Sarkisyanz traces the long history of “the royal ideal of a welfare state” (56) in Burma, from Ashokan influences, through Kyanzittha’s proclamations that “‘all the people … shall eat plenty of food, … shall enjoy happiness'” (50), to Mindon, who “refused to arm his forces with modern weapons in order not to be responsible for the destruction of life” (97). This lineage culminates, in Sark’s narrative, with the syncretic Marxist Thakins, but even more so in Nu, who eliminated the death penalty (221) and was seen by monks interviewed in 1959 as the “closest approximation to the ideal of the perfect Buddhist ruler in the Ashokan tradition” (226). Ultimately, Sarkisyanz attempts to adduce in this tradition an “aspiration to base the state on an ethical maximum” (236), although he does at least admit that the Ashokan ideal must contend with other models of kingship: “Against the background of ruthless power practices of numerous historic monarchs, the Bodhisattva ideal of kingship proved only a partial ideational foundation for the royal charisma” (80). Indeed, as a BSPP ideologue gloated after the 1962 coup, “U Nu’s government did not know ‘what it means to care for the people, far less capable of carrying out what little it knew …’  It was elected by a majority of the people. But: ‘Sometimes what a man desires to have is not what he actually needs … It happens that what a man desires is actually dangerous for him and for society. So also with nations …’” (234). The BSPP and the SPDC after it would endorse a form of “tough love” that would re-center the ruthless power imperatives of rule. Nu, it would appear, was just too soft (နု)…

Sarkisyanz, Emanuel. Buddhist Backgrounds of the Burmese Revolution, Springer, 1965.

See here for the PDF, and for all the other cuts.

Applications are now open for the 2023 ANU Humanities Research Centre Visiting Fellowship program. About the fellowship program:

• Provides travel and accommodation for up to 3 months at the Australian National University (for numerous scholars each year)
• Applications welcome from eligible scholars working in every discipline and from every part of the world who wish to contribute to 2023 annual theme of “Repair” (described below)
• Applications close 30 September 2022
• Guidelines, application form and eligibility: https://hrc.cass.anu.edu.au/news/hrc-2023-visiting-fellows-scheme-now-open
• Queries to admin.HAL@anu.edu.au

a few days ago Macquarie University professor and NLD advisor Sean Turnell testified in court, pleading not-guilty to accusations of espionage, essentially. Read more here.

This is a grim reminder that he remains inprisoned. Read more about his situation on the website put together by his colleagues.

https://freeseanturnell.net/

This week’s New Pubs features two chapters from the recently published Routledge Handbook of Highland Asia. One is by Fiskesjö on the Wa; the other by Sadan and Ja Htoi Pan Maran on gender in Kachinland. The last publication for this week is Sunam on Rohingya refugee life projects in Malaysia.

As always, see our Recent Publications page for all of the citations and for past weeks.

The Burma Studies Group and the John Okell Paper Prize Committee are pleased to announce that Lian Bawi Thang and Courtney Wittekind have been selected as co-honorees for this year’s inaugural paper price. Congratulations both.

• Courtney Wittekind. “‘Take our Land:’ Fronts, Fake Farmers, and Falsity in a City Yet-to-Come.”
• Lian Bawi Thang. “The Sit-Tat’s Quest for a Grand Strategy: A Critical Examination of the 2017 Rohingya Clearance Operation.”

Here are the remarks from the Prize selection committee about the papers:

“The committee was impressed by the two papers especially because they provide new ways of approaching questions that might seem to have been settled. By starting from a deep engagement with the empirical material and crafting an analysis from there, both authors generate nuanced analyses that steer clear of received and often polarized ideas about society, culture and politics in contemporary Myanmar. We welcome the creativity and openness to surprise their scholarship demonstrates.”

See here for other paper prizes.

Hedström, Jenny and Elisabeth Olivius. Waves of Upheaval in Myanmar: Gendered Transformations and Political Transitions. NIAS / Hawai’i U Press, 2022.

This is the first comprehensive account of the multifaceted processes of gendered transformation that took place in Myanmar between 2011 and 2021, and which continues to shape events today. The period began with the end of direct military rule and the transition to a hybrid, semi-democratic regime, precipitating far-reaching political, economic and social changes across Myanmar. To date, the gendered dynamics and effects of this transition have not yet received sustained scholarly attention. Remedying this gap, this book provides a much-needed historical corrective through a careful, nuanced analysis of the gendered dynamics of transitional politics, institutions and policymaking; feminist resistance, mobilization, and movement building; and their effects on labor, land, and everyday lives. Although the February 2021 military coup brought an end to this decade of experimentation and transition, in the richness of its analysis and detail, the book offers a deeper understanding of the current political situation in Myanmar. The gendered changes that the transition brought about have shaped both the current configuration of masculinized, military dictatorship, as well as the unprecedented role played by women in resistance to military rule after the 2021 coup. This analysis of the gendered dynamics and effects of the recent decade of political transition in Myanmar is therefore critical for understanding current events, as well as the ways in which Myanmar’s political landscape might continue to be reshaped.

See all of our future pubs here.

This week’s New Pubs features Campbell’s new book on life in Yangon’s informal settlements; Lahkyen Roi challenges extractivism in Kachin State; and Yaw Htung on the relationship between Kachin conceptions of ethnicity and the Kachin ethnonationalist movement .

As always, see our Recent Publications page for all of the citations and for past weeks.

A Masters Thesis from 20 years ago by Yoon Ah Oh, which is an ethnography of Insein Karen experiences with their Karen-ness.

See here for the PDF and other PDFs in the series. 

This week’s New Pubs features the GSCN’s big report on post-coup revolutionary movement; Foxeus on the Buddhist nationalist rituals; and Thakur on the issue of global cruelty, with Myanmar’s treatment of Rohingya as a case.

As always, see our Recent Publications page for all of the citations and for past weeks.

Since the protracted ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya (episodes in the 1950s, 1978, 1992-94, 2012, 2017) recently became an object of scholarly attention, the Rohingya’s standing as an ethnic group has generated intense scrutiny. The same attention, sadly, has not always been focused on other ethnic groups in Myanmar, resulting in the Rohingya appearing to be a “political” identity when the others are simply “natural.” The Rakhine, for instance, are often taken as existing since time immemorial.

Kyaw Minn Htin’s PhD dissertation challenges that presumption, examining the historical processes of ethnogenesis that have led to the construction of the Rakhine. As he argues, “In the not-so-distant past, Burmese from Myanmar proper and Arakanese-speaking peoples themselves considered the Arakanese to be Myanmar (Mranmā) or ‘Burmese.’ In pre-colonial Arakan, these Arakanese speakers assumed various local identities depending on their place of dwelling, and it was in later colonial descriptions that the people who lived within the boundary of the map of Arakan were | collectively categorised as ‘Arakanese’” (13-4). This provocative thesis also includes arguments about the pre-colonial Muslim populations in Arakan (proto-Rohingya) and what happened to that identity after successive waves of in-migration from Chittagong during the colonial era.

See here for the PDF, and for all the other cuts.