Burma at the Turn of the 21st Century

–8–The Chicken and the Scorpion: Rumor, Counternarratives, and the Political Uses of Buddhism

In this chapter I analyze the meaning and content of rumors current in Burma at the beginning of the 1990s. Several years after its defeat in a general election, the military regime began to look to Buddhism as a form of moral legitimacy in order to retain political power. The period from 1990 until Aung San Suu Kyi’s release from house arrest in July 1995 was one of ascendancy for the military regime (Fink 2001:78). In conditions of military repression, opinions about the regime are likely to be expressed in rumor. Skidmore (2003a: 13) has pointed out that rumor in urban Burmese spaces has become a form of broader discourse. I propose that rumors constitute “popular resistance” under the strict control of speech censorship and that they decode the moral legitimacy of the regime by the folk rubric of lawkï pyinnya (lit.“this-worldly knowledge”). Historically, a great many rumors regarding the successive military regimes1 have existed in the public sphere, a prevalent one being that former Gen. Ne Win’s absorption in astrology was such that the economic fortunes of the country lay in the hands of fortunetellers during the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) period (1962–1988). These kinds of rumors have not, however, been regarded as reliable resources for research, especially in the fields of political science and economics. On the other hand, many anthropologists collect village rumors and use them as legitimate informant discourse.2 Such ethnography has largely been conducted in relatively small communities where rumors can be easily confirmed, and it is not difficult to identify those 154 –8– The Chicken and the Scorpion Rumor, Counternarratives, and the Political Uses of Buddhism Keiko Tosa transmitting rumors. In urban areas, however, it is difficult, if not impossible, to know the origin and extent of a rumor. Rumor has been an object of study in sociology and as a form of urban folklore.3 Morin, for example, defines rumor as a false story. He bases his argument on an analysis of Jewish trafficking of women in New Orleans as a story without any real basis (Morin 1980). Kapferer defines rumor more broadly as “the emergence and circulation in society of information which is not publicly confirmed by official sources or denied by them” (Kapferer 1990:13). He denies that an absolute reality exists in any society, emphasizing instead that truth-value is not of primary import for rumors and that reality is essentially social and exists in the place where it obtains the greatest social consensus. In this sense the creation and dissemination of Burmese rumor is truly a social act, one in which reality is contested and daily remade in the public domain. The rumors examined here were collected in Rangoon in 1991–1992, when I was conducting research on the religious practices of gaing membership and belief. Gaing is a term referring to a group of people organized around a founder who is known as a weikza (see below). Street rumors were commonly being discussed not only within my group of informants but also by the people around them, and it became clear that rumor was playing an important role for urban people. I checked on the veracity and circulation of the rumors in the central Kamayut township where I lived, and in the Ye Kyaw ward of distant Mingala Taung Nyun township where I conducted research. I asked about these rumors among a diverse range of informants including civil servants, office workers, merchants, shopkeepers, publishers, and also among people regarded as having expertise in lawkï pyinnya. I did not discuss rumors that I had heard, but instead waited for my informants to volunteer specific rumors. Among the many topics of Burmese rumors, in this chapter I focus upon a significant and prevalent kind of counterpolitical rumor that combines resistance to the regime with “traditional” folk knowledge and techniques such as astrology, omens, and yadaya (a technique for manipulating the results of astrology or portents). These forms of knowledge and practice have been documented in previous Burmese studies and in the ethnographic record.4 Astrology is consistently mentioned in these rumors concerning political power, particularly those rumors involving members of the ruling military council. Folk knowledge such as astrology is included in the broad category of lawkï pyinnya in Burma, but very little attention has been paid to this category of knowledge. This is not owing to an omission by scholars...