The Burmese Labyrinth
The Burmese Labyrinth
A History of the Rohingya Tragedy
Carlos Sardiña Galache
First published by Verso 2020
© Carlos Sardiña Galache 2020
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
The maps on pages vi and vii are reproduced with permission from New Left Review, where they first appeared in Mary Callahan’s “Myanmar’s Perpetual Junta.”
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Verso
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Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-321-2
ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-320-5 (LIBRARY)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-322-9 (UK EBK)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-323-6 (US EBK)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Typeset in Minion Pro by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
Contents
Introduction: Trapped in the Burmese Labyrinth
Part I ‘Discipline-Flourishing Democracy’
2. The War in the ‘Green Hell’
4. ‘We Will Build a Fence With Our Bones if Necessary’
5. The Counted and the Excluded
6. The Burmese Cage
Part II History and Its Traces
7. The Worlds of Precolonial ‘Burma’
8. Burma Under the British
9. The Emergence of Nationalisms
10. World War II and the Road to Independence
11. An Embattled Democracy
12. The Burmese Way to Socialism
13. A Long ‘Caretaker Government’
Part III A Diarchic Government
14. The Election
15. ‘The Lady’ in Power
16. ‘An Unfinished Job’
17. After the Ethnic Cleansing
Conclusion: The Failure of Burmese Nationalism
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
In 1989, the military junta ruling Burma changed the official name of the country, and those of several regions and cities, returning them to their old names in the literary Burmese language. By the Adaptation of Expressions Law, both ‘Burma’ and ‘Burmese’ were changed to ‘Myanmar’. The change only affected languages other than Burmese, as ‘Myanmar’ had been the official name of the country in the language of the Burman majority. One of the explanations was that ‘Burma’ had been imposed by the British colonial power. But that was not entirely true, since ‘Burma’ is just a transliteration of the less formal word for the country in Burmese, and not a new name imposed by the colonial overlord – as is the case, for example, of ‘the Philippines’, a completely new name coined by the Spaniards in honour of the conquering King Philip II. In reality, ‘Burma’ and ‘Myanmar’ mean exactly the same, and asking speakers of other languages to use one instead of the other is the equivalent of asking non-German-speakers to use ‘Deutschland’ instead of ‘Germany’.
The United Nations and some governments accepted the change, but many other countries and the international media continued to call the country ‘Burma’. There was a time when choosing one term or the other had political connotations, as Aung San Suu Kyi had opposed the change. But ‘Myanmar’ has become internationally accepted since the transition in 2012. Throughout this book, I will use the name ‘Burma’, except when quoting other writers or public documents where ‘Myanmar’ is used. This is both a matter of personal preference and a function of the fact that, for most of the long period covered in the book, the country was known as Burma.
The name of the state of ‘Arakan’ was changed to ‘Rakhine’ in 1983, probably to please Rakhine nationalists. Throughout this book, I use ‘Arakan’ to refer to the state, and ‘Rakhine’ to refer to the majority ethnic group in Arakan, as I understand Arakan, the place, to have more inclusive connotations.
The majority group in the country is called ‘Bamar’ or ‘Burman’. I have opted for ‘Burman’ because it is consistent with the use of Burma rather than Myanmar. ‘Burmese’ refers to any citizen of the country, regardless of ethnicity. But the Burmese language is that spoken by the Burman majority. In colonial times, it was the other way round: ‘Burmese’ was used for the ethnic group ‘Burman’. I have noted this when necessary. It is also worth pointing out that many members of the ethnic minorities use ‘Burmese’ when referring to the ‘Burmans’. This shows the extent of confusion about national identity and the failure to create a multi-ethnic Burmese nationalism.
In some press reports and books that adopt the ‘Myanmar’ terminology, some names are different to those used in this book. I show here the equivalent variants of the most important names for states and cities used throughout the book (others, such Kachin, are the same in both terminologies):
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Burma (country)/Burmese
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