Contestations of Memory in Southeast Asia

2. Remembering Kings: Archives, Resistance and Memory in Colonial and Post-colonial Burma

Remembering Kings 53 53 CHAPTER 2 Remembering Kings: Archives, Resistance and Memory in Colonial and Post-colonial Burma Maitrii Aung-Thwin Memory, Nation, and Kings T he study of memory in Southeast Asia studies continues to be a topic of much attention, especially in the field’s critical reassessment of national histories (Zurburchen, 2005; Hong and Huang, 2008; Pelly, 2002; Ileto, 1998). Scholarship on the region has benefited from post-colonial critiques that have begun to resituate national narratives by exploring the particular contexts and roles of social memory in a variety of memorial and commemoration projects (Winter, 2008; Winichakhul, 1994). Broadly speaking, many of these studies reveal that nationalist agendas contributed significantly to the production of collective memory as efforts to define the national community required a reconfiguration of multiple pasts into a single, dominant narrative (Amin, 1995; Reid, 2010). Even today, Southeast Asian nations still make defining their identity through history and memory a significant priority since the particular processes and challenges associated with national integration (and resistance to these trends) are often readily apparent (Ahmad and Tan, 2003). Contemporary examples of autonomy movements in southern Thailand/northern Malaysia, southern Philippines, northeast/southeast Burma, and in numerous Indonesian locales suggest that the question of belonging to the nation has yet to be resolved by various communities throughout the region (Montesano and Jory, 2008; Gravers, 2007; Reid, 2006). The study of memorymaking projects has become an important angle through which the 54 Maitrii Aung-Thwin critique of contemporary nation-building and resistance to these efforts has been engaged (Winter, 2007). With these issues in mind, Myanmar (Burma) provides an attractive field for the study of memory and the critique of the national project as domestic, regional, and international commentators connect the debate over the country’s political future to the management and interpretation of its pasts (Skidmore, 2004; Fink, 2001; Collignan and Taylor, 2001; Lang, 2002). Recent scholarship has considered how individuals , institutions, and events in recent Burmese history have been represented, appropriated, and remembered in order to assess issues surrounding the current and future direction of the country (Michael Aung-Thwin, 1998; Silverstein, 1972; Maung Maung, 1999; Taylor, 2001; Maung Aung Myoe, 2001; Litner, 1990). Specifically, studies have attended to interpretations surrounding the political legacy and memory of Aung San (the ‘father’ of post-colonial Burma), the tumultuous 14-year period of ‘democratic’ rule following independence (1948–1962), and the more divisive memories of the 1988 uprising and 1990 constituent elections respectively (Houtman, 1999; Skidmore, 2005). While this body of scholarship recognizes attempts by Burmese (and various other communities) to define, articulate, and imagine the national community — an internal process that has been ongoing since at least World War II — it has not begun to comment on how memory has become an analytical category in the assessment of Burmese culture, politics, and history. This paper explores and compares the colonial linkages to this contemporary discourse that makes Burmese memory of past kings a defining characteristic of and method towards the construction of Burmese identity and political potential. One recurring theme that has emerged within current assessments of the country’s political future is the role of traditional Burmese kingship in relation to the state’s patronage of Buddhist institutions (Skidmore , 2005). Despite the dissolving of the monarchy by the British at the close of the third Anglo-Burmese War (1886), Burmese kingship continued to be a relevant issue in colonial and post-colonial discourses on leadership and moral authority (Michael Aung-Thwin, 1985; Miksic, 2002). Scholars suggest that the dismantling of the monarchy fundamentally altered crucial institutional, economic, and socio-religious networks that structured the pre-colonial state — a fate that neighbouring Thailand managed to avoid. Furthermore, the banishment of the last king Thibaw and his court to India also represented a significant Remembering Kings 55 change in the order of the (Buddhist) universe as there was no longer a monarch to protect and preserve the sanctity and purity of the Buddhist religion (Sarkysianz, 1965; Adas, 1979). Without the king, common Burmese were thought to have experienced a psychological and deeply traumatic cultural crisis, which engendered an enduring hope that one day, a king of Burma might return (Sarkysianz, 1965; Adas, 1979; Michael Aung-Thwin, 1985). Rebellions and resistance movements in the 1890s were regarded as being directly linked to this nostalgia, with former court...