The story was all over the London as well as the Rangoon press, and a formal police inquiry was automatically begun. On 27 March at a meeting at Government House, Dorman-Smith canvassed the opinions of his chief lieutenants, and they were divided. The chief secretary to the government, Sir John Wise, said that they would legally be obliged to arrest Aung San if a formal complaint was made, but the inspector general of police argued that this would lead to rebellion. He also reminded the governor that a pardon of all wartime offenses was being discussed. The commander in chief of Burma Command, the top British military officer in the country, said that an arrest of Aung San would lead not just to rebellion but to a mutiny from within the Burma Army and that there would be no Indian troops to deal with the consequences.
Aung San quickly heard of what was happening. He was not unhappy. This would force the issue and reveal once and for all whether the British were really going to try to stay. He saw what was going on in the world. Two weeks before, Ho Chi Minh, leader of the Vietminh guerrillas, had been elected the president of North Vietnam, and the Yugoslav partisan commander, Josip Broz Tito, was setting up his new government in Belgrade. The UN Security Council had held its first session, and Clement Attlee had just promised India independence as soon as a new constitution could be agreed on. History would forgive nothing but decisiveness.
The next morning Aung San walked into Sir Reginald’s office and told him as politely but directly as he could that the story about the murder was correct and that he accepted full responsibility. The governor warned that he might have to arrest him. Two weeks later an order arrived from Whitehall telling him to do just that, and the police were instructed to comply. In the Dutch East Indies, thousands had already died in fighting between Indonesian nationalists and the returning Dutch regime. Burma seemed on the eve of a similar war, perhaps one that would eventually drag in the Chinese and the Americans as well. But then, just as policemen had gone out to serve the order, a new order arrived from London, canceling the first. Over those twenty-four hours London had lost its nerve.
Dorman-Smith then decided to press home the issue and wrote to his superiors that at this point nothing other than the establishment of a provisional government under Aung San would calm tensions. He recommended immediate elections for a constituent assembly that would pave the way for unconditional independence. The world had changed, and Aung San had positioned himself just right. Dorman-Smith was asked to come back to London and would be made the scapegoat for a year of inattention by Clement Attlee and his government. He was soon replaced as governor by Sir Hubert Rance. The British were getting ready to quit Burma.
*
By now political instability, the protests and strikes, the stillborn reconstruction, and the absence of any real law and order meant the country was a mess. Banditry was a problem almost everywhere in a country awash in guns and martial spirit and with a standard of living far below that of the 1920s. Rice was in short supply, with government price ceilings and diversion of part of the crop to famine-stricken India. The Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, the lifeline of many backwater towns, was forced to discontinue service in the delta because of fears over security. Armed guards had to be assigned to all trains, buses, and boats. On 8 June even The New York Times reported that revolution was imminent.
Against this backdrop, the British House of Commons held its first proper debate on Burma, and the government’s Burma policy was attacked from both sides. Erstwhile journalist and alleged Communist spy Tom Driberg led calls from within the Labour Party in favor of working with Aung San and the nationalists, blaming not Dorman-Smith but the old Burma establishment at Government House and the Pegu Club, who, he said, were simply incapable by their background and training of understanding the new forces around them and of being anything but patronizing in their attitude toward the Burmese. On the Conservative side, Captain Leonard Gammans said that the real mistake was not having arrested Aung San sooner as a Japanese collaborator. Restore law and order, by force if necessary, and the Burmese would regain confidence in British rule. There was no real alternative; if the British pulled out now, someone else would come in. The government, while not quite taking Driberg’s line, said that the best course forward now was working with Aung San toward a speedy independence.
On 2 September, Pandit Nehru’s provisional government took power in New Delhi. As talks continued on possible partition, Nehru made clear again that the Indian Army could play no role against Aung San. Sir Hubert Rance had just arrived as the new and last governor and was welcomed by a wave of strikes, including a police strike that soon spread, first to all government workers and then to the railways and oil industry. By late September all business and administration was at a standstill. A giant demonstration in Rangoon denounced the White Paper. Aung San knew he was gaining ground and prepared for a national strike to underline his position.
Governor Rance acted fast to show the Burmese things had changed. He met with the league on 21 September, and within two weeks a deal was made. There would be a new executive council with himself as chair and Aung San as deputy chair as well as the member in charge of defense and external affairs. The league was well represented, but other political groupings, including those of minority groups, would also be there. Aung San would be the de facto prime minister of a provincial government.
A national strike was averted, but Aung San made certain he would now set the pace. On 10 November he issued a four-part demand, including elections in April 1947, the inclusion of the hill regions in the whole process, an agreement that Burma would be independent by 31 January 1948, and a relook at economic reconstruction issues and in particular the role of British companies. Having come this far, Aung San also knew that he now needed the British to see things through and hold the country together. An armed rebellion at this point would mean that everyone would lose. He also needed to reassure minority peoples—in particular the Karens—that he could be trusted and that there would be no discrimination in an independent Burma. The lessons of India were close at hand, where vicious communal rioting in Calcutta was soon overshadowed by partition, a million refugees, and tens of thousands more dead across Bengal and the Punjab. And Rangoon was volatile. Militia commanders declaring loyalty to Aung San threatened violence and local strikes, and demonstrations continued, including one that nearly invaded the Secretariat building. With Aung San’s agreement, West African troops were sent in to patrol Rangoon, and this had good effect, but the situation was far from calm.
U AUNG SAN GOES TO LONDON
Prime Minister Attlee was now ready to accept anything, including full independence for Burma outside the new British Commonwealth. In a speech to Parliament just before Christmas holiday, he said: “We do not desire to retain within the Commonwealth and Empire any unwilling peoples. It is for the people of Burma to decide their own future … For the sake of the Burmese people, it is of the utmost importance that this should be an orderly—though rapid—progress.” He proposed inviting Burmese representatives to London to discuss a new policy. Churchill, now the opposition leader and mindful of his father’s legacy, replied that the government was throwing away “what has been gained by so many generations of toil and sacrifice … this undue haste that we should get out of Burma finally and forever.” He hoped for delay and a chance for Britain’s friends in Burma to regain the initiative. Attlee responded that both India and Ireland were examples of the British doing the right thing too late.22
Aung San and the other delegates arrived by air to a poorly heated London in the middle of a freezing cold January. For some like Tin Tut, educated at Dulwich and Cambridge, London was familiar territory, but for Aung San, wearing a greatcoat against the unfamiliar climate, it was his very first time in the West. Tin Tut, the brightest Burmese official of his generation, quickly found himself Aung San’s deputy, and together they made speedy progress and were in a good mood. By 27 January there was an agreement. The interim government would be respected as a full dominion gov
ernment (like Canada and Australia) and would control the Burma Army as soon as all Allied forces were withdrawn. A constituent assembly would be elected as soon as possible, and the final constitutional document would be presented to the British Parliament for approval. A portion of this assembly would become the provisional Burmese Parliament and would decide whether or not to remain in the Commonwealth after independence. Financial matters and the question of a future military alliance would be left to later talks. Britain would nominate Burma for membership in the United Nations.
The main problem for Aung San now was not with the British but with rivals at home. His closest colleague, Than Tun, left the league and as the leader of the Communist Party began warning of a sham independence, one that would leave the country to the mercy of British commercial interests and Anglo-American military domination. From the right, U Saw, the prewar prime minister, began making similar noises. A few months before, unknown assassins had tried to kill U Saw but only managed to blow out an eye. He blamed the league and began plotting his revenge.
On 29 January, a bitterly cold night, Aung San threw a reception at the Dorchester Hotel for the diplomatic corps and members of Parliament. The fountain outside was frozen, and small electric fires were scattered about the big drawing room to make up for the breakdown in central heating. It was the first Burmese diplomatic reception since the Kinwun’s reception on a ship in the Thames in 1874, at the beginning of what were more than sixty years of European imperialism. He was wearing a pressed major general’s uniform, and to those who knew him he seemed for the first time to be relaxed and happy. He received the visitors with politeness and assurance and was observed inquisitively by the assembled dignitaries as the young Asian man who had stood down the British Empire. They addressed him as Your Excellency. He was thirty-one years old.23
*
The most urgent challenge now for Aung San was to convince people in the hill areas to join in the new deal, all while keeping the Communists and other restless elements in check. At the little Shan town of Panglong, he gained an agreement with the Shan sawbwas that their states would be part of the new republic, while retaining a good deal of autonomy. They would also have the right to secede after ten years, in 1958; Burma would be the only British possession to gain independence with an option for a future breakup built into the constitution. The Karen leaders, though, would agree to nothing. The memories of bloodletting were too fresh, and their hope for British and American help was too strong. They insisted on a separate Karen state within the British Empire, looking perhaps to the example of Pakistan, and unperturbed by the fact that Burma’s Karen minority, like India’s Muslims, lived scattered across much of the country.
On 7 April, elections went ahead, but they were far from ideal. The Karens boycotted the entire process, and many of Aung San’s enemies refused to take part. The league naturally won a huge majority, and all its candidates were returned. One of the first things the new league-dominated Parliament did was to withdraw from the British Commonwealth. It was not an easy decision and was a great blow to the British, but it was taken when staying in the Commonwealth seemed to mean remaining a dominion and keeping the British monarch as head of state. The Indian example of being a republic in the Commonwealth was in the future. At a time when the Communists and U Saw were attacking Aung San’s “sham independence” deal, he could not afford to give them any further ammunition.
*
Aung San’s Executive Council—the interim government—was made up of many, if not all, of the country’s most promising new leaders. It did not include Than Tun and the Communists, many of whom were clever and capable, but it did include many other men on whom any bright future would depend, not only ethnic Burmese like Aung San and Tin Tut, but also the Karen leader Mahn Ba Khaing, whom Aung San had persuaded to join; Sao Hsam Htun,* one of the Shan chiefs; and Adul Razak, a Muslim leader of considerable standing from Mandalay. The Council normally met under Sir Hubert’s chairmanship at Government House, but it decided to meet on the morning of 19 July at the Secretariat instead, as there was nothing in the agenda on that muggy and overcast day that would concern the governor’s residual areas of responsibility.
The Secretariat is today surrounded by a high wall as well as an outer fence, with coils of barbed wire in between, but in 1947 there was no real protective barrier. In any case the car that sped in at just before half past ten in the light drizzle, through the front entrance off Dalhousie Street and into the central courtyard, was carrying men in army fatigues. They were unchallenged by the sentries on duty. Three of them, armed with Sten guns, then raced up one of the stairways, shot the single guard standing outside, and burst into the council chamber, where the meeting was taking place, opening fire immediately. Apparently having heard the gunshots outside, Aung San stood up as the doors were flung open and was shot first with a volley in the chest. The gunman then fired to Aung San’s right and left, killing four other council members on the spot and mortally wounding two others. Only three of those in the room survived. Aung San was dead.24
There was now the danger of an uprising by the Communists or a coup. Rumors spread that the British were behind the killings. The only council member who was not present was U Nu; assassins had rushed to his house, but he had luckily been away. Governor Rance quickly asked him to take over and form a new council, which was sworn in the next day. But who had been responsible?
It soon emerged that U Saw, Aung San’s bitter rival who had lost an eye, had been at the center of a plot that also involved British officers. To this day conspiracy theories abound, linking the assassination with the British government. But it seems certain that these British officers were acting on their own; Aung San was increasingly seen by London as an asset against a Communist takeover, and there would seem little reason for the Labour government in London at this point to want him dead. But an inquiry by Rance showed that in June and July arms and equipment from the (still British-controlled) Army Ordnance Depot had found its way (through forged documents) into the hands of U Saw’s men and that U Saw had directly paid two British Army officers. Another British officer had reported to his superiors that U Saw himself admitted stealing the arms, and on reading this report, the senior officer simply filed it away, rather than tell the police. The senior officer, the chief of the Ordnance Depot, claims to have forgotten all about it until after the assassination. U Nu was told of this but decided not to reveal all the facts to a Burmese public that would have demanded retribution.25 Instead U Saw, the man who actually organized the assassination, was tried before a Burmese court, denied an appeal to the House of Lords, and was hanged.
*
The drama surrounding the country’s independence was part of many great changes occurring across an exhausted but fast-changing postwar world. Just as soon as the United Nations was up and running, a new cold war between the West and the Soviet Union was creeping up over the international landscape. In May 1947 President Harry S. Truman unveiled his Truman Doctrine, proclaiming that the United States would come to the aid of peoples threatened by Communist insurrection. Aid was delivered to anti-Communist forces in Turkey and Greece, and a forty-year policy of containment was begun.
World attention was elsewhere. In November 1947 the United Nations General Assembly had voted to partition Palestine between Jews and Arabs, and within months six Arab armies invaded the new state of Israel. Closer to home, the partition of India into independent India and Pakistan had left up to a million dead, made ten million refugees, and, in October, ignited the very first Indo-Pakistani War over the fate of Kashmir. The 30 January assassination of Mahatma Gandhi underscored the end of an era. Britain was in full retreat. Even more ominously, on 24 June, the Soviet Union began its blockade of Berlin, threatening to turn the cold war into a nuclear confrontation.
Independent Burma would very soon enter this world with several of its key leaders, including its nationalist hero, dead, its principal minority demanding an independent state, and a
nother nationalist leader getting ready to lead a Communist rebellion. It was not to be an auspicious start.
Notes – 10: MAKING THE BATTLEFIELD
1. On the war, I’ve drawn mainly on Louis Allen, Burma, the Longest War, 1941–45 (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1984); Maurice Collis, Last and First in Burma (London: Faber and Faber, 1956); and Viscount William Slim, Defeat into Victory (London: Cassell, 1956).
2. Collis, Last and First in Burma, 40–42.
3. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, 86.
4. Collis, Last and First in Burma, 104–105.
5. Ibid., 158–67.
6. Ibid., 178.
7. Donald M. Seekins, “Burma’s Japanese Interlude, 1941–45: Did Japan Liberate Burma?,” Japan Policy Research Institute Working Paper No. 87 (August 2002); on Aung San’s political views, see also Clive Christie, Ideology and Revolution in Southeast Asia, 1900–1975 (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2000), 102–104.
8. Quoted in Ba Maw, Breakthrough in Burma, 127.
9. Mercado, Shadow Warriors of Nakano, 238.
10. On life in the Ba Maw government, see Thakin Nu, Burma Under the Japanese (London: Macmillan, 1954).
11. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, 360.
12. Slim, Defeat into Victory, 517–19.
13. On the views of conservative Burmese officials, see Kyaw Min, The Burma We Love (Calcutta: Bharati Bhavan, 1945).
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