Dr Maung Maung: Gentleman, Scholar, Patriot

Dr Maung Maung and the Constitutions of Myanmar

441 Section VI DR MAUNG MAUNG AND THE CONSTITUTIONS OF MYANMAR If Dr Maung Maung’s patriotism drew him toward the tatmadaw in which he had briefly served and many of whose top officers were close friends of his, his journalistic avocation drew him naturally to write about the politicians, judges, and journalists who were prominent in the 1950s, again many personal friends. But his professional career as a lawyer drew him naturally to write about the constitutions of Myanmar with which he was engaged. The 1947 constitution, under which he lived and worked during the period when he wrote the overwhelming bulk of his English-language writings, in particular, was a subject about which he knew perhaps more than anyone at that time. His writings were widely read by foreigners as their key historical guide to understanding constitutional developments in Myanmar at least up to the military take over in March 1962. His writings on the constitution were so influential not only because they were erudite but also they drew a very broad picture of the role and life of the constitution, seeing it as a living set of aspirations as well as a clear guidelines for the rules and procedures with which the government, and the wider state, were to conduct their affairs. In the days soon after the height of Burma’s post-independence civil war, Myanmar’s socialist politicians sought an ideological guide that took 06฀DrMaung.indd฀฀฀441 1/24/08฀฀฀5:57:38฀PM 442 DR MAUNG MAUNG: Gentleman, Scholar, Patriot them away from the accusation that they were little different from the Communists who they were battling. They also sought to reassure both Western governments that they were not Marxists, then a particularly unacceptable word in the midst of the Cold War, and also to convince more conservative elements in Myanmar’s own society that they were not taking the country down a path which was antithetical to Buddhism, the faith of the overwhelming majority of the country. However, the 1947 constitution contained a number of leftist, if not explicitly socialist, ambitious that the government sought to achieve while maintaining its very shallow political support. This posed a serious presentational and policy issue for a government whose major domestic political opposition was on the radical left of the political spectrum. Dr Maung Maung’s article “Pyidawtha”1 described the first of several attempts by the government of U Nu and the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL) to find a doctrine that “is above party and ideology and … is in some way to help build the nation…”. Written at a time that the government of U Nu was optimistic that it had seen off its enemies and was benefiting from the Korean War boom in rice and other primary commodity prices, grand plans seemed the need of the day. Now, of course, there is little left of U Nu’s Pyidawtha, which literally translated can mean a “pleasant royal country”, than a village founded under the scheme north of Yangon and many dusty volumes of grand but unachieved plans. Like Dr Maung Maung’s essay “Pyidawtha”, which was originally written for the August 1953 issue of the Far Eastern Survey published in New York to educate Americans about neutralist Burma’s domestic political orientation and then reprinted in The Guardian, “State Socialism in Burma”2 was written to help explain what was happening in the country in 1953 to an Indian audience. Here he could be more explicit in terms providing a gloss for pyidawtha as a welfare state. As that was the goal of the Indian government of Pandit Nehru and the Congress Party, as well as an accepted term in British and European politics at that time, that was language which his intended readership would appreciate. The article then goes on to describe the plans the government had for improving the standards of living of the population as well as the health and educational provision the state intended to develop. These were the grand dreams that we saw above that Dr Maung Maung wrote had to be abandoned by the early 1960s for a more realistic assessment 06฀DrMaung.indd฀฀฀442 1/24/08฀฀฀5:57:39฀PM Dr Maung Maung and the Constitutions of Myanmar 443 of Myanmar’s economic and social possibilities under prevailing, and unpredictable, circumstances. If socialism or building a...