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By Root 4619 0

punctuated by wild cheering, rambled on genially about the need for national unity, the value of statistics, the wisdom of Lenin and various thinly disguised Buddhist themes concerning the baseness of luxury, and so on. On 11 June the new constituent assembly elected that spring was inaugurated. The AFPFL delegates marched down the aisle followed by colourfully dressed tribal representatives from the frontier areas.78 Gandhi sent a message promising friendship with Burma and reminding the Burmese that the Buddha was an Indian. The city’s populace was entertained with Hollywood films, now much more popular than those contemporary British productions in which moustachioed men in trilby hats addressed each other in clipped tones. Rangoon’s city hall hosted an All-Burma beauty contest presided over by Aung San’s wife.79 The competition was intended to demonstrate the fitness of the body politic. The finalists were ‘young, but they possess firm, neat little figures’, drooled the New Times of Burma correspondent. Despite all this, politics in Rangoon and Mandalay was turning more vicious. In May Tin Tut sued the Burmese daily Bamakhit for defaming him.80 The newspaper accused the former ICS man of getting his brother appointed as an additional judge of the High Court and using his patronage as chancellor of Rangoon University to distribute jobs to his relatives: ‘one rotten fish’ could undo all the good work of Aung San’s government, the newspaper wrote. It was perhaps no coincidence that within a month the editor of Bamakhit had been called on to furnish security to the police that he would not print articles subversive of public order. To compound its offence against Tin Tut, the newspaper had printed stories such as ‘A true red flag sheds his blood freely for the country’. A communist patriot, the paper averred, would proclaim, ‘Kill me boldly in the presence of the dumb masses.’81

Ironically, the event that began the unravelling of Burma’s politics came from within the old establishment and not from the myriad of dacoits, communists or separatists in the countryside. On 16 July 1947, three days before the most fateful date in Burma’s modern history, Rance was picking up some alarming signals. The governor telegraphed London that a false demand note had led to the issue of 200 Bren guns to ‘persons unknown’ from the Base Ordnance Depot of Burma Command three weeks before.82 At about the same time 100,000 rounds of small-arms ammunition and 25,000 rounds of Sten-gun ammunition had ‘gone missing’. This had altered the balance of power in the capital and Aung San was so worried that he had called a tribunal to investigate the continuing leaks. Nu said that some young hotheads had concluded that the British were conniving in this leakage to strengthen the power of the opposition and put in power people who would accept dominion status.83 The newspapers were full of rumours of nocturnal meetings and bodies of men moving around the city and surrounding villages.

The monsoon of 1947 had been particularly heavy in Rangoon. Pools of filthy water filled the streets of the dilapidated city. The third week of July was particularly unpleasant. Khin Myo Chit, the intellectual who wrote a vivid memoir of the Japanese occupation, remembered that

rain slashed mercilessly as the winds groaned and roared, and for a full week we scarcely saw the sun. The thick shroud of rain and clouds lay on us as if never to be lifted. The 19 July 1947 was a day we shall not easily forget. The rainstorm raged more fiercely on this day and the skies were darker. The terrible aspect of all nature seemed to be in keeping with the calamity which shook the whole nation.84

That wet morning Rance was working in Government House, expecting a report later in the day on the executive council debate that was going on some miles away in the Secretariat building. An ADC suddenly burst in to say that there had been an armed attack on Aung San and the council. Within a few minutes it was confirmed that Aung San and five members of the council had been killed. It seemed