Forgotten Wars_ Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia - Christopher Bayly [184]
The Shan and Kachin frontier areas and the Karens of the plains were equally restive. British officers remained a problem here. Noel Stevenson, long-time advocate of the minorities, privately spoke of the British government’s ‘betrayal’ of them. He seems to have been urging the Karen Democratic Union to adopt a tougher stand. So troublesome did he become that Rance wrote to Sir Gilbert Laithwaite, the civil service expert on Burma, that he was ‘very disturbed at Stevenson’s tactics during the past few weeks. Some of his telegrams to the Frontier Areas Administration are on the verge of disloyalty.’ He was ‘almost a fanatic where the frontier areas are concerned’.59 Stevenson had apparently disparaged a Buddhist monk and a Burman district commissioner in the course of talks about the future of the frontier areas, rekindling the old AFPFL suspicion of British divide-and-rule tactics. Thakin Nu even complained to Rance that the British were dropping arms to the Karens as a preliminary to a full-scale revolt, a rumour that Rance had explicitly to deny.60
Then, on 27 January, the British government announced the successful conclusion of the negotiations for Burmese independence. A smiling Aung San, accompanied by Attlee and Tin Tut, emerged onto the steps of 10 Downing Street to speak to the world’s press. Burma would be independent in January 1948.61 New elections would be held. Arrangements for the frontier areas, the minorities and the future of British business in Burma were settled to the satisfaction of both sides. The British still hoped secretly that the AFPFL could be persuaded to stay in the Commonwealth but the issue was shelved in order to maintain the optimistic atmosphere. Aung San knew better. The night before he returned to Burma he had met Tom Driberg one last time. Driberg thought him depressed and full of foreboding, despite his public face of rejoicing. It would be best for Burma to stay in the Commonwealth, Aung San said, but he could not persuade his people.62 A few days later at a press conference in Rangoon, Aung San announced that full elections would be held in the near future leading to the creation of an interim government. It would have the powers of a dominion government such as in Australia or Canada. He made sure to mention that the situation was exactly the same as it was in India, except that Burma did not have a minority problem like that of the Indian Muslims.63 This must have given him great satisfaction, even if it was tinged with apprehension.
Aung San’s first steps as a virtually independent political leader were remarkably sure, despite the massive problems the country faced. It is this, as much as his military exploits, which has kept his reputation high after his death. In the first place the leftist elements still within the AFPFL were less than enthusiastic about the London agreement and the communists were implacably opposed to it. Kyaw Nyein remembered acrimonious arguments in which communists asked each other: ‘Why must you be afraid of Aung San? [Our] party has authority and leadership in the countryside and must assert its power over Aung San… We want a Dictatorship of the Proletariat and not Parliamentary Socialism.’64
Even before he left for London Aung San had been talking of a Burma which would be ‘a federation of all the races and the frontier areas’. He spoke of local governments in minority areas with their own financial independence