Among options that travel agencies offer for traveling to Yangon from Kathmandu, some of the most outlandish ones involve flying west to Dubai or going east to Kunming or Seoul to take a connecting flight to the Burmese capital. Even the most economical route turns out to be the one that entails flying east to Kuala Lumpur and then coming back west to Yangon with such a long layover in between that it takes more than twelve hours to reach a destination that appears closer than Mumbai on the map of South Asia.
Burma, however, isn't officially a South Asian country despite apparent geographical affinities, shared historical trajectories and obvious cultural similarities. Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is an India-led enterprise to bridge the distance between South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), but like most multilateral attempts in Asia that tries to keep China out of their ambit, the effort has failed to be of much use for most member countries.
The long shadow of the Chinese becomes visible from the Yangon airport itself where tourists or businessmen from neighbors up north are seen swaggering around duty-free shops. Western tourists plan their itinerary months in advance and base their schedules on weather cycles. It's supposed to be wet season in Burma between May-end and mid-October. A few westerners that can be spotted around Swedagon Pagoda are clutching an umbrella for protection from the fierce sun: A sure sign that they are either resident diplomats or members of the burgeoning NGO-industry of Southeast Asia that has discovered almost a virgin territory to expand its activities in what was a 'No Go' area until recently.
Even though the wet season in Burma is said to have begun, the country hasn't seen much rain till early July. Often obsessed with smaller things of immediate concern, governments and industry fail to notice the havoc that changes in weather pattern cause in the lives of ordinary people. Foreign investments to exploit natural resources and swarm of tourists to gawk at religious sites are all very well, but what will the rural poor eat if rains fail for prolonged period or pour down within few days to wash away crops? Only monks lazing around with coconut water far away from life in the city seem capable of asking such questions.
Beijing Consensus
Close on the heels of royal-military coup in Nepal in 1960, Burma followed suit with a Panchayat of its own in the name of "The Burmese way to Socialism". The single-party state model of Gen Ne Win and Supreme Commander-in-Chief Mahendra probably followed the same template that the Cold War strategists of USA had designed to resist possible Soviet threat in newly independent countries.
In an Orwellian manner, freedom of the press had to be curtailed to protect interests of the Free World in newly free societies where freedom was supposed to be too fragile to enjoy full freedom! Back in the early-1970s, Nepali scholars coming back from short stints at universities of USA and Europe used to recite such mantras as if they had been revealed to them by heavenly bodies rather than learned propagandists of libertarian ideology. A few Burmese still remember that the mood was so similar in what was then still Rangoon.
The demographic filters that the so-called Harka Gurung report had devised in 1984 to de-nationalize Madheshis in Nepal probably also drew inspiration from the same intellectual school of Cold Warriors that had resulted in the creation of a class of "associate citizens" in Burma in 1982 barring "non-indigenous" Burmese from public office. Disillusionment of Third Word dictators with the West probably began when the USA dropped Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (1919-1980) like a "dead mouse" after the debacle in Iran. The Burmese began to court the Chinese in earnest soon after. By the mid-nineties, nationalists of Burma had more or less changed their overseas benefactors.
If the faux "Burmese way to Socialism" of 1960s was a Western innovation, the formation of The State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) in 1988 had "Designed in Beijing" stamped all over it. The June Fourth Incident of Tiananmen Square in 1989 proved that Beijing was a possible alternative to the hegemony of the West.
The expression found popularity only after the emergence of China as the biggest economy of the world in purchasing power parity, but the essence of Beijing Consensus—illiberal politics combined with liberal economy—dates back to 1960s and 1970s when the Chicago Boys, the Berkley Mafia and the Ford Fundoos had prescribed precisely such a concoction in their client countries of South America, East Asia and the Indian Subcontinent. Like most "nationalists" of heavily militarized countries, the Burmese merely changed their masters along with the name of their country and the capital city.
While exploring and recording for a BBC 4 series on endangered languages of the world, academic, anthropologist, broadcaster and linguist Mark Turin discovered that Myanmar, the current official name of what has always been Burma, isn't actually a noun but an adjective. Myanmar can describe a language, a people or even a country but it can't stand for any of these. In order to get around the confusion, the Myanmar language was rechristened as Myanma Bhasa, which nobody understands or uses.
In the project to keep the primacy of Bamar people intact in multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Burma, there isn't much difference between the outlook and approach of military-dominated state machinery in Naypyidaw or the economic powerhouse Yangon where Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi holds sway in the civic space. Rohingyas, perhaps the most piteous of stateless minorities in the world, are as much of a pariah for the celebrated peace campaigner as her militarist prosecutors.
Her public persona as an unparalleled democrat in the international press notwithstanding, Madam Suu Kyi has failed to promise that she will honor the self-rule commitments that her revered father, assassinated freedom fighter, and founding father of modern-day Burma Bogyoke Aung San had made to non-Bamar ethnicities that had joined the Burmese Union in the hope that it will become a truly federal country. When asked whether she preferred ethnically-neutral Myanmar to Burma that directly indicated the dominant community of the country, a proponent of self-rule replied indignantly, "Same difference: One celebrates culture and other honors the name of the same people. We are nowhere in it!"
Exclusionary union
Avowedly based on 16-point conspiracy between four big parties, the draft of constitution doing the rounds is blatantly unconstitutional as it violates specific provisions of interim statute that hasn't been changed despite its proponents having more than two-thirds majority in the legislative assembly. Brought in violation of a ruling of the Supreme Court that has not been overturned, it is clearly illegal. Since provisions of the draft go against manifestos of all political parties that are taking it to the public, its contents are patently immoral. But it's very practical for it aims to maintain the HAMNS (Hindu, Aryan, Male and Nepali Speaker) hegemony in the name of democracy.
Burmese parallels post-Cyclone Nargis in the wake of the Great Shakes of April in Nepal are unmistakable. The only 'Modi-fication' that the drafters of proposed constitution in Nepal seems to have done is to agree to keep the security forces in the background. Everything else fits the pattern. Lower status for social, cultural and religious minorities; willful neglect for the rights of women, innovation of ways to muzzle the media and unrestrained rights to the paramilitary force to shoot anyone it deems fit. Welcome to the world of Guided Democracy of the twenty-first century that promises everything from peace to prosperity but refrains from mentioning autonomy and human dignity for anyone other than the PEON community.
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