Dr Maung Maung: Gentleman, Scholar, Patriot

Dr Maung Maung and Biography

63 Section III Despite the important role that Dr Maung Maung played in Myanmar’s journalistic world from the cusp of independence until the time of the Revolutionary Council government, he wrote and spoke relatively infrequently on that aspect of his life. As discussed above, while his career as a newspaper editor was relatively short, less than a year, and perhaps occasionally between 1955 and 1958, these were very tumultuous times in Myanmar’s history. Though he was a mere twenty-two years of age when he commenced his editorial career, he was responsible, under the direction of U Thant and with the assistance of Tawtha (jungle man) U Khin Maung, for one of Yangon’s leading English language publications at a time when the world was trying to understand what a post-independence Myanmar would be like. Dr Maung Maung clearly enjoyed that period and frequently retold the story of how the clerk of a newly appointed judge telephoned the paper on one occasion to complain that “The Honorable” had not been included in his title in an article about a foreign trip he was making. U Khin Maung told the man to complain to the Prime Minister and took two sips from his “amber medicine” (i.e., Scotch) bottle that apparently he had cause to frequent throughout the editorial day.1 Dr Maung Maung DR MAUNG MAUNG AND BIOGRAPHY 03฀DrMaung.indd฀฀฀63 2/28/08฀฀฀1:49:20฀PM 64 DR MAUNG MAUNG: Gentleman, Scholar, Patriot had no resort to his own medicine drawer. However, he managed to put in an edition of the paper a bit of doggerel that would deflate the pomposity of the most pretentious of judges. His role in the founding of The Guardian magazine and eventual daily newspaper was also not insignificant. As he describes it, he and a group of friends pooled their resources to launch the venture in 1954,2 each buying 500 kyat worth of shares. Eventually the daily newspaper that they founded moved to the press owned by the Army-back Myawaddy press and Guardian Sein Win, who had previously worked for The Nation, was appointed editor.3 The Myawaddy press was backed by the Defence Services Institute (DSI). The DSI, formed by the army under Colonel Aung Gyi, was an organization established to provide inexpensive food and other necessities to members of the armed forces. It soon, however, grew to be the largest business in the country. Like its daily offshoot, The Guardian soon established itself and became the leading English-language Myanmar monthly periodical. All of the major authors in the country who wrote in English were contributors and it soon had a sizeable following.4 Amongst the features of The Guardian most sought by its readers were the biographies and related articles that Dr Maung Maung regularly contributed. These involved lengthy interviews with their subjects, generally important politicians or leading figures in Myanmar’s political firmament in the 1950s. In some cases, they remain to this day the only description of the character and nature of some of modern Myanmar’s most important political actors during the first decade after independence. As for individuals about whom he wrote that were either “underground” (i.e., in armed rebellion against the government of U Nu) or deceased, he relied heavily on his memory from the times he had met with them in 1947–48 when he was editing the New Times of Burma or earlier during the nationalist struggle. Selected for reprinting are twenty-five of the profiles that Dr Maung Maung wrote between 1954 and probably 1962. Missing from the list of some of the most prominent figures of the day about whom one would have expected him to have attempted to write. Among the missing were the Prime Minister, U Nu, from the political elite and Brigadiers Aung Gyi and Maung Maung from the military elite, though then Colonel Aung Gyi was a contributor to the issue in which the first of 03฀DrMaung.indd฀฀฀64 2/28/08฀฀฀1:49:20฀PM Dr Maung Maung and Biography 65 the “sketches of men and women who matter”, according to the preface to the article about the Speaker of the House of Deputies (lower house of the parliament under the 1947 constitution), Bo Hmu Aung,5 in May 1954. Not surprisingly, the first five persons Dr Maung Maung profiled were...