Sadly, much of Myanmar’s history is shaped by leaders who were jailed under harsh conditions at Insein Prison. The British built Insein Prison in 1887, as part of a prison gulag, and criminalized the practice of democratic politics. Among their prisoners was U Nu, the man who would become Burma’s first prime minister, who was jailed from 1940 to 1942 for sedition. This tradition of imprisoning politicians was of course continued by the Ne Win regime that came to power in the 1962 coup, and intensified following the 1988 demonstrations when thousands who survived the soldiers’ bullets were imprisoned in Insein and elsewhere, including the nation’s elected leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Following the February 2021 coup, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, President Win Myint, and others were once again imprisoned. The revolving door between prison and democratic leadership in Myanmar keeps on spinning.
“Burma’s Rough Road to Independence”, edited and in part written by Hans-Bernd Zöllner, is mostly a literary biography of the first prime minister, U Nu. Oddly for a literary biography, the book highlights U Nu’s experience as a political prisoner of the British in Insein prison by reprinting Thakin Nu’s entire novel, “Man, the Wolf of Man”. Thus, while “Burma’s Rough Road” starts with a biography of Thakin Nu’s early awakening as a writer, and politician, it shifts quickly to Nu’s first novel.
As a young man, Nu sought to become the “George Bernard Shaw of Burma” and published plays and nonfiction for the Nagani Book Club while also organizing resistance to British colonialism via the Dobama “We Burma” nationalist association. The novel itself (over 100 pages), is followed by an extended postscript, “Nu as a Writer and Politician After Independence”, written by Zöllner. The introductory material and the postscript make the larger book three books in one. But it is the republication of “Man, the Wolf of Man” that makes the entire book particularly memorable. U Nu wrote his first novel in Burmese while imprisoned, and his descriptions of the inhumane nature of the British gulag are haunting. The descriptions of physical and mental torture are particularly stomach-churning. Do not read this novel late at night!
U Nu’s biography
The first part of Zöllner’s book is a biography of U Nu, independent Burma’s first leader. Elevated to the post in the chaos following World War II, the Japanese departure, British attempts to re-establish control, and the assassination in July 1947 of Aung San and his cabinet, the quiet literary man bestrode Burmese politics from 1948 to 1962, when General Ne Win imprisoned him again, leading to the military dictatorship that is in place today.
U Nu was a complicated man. Power was unexpectedly thrust upon him just six months before Burmese independence. Up to that point, U Nu’s personal goals were not completely political. His primary interests were in literature and Buddhist practice. He would return to both of these vocations during his political life and after. Zöllner has assembled this creative book to show just how effective U Nu was as a writer, political prisoner, prime minister, prisoner of Ne Win, and Buddhist teacher. But the center of the book is his novel about prison life.
U Nu’s novel: ‘Man, The Wolf of Man’
The second part of “Burma’s Rough Road to Independence” is unusual because it is U Nu’s own novel about life in British colonial prisons. This manuscript was first published in Burmese in 1943, and then as an English translation in the Guardian Newspaper (Rangoon) in 1953 when U Nu was prime minister. “Man, the Wolf of Man” was written “during a period of enforced leisure at Insein Gaol” after Thakin Nu was convicted of sedition.
The protagonist of the story is Yan Shin, a newlywed deeply in love with his bride. He lives in the Irrawaddy River Delta, a land that British authorities have recently opened for rice farmers to supply global capitalist markets. The land becomes dominated by landlords, whose crippling rents are the basis of both their own wealth and the poverty of the rice growers. U Nu’s description of the agricultural cycle, village life in the Irrawaddy Delta in the 1930s, and the relationships between landlords and peasants is masterful and leads to the central point that global capitalism dominated life in the delta. The peasants, Yan Shin says, labor in the fields as bullocks, while the landlords reap the profits of their work and lead lives of luxury.
The Dobama association arrives in the village to raise the political consciousness of the villagers. Yan Shin is attracted to this movement, and joins. Dobama challenges the authority of the landlords and the British government that supports them. Inevitably, this leads to strikes. The local landlord, who is the villain of the story, is unable to collect the paddy he is owed and seeks revenge on Yan Shin via the colonial legal system.
Yan Shin quickly finds himself framed for crimes ranging from dacoity to attempted murder. Following swift convictions, Yan Shin is sentenced to terms in the British gulag (starting with 5 years) and 30 lashes. Thus begins Yan Shin’s fictionalized journey through the brutalities of Maungmya jail, Insein itself, Bassein prison and eventually a special correctional center in Moulmein. U Nu’s description of prison life as seen through Yan Shin’s eyes is stomach-churning and masterful. We are introduced to instruments of torture like the “whipping triangle”, forced consumption of Epsom salts to purge, hard labor in the flour mill, water drawing, and other “correctional measures” imposed on prisoners.
Also featured are psychological tortures, including the degrading prison admission process, insults of the guards, routine beatings, loneliness of solitary confinement, and the need to pay frequent bribes in exchange for leniency. To avoid punishment, Yan Shin repeatedly produces coins from his “throat pouch”.
Through all this, Yan Shin pines for his wife, who is raped by the vengeance-seeking landlord who had him imprisoned for dacoity. The landlord bribes prison authorities to make Yan Shin’s sentence as harsh as possible, and the lashes on the whipping triangle become more excruciating.
Hard labor and physical breakdown lead to further punishment as Yan Shin is unable to comply with commands. He is transferred to Moulmein prison for even harsher punishment and labor. Finally, he dies as a result of the torture. The cause of death is recorded simply as malaria.
U Nu as major figure in Myanmar history
U Nu is of course known best as the man who picked up the pieces after the assassination of Aung San and his cabinet and led the country through the post-independence wars between the government, the Burmese Communist Party, and the Karen armies. Despite this, Burma became one of the most important non-aligned countries of the 1950s. Most importantly, perhaps, U Nu observed democratic norms of governance, and rule, for which he was rewarded with re-election in 1960, despite corruption problems and the presence on the ballot of the military party. The tragedy is that U Nu’s positive achievements are inevitably overshadowed by the fact that he lost power to the bloody coup of 1962, which ushered in decades of military rule that continue today.
So, while not exactly the father of modern Myanmar (that honor falls to the martyred General Aung San), U Nu it was who moved the wheels of self-governance forward following decades of British and Japanese authoritarianism. That he was then clapped back into prison by General Ne Win is particularly tragic.
Prison as incubator of political thought
What Zöllner’s book and U Nu’s writing demonstrate is that prison, its terrors, and the resulting writings have long been at the heart of Myanmar’s political experience. And of course, it is not only U Nu’s prison experiences that shape Myanmar’s history and politics. Most obviously, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi wrote “Freedom from Fear” during her imprisonment in the early 1990s. More political prison writing will undoubtedly surface in the 2020s and 2030s, as survivors of the current regime re-emerge and are called on to govern. Their politics will be shaped by the language of prison – a situation that will once again frustrate foreign donors who prefer the graduate seminar rooms of Harvard, Princeton, Geneva, and Cambridge. But as the writings of U Nu (and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi) illustrate, the seminar rooms of elite foreign universities are not where the soul of a new nation is forged. It emerges from the prisons, safe houses, refugee/IDP camps, and exile communities. These are the places where political consciousness is shaped.
Myanmar, of course, is hardly alone in calling on freed prisoners to govern. Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa, Jawaharlal Nehru, Jomo Kenyatta, and Mujibur Rahman are among the many former prisoners who led their countries after the overthrow of authoritarian regimes. Other former prisoners who played roles in the liberation of their peoples include Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi. The harshness of prison life may punish, but in the case of politics, it also stiffens the resolve of survivors and is a basis for the courage that underpins leadership and political legitimacy.
Burma’s Rough Road to Independence: U Nu’s Novel Ma, the Wolf of Man and a Portrayal of the Author as Writer, Politician, and Buddhist
By Hans-Bernd Zöllner
Published by Regiospectra Verlag Berlin
€29.90, 322 pages
Tony Waters is a Visiting Professor at Leuphana University, Germany, and formerly at Payap University Chiang Mai.
