Saw Eh Htoo, a Burmese academic who wrote on Burmanization, amongst other things, passed away last week. Tony Waters, his advisor at Payap University, where Saw Eh Htoo was working on a PhD, has penned the obituary below. We also include a very recent text by him just out a few months ago, an excellent examination of Burmanization policies

In Memory of Saw Eh Htoo

By Tony Waters | Professor of Sociology | Department of Peace Studies | Payap University

            I was greatly saddened to hear of the death of my student Saw Eh Htoo in late May, 2022.  He was a kind man, deeply concerned with both the future of Myanmar as a nation, and that of his own Karen people.  He sought ways to reconcile the consciousness that was within him, that of a proud Karen Christian, while also being a lover of Burmese culture, novels, and philosophy.  He was a voracious reader in three languages, and a friend to all.  He was a Master’s graduate of both the Myanmar Institute of Theology, and the anthropology department Yangon University.  During the period of liberalization, he worked extensively in Sittwe, seeking to integrate build peace between the Burmese Buddhists, and the Muslim Rohingya. In 2017 he also began studies at Payap University for a PhD in Peacebuilding where I was his advisor.  He was near completion of his dissertation at the time he became sick, and passed away.

            Saw Eh Htoo was born in the Irrawaddy Delta in the mid-1970s to rice farmers, and began life as a “cowboy” tending the family bovids, and listening to his Karen grandfather’s stories at night.  A devoted Christian, he taught Saw Eh Htoo the stories of the Bible.  But his grandfather also told stories of Karen history.  The stories were about life under the protection of the British colonialists, fears of the Burmese, tales of brutality from the Japanese occupation, and the Karen-Burmese war of 1949-1950.  He credited this with his interest in the ironies of history.

            Eh Htoo was immersed in the Burmese language curriculum of Ne Win’s Burma.  As a young boy, he found it strange that the history curriculum in particular told a different story than that of his grandfather.  Why were the Karen presented as enemies, and why was he taunted by his fellow students for being “the enemy?”

Nevertheless, Eh Htoo learned to read in Burmese, and became quite good at it!  In fact, reading Burmese action novels was to be a major vice of his youth (along with football). But as he matured, it was through this language that would study philosophy.  And this tension was to feature in his future in the questions he would later ask as a PhD student, and as a writer.  How do you reconcile two such very different histories into one man, and one nation?

In the mid-1980s Saw Eh Htoo moved with his father, a taxi driver, to Rangoon.  Saw Eh Htoo thrived in Rangoon. He claims to have been an indifferent student, due to habits of too much football, and reading too many translated Chinese action novels.  Still, ever the curious guy, he pushed forward.  He studied English so he could read more philosophy, and earned a Master’s in Theology at Myanmar Institute of Theology (MIT) where he later taught, and a second Master’s, in Anthropology, at Yangon University.  It was at Yangon University that he came to know the military officers who were also interested in anthropology.

Saw Eh Htoo would leverage this learning into the founding of the Kaw Lah (Green Earth) Foundation, a Yangon-based NGO in 2012 which successfully performs consulting contracts for international and national players.  He was particularly adept at going into remote areas of Karen and Rakhine State, seeking to understand the lives and attitudes of remote villagers.

Saw Eh Htoo arrived at Payap University in Chiang Mai to study for the PhD degree in Peacebuilding at Payap University.  I met him in my seminar in 2017-2018, and have known him since.  As with a number of students from a very talented cohort, he had a deep interest in social theory, and was entranced by what the theories of Benedict Anderson had to say about Burmese and Karen nationalism.  Oddly, he reveled in Max Weber’s description of bureaucratic behavior—pointing to the many bureaucrats he had known from the military.

            Saw Eh Htoo’s own research interests were to come from his personal experiences as a youth growing up in Ne Win’s Burma, and the era after.  Having lived as a rural and urban Karen, worked with Rohingya, and become entranced with Burmese culture, he asked how such a wonderful constellation of people could be so unfortunate in seeking peace?  The more he thought about it and read, he came to believe that the much of the problems of Myanmar emerged from General Ne Win’s “Burmanization” policies of the 1960s.  Burmese culture, Buddhism, and military authority were glorified under such policies, presenting others as potential enemies.  This view, of course, logically led to the military being at the center of society.

As Sw Eh Htoo pointed out to me, besides removing military control, change would need to also include addressing the Burmanization curricula of the schools, youth groups, and of course the military. This enforced uniformity has resulted in a habitus of oppression and segregation, which continues today.  The argument at the end of his dissertation pointed out that for peace to be achieved, the Burmanization policies would have to be reversed from the schools up, whether it was the military or NLD in power.

Saw Eh Htoo had many ideas about how all of this could be done.  His enthusiasm for using academic ideas from sociology and history to bring out the best in the country he loved was infectious. He also had a great deal of faith in the capacity of his country to embrace its many elements; when he first picked me up at the Yangon airport in 2018 or so, placed carefully on the dashboard of his car were the two elements he prized in his identity: The crossed flags of Kawthoolei/KNU and the flag of Burma.  Seeing these two elements together after the 2021 coup seems impossible; but for a brief time, people like Saw Eh Htoo sought to make it happen.

Saw Eh Htoo, Partial Bibliography

(2022). “Ne Win’s Echoes: Burmanization Policies and Peacebuildingin Burma Today.”  In Ethnic and Religious Diversity in Myanmar Contested Identities Edited by Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Hans-Peter Grosshans and Madlen Krueger, pp. 50-69.  London: Bloomsbury Books By Saw Eh Htoo.

(2021). The Fractured Centre: ‘Two-headed government’ and threats to the peace process in Myanmar.  Modern Asian Studies. 56(2): 504-532. By Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung, and Saw Eh Htoo.

(2016).  Small Scale Fishermen in Rakhine State.  Journal of Burmese Scholarship. By Saw Eh Htoo.