Reprinted from Asian Survey, vol. 31, no. 9 (pp. 793–7), by permission of the Regents of the University of California. An editorial note explained how it had been submitted in draft to the journal some years earlier and that it was decided to publish it as it stood, even though the author had intended to make further revisions. In her accompanying letter to Asian Survey the author explained her wish to reprint the essay eventually in a volume dedicated to her father: ‘The more I learn about modern Burmese politics the more I realize how essential is my father’s role in keeping alive the spirit of truth and justice during all these years under a corrupt regime. When I honour my father I honour all those who stand for political integrity in Burma.’
Boh is the official Burmese term for an army lieutenant. But in common parlance a boh is any military officer, a commander, a leader. It was in that sense that the word was applied to officers of the fledgling Burma Independence Army when it first made its appearance on Burmese soil in 1942, vibrant with the hopes of a country poised to realize its dream of freedom. In the febrile, hazardous atmosphere of wartime, heroes were at a premium and every boh was seen through a haze of glamour and romance. Foremost among them was Aung San, barely twenty-seven, intense, upright, the very image of the patriotic young commander-in-chief, inspiring poetry and song.
You must give birth to heroes
Like Boh Aung San …
He will make history
His deeds will be recorded in annals
The noble Boh Aung San.
Such adulation would have intoxicated men of greater age and experience, but Aung San remained steady and clear-sighted, kept stone-sober by the extremely high standards he set himself. On a not untypical occasion when a panegyric was read out hailing him as one who would be renowned in world history, he remarked crisply that, let alone the history of the world, he had not yet earned himself a place even in the history of Burma. After he had led his army through the resistance movement against the Japanese and when negotiations with the re-established British administration had reached the stage where he had been appointed the Deputy Chairman of the Governor’s Executive Council, he was still saying: ‘I have not even started, I have not yet done anything, so if there is to be praise I do not want it yet.’ By that time he was already a national hero, the acknowledged leader of the people of Burma, known throughout the country simply as ‘our Bogyoke‘.
Bogyoke indicates the rank of major-general, but as applied to Aung San the title acquired a unique significance in Burma. It stood for the father of the army, for strong, selfless leadership, for a ‘ruler of Bohs’ in the best sense of its literal meaning. Boh is derived from bala, the Pali word for strength. But the dividing line between praiseworthy strength and undesirable force is very thin. For when kara, action, is joined to bala, it becomes balakara, violence. In other words, strength turns destructive when acted out beyond acceptable limits. The menace which might, uncontrolled by principle, poses is predictably greatest in times made turbulent by sweeping social or political changes, and it was at such a time that Aung San found himself at the helm of the Burmese struggle for independence. The product of a Buddhist monastery school, he would have acquired early the concept of strength as a mental and spiritual force, learning that the five bala (synonymous with the five indriya or controlling faculties) were confidence, energy, mindfulness, mental discipline and wisdom. The five strengths which were desirable from a wordly point of view – those of conduct, body, wealth, knowledge and friendship – would be considered relatively inferior, capable of reaching honourable fruition only when regulated by a proper cultivation of the mind and spirit. But Aung San was not influenced simply by an intellectual understanding of the positive and negative aspects of strength. As the commander-in-chief of a young army which had to be welded into a responsible military organization and as the leader of a national movement which comprised many volatile elements, he was well acquainted with the practical dangers of undisciplined force.
Aung San visualized the army he had founded as an austere and honourable institution carved out of such rock-solid virtues as incorruptibility, self-sacrifice and self-discipline, its strength wholly dedicated to the service of the nation without thought of personal gain. He exhorted his soldiers to refrain from adopting a stance which would make their strength of arms seem an instrument of oppression. Pointing out the human tendency of the strong to bully the weak, he urged the fearless opposition of immoral strength and the practice of scrupulous justice towards the weak. He warned that if the army came to be detested by the people, the reason for which it had been founded would be vitiated. ‘This army must be such that … the people can revere it, take refuge in it, depend on it.’ And to deserve the respect and affection of the country there must be a continuous striving for excellence. But it had to be excellence without élitism. Aung San stated in unambiguous terms that the Burmese army had not been founded for one man or one party, it was for the whole country. He rejected the blinkered view of those military personnel who harboured the opinion that only they were capable of patriotism. ‘There are others who are not soldiers who have suffered and made all kinds of sacrifices for their country … You must change this notion that only the soldiers matter.’
Aung San would admonish his soldiers sternly not because, he explained, he wished to undermine the army but because he wanted to make it quite clear that ‘although we bear arms, we do not commit injustices, we are not the nation’s enemies, we are the nation’s friends’. For him the honour of the nation meant the honour of the people, and the honour of the people was inextricably linked with his own honour and that of his soldiers. His ideal of the armed forces was one in which the conduct of every single member would have been instinctive with the sentiment expressed in the lines of an eighteenth-century courtier-poet, Let-We Thondara (c. 1723–99):
How superior
The tactics of war
How potent
The weapons!
Without gathering in
The hearts of the people,
Without relying on
The strength of the people,
The sword edge
Will shatter,
The spear
Will bend.
That Bogyoke Aung San himself gathered in the hearts of his countrymen and that he relied on their strength became increasingly manifest as the independence movement approached its climax. He asked the people to stand firm and resolute behind him in the struggle, for he held that no man however able could successfully conclude any national enterprise of historic significance without the support and active co-operation of the public. He knew that genuine support could not be coerced and he would not stoop to court it with flattery or false promises. He saw plain honesty as the only foundation for the mutual trust and respect which would have to be established between him and the people of Burma if they were to carry out unitedly the task of creating an independent, self-reliant nation out of a land devastated by war. To indulge in political guile and deceit would be to insult the people and to violate his own self-respect.
Aung San simply worked on the assumption that the majority of the people of Burma were wise, that they preferred the true to the false and that they were capable of distinguishing between the two. The assumption could not have been false, for the people reciprocated by giving him their full understanding and placing their united strength behind his endeavours, returning in the elections of April 1947 an overwhelming majority of candidates from his Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League.
Aung San did not much care for the trappings of governmental power, but his standing as the chosen leader of the people he frankly cherished. He took the responsibilities of leadership very seriously, seeing it as a trust which had been earned through his courage to do what he believed to be right without fear of calumny or death, and which would have to be forfeited if he failed in his duties towards the nation. When he said that the day he and his government lost the respect of the country they would resign, the people knew that it was not mere rhetoric, that it was a promise which would not be broken. To rule without honour held no attractions for a soldier-statesman for whom strength had value only when it served a just cause.
The heroes of a people represent their aspirations, while their actual leaders reflect the degree to which these aspirations are capable of being realized. In those rare moments of history when the two coincide there is an inner harmony and a climactic release of spiritual and physical vigour, the memory of which constitutes a reservoir of strength and pride which can be drawn upon when the times are impoverished of dignity and achievement. During the brief years of Aung San’s leadership, the people of Burma were filled with the hope and purposeful energy of those who had been given confidence in their own worth. Even when their Bogyoke rebuked them with characteristic bluntness for their lack of diligence, perseverance and discipline, they were undismayed, encouraged to further exertions by the sure knowledge that he considered them desirous of correcting their shortcomings as he desired to correct his own.
Aung San saw life as a ‘pilgrimage in quest of truth and perfection’ and he sought to carry his country with him in the quest. That he succeeded to an astonishing degree in what might seem as an almost quixotic undertaking was a tribute to the people of Burma as well as to Aung San’s ability to put his words into action, to demonstrate that integrity and honesty could be an effective basis for practical politics. He was a soldier who could fight – and fight well – when he had to fight, but who when the fighting was over could lay aside his sword without fear and pursue the path of peace. When political power came into his hands he could say with absolute sincerity and a complete lack of self-consciousness that he would govern ‘on the basis of loving kindness and truth’. Those who followed him could feel secure in the certainty that he would not be prodigal with their lives, their happiness or their trust. He was not, as he put it, a political stunt man who would put his country into an unnecessary turmoil. He boldly guaranteed that if the people would place their confidence in his leadership, independence would be achieved within a year, as peaceably as possible: ‘You know that I have never broken my promises.’ These words were spoken exactly eleven months before the Union of Burma was declared an independent republic on 4 January 1948.
Aung San was no longer alive when independence came to his country. The basic tendency to regard his fellow men as intelligent beings amenable to reason and responsive to genuine goodwill made him vulnerable to the treachery of opponents who were less concerned with principles than with the drive to gain power. It has been said that if he had given as much thought to his personal safety as he had to the realization of his dreams for Burma, he would not have fallen victim to the bullets of assassins. But then he would not have been the Aung San whom the people of Burma regard as their Bogyoke, the supreme boh who brought to life the tradition of the leader who is the strength of the nation.