General Ne Win’s Legacy of Burmanization in Myanmar: The Challenge to Peace in the Twenty-First Century
By Saw Eh Htoo and Tony Waters
Palgrave Macmillan, 2024, 225 pages
Reading “General Ne Win’s Legacy of Burmanization in Myanmar” by Saw Eh Htoo and Tony Waters reminded me of my days studying with Saw Eh Htoo, and another classmate, Saw Soe Gyi, in the Ph.D. peacebuilding program at Payap University in Chiang Mai, Thailand. We referred to our class as “Burmanized” because we mainly discussed Burma-related topics. Thank God our two non-Myanmar classmates were patient with us.
The three of us came from different backgrounds. Saw Eh Htoo grew up in the Yangon River delta area; Saw Soe Gyi grew up in Karen refugee communities; and I came from Bamar communities in central Myanmar. We had only one thing in common: We all grew up in the time of the Burmese Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) of Gen. Ne Win.
The personal account related by Saw Eh Htoo is reminiscent of the stories he shared with us at breakfast, while working out on the sports field, or in the coffee shop. Eh Htoo learned the Karen perspective on history from the stories told by his grandfather and father. As he recounts in an autobiographical section of the book: “The Karen were the victims of decades and centuries of Burmese oppression, and the Burmese were to be feared.”
Eh Htoo learned another version of history from the one disseminated in the schools run by the socialist government. In Ne Win’s “Burmanized” version of history, Eh Htoo learned, “The British and the Karen allies in this story were ongoing threats to the unity of a great nation that was Burma.”
The Burmanized narrative peddled in school textbooks portrayed the monarchs of centuries past, particularly King Anawratha, King Bayinnaung and King Aung Zay Ya—all leaders of the royal army, the Tatmadaw—as the founding fathers of Burma. The logical assumption stemming from this narrative is that whoever leads the modern Tatmadaw (as Myanmar’s armed forces are still widely known) are the natural heirs to the great kings.
Saw Eh Htoo coined a phrase, “Burmese Burden”—amending the titular phrase in British imperialist poet Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The White Man’s Burden”—to convey a similar colonizer attitude on the part of Ne Win’s military regime toward ethnic people. Ne Win’s Burmanization policy could be seen as a form of what American political scientist James C. Scott has referred to as “internal colonialism.”
Eh Htoo and Waters’ book identifies three pillars of Ne Win’s Burmanization policy: Burmese Theravada Buddhism; Burmese language and culture; and the importance of military control and a disciplined society. Based on these pillars, the book explains, three foundational principles emerged during Ne Win’s time, and they have been carried on by his successors.
- National identity is formed by the Burmese Buddhist culture.
- The national economy needs to be a centralized system, built around the military.
- The national government has to be a quasi-military government, in which the Burmese army plays the central role.
Saw Eh Htoo refers to Ne Win’s political ideology as “Ne Winism”, implemented using a three–pronged strategy. Firstly, Ne Win used Buddhism to create a Bamar/Buddhist identity for the country. The Burmese language became the official language in both education and government offices. To implement its “Burmese Way to Socialism”, Ne Win’s regime promoted Burmese from the first grade, irrespective of a student’s mother tongue, as Saw Eh Htoo himself experienced. Ne Win—and Ne Winism—was a reformed version of a system inherited from the British colonial administration.
Secondly, Ne Winism relied on nationalism to achieve so-called “socialist” economic reform. All foreign companies were nationalized and foreigners were deported en masse. As the authors observe, “Ne Win put ethnic Bamar at the center, resulting in a Bamar chauvinism known as ‘Maha Lu Myo,’ which means superior race. If anyone did not support the newly nationalized economic system, access to business opportunities became difficult.”
Ne Win’s third reform strategy was military reform. Examining military journals and curriculums, Eh Htoo found that the basic philosophy of the Pyithu Tatmadaw (People’s Army) was merged with the BSPP’s philosophy. He wrote, “Ne Win spread ‘Burmese Socialism’ throughout the defense organization and cultivated his military officers to run the country using these ideologies.”
So did Ne Win’s legacy die along with the BSPP after the general fell from power in the 1988 pro-democracy uprising? Ne Winism should have ended together with the fall of the Socialist Regime, but was carried on by Ne Win’s successor, Senior General Than Shwe, in a new form, dubbed “disciplined flourishing democracy”. Ne Win’s legacy of Bamar/Buddhist identity promotion is being carried on by his heirs. Just as Ne Win introduced socialist economic reforms, in the 1990s Than Shwe tried an economic reform approach—in his case, a market-oriented economic scheme. Imitating Ne Win’s military reform strategy, Than Shwe placed the Tatmadaw in the role of safeguarding the 2008 constitution. Ne Win may be gone, but his legacy remains as the Tatmadaw’s legacy.
In this book, Saw Eh Htoo makes clear both the characteristics of Ne Win’s Burmanization policy and how the policy is the core cause of today’s crisis. “Burmanization began with Burmese nationalism, but it was Ne Win who formalized it within the government structure.” He also points out, “The Bamar people were habituated to Ne Win’s views, and this habituation continues today.”
Ne Win’s Burmanization policy influenced groups of people with varied perspectives such as pro-military groups, democratic alliances, and ethnic armed organizations. However, Saw Eh Htoo considers the new generation, born in the digital age, to be free of its influence. He writes, “Modern communications also means that the younger generations continue to be in touch with people beyond Burma’s borders; it is not possible to seal the country off as tightly from information as was the case in the past.” To Saw Eh Htoo, they the only hope for the future of Myanmar.
As Ne Winism continues within the military, the tradition of military coups repeated in February 2021. The Tatmadaw still wants to keep its role of founding father or savior of the country, using Ne Win’s legacy of Burmanization as its justification, but today the Tatmadaw no longer has the trust of the Bamar majority.
Saw Eh Htoo’s dream of a peaceful Myanmar is rooted in a reversal of Ne Win’s Burmanization policies—a de-Burmanization narrative. In order to break the decades-long vicious cycle of conflict, Saw Eh Htoo suggests the most basic preconditions for a transformational peacebuilding are: de-Burmanization narratives, de-militarization programs and de-centralization policies.
By de-Burmanization narratives, Eh Htoo simply means abolishing the Burmanization narrative: uncovering the root cause of Burmanization, repairing losses and restoring justice for a sustainable society. This means encouraging cultural diversity and equality. In order to change the Burmanization narrative, the first thing we have to do is rewrite the school history textbooks.
For de-militarization programs, the author has three suggestions: Peace Education programs, a new liberal military, and a de-centralization of state-building. A new professional army with liberal principles must replace the Tatmadaw, which Ne Win indoctrinated with an authoritarian mindset.
Unfortunately Saw Eh Htoo passed away before this could happen, with Ne Winism continuing in the form of the most recent round of military dictatorship. However, he was able to explain how Ne Win used Burmanization to keep Myanmar under authoritarian rule for decades. The message Eh Htoo left us with is that if people are not aware of the nature of Burmanization and Ne Winism, the authoritarian tradition will continue in Myanmar.
Like it or not, Ne Winism shaped Myanmar’s closed society for decades. It exemplifies what co-author Dr. Tony Waters describes at the end of the book as “the great sociological mystery of why people obey (and disobey) the leaders who shape society.”
Mon Mon Myat is an independent writer and journalist from Myanmar. She completed a Ph.D. in Peacebuilding at Payap University in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
