Tun Myint | ယခုဆောင်းပါးကို မြန်မာဘာသာဖြင့် ဖတ်ရှုရန် ဤနေရာတွင် နှိပ်ပါ

Cite as: 
Tun Myint. (2025). The Collapse of the sit tat and the End of Burmanization. Independent Journal of Burmese Scholarship, 5. https://ijbs.online/?page_id=5201

Abstract

The political crisis since the 2021 military coup is only the latest chapter in a much longer struggle to build an inclusive political system that respects the ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity of Burmese society. This article argues that the coup, while a tragedy, ended the flawed “disciplined democracy” under the military’s 2008 constitution, and has opened public debate on how to achieve a more open, inclusive, and polycentric society in Myanmar. In an area with a huge diversity of local peoples, cultures, religions, and political orders, I argue that Burmanization has been a millennia-long disaster from the time of the Bagan empire to the Republic of the Union of Myanmar today. Burmanization must end, and with it, the institution of the Myanmar military, which is misguided beyond reform, in order for polycentric federal democracy to take root in Myanmar.¹

Introduction

The military coup on 1 February 2021 ended Myanmar’s nominal ‘transition’ to democracy and initiated the latest chapter in a long political crisis over whether and how to build an inclusive political system that respects the ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity of Burmese society. A long view of political contestation in Myanmar bypassing ethno- and state-centric sanctioned histories shows that trying to build a Westphalian-style Leviathan state² in Myanmar can only fail. Yet until today, a Burmese nation state that is inclusive and reflective of its diverse people and cultures has never been realized. Instead, Myanmar has been in conflict for decades and is commonly referred to as having the longest civil war in the world, with barely any peace since its founding as an independent nation state.

The 2021 military coup destabilized a delicate political framework of nominal transition which, for all its flaws, did provide limited opportunities for a vibrant public sphere, research and debate—and space for political processes to work toward a new and inclusive society. Myanmar’s nominal ‘transition’ to democracy also opened up space for much needed wider scholarly attention on Myanmar from scholars across the world. This included attempts to revitalize the country’s own rich tradition of critical and independent scholarship on society and politics. The coup did not end this, but certainly punctuated it, and scholarship on Myanmar still needs to move beyond state-centric histories and ideas. It should prioritize the public memory displayed in the livelihood activities of the people. Scholars must resituate their framework of analysis to include the neglected histories, cultures, and peoples of Burma. Only then can scholarship on Burma accurately reflect its diverse society and its public-facing history.

The most recent post-coup political crisis does not show a failing state but rather shines a clear light on how there was no truly viable state of Myanmar there to fail. It is another poignant demonstration of diverse ethnic groups, including the Bama population, persisting in their struggle for an inclusive political order in Myanmar. But analyzing how this post-coup crisis is affecting the trajectory toward an inclusive society requires first understanding how political order in such a diverse society has neglected the very richness of this ethnic and cultural diversity.

It demands an understanding of the concept of Burmanization and how Bama kings, and dictators aspiring to be kings, use it to exploit ethnic diversity and religious differences to divide and rule. At the same time, inclusive scholarship on Burma’s history of political development necessitates a recognition of how political socialization over time has normalized the perpetuation of Burmanization by ethnic Bamas and others. During the nominal ‘transition’ period, some scholarship began to examine the consequences of Burmanization and its political socialization.³ This article looks at the long history of political development and socialization⁴ in Burma to argue that polycentric federalism is the most viable political system to facilitate inclusiveness and diversity in the country’s democratic future. Polycentric federal democracy is also the most appropriate political framework to end Myanmar’s ongoing and intractable conflict. To achieve it, not only must attempts at Burmanization end, but the Myanmar military as we know it today must also collapse.

The Roots of Burmanization

Many historians of Burma would attribute the beginnings of what became Myanmar today to King Anawrahta (reigning from 1044 to 1077 C.E.) and the Bagan empire (usually considered to run from 849 to 1287 C.E.).⁵Bagan is commonly thought of as the beginning of the unification of state and religion in Burmese history—Theravada Buddhism in this case. At the time of the empire, the polities of Europe were consolidating power in their respective societies by exploiting emerging private property rights, which later empowered industrialization in the sixteenth century. Private property rights are rooted in the great enclosure movement in England with the privatization of common property during the Tudor period in the twelfth century. In this sense, European societies were subject to the control of the state and the market economy as industrialization gained momentum. Karl Polanyi, a critical observer of the political and economic roots of neoliberal economic order coined the term “double movement” to frame the control of societies of Europe under state and market economy.⁶ One can argue that most Eurocentric states in the world today thrive on the Polanyian double movement to construct neoliberal economic order under the provision of freedom for citizens of states and production of products for consumers of market societies.

The Bagan empire initiated what I would call a “triple movement,” unifying religion, state, and a rice-based economy.⁷ This triple movement marginalized diverse hierarchical social orders that existed in communities at the time, especially in upper and highland areas of Burma. The political order of Bagan continued to sustain fragile regional stability through successive wars with different ethnic groups and frequent political assassinations within the courts. Burma’s king-commissioned and state-commissioned histories are littered with rivalries, exiles, and killings. For millennia, no Myanmar monarch managed to govern a stable and prosperous empire, with lasting useful infrastructure and educational institutions, let alone achieve peace. These kings were instead busy establishing legitimacy through constructing religious buildings and conquering neighboring empires. The dynamic history of the kingdoms and public memory of Burma before the British colonial era deserves careful attention to understand why Leviathan-style states successful in Europe failed to take root in Burma.

Burmanization grew out of this history and was sharpened in the twentieth century during the postcolonial political crisis of independence from Britain and the founding of the Union of Burma. Interesting moments such as the 1947 Panglong Agreement notwithstanding,⁸ the fundamental ideology of Burmanization only grew through the independence era, to be deepened by General Ne Win after his 1962 military coup. Ne Win did so through propaganda, education, and militarism. Non-Bama others were portrayed in textbooks and newspapers as barbaric and uncivilized, needing to be brought into the moral and legal fold of a Bama-centric political order.

Ever since Ne Win, the sit tat has held to its political doctrine of Bama hegemony and fought to maintain and defend a unitary Bama Buddhist political order, rejecting any alternative as a threat to the state. This doctrine contributed to why the sit tat put itself above civilian politicians in its long-delayed 2008 constitution, giving itself the power to appoint twenty five percent of the members in the pyidaungsu hluttaw and to control the budgets and policies of three critical ministries. Bama nationalist politicians and extremist Buddhist monks then nurtured the evolution of the 969 movement,⁹ members of which successfully lobbied for President Thein Sein to pass the discriminatory Race and Religion Protection laws.¹⁰ These four laws exemplified, in legal form, core attributes of the Burmanization project. Throughout the ‘transition’ period and supposed efforts at a peace process, the military still engaged in frequent acts of violence against civilian protesters, ethnic cleansing of non-Bama others, and launched new wars; the 2021 coup was shocking for many Bama in the cities who were ignorant of the Burmanization inherent to the prevailing political order, but few people living in the ethnic states could pretend to be surprised.

Given the sit tat is wedded to its Burmanization ideology and proudly claims to be the savior of the unitary state in its propaganda and constitution, the demise of the sit tat may also lead to the end of Burmanization. The sit tat could be the last gatekeeper protecting Burmanization, with its collapse leading to the end of that political order, and a reinvented country with a freer politics, economy, and society.

At the time of writing, the sit tat is at its weakest in decades. While the military still has its hardcore members and supporters, and it enjoys technological, resource, and wealth advantages over the armed resistance groups opposing it, the military faces serious challenges including territorial losses, poor morale, limited troops numbers, and ineffectual recruitment. Most Burmese people fear or seethe when they encounter uniformed people on the street. The sit tat has become a repugnant institution.

A Repugnant Military

While most people in Myanmar have been deeply critical of the sit tat for decades, their views have changed in important ways since the 2021 coup. Taking stock of public opinion regarding military rule and the ongoing brutalities of the sit tat requires moving beyond basic words like “hate” or even “detest.” There are many Burmese language words to describe feelings of positive and negative opinion, and they can be placed along a spectrum from “like” to “hate.” But the two words most relevant to critical opinion of the sit tat are completely outside of this spectrum.

The first word is kyauksaya,¹¹ referring to a fearful entity or thing. The sit tat has ruled much of heartland Myanmar through fear since 1988, and the ethnic states and border areas since 1962. The well-known Freedom from Fear is telling.¹² Its author, the still-imprisoned State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, has been a political prisoner several times, and before the 2021 coup she led the country as an elected official and leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD). She called for Myanmar’s people to not fear the oppression of sit tat. She also sought, in a philosophical vein, to teach those who inspire fear in Myanmar to not fear a future after they relinquish the power they have maintained by inducing fear in others. The people have feared the sit tat for decades.

The second word relevant here is yunsaya.¹³ This word describes a feeling that goes beyond hate, but implies no fear, it rather carries the connotation of loathsomeness. It captures how many people feel about the sit tat since the 2021 coup—when so many who fear for their lives still strongly oppose the military. The word yunsaya denotes a feeling beyond hatred or detestation. It means absolutely intense disgust. When Burmese designate something yunsaya, they no longer care about its existence or being.

If a person, an institution, or a thing is conceived in the Burmese mind as falling into this category, it is no longer treated as something to like or to hate—but rather to disregard, ignore, it is eternally worthless. One seeks to erase it from their memory. That entity possesses no value. No property of ethics or morality; no attribute meriting respect; no value to nature and the universe. Such a thing is hard to find, but Burmese mental culture provides room to conceive of an entity as such. To state it visually, it is a thousand time worse than rotten feces populated with lauk kaung (fly maggots).

Why does people’s evaluation of the sit tat shifting from something to fear to something so repugnant as to be disregarded matter? If an entity is to be feared, Burmese people regard it as having some intrinsic value, even though it may represent something unjust or undesirable. When generating fear, the sit tat was seen as something wrong, failing to serve society, but capable of being repaired, or changing itself. Even the most self-serving, selfish, egomaniacal bully can potentially change. Something yunsaya on the other hand is outside measurements of value. The Burmese public no longer debate how best to compel the sit tat to change. Right after the coup, the world wondered how the Burmese people, especially young generation Z, could show no fear when the sit tat threatened their lives for protesting peacefully, and shot, ran over, and tortured people to death. Rationalizing the sit tat as yunsaya is one explanation for this lack of fear.

The Collapse of the sit tat

The sit tat, endowed with so much respect under its original leadership of General Aung San,has had several opportunities since Burma’s independence to end its wars and foster the creation of an inclusive society. At the very point of independence, the sit tat as an institution could have been satisfied with its historical standing as the savior of the country from British colonization and Japanese imperialism, remained under civilian administration, and stayed out of politics like a professional military institution. It could have recognized in the uprisings of 1988 and 2007 that the people demanded a kind of inclusive politics, or democracy, that military rule was incapable of delivering.¹⁴ Instead, the military lumbered on to adopt its 2008 constitution, cementing its power over the people. It then could have accepted the leadership of the NLD during its government term and pursued the 21^st Century Panglong Union Peace Conference in good faith. It could have amended the 2008 constitution to cede more power to civilian politicians after the NLD won the 2015 elections. It could have accepted the results of the 2020 election. At all these moments and more, the military balked at ceding power. It could not bring itself to foster the institutionalization of democracy.

The sit tat as an institution has long been held ransom by selfish, exploitative leaders, for their own narrow personal gain. Ne Win and his successors prolonged the country’s many wars and profited from interminable and unstable state-building. This is real, but also an apt metaphor: military leaders direct the building of infrastructure like bridges to half completion, then pocket the rest of the project funds. They abandon the projects until the next round of corrupt ‘investment’ is needed, and repeat, without any care for the people who must use that infrastructure. No one knows how much of the budget for building Nay Pyi Taw went into the pockets of those in authority, but the effects of the 2025 earthquake suggest poor quality construction materials were used and many corners were cut. The corruption and nepotism at all levels of military rule underpins the survival of Myanmar’s dictators, of which coup leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing is just one.

But Min Aung Hlaing is on the back foot. The ongoing Spring Revolution toward inclusive federal democracy is yet to falter. The Civil Disobedience Movement, post-coup armed groups and people’s defense forces, the ethnic revolutionary organizations, the National Unity Government, the National Unity Consultative Council, the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, and several strike committees represent diverse interests and communities in the revolution. These forces sustain the people’s revolution rejecting the 2021 coup and refusing the military’s new ‘State Administration Council.’ In this way the Spring Revolution is far more diverse and resourceful than the democracy movement born out of 1988.

There are several reasons behind the Spring Revolution’s momentum working toward liberal ideas of openness and inclusion. First, young people. Once considered a generation wasting their lives in internet cafes and tea shops playing video games and absorbing social media, the youth are in fact the ones most actively resisting the coup, both peacefully and with arms. These youths are steering armed drones, applying battle strategies they learned from video games, and helping their elder comrades understand new technologies for communication and war. By the time of the 2021 coup, many of this cohort had lived around half of their lives under military rule, and half of their lives under the civilian ‘transition’ period, when standards of living were improving, liberal ideas were spreading, and it felt like Myanmar was emerging from its isolation, corruption, and despotic military rule. Second, the increase in phone, social media, and internet access that roughly corresponded with this ‘transition’ period, now provide unprecedented capabilities for communication and organization—even though the military regularly enforces internet blackouts and restrictions. Third, an increase in vibrant civil society organizations all over the country since 2010 is providing social capital for collective action. Fourth, rural outmigration to cities, and abroad for education and jobs, has provided much needed information transfers and comparative experiential learning about different systems, places, people, cultures, and countries. Fifth, the media during the ‘transition’ period was relatively free and provided vibrant public debate as well as information about democracy and issues forbidden under military rule, preparing the public for resistance. Sixth, the large Burmese diaspora abroad played a critical role in fundraising and supporting the revolution.

However, some issues remain, including the ongoing Rohingya crisis. Reactions to the military’s genocide of the Rohingya population and ethnic cleansing attacks in Rakhine State provide a test case for just how liberal and open Burmese society can be. Just how over a million displaced Rohingya people, nearly all of whom are now stateless, are reincorporated into revolutionary and/or post-revolutionary Myanmar reflects what kind of society is to come.

The Rohingyas as a Litmus Test for Inclusion

No event in Burma’s history better exposed the hypocrisy and moral incompetency of society than the Rohingya crisis. The inhumane treatment of fellow Rohingya human beings by Myanmar’s majority Buddhist society, which claims to follow the teachings of loving kindness and the middle way of thinking and acting, was plainly counter to Buddhism’s moral claims. The majority Bama people and ethnic minorities who claimed to be fighting for freedom and inclusive society equally failed to publicly acknowledge the ongoing inhumane treatment of the Rohingya, leading to particularly catastrophic violence in 2012 and 2017.

This journal published a special issue on the Rohingya in 2021, including several articles analyzing how Bama ethnocentrism and Buddhist nationalism prevent the inclusion of non-Bama and non-Buddhist political communities and leaders in significant political decision-making processes.¹⁵ The contributing authors deconstruct how the 2017 Rohingya crisis unfolded and the systematic racial, religious, cultural, and political exclusion of Rohingya in local and national contexts in Myanmar. Wai Moe, Elliot Prasse-Freeman, and Aiden Moe each presented new evidence of how the army and extremist Buddhist nationalists led a systematic campaign to erase Rohingya identity using social media.¹⁶ Together their articles show how modern social media and Bagan-era Buddhist ideals shape the sit tat’s nationalism, islamophobia, and hatred against Rohingya.

The influence of social media platforms today allows groups to deploy campaigns of disinformation and drastically affect democracy and society. Myanmar’s nominal ‘transition’ to democracy occurred during the height of global communication technological transformation. The Arab Spring showed how the internet and social media can contribute to toppling oppressive regimes.¹⁷ The Myanmar military, however, proactively sends its troops to Russia to learn engineering and technological skills in order to wage cyber warfare against the public. At the time of the 2017 Rohingya crisis, there were up to an estimated 700 staff working on military propaganda campaigns using Facebook in Nay Pyi Taw, Pyin Oo Lwin, and other military strongholds.¹⁸ The crisis revealed how little critical scholarship deconstructing Burmanization and racism there was in mainstream literature and education.

Ethnicity and Racism in Burma

Scholarship on ethnicity, ethnic politics, and ethnic conflict in Burma is well developed, but scholarship on race and racism is less so. In conventional understandings, race is often used to divide people into groups based on physical characteristics such as skin colors.Ethnicity, on the other hand, usually encompasses cultural expressions including customs, history, language, and religion. If we follow this general understanding,the discrimination against the Rohingya by Bama and Rakhine nationalists and the military can best be understood as being racism. Many Rohingya themselves however want to define their statelessness and discrimination as an ethnic conflict.¹⁹ Terms such as “ethnic cleansing” or “genocide” are often applied by journalists and international observers.²⁰

The challenge for scholars is whether the case of the Rohingya should be analyzed as part of ongoing ethnic conflict and civil war in Myanmar or whether it should be treated differently from such ethnicity-based wars in other states and regions. Furthermore, defining the indigeneity of ethnic groups in Myanmar is complex. The complacency by ethnic groups and ethnic leaders and their lack of criticism of ethnic Rakhine and Myanmar military abuses against the Rohingya suggest that those ethnic leaders and groups agree, more or less, with the Myanmar military’s view that the Rohingya are ‘others’ who do not belong in the nation. These leaders and groups may fear that expressions of overt sympathy for the Rohingya would jeopardize their desires for full inclusion in the state. This position legitimizes the essence of the 1982 citizenship law and the military’s 2008 constitution that excludes certain ethnic and cultural groups from the official list of 135.

The constitution and laws show that Burmese nationalist leaders recognize the legitimacy and theoretical inclusion of 135 ethnic groups, as counted by the sit tat. However, extreme nationalists among ethnic minorities and some Bama people even deny the existence of the Rohingya as an ethnic group in historical records before 1824. This is the first order of distinction that needs to be understood to appreciate why State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi was always hesitant to question the 1982 citizenship law and the classification of Myanmar’s 135 ethnic groups.²¹ By doing so she seemed to imply that Rohingyas are members of communities in Rakhine State and could be citizens if they do not use the term Rohingya to describe their ethnicity in their citizenship forms. She failed to acknowledge Rohingya as an ethnic minority in her International Court of Justicespeech in The Hague on 11 December 2019.

The domination of the military in politics over time, asserted once again by the 2021 coup, should remind observers who forcefully pointed out Aung San Suu Kyi’s failed defense of the Rohingya genocide of just how complex the local historical context is, and how perilous the political climate was at the time. It is one thing to criticize players in the field from the position of the spectator, but it is another thing to be a player in the field. The assassination on the footpath of Yangon Airport on 29 January 2017 of U Ko Ni, the lawyer who led efforts to find ways for the NLD to gain power under the 2008 military-drafted constitution with Aung San Suu Kyi as the legal state leader, was a clear signal that the military uses force against civilian politicians, even under an NLD government and in an environment of reform. The military showed with its recent coup that it still has no intention of allowing Myanmar to become the inclusive/federal democracy that millions have fought for since independence. The NLD for its part is unable to bring peace and achieve inclusive society without the meaningful participation of other ethnic and political groups.

Burmese Buddhism and Exclusion

The question of inclusion and exclusion in the formation of Myanmar’s polity necessarily requires us to deconstruct the role of religion in Myanmar history and politics. It also inevitably raises the further question of how Burmese Buddhist concepts could ever be used to justify the actions of Myanmar’s successive military regimes. They cracked down violently on student protests in 1962 and 1974, on wider public protests in 1988, on Buddhist monks’ protests in 2007, and committed atrocity crimes against the Rohingya people in Rakhine State. The sit tat consistently perpetrates large-scale arbitrary arrest, torture, and murder of civilians who peacefully resist their rule. To justify the exclusion of any member of society in the tenets of Buddhism, let alone to violently expel them, is to outright politicize Buddhism.

Several scholars of Buddhism in Myanmar have unraveled the critical and contentious role of Theravada Buddhism in Burmese politics and political thought since the nineteenth century.²² Matthew Walton argues that “in order to understand the political dynamics of contemporary Myanmar, it is necessary to understand the interpretations of Buddhist concepts that underlay much of modern Burmese political thought.”²³ It sounds plausible to judge and portray a society’s foundation through the majority’s religion and values, but doing so undermines minorities’ intellectual roles and views. The problem with a narrow and glamorized version of a country or ethnic group seen only through the lens of the majority is a tragedy of intellectual zeal that makes one’s subject unique and one’s question the only one worthy of pursuit. In this sense, the inclusion and exclusion problem in religion and society begins with the intellectual exclusion of the existence and value of the minority by sentimentalizing the majority. Returning to this journal’s special issue on the Rohingya, several articles contribute to diversifying the view of religion and politics in Myanmar beyond Buddhism’s tenets. Both Joshua and Moe Htet Nay separately urge that we should not regard ethnic and religious conflicts as economic ones but understand that they are caused by struggles against structural injustices deeply rooted in Myanmar society.²⁴

For some Burmese living in Myanmar, where Buddhism is the majority religion, anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic sentiment is almost a right to be exercised. For ultra nationalist Buddhist Bama, Rakhine, and other peoples, non-Buddhists are not considered full citizens. This political psyche is a source of hatred and a tool of the genocide inflicted upon Rohingya people. This might explain why for so many Myanmar people the inhumane treatment of the Rohingya by the military does not dent their moral universe.²⁵ However, such perceptions seem to be changing in the wake of the Myanmar military’s indiscriminate violent arrest, torture, and killing of protesters and civilians in urban areas since 2021. Even urban residents now suffer the same type of violence inflicted upon Rohingya people and other ethnic minorities for years. The 2021 political crisis in Myanmar has significantly altered the majority view of the Rohingya and the Myanmar military. Do most people now view the military dictatorship as an obstacle to realizing an inclusive society and thus a threat to peace in Myanmar? The emerging evidence and the unified determination of different resistance groups since 2021 suggests an affirmative answer to the question.

The End of Monocentric History and the Beginning of Polycentric Society

Aung San Suu Kyi led the post-1988 democracy movement with steadfast determination for decades, her role only fading after the 2021 coup. She maintained an international reputation as a champion of human rights and freedom until the Rohingya crisis. Holding onto the political center in Myanmar requires performing the narrative history of monocentricity, and Aung San Suu Kyi cleverly employed this in her speech at The Hague in defense of the Rohingya genocide. She treated the exodus of the Rohingya as the consequence of her state’s military quelling an armed separatist movement—in other words, legitimate military conduct:

Can there be genocidal intent on the part of a state that actively investigates, prosecutes and punishes soldiers and officers who are accused of wrongdoing? Although the focus here is on members of the military, I can assure you that appropriate action will also be taken against civilian offenders, in line with due process. There will be no tolerance of human rights violations in the Rakhine, or elsewhere in Myanmar … To conclude, Mr. President and members of the court, Rakhine today suffers an internal armed conflict between the Buddhist Arakan Army and Myanmar’s Defense Services. Muslims are not a party to this conflict, but may, like other civilians in the conflict area, be affected by security measures that are in place.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s defense of the Myanmar military’s conduct, as that of a state trying to keep stability within its territory, is indeed legitimate under the United Nations Charter. Chapter 1, Article 2, Clause 7 of the charter states:

Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter VII.

In this legal view of the state-centric politics of world order, Aung San Suu Kyi’s position on the Rohingya holds some water: the military conflicts in northern Rakhine State are strictly the Myanmar state’s domestic affair and does not pose a threat to the peace and stability of the region and the world. Aimed at diplomats and heads of state, her remarks clearly avoided human rights, human dignity, or the agency and self-determination of the Rohingya people. Her approach sounded clever but failed to address the moral terms in which the Rohingya genocide is understood by the majority of the global public. Instead, it appealed to the moral bankruptcy of the state-centric world order. The diverse political aspirations of millions in Myanmar and their struggles to escape Burmanization challenge the relevance of her approach, something thrown into starker relief after 2021.

The history of Myanmar must be more inclusive of neglected memories and histories of society at large, beyond kingdoms and the state, as Charney recognized in his article on decolonizing history in this journal’s special issue on the Rohingya. Only when Myanmar’s modern history is free from its original colonial impositions can Myanmar society meaningfully rethink inclusivity and apply it as a political aim.

Regardless of what solution is found to the present crisis, Rakhine will continue to be subject to genocidal conditions and there will be further episodes of murder and flight. This goes beyond the need to abandon the citizenship laws and the taingyintha paradigm; Myanmar needs to radically reinvent itself on a new basis, if it is to end its continued problems not just with the Rohingya, but with all of its ethnic minorities.²⁶

Suppressed Public Memory

The majority of Myanmar people, especially those in cities and military-controlled areas, learn the history of their country predominantly through state-endorsed narratives and official accounts. These narratives are written by state-appointed historical commissions and textbook committees, and distributed through the school curriculum, centralized classroom pedagogies, official museums, and official archives. They have very little to do with the day-to-day public life of people. Carefully selected historical events and Bama ethnic and cultural symbols are promoted as the true history of Myanmar, while less palatable facets, from the state’s point of view, are ignored and left out of the historical record. In fact, over the past seven decades, the military state has in several circumstances treated the rich repository of public memory as a potential threat to political order.

This continued during the post-2010 ‘transition.’ Public memories of egregious military atrocities and more subtle Burmanization policies alike were sidelined by political leaders of all kinds, as the military was carrying out making tentative concessions and reforms and no one wanted to ‘rock the boat.’ Elected political leaders were unwilling to challenge official narratives for fear of endangering the reforms they had fought for and hoped were real. The 2021 coup showed that hope was foolish.

Myanmar needs a publicly available, thoroughly documented and researched public memory initiative for the benefit of Burmese society. Liberating the history of Myanmar from colonial, authoritarian control, and monocentric state narratives, is critical to making Burmese society inclusive, open, and humane. While the Spring Revolution is nearing success, the downfall of the military and Burmanization will not automatically liberate Myanmar history from its cage. But a polycentric federal democracy which allows for inclusion, equality, and local self-determination of communities to manage their own resources and define their own freedoms would allow for these conditions, and newly liberated public memory would then act to reinforce that new political order.

Polycentric Federal Democracy in Myanmar

The clear failure of Eurocentric state-building and Burmanization to bring prosperity and equality to Myanmar suggests any forthcoming post-revolutionary society must consider two points. First, building an inclusive society in Myanmar has to be distinguished from keeping to a Eurocentric model of state-building based on Hobbes’ theory of Leviathan. Treating the state as the only legitimate provider of domestic order, stability, and peace as theorized by Hobbes is a myopic view of politics. Allowing the state the monopoly on violence is how Aung San Suu Kyi found the language to defend the Myanmar military’s conduct against the Rohingya when speaking at The Hague. Monocentric political order skews toward the powerful and the majority in society, as best seen in non-democratic states and autocracies. For this reason, minority ethnic communities are inherently wary of monocentric political systems. If one appreciates the longevity of civil war, and the struggles of ethnic minorities in Myanmar, as a larger struggle for agency and freedom of individuals and communities, one can understand that the Eurocentric model of the state is incongruent with heterogenous societies such as Burma.

Second, the diversity of Myanmar society calls for a polycentric democracy with a framework capable of checking and balancing both vertically and horizontally. Democracy has to be understood and practiced not just through regular periodic elections but through a diverse exercise of freedoms and the agency of different communities and individuals. Elections are only one component of democracy. The protection and expansion of individual agency and the freedom of individuals and communities cannot be achieved through elections alone. Local autonomy, self-determination, and freedom to learn and grow have to be a part of federal democracy. Therefore, Myanmar’s long and enduring revolution has to be understood as the people’s struggle to embrace polycentric federal democracy to once and for all put an end to war. Having the “longest civil war on the planet” is ironically proof itself of the Myanmar people’s unrelenting desire for genuine peace. To reach that peace, the sit tat must collapse and Burmanization with it. The public’s widespread view of the sit tat as being repugnant and worthless and the strength of the ongoing Spring Revolution presage that very outcome.

Endnotes

¹ This article was developed from a lecture I gave at the Yale Council on Southeast Asia Studies, titled “Collapse of the Tatmadaw and the end of Burmanization in Myanmar: Understanding the contentious relationship between democracy and state sovereignty” on 7 December 2022, and then adapted into an article for a different forum (Tun Myint, 2023).
² Hobbes, 1982.
³ See Boshier (2016), Campbell & Prasse-Freeman (2021), Salem-Gervais (2023), and Walton (2013).
⁴ Historians narrate events and compose stories. Political scientists analyze events and connect those events to understand how coercive structures evolve over time for whom, how, and why. I write this article through a political economy lens and as a native of Burma/Myanmar.
⁵ The unified kingdom of Bagan had a myopic view of society with both Buddhism and Bama-centric political socialization consolidated as the primary framework of political order.
⁶ See Polanyi (1944, p. 79) and chapters 3, 5, 6, and 10.
⁷ The Buddhist, Bama-centric state continued from Bagan to today without much deviation. However, while rice was the economic foundation of the Bagan and subsequent empires for centuries, this eventually evolved into a foundation based on natural resources after 1989, when the military initiated economic reforms and cronyism took root along with the enrichment of military corporate conglomerates.
⁸ Walton, 2008.
⁹ For more on the 969 movement and Burmese Buddhist nationalism, see Foxeus (2019).
¹⁰ Rahman, 2015.
¹¹ ကြောက်စရာ။
¹² Aung San Suu Kyi, 1991.
¹³ ရွံစရာ။
¹⁴ The NLD’s political project that grew out of the 1988 protests in Myanmar, despite its painfully slow beginning—a coup, then a nullified election in 1990, through to the recognized NLD victories in the 2012 by-election and 2015 election, then again in 2020 (to the military’s chagrin and refusal)—is an ongoing, obvious rejection of the Burmanized military state.
¹⁵ “Special Issue on the Rohingya”, 2021.
¹⁶ Aiden Moe, 2021; Prasse-Freeman, 2021; Wai Moe, 2021.
¹⁷ Sadiki, 2014.
¹⁸ Wai Moe, 2021.
¹⁹ Zahed & Jenkins, 2022.
²⁰ Bowman, 2022; McLaughlin, 2022.
²¹ Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, 2017.
²² Mya Maung, 1964, pp. 757-764; Rozenberg, 2010; Sarkisyanz, 1965; Shway Yoe, 1896; Spiro, 1970; Tun Myint, 2014.
²³ Walton, 2017, p. 3.
²⁴ Joshua, 2021; Moe Htet Nay, 2021, p. 476.
²⁵ See for example Ahmed et al. (2021), Akins (2018), and Farzana (2015).
²⁶ Charney, 2021.

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