6. Two Versions Of Nationalism: Union State Or Ethnicism?

When Burma was close to independence, Aung San, the then leader, nationalist and champion of liberty, said that monks must desist from taking an active part in political life. They must concentrate on the Buddhist message of charity and non-violence; this must be their contribution to the country. He preferred this traditional role, where religion as an institution (the Sangha) looked after religious functions, kept its own ranks in order and refrained from politicising:

We must draw a clear line between politics and religion, because the two are not one and the same thing. If we mix religion and politics, then we offend the spirit of religion itself. ¹

Also he warned against integrating animism, astrology and alchemy into Buddhism. His ideal was a philosophy and ontology containing the ‘great truths’ as a universal religion, free from political intrigue, superstition and fraud. Demands for Buddhism to be made the state religion were rejected. This was clearly addressed to politicised monks and sects—also to politicians who plotted to harness the Sangha for their own political ends. In a speech in 1946 Aung San addressed ‘the reverend Sanghas' thus:

You are inheritors of a great religion. Purify it and broadcast it to all the world… [carry the message] of love and brotherhood, freedom of religious worship, freedom from fear, ignorance. ²

Aung San also had the clear goal that all ethnic groups should be included in a united Burma, even if this involved positive discrimination. Aung San's definition of national identity is therefore interesting since the present regime has followed it and it is cited in

the Burma Socialist Programme Party's manifesto from 1962: A nation is a collective term applied to a people irrespective of their ethnic origin, living in close contact with one another and having common interests and sharing joys and sorrows together for such historic periods as to have acquired a sense of oneness. Though race, religion and language are important factors, it is only their traditional desire and will to live in unity through weal and woe that binds a people together and makes them a nation and their spirit a patriotism. ³

This representation is—including its bombast—a reply to British policy, where race/ethnicity and national identity were coupled together. But Aung San did not view a unitary state as feasible; he favoured a union of the different ethnic groups as equal participants and with special rights accorded to the national minorities. Aung San's definition was also a direct reply to the Christian Karen who, during a visit to London in 1946, attempted to convince the British to grant them an independent state. ⁴ They stressed at that time that they were a nation with its own pure ethnic culture and civilisation, as the following passage written by Saw Po Chit, a member of the Karen delegation to London, depicts:

It is a dream that Karen and Burman can ever evolve a common nationality, and this misconception of one homogeneous Burmese nation… will lead Burma to destruction.

Karens are a nation according to any definition. We are a nation with our own distinctive culture and civilisation, language, literature, names, nomenclature, sense of value and proportion, customary laws and moral codes, aptitudes and ambitions; in short we have our own distinctive outlook on life. By all canons of international law we are a nation. ⁵

This is an especially particularistic definition in clear opposition to Aung San's definition which emphasises the unifying and universal features. By ‘civilisation’, the Karen meant emphatically that they were more civilised or rather educated in the modern, Western understanding of the term, as well as being Christian. They pointed out, moreover, several serious episodes during the Second World War where the Burman army and young nationalists had killed many Christian Karen near Papun in the Salween district and in the town of Myaung Mya in the Delta. These confrontations increased the existing mistrust between the Karen and the Burmans, and the current of events demonstrated clearly the mix of ingredients which unleashed the conflict.