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By Root 4661 0

’s actions. In Rangoon Aung San’s speeches became more inflammatory after the New Year. In India Nehru was threatening the British with mass civil disobedience, but in Burma it was the threat of military force that loomed. At the Shwedagon pagoda in early January 1946 Bogyoke, as Aung San was popularly known, denounced Dorman-Smith as a Tory imperialist who was misleading Labour and was in cahoots with British capitalists. There were calls for the resignation of the ‘fascist governor’ and cries of ‘Rise! Kill! Kill!’ On 19 January Aung San surpassed himself with a three-hour speech, during which even he had to sit down for a time as a result of exhaustion. In the course of this marathon he insisted that Britain was no longer great. It was indebted to the USA and even to its own colonies. The British were attempting to reintroduce their commercial interests into the country and ‘the Emergency Laws in Burma and [the] British Judicial system are similar to those of the Kempeitai’, the hated Japanese secret police.94 Amidst the ranting, however, he enunciated three demands that would resonate throughout the year. First, he insisted that the White Paper of May 1945 which seemed indefinitely to postpone Burma’s independence should be torn up: power should be transferred to a wholly Burmese ministry. Second, he called for full adult suffrage to be introduced and, third, he demanded an immediate passage to Britain to talk to Attlee’s government.

In January 1946 all this sounded like the wishful thinking of a firebrand. Dorman-Smith certainly maintained his haughty demeanour to the young fellow. Yet by the end of the year Aung San had achieved every one of these aims. This was testimony both to the rapid weakening of Britain’s international position and to the approach of a social crisis in Burma itself. In this same speech, Aung San went on to demand the immediate nationalization of business, the exclusion of British, Chinese and Indian firms and the seizure of their assets, and government control of padi exports. Again, every one of these aims was in the process of being achieved two years on when Burma became an independent country and left the Commonwealth.

To the British it might have seemed that these speeches were cynical attempts by Aung San to restore his credibility with his restive left wing. Yet there was no hiding the fact that the AFPFL spoke directly to the fears of many, if not a majority, of Burmese.95 British business was obviously re-establishing itself in the teak forests and oilfields. Indians were trickling back into the country and the governor, along with Indian business representatives, was putting strong pressure on his fairly tame executive council to allow the 1942 evacuees to return, promising only to retain some of the restrictions on immigration agreed in 1940. It was true that the Americans had withdrawn from the north of the country. But it was Indians and Chinese, not Burmese, who were making vast fortunes by buying up and selling off US war surplus. In the cities, the Anglo-Burmans and the Chinese were setting up lucrative and semi-criminal businesses. Even though the ‘Black Market Administration’ was more or less over, a few unscrupulous British officers were still on the make. Meanwhile, Karen and Kachin separatists and their missionary friends thought their day had come and were intent on biting off large chunks of the country.96 To ordinary Burmese people who had not known security since the Depression, impoverished and without savings, it seemed that the whole nightmare of occupation and dispossession was to be played out again. However foolish Ba Maw and his gaudy satin pants had been, there had at least been some hope of independence in 1943. Now his partial or ‘ten anna’ independence seemed to have been devalued to five annas. The Pegu Club had even reinstated its colour bar, as if it were still 1939, or perhaps even 1889. So Aung San sparked a bonfire of resentment when he spoke of the ‘fascist governor’ and his business cronies. He also expected his message to find some sympathetic British