ABSTRACT
On 24 September 1932, Rabindranath Tagore visited Mohandas Gandhi in
Yeravada prison. Entering Poona, he found ‘armoured cars and machine
guns being paraded on the military grounds’ and soldiers stationed along
the city roads. Four days earlier, contemplating Gandhi’s stand, Tagore had written: ‘Today there are thousands in India, confined in prisons indefinitely
and without trial, inhumanly treated . . . there can be no doubt that not only are they a heavy burden upon the Government but they permanently lower
its dignity.’1 Were we to substitute Yangon for Poona, Myanmar for India,
and Aung San Suu Kyi for Gandhi, these musings on colonial injustice and
the deeply spiritual fight for right (and rights) could easily be mistaken for
an account of life under military rule in contemporary Burma.
