The Lady and the Peacock Read Free Page B

“big enough to scare away the crows,” gained spiritual merit which was obtainable in no other way. 8
    Now all this was smashed and ruined. It was worse than mere humiliation: The nation had lost its compass. In response, the Young Men’s Buddhist Association, or YMBA, in imitation of the YMCA, was established. It was a critical first step, less in defying the British than in asserting or reinventing an order that resonated with traditional Burmese beliefs. The most significant figure to emerge from this, in the feverish years after the First World War, was U Ottama: a learned Buddhist monk, who had also traveled around Asia and come back with the news that faraway Japan, another Buddhist country and one that had succeeded in repelling invaders and remaining independent, had actually beaten the Russians, a full-fledged European power, in war.
    By the 1920s, under huge pressure from Gandhi and the Congress, Britain had conceded to India important measures of self-government, and the nationalist agitators in Rangoon, advised and cajoled by Indianradicals who had slipped over from Bengal, found that, although their movement was young and raw compared to India’s, they had the wind in their sails. By the time Aung San arrived at Rangoon University from his home in the little central Burmese town of Natmauk in 1932, independence no longer seemed an impossible dream. But the more the British conceded, the more impatient the nationalists both of India and Burma became to win full independence.
    With his gauche manner, his up-country origins and his clumsy English, Aung San struggled to make an impact among the metropolitan elite of the capital’s university. But those who jeered at his contributions to the Students’ Union debates and implored him to stop trying to speak English and stick to Burmese, soon learned that this difficult, angular young man had formidable determination. He wouldn’t give up a challenge—trying to speak English, for example—until he had actually mastered it. Gradually he emerged as one of the leaders of a group of revolutionary nationalists at the university. Their ideology was hazy, leaning towards socialism and communism but with a deep commitment to Buddhism as well.
    They took to calling themselves the “Thakins”: The word means lord and master, roughly equivalent to “Sahib” in India. After conquering Burma the arrogant British had appropriated the title. Now these Burmese upstarts were demanding it back. They “proclaimed the birthright of the Burmese to be their own masters,” as Suu wrote in a sketch of her father’s life; the title “gave their names a touch of pugnacious nationalism.” 9
    Aung San and his friends were developing the courage to claw back what the invaders had stolen, beginning with pride and self-respect. He was in Rangoon for the momentous events of 1938 (year 1300 in the Burmese calendar, so known subsequently as the “Revolution of 1300”). Despite the fact that the British had already conceded a great deal, separating Burma from India and allowing the country, like India itself, to be ruled by an elected governing council under the supervision of the British governor, agitation for full independence reached its peak in that year, with peasants and oil industry workers striking and joining the students in demonstrations in Rangoon. During one baton charge to disperse the protesters, a student demonstrator was killed.
    Schools across the country struck in protest, communal riots broke outbetween Burmans and Indian Muslims, seventeen protesters died under police fire during protests in Mandalay and the government of Prime Minister Ba Maw collapsed. 10
    Then the Second World War broke out in Europe, and while Gandhi in India launched his “Quit India Movement,” demanding that the British leave at once, and Subhas Chandra Bose in Calcutta began secretly training his Indian National Army,