the establishment of such a center. To the British, monks joining the vio
lence of the political arena ? in the frontlines of strikers, leading peasant uprisings such
as the Saya San Rebellion, using the Shwedagon Pagoda as the site for political agitation
? was lawlessness in the extreme. To the Burmese, all this was precisely to the point:
things of that sort happen when the dhamma-xtd\m is skewed.
After colonial rule formally ended in 1948 and a (pseudo) Parliamentary system was
created; even if led by Burmese, it was still largely irrelevant to the resplendent order, for
that new system had no clear role in the relationship between natural and moral order. U
Nu understood this, even if he did not articulate it, and tried to fill the void by acting at

28Frank E. Reynolds and Regina T. Clifford, "Sangha, Society and the Struggle for National Integration:
Burma and Thailand", in Transitionsand Transformations in the History of Religions, ed. Frank E. Reynolds
and Theodore M. Ludwig (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1980), pp. 56-88.
29G. E. Harvey, British Rule in Burma, 1824-1924 (London, 1946), p. 27.

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256 Michael Aung- Thwin

least in part like a dhammaraja: patronizing the Religion openly, building works of merit,
in short, doing all the things a true leader of the dhamma-realm would or should do. Yet,
the (parliamentary) system he was compelled to use to set right a skewed dhamma-xQdXm
was largely artificial in origin as well as in its ability to express clearly and implement the
peoples' needs, and U Nu thus disarmed, resorted to largely symbolic acts which were
under the circumstances the most meaningful forms of expression of Burmese desires, but
without the necessary support from the kind of political or economic structures that
would have realized some of those goals.

The Resurrection of 1962

On 2 March 1962 the Army staged a coup, it is said, to prevent the nation from civil war.
Although the immediate circumstances may have been more political and even personal,
the reason given was very nearly correct from the perspective of our argument: it was
carried out essentially to resurrect meaningful order in a society that had experienced
extreme social and psychological dysfunction?the type of order that neither the colonial
system nor the subsequent artificial Parliamentary system had provided. I think this type
of explanation goes a long way in understanding military and/or strong-man rule in South
east Asia and other "Third World" countries. However, once the Army had taken control
of the political apparatus and subsequently established the Revolutionary Government of
Burma, it attempted to do what the British had done, but within a Burmese context and
with Burmese priorities: it tried to create a truly secular and modern government within
the parameters of a Buddhist society. As one would expect, it was impossible to ignore
completely the old system. Even the Burmese term "to hlan re", though translated now as
"revolution" in the context of Burmese history, implies less the creation of something
new than it does resurrecting something old. Its use, further, implies the replacing of
illegitimate rule by what the actors considered legitimate rule, making the coup of 1962
not a revolution but a resurrection, an attempt to recreate order with meaning.
The validity of this interpretation becomes all the more evident when one compares the
most important conceptions and institutions of pre-colonial Burma with those of post
1962 Burma, such as conceptions of the state, conceptions of leadership, the administra
tive structure, the organization of material resources, and the relationship between the
state and sangha.

Conceptions of the State

The traditional Burmese state was Jambudipa: a model of an ideal kingdom on earth,
a "Camelot" where the future Buddha will surely descend to, where people support the
religion, are righteous, where world conquerors are born, where the monkhood is pure
and united, where the king is enforcer of the dhamma and patron par excellence of
Buddhism, where his works of merit supercede (or at least emulate) those of other kings.
It is the dhammaraja's duty to ensure the morality, and ultimately, the salvation of his
subjects. But Jambudipa was not an end in itself, it was a means to another end, namely
nibbana. Order was found in a centralized polity, hierarchical society, a stable, self
sufficient economy, and a thriving religion. Order was not the absence of tyranny, but the
absence of individualism, manifested in political, social, or economic principles.30
Today's conception of the state comes from three formal ideological statements: "The

^Michael Aung-Thwin, "Jambudipa: Classical Burma's Camelot", Contributions to Asian Studies XVI
(1981): 38-61.

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British "Pacification" of Burma 257

Burmese Way to Socialism", "The System of Correlation of Man and His Environ
ment", and "The Specific Characteristics of the Burmese Socialist Programme Party".31
The first was formulated officially in July 1962 and is a statement of the direction of the
Revolution. It includes the "blueprint" for the organization of the Burma Socialist
Program Party (BSPP) and basic organization of the state. The second, published in
1963, describes the basic philosophy and cosmology of Burmese socialism. Its author, U
Chit Hlaing, an ex-monk was in the Burma Independence Army that fought against both
Britain and Japan. The treatise, as Jon Wiant so well put it, is "Marxist in inspiration,
Leninist in application, and Buddhist in its goals."32
More precisely, the triumph of the Party, according to Wiant, is seen as a realization
of Buddhism, in fact, the elimination of ego. "Man", it states, "is egoistic and self seek
ing in nature" and if left to his own devices, individually or collectively, he will seek
the satisfaction of his material desires. The goal of the revolution is not pure communism
or classless society but the creation of a state and society where man, freed from envy
and greed, can prepare for his own salvation. From these two critically important state
ments of Burma's conceptual system (the third deals with party structure) the state is
said to be responsible not only for checking this base nature of man but also for creating
the circumstances in which each individual can pursue his own salvation. The "Burmese
Way to Socialism" may well be the modern form of that just society where the causes of
misery, of man trapped in the material world, are eliminated so that each individual can
be "emancipated from all social evils, setting him free from anxiety over material
wants".33 But the question remains whether or not the "Burmese Way to Socialism"
is only a means of escaping samsara or also a means of creating a modern, secular,
Jambudipa.

Conceptions of Leadership
Kings of Burma were part deity, part human where constant tension existed between
the king's desire to make himself divine and Buddhism's insistence that even Buddha
himself was man, not god. Essentially, it was Buddhism that disallowed the king to claim
divine status, even though he partook of, practised rituals associated with, and used
symbols characteristic of divinity. But in the end, it was the belief in kamma that justified
his present position as suzerain. The king was the top person on the human ladder, mortal
though powerful; subject to kamma yet imbued with abundant merit; not a deity though
most likely to become one after death. Along with kamma, implicit as well as explicit links
with past leaders determined legitimacy, so that usurpers as well as more orthodox
successors could assume the country's leadership. Particularly in a time of disorder, non
orthodox leaders were acceptable, in fact, yearned for, because the concept of minlaung
or immanent king operated most successfully during such times.34

31Thus argues Jon Wiant, in his "Tradition in the Service of Revolution: The Political Symbolism of Taw
Hlan Ye Khit", Military Rule in Burma Since 1962: A Kaleidoscope of Views, ed. F.K. Lehman (Singapore:
Maruzen Asia, 1981). The same views are expressed in his forthcoming dissertation "Lanzin: Ideology and
Organization in Revolutionary Burma*', Cornell University, to which I owe virtually everything on the Ne
Win regime.
32Ibid.
33Ibid.
^Michael Aung-Thwin, "Divinity, Spirit, and Human: Conceptions of Burmese Kingship", in Centers,
Symbols, and Hierarchies: Essays on the Classical States of Southeast Asia, ed. Lorraine Gesick, Yale
University Southeast Asian Studies, Monograph Series no. 26 (New Haven, Conn., 1983), pp. 45-86.

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258 Michael Aung- Thwin

These conceptions were varied and inclusive. One depicted the Asokan model, the
embodiment of moral authority with the responsibility to protect, purify, and propagate
Buddhism. Another was the scholar/king, where his stately activities glorified Buddhism
by patronage of the arts. Then there is the military/administrator king, who is associated
with themes of conquest, triumph, unity; where the image of the kingdom is martial.35 He
emerges at times of chaos or disorder or arrives to prevent such conditions from occurring
and to secure unity. The literature during his time is concerned with statecraft, more than
with concepts of "liberation" from this world of suffering. The sangha is likely to be better
controlled than in other reigns, possibly purified, unified, and relatively austere; or at
least appears that way.
As Jon Wiant has argued, it is to this third tradition of leadership that Ne Win and his
government make their appeal.36 And this attempt is manifest from the earliest days of the
Revolutionary Council to the present. Ne Win of course takes his role as military/
administrator leader from Aung San, the modern embodiment of the great Burmese
unifiers. Aung San is seen as the fourth great unifier after Aniruddha of 11th century
Pagan, Bayinnaung of 16th century Taungoo, and Alaunghpaya of 18th century Shwebo.
Ne Win is regarded as the fifth.37 The major concerns are national unity and government,
and less ? though not by any means unimportant ? the propagation of Buddhism or the
preparation for Metteya's return, which were the major concerns of U Nu's regime.
According to Wiant, Aung San has become the symbolic repository of all the revolution
stands for, the creator of a dream terminated by his assassination, but resurrected by the
coup of 1962. It is to his ideals and leadership that Ne Win turns to for inspiration,
linkage, and legitimacy. Yet Ne Win has not carved out for himself a cult of personalism,
nor have his supporters sought to build one around him. He may not be as popular
as Aung San was, but people are loyal to his status, that is, he is there because of his
kamma, so they are in fact loyal to the principle and doctrine of kammic determinism,
not necessarily to the person. He is the "minlaung", who out of chaos and near disunity
stepped in to create relative order and unity.

The Administrative Structure

The traditional Burmese state was administered largely by crown servants (ky wan-to or
ahmudan) who fulfilled both civil and military functions. At each level of administration,
divisional, district, township, and village, alongside the chief administrator, supported by
civil subordinates, there was a military/crown officer with a dual function. This chain of
command went from the village all the way to the top, the Hlutdaw, which was staffed by
officials who also had both civil and military functions. Law and order, revenue, war time
mobilization, were in the hands of these crown officers. The population was thus not
separated according to civil and military functions, only between crown and non-crown
categories, especially at the command level, because the crown was responsible for both
civil and military roles and used its men to staff both types of positions.38
The role of the military ("crown men") in today's administration is quite obvious. Not
only is it conceptually the standard bearer of creating order out of disorder, unity out of
disunity, but in practice, the important positions in government at all levels from capital

35Wiant, loe. cit.

36Wiant, loe. cit.
37Incidentally, the Buddha of the future, Metteya, is the fifth and last Buddha of this kappa.
38Michael Aung-Thwin, "Hierarchy and Order in Pre-Colonial Burma", Journal of Southeast Asian
Studies XV, no. 2 (1984): 224-32.

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British "Pacification" of Burma 259

to village are staffed by the military. The military is the political and administrative core
of the Revolution and military organization itself is a model for state organization.
Justice, revenue, economic policy, in short, the bureaucracy, are headed by military
officers. The head of the military is the head of state, if not technically, at least in practice.
The administrative relationship of the center to its various components, which has been
regarded essentially as an "ethnic" problem in the colonial scheme of things, has also
witnessed a return to more indigenous criteria, and as a result, the concept of the nation
no longer rests on western premises and experiences. Robert Taylor's stimulating essay
on ethnicity and politics in Burma has shown the meaninglessness of center-peripheral
relations when western conceptions of ethnicity and therefore administrative governance
as opposed to social governance have been imposed on both the actual situation and in
Burmese studies.39 These dissonant principles of what constitutes a nation, moreover,
have been written into the post-war Constitution of 1947, and attempts were made
thereafter to operate the system according to those principles. Its failure can be inter
preted as reflective of its meaninglessness, a problem not addressed fully until the 1974
Constitution, which Taylor sees as being more reflective of the Burmese situation, for it
redefined ethnicity in its proper indigenous (and therefore correct) context ? namely
according to its "relational" rather than "ascriptive" attributes.401 would argue further
that the presence and nature of rebellious groups must be regarded as part of the struc
ture of indigenous unified governments while their methods of dissent should not be
construed to imply questionable legitimacy of the center. We should no more expect
dissenters in the United States to hide in the Rockies with guns and resist with guerrilla
warfare than we should expect Karens to lobby, hire professional lobbyists, or run for
office as the opposition in Burma, for forms of dissent are culturally defined, conditioned
by the political culture, the geo-political context, and history. Today's Karen rebellions
have been conditioned by and operate according to principles and conceptions external
and foreign to the historical and cultural context of Burma, rendering them, in Taylor's
opinion, ultimately fruitless and technically without legitimacy.

The Organization of Material Resources

Burma's traditional economy resembled what anthropologists called "redistribution"
or a system of "leveling", whereby the bulk of the resources of the kingdom, largely
agricultural, were harnessed by the state to centralized focal points from where it was
redistributed in political, economic, and religious modes. Things economic were em
bedded in things religious, social, and political. Wealth moved from royalty to its clients,
thence to the populace at large, while merit and legitimacy flowed back to the center in
relatively equivalent proportions. The "grain heap" itself need not have moved physically
from the provinces to the center and back, but rights to that grain did move, from the
center of the polity to its environs. The system aimed at self-sufficiency, not gain;
operated upon the principle of centricity; implied the presence of a widespread storage
system or its equivalent; and its prices were fixed, administered, or otherwise controlled
while allowing for "pockets" of market conditions and principles to exist. The latter were

39Robert H. Taylor, "Perceptions of Ethnicity in the Politics of Burma", Southeast Asian Journal ofSocial
Science 10, no. 1 (1982): 7-22.
^Victor Lieberman, "Ethnic Politics in Eighteenth-Century Burma", Modern Asian Studies 12, no.
3 (1978): 455-82. The original article which stimulated all of this is probably F. K. Lehman, "Ethnic
Categories in Burma and the Theory of Social Systems", in Southeast Asian Tribes, Minorities and Nations,
ed. Peter Kunstader, vol. I (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1967), pp. 93-124.

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260 Michael Aung- Thwin

the "windows" to the outside world where religious and political communication lines
could remain open and luxury items flowing.
The economic components and aims of the "Burmese Way to Socialism" belie many
features, and may in fact be a modern form of "redistribution". It is largely agrarian;
prices of the most essential commodities are administered by the state; the economy has
limited and restricted ties to other market economies; and market conditions and princi
ples are in effect allowed to operate in certain "pockets" only, namely the black market.
These, like those in the traditional structure, are more outlets (or inlets) for luxury items
and windows of information to the outside world than sustainers of essential commodities
of the economy: the attempts at centricity of state resources rather than their dispersion,
successful or otherwise, aim at self-sufficiency, not gain. Lastly, in many ways the
economy is still embedded in society, where community demands of "good will" often
play a larger role than supply and demand do, such as writing-off farmers' debts one year
when there was poor weather, or the continued spending on the Religion both by govern
ment and the public, whose "returns" are seen not strictly in economic but religious and
social terms.

Relationship of the State to the Religion

The relationship between the state and religion, in effect the sangha, centers around
several themes. The sangha was a balance to the political extremism of the state, in that
by refusal or compliance to work with the state on certain issues essential to legitimacy,
it created conditions that allowed potential opponents of the leadership to seize control.
It could also use monasteries as sanctuaries for these political opponents of the king.
It was, furthermore, a peaceful haven for ordinary folk, a psychological and physical
refuge, especially during times of war or intrigue at court. Its "power" was essentially
ideological, sustained by economic independence, based on tax exemption and perma
nently held landed wealth.
The purity of the sangha was symbolic of order, and it was the duty of the king to ensure
this. The purer the sangha was, the more legitimate the state and king. This concern of
the king for the purity of the sangha, which was related to the perpetuation of the religion
itself, was accomplished by the ritual called sasana reform or religious purification.
The procedure of purification allowed the state to eventually control the sangha through
examinations and registrations conducted by the king's primate. Reordination further
more recreated the religious hierarchy, which automatically fell in the primate's favour. It
also minimized the sectarian and therefore disunifying elements that made control of the
sangha difficult. Purification potentially had profound economic implications also: it
could reduce its size and limit the build-up of the tax-exempt sector.41
The concern with the sangha today is less economic and more political, and is less
obvious during Ne Win's regime than it was under U Nu's. It is nonetheless a serious and
deeply rooted one. Ne Win's regime favours, as in the past and for similar reasons, the
austere, fundamentalist, sects. In fact, their appeal was sought during anti-communist
campaigns called "Buddhism in Danger" (dhammantaraya) that allied these monks with
the military. In 1965, Ne Win convened at Hmawbi an All-Sangha, All-Sect convention
to purify ritually the Buddhist hierarchy. It was a symbolic act as well as a political
necessity. Through purification, he demonstrated his responsibility as protector of the

41Michael Aung-Thwin, "The Role of Sasana Reform in Burmese History: Economic Dimensions of a
Religious Purification", Journal of Asian Studies 38, no. 4 (1979): 671-88.

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British "Pacification" of Burma 261

sangha. Politically, he used this to displace concentrations of power within the sangha
which had developed during U Nu's premiership; in 1965 he forced through a limited
registration of monks. Subsequently, his government, through the Ministry of Home and
Religious Affairs has periodically administered examinations for advancement in the
sangha hierarchy. Ne Win has not allowed the sangha to develop the same political
position as it had during U Nu's regime. Thus as in traditional times, strong leaders went
hand in hand with a unified and controlled monkhood. As in traditional times too, he
patronizes one sect over another by asking its advice, and by favouring it in public, gives
his "blessing" to that particular sect, hence bestowing it with credence. It has the effect of
influencing the public to favour a particular sect while weakening other, more politically
powerful ones. Kings have often done this every few generations, patronizing the austere
sects over the powerful and wealthy ones, claiming the former's greater purity, with the
consequence of reducing the influence of the more powerful and entrenched ones.
In the case of Ne Win, he turned to the Shwegyin Sect in Amarapura for guidance. He
consulted with leading abbots in December 1979 and January 1980, and convened a
second AW-Sangha, All-Sect convention in May 1980 where purification was carried out.
Furthermore, in his address to the BSPP Central Committee in December 1979, he
pushed for registration of monks on a national basis. In June of 1980, the Ministry
of Home and Religious Affairs began to form ecclesiastical courts to weed out "undesir
ables" from the sangha, and like Mindon before him, Ne Win concluded the convention
with the proclamation of General Amnesty (for which he receives much merit) and the
release of some 14,000 prisoners. Almost all his political opponents were freed and those
who had fled the country, like U Nu, were invited to return. Again, the issue is not
the success of the purification in terms of numbers purified, but the attempt at and
promulgation of it by the state, which illustrates not only that the traditional relationship
between state and church survives, but the criteria for that relationship as well as the
traditional methods used to articulate that relationship persists. The principles of the
traditional conceptual system and structure (at least between state and sangha) must have
been valid and operational.
In short, the coup of 1962 was not an attempt at economic development per se, but one
whose goals sought political and psychological stability. Although the government used
"modern" socialist revolutionary vocabulary and most probably some of the
revolutionaries wanted change of some sort, the over-riding concern was clearly to
recreate order with meaning. This was accomplished in largely traditional ways, using
traditional symbols, and appealed to traditional criteria for legitimacy. The coup
re-established certain important relationships between leadership and the populace,
between state and church, between society and the conceptual system; in a word,
between natural and moral order, thereby resurrecting some of the more important
elements that gave meaning to Burmese society. The best example of Ne Win's many
attempts to set right a skewed dhamma-realm is his last one as de facto head of state
before leaving kama rupa: building his great work of merit, an eight-sided pagoda, under
the shadows of the Shwedagon, an act meaningful only in the context of a traditional
conceptual system, not a modern secular one.

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