The Concepts of Dobama ("Our Burma") and Thudo-Bama ("Their Burma") in Burmese Nationalism, 1930-1948

This article attempts to demonstrate the interdependent operation of the term dobama ("our Burma") and its opposite, thudo-bama ("their Burma"), in the minds of members of the Dobama-asiayoun ("Our Burma Party"). From the party's very beginning in 1930 to the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League's struggle against Japanese rule and subsequently for independence from the British from 1944 to 1947, Dobama party members, known as "thahkins," avoided being identified as thudo-bama, meaning "the Burmese of their (the British or Japanese) side" or "the Burmese people who collaborated with the colonial regime." Instead, they invariably identified themselves as dobama, or "our Burmese." The thahkins preferred to define themselves in negative rather than positive terms. In other words, they chose to identify themselves by describing what they were not rather than what they were, and by attacking their imagined enemies, the thudo-bama, rather than attempting a clear definition of dobama.