Forgotten Wars_ Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia - Christopher Bayly [186]
The haggling at the conference was fierce. For instance, could the Kachin tribes who had always been in Burma proper, now called ministerial Burma, have the same rights as the Shan and the Chin or the Kokang Chinese way up on the northern border? When did local autonomy become virtual independence? How far could a future Burmese government in Rangoon accept this sort of autonomy when ominous clashes were already occurring beyond those borders, where Chinese nationalists and communists, Indian Hindus and Muslims, Vietnamese communists and the French were beginning to square up to each other? Superficially, a degree of agreement was reached. This was an easier matter on the northern and eastern frontiers. The Chin, Kachin and Shan wanted ‘roads and schools’, as one delegate said baldly. They had at least a little hope of obtaining funds for development if they stayed in some kind of united Burma after the British left. Besides, the frontier rulers were keeping a wary eye on the Chinese armies whose leaders claimed that these territories were part of their patrimony. The problem was more complex in the case of the Karens living deep in Burma, who feared for their autonomy, religion and way of life once the British had left. Whereas the representatives of the frontier areas cautiously agreed to join a new Union of Burma, the Karen majority remained unconvinced. The newly formed Karen National Union boycotted the elections to the new assembly. A delegation of its leaders waited on Rance on 25 February to tell him of the ‘restiveness’ of their people, arguing that the AFPFL had not offered enough. Their talk of autonomy was too vague.68
Aung San carefully avoided exacerbating the situation.69 He did not denounce the Karen National Union for its boycott, merely regretted it. During the months after the Panglong meeting, he did his best to show that minority interests would be constitutionally safeguarded in an independent Burma and that the Karens in particular would have virtual autonomy within a unified country.70 Although he had been doubtful about its wisdom, he agreed to the constitution of a Frontier Areas Commission of Enquiry, which was joined by Arthur Bottomley and J. L. Leyden, one of the less partisan of the frontier officers. The commission made recommendations about the number of seats to be reserved for these tracts in the new assembly.71 When the report was published Thakin Nu, who had long been suspicious of its operations, signalled his approval, conceding, in his homespun way, that ‘the proof of the pudding was in the eating’. Another sign of Aung San’s good faith on this matter was the AFPFL’s statement in May that Buddhism would not become the official faith of the new Burma. Aung San even made some disparaging remarks about political monks to keep the air sweet. This was a risky strategy as some senior figures, notably Nu, felt that the president of the new republic should automatically be a Buddhist. Certainly the priesthood had expected that Buddhism would be made the state religion.72 Rance reported to the Burma Office that he was worried by a possible Buddhist backlash.73 But he conceded that Aung San was ‘doing everything possible to improve relations between the Burmese and people of the frontier areas, particularly the Karens’.74 Before independence, at least, the gulf between minority leaders and the AFPFL had not become unbridgeable.
DISASTER APPROACHES
The British and the AFPFL continued to confront a situation of extreme delicacy. Communist insurgency and a fresh wave of strikes might result from the slightest hint that there were any conditions attached to the January agreement or that British