Forgotten Wars_ Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia - Christopher Bayly [158]
Aung San then went on to try to dissolve what remained of British control over Burma’s internal affairs. On 11 November, heavily tutored by the former ICSofficer U Tin Tut, he made what was, in effect, his final set of demands. He denounced the governor’s remaining discretionary power over certain ‘imperial’ subjects as incompatible with democracy.58 The frontier areas would now have to be brought within the remit of a Burmese cabinet. So, too, would control over affairs concerning British and Indian imports. All expenditure would have to be made subject to a vote of the lower house. The British could no longer hope to ‘reserve’ subjects that bore on their own interests, as they had been doing for years. As for the future shape of a popular assembly in Burma, the AFPFL made it perfectly clear that the franchise would have to be universal in the general election that was scheduled for March 1947. There was no going back to the 1935 Government of India Act and its constitution for Burma. All the old subterfuges that had guaranteed the continuation of colonial interests and their hangers-on would have to go. No longer would the Burmese be outvoted by a combination of representatives of the European and Indian chambers of commerce; those great Indian moneylenders, the Nattukottai Chettiyars; and a plethora of Shans, Karens, Kachins, and so on.59
In all this Tin Tut, ‘highly trained, intelligent and very ambitious’, made it clear that his lodestar was India.60 Burmese would never again play poor relations to the Indians. The Indians were now sending ambassadors to other countries, and in a world where nations measured each other according to international clout, that was independence. Tin Tut, who offered constitutional and financial advice to all the Burmese political parties, threatened boycotts and strikes if an agreement on independence was not reached before 31 January 1947. Rance, however, knew that boycotts and strikes would almost certainly be the precursors of armed insurrection. Aung San had only just managed to stave off that threat in October and the social situation in the country was still deteriorating. Rance bowed to force majeure, noting that 12,000 Indian troops were scheduled to leave Burma in February 1947 and there would be no replacements.61 In the interim, these troops could not be used to put down openly nationalist risings. Timetables were now quite irrelevant. ‘It cannot be argued’, he wrote to the Labour government, that ‘a people by assumption fit to govern themselves in 1948–49, are still unfit to begin the process in 1947–48’.62 He urged the immediate passage of a House of Commons amending bill to expand the powers of the present government to include those formerly retained by the governor.63 In addition, the Burmese leaders should be rapidly invited to London to discuss outstanding issues, above all financial matters and the future position of the minorities.
Rance’s position was now unequivocal. The policies of Dorman-Smith were thrust aside. As 1946 drew to an end, Attlee and his colleagues realized that further equivocation was impossible in Burma, just at the moment the Indian situation was about to spin out of their control. They had to decide on quick independence for both countries and the form it would take. The AFPFL leadership was abruptly invited to London after New Year. The goal was to keep Burma within the Commonwealth and out of Soviet clutches. If possible, new agreements would safeguard British commercial interests in the country. The background to the talks in that cold, depressing London winter was an imminent conflagration in