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BULLETIN OF THE BURMA STUDIES GROUP
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Burma Workshop (Atelier Birmanie), Université de Provence Marseille, France on June 18-20, 2009
Number 83 Spring 2009 Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group Southeast Asia Council Association for Asian Studies Number 83, Spring, 2009
Editor Ward Keeler Department of Anthropology University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX 78712 email: [email protected]
Assistant Editor Jake Carbine CONTENTS Franklin & Marshall ______email: [email protected]
Book Review Editor Introduction ...... 2 Leedom Lefferts Department of Anthropology A “Wicked Creeping:” The Chettiars Drew University in Burma...... 2 Madison, NJ 07940-4000 email: [email protected] Burma Workshop, Université de Provence ...... 12 Subscription Manager Catherine Raymond Recent Dissertations on Burmese The Center for Burma Studies Topics ...... 18 Northern Illinois University DeKalb, 60115-2853 Recent Publications of Note...... 22 office: (815) 753-0512 fax: (815) 753-1776 The Nargis Library Recovery email: [email protected] Project ...... 24 web: www.grad.niu.edu/burma Burma Studies Conference 2010, Subscriptions Call for Papers...... 25 Individuals and Institutions: $30 (Includes Journal of Burma Studies) Send checks, payable to The Center for Burma Studies, or email Beth Bjorneby at [email protected] (Visa and Mastercard accepted only).
Next Issue Fall, 2009 (Submissions due October) ______
Introduction A “Wicked Creeping:” ______The Chettiars in Burma ______Just as the months of the northern summer brought Burma into the news for unfortunate Reading through a copy of Cornell reasons last year, the same must be said for University’s Southeast Asia Program this year, as well. The current intermingling Bulletin last year, I was fascinated to read of legal proceedings and political Sean Turnell’s article about the Chettiars in machinations in Rangoon make the picture, Burma. It occurred to me that many readers never clear, particularly murky. Yet efforts of the BBSG would share my interest but to make sense of the present always benefit would not see it if they were not Cornell from greater awareness of the past. So it alumni. Sean and Thamora Fishel, who edits seems appropriate to devote much of this the SEAP Bulletin, have graciously granted issue to an article by Sean Turnell, reprinted us permission to reprint the article here. from Cornell’s Southeast Asia Program Bulletin, about the Chettiars in Burma. Sean, who is Associate Professor of Following this, I provide my informal log of Economics at Macquarie University in a very interesting, relatively small-scale but Sydney, is well-known to many of us, of highly enjoyable conference about Burma course. He spoke at last fall’s Burma Studies that took place at the Université de Provence Conference in DeKalb, and he is cited, in June. Put on by people who are helping quoted—and clearly greatly admired by— to organize the Burma Studies Conference to journalists and academics the world over for take place at the same location next July, the his impressive knowledge of Burma’s success of this year’s conference bodes very economic affairs and his ability to discuss well for next year’s larger endeavor. The the topic intelligibly. His book examining remainder of the issue provides information the history of Burma’s monetary and about recent dissertations concerning financial system, Fiery Dragons: Banks, Burma, some new publications about Moneylenders and Microfinance in Burma, Burma, efforts to help Burma’s libraries has just been published (2009) by the Nordic recover from the damage caused by Cyclone Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) Press. Nargis, and finally, the call for papers for —The Editor next year’s BSG conference. —The Editor The economic history of Burma contains a myriad of controversial themes, but none has been quite as divisive as the role of the Chettiars. A community of moneylenders indigenous to Southern India, the Chettiars operated throughout the Southeast Asian territories of the British Empire. They played a particularly prominent role in Burma, where they became the major
2 / Spring 2009 Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group providers of the capital that turned the Burma. Of course, for the full story one country into the ―rice-bowl‖ of the region. could hardly do better than to consult the Yet, the Chettiars were also vilified as vast array of primary sources on Burma held rapacious usurers whose real purpose was to by the marvelous Kroch Library at Cornell. seize the land of the Burmese cultivator. There are plenty of reasons to visit SEAP This accusation became widespread in the and Cornell – but this was excuse enough wake of the global depression of the 1930s, for me! during which paddy prices collapsed. This collapse, and the fact that the Chettiars The Chettiars in Burma applied British land-title law to enforce collateral pledges against their loans, The Chettiars came from the Chettinad tract brought about a substantial transfer of of what is now Tamil Nadu. A distinct sect Burma’s cultivable land into their hands. of the Vaisya (commercial) caste, the Demonized thereafter, the Chettiars fled Chettiars were originally salt traders who, Burma when the country fell to the Japanese sometime in the eighteenth century, became in 1942. They were never to return. more widely known as financiers and Effectively banished by successive Burmese facilitators for the trade in a range of governments, the Chettiars remain reviled commodities. By the early nineteenth figures in the country to the present day. century, however, finance had become the abiding specialization of the Chettiars, and In 2006 I spent my time at SEAP and they became famed lenders to India’s great Cornell (as a Visiting Fellow) completing a land-owning families (zaminders) and in book on Burma’s monetary and financial underwriting trade through the provision of history, in which the Chettiars have a hundis (more on that later). starring role. In the book, however, I deliver a ―not guilty‖ verdict with respect to the The first, substantial, expansion of the charges against the Chettiars. Applying Chettiars beyond their homeland was to modern economic theory to the issue, I (what was then) Ceylon, sometime in the found that the success of the Chettiars in second decade of the eighteenth century. Burma lay less in the high interest rates they The motivation seems to have been simply charged, than it did in patterns of internal the offer of higher returns on their capital– organization that provided solutions to the nearly double that which they could earn at inherent problems faced by financial home. Establishing links with European intermediaries. A proper functioning banks, they followed the British Empire into financial system could have provided better (what is now) Malaysia and Singapore, solutions perhaps for Burma’s long-term Indonesia, Thailand, as well as the former development, but Burma did not have such a French colonial territories of Vietnam, Laos system, then or now. Easy scapegoats for and Cambodia. Of all their overseas spheres what went wrong, I believe the Chettiars of operations, however, it was Burma that merit history’s better judgment. dominated. The tin, rubber, tea and opium trades of maritime Asia created a ready In what follows I offer something of a demand for Chettiar capital, but this was vignette into the story of the Chettiars in significantly overshadowed by the volume
Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group Spring 2009 / 3 of credit demand, and the quality of the newly become interested in the country. collateral, that could be yielded from the This role was similar to that played by expanding ―rice frontier‖ of Burma. compradors elsewhere in Southeast Asia. It was celebrated thus by the Diwan Bahadur The first Chettiars arrived in Burma at the Murugappa Chettiar, the leading outset of British rule – in 1826 spokesperson for the Chettiars in Burma at a accompanying Indian troops and laborers government enquiry into their activities in following the first Anglo-Burmese war. It 1930: The banking concerns carrying on was, however, the opening of the Suez business on European lines did not and do Canal in 1869 and the passing of the Burma not care to run the risk of advancing money Land Act in 1876 that brought about the first to indigenous cultivators and traders; and it substantial movement of Chettiars into is left to the Chettiars to undertake the Burma. Cutting shipping times to and from financing of such classes, dealings with Europe by half, the opening of the Suez whom are naturally a source of heavy risks. Canal not only directly opened up European So far as banking business is concerned the markets to rice exports from Burma, it also Chettiar banker is the financial back-bone of stimulated demand for the commodity more the people…. generally in a region suddenly exposed to greatly expanded commercial opportunities. Chettiar Banking Operations Meanwhile the Burma Land Act revolutionized land tenure arrangements in The Chettiars carried out an extraordinarily Burma, essentially importing British wide range of banking business in Burma. ―property rights‖ and creating the ability of They made loans, took in deposits, remitted cultivators to pledge land as collateral funds, discounted hundis, honored checks, against loans such as those offered by the exchanged money, dealt in gold, and kept Chettiars. By 1880 the Chettiars had fanned valuables for safe-keeping. They were, in out throughout Burma and by the end of the essence, a ―one-stop-shop‖ that covered century they had become by far the most pretty much the gamut of financial needs, significant providers of capital to the especially those of agriculturalists and cultivators that were transforming Burma cultivators. But, of course, the Chettiars into the ―rice bowl‖ of renown. By 1930 were known above all for lending money there were nearly 2,000 Chettiar offices and in this activity they were extraordinarily throughout Burma (most concentrated in liberal. They avoided obvious speculative Rangoon and the Irrawaddy Delta), loans, but were otherwise willing to lend supporting total lending of almost 1 billion more or less for any enterprise that offered rupees (about $US3.5 billion today) – or security and profit. Importantly, their loans roughly equivalent to that of all British were not determined by the purpose of the investments in Burma combined. A deeply loan or the identity of the borrower – a significant role played by the Chettiars was commercial virtue that brought with it the the way in which they functioned as a considerable social virtue that they dealt ―bridge‖ between what had formerly been with people of all races, classes and creeds the subsistence agricultural economy of on equal terms. This was not something that Burma, and the European banks that had could be said of most other lenders in
4 / Spring 2009 Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group Burma. Chettiar lending was their use in informal remittance systems, in overwhelmingly made to agriculturalists, but which context the word hundi has an this was because it was precisely this sector identical meaning to hawala, hui kwan, that most fulfilled their profitability and chiao hui, poey kwan – and various similar security prerequisites, rather than any but differently named instruments in use philosophical predisposition to rural around the world. The word ―hundi‖ is pursuits. Crop-loans and loans for land derived from Sanskrit and means simply to purchase, redemption and improvement, ―collect‖. Its origins can be readily were the most common forms of Chettiar identified by the fact that ―hundi‖ is also the lending to agriculturalists. Cultivators word employed to describe the collection typically drew multiple loans from their box in a Hindu temple. Chettiar lender throughout the year according to season – for the purchase of Chettiars generally did not charge for hundis seed, transplanting and broadcasting, for issued to people who were otherwise their payments to laborers, for the purchase of customers as borrowers or depositors. For cattle, to repair dykes and borders, and to people for whom they had no existing meet general expenses. These multiple loans relationship, charges were not much more constituted a type of ―revolving credit‖ than a couple of ―annas‖ per 100 rupees. facility, upon which repayment was due Such charges were very competitive with only once a year, after the sale of the other remittance forms, but perhaps the cultivator’s crop. Recognizing the essential greatest competitive advantage enjoyed by fungibility of money, however, (a fact often the Chettiars was the ubiquity of their overlooked by other lenders in Burma) presence – enabling hundis to be sent to Chettiars also lent for a range of cultivator Rangoon, and to cities throughout South and needs – for marriage expenses, funerals, South- East Asia, from all but the humblest religious and other social festivities, and for of villages. household contingencies generally. Chettiars were also the providers of funds to Interest Rates other lenders – primarily Burmese, and a mixture of professional moneylenders and One component of the hostility to the large land-owning families who on-lent Chettiars was the accusation that the interest (mostly to their employees and tenants) for rates they charged were usurious and, as consumption purposes. One of the most such, were the means by which later loan important financial products provided by the default and the seizure of land was activated. Chettiars in Burma were hundis. Hundis The question of Chettiar interest rates is not were (and are) bills of exchange that could easily settled, not least because of the data be used both to remit funds and to advance problems that might be expected given the credit. An ancient financial device used in passage of time, and the relative informality India and surrounding countries well-before of the transactions in question. Very high the dominance of Europeans in regional Chettiar interest rates have been reported commerce, they were integral to the down the years, but most reliable accounts operation of indigenous bankers such as the do not usually have them exceeding 25 Chettiars. Today hundis are well-known for percent per annum, and even rates of this
Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group Spring 2009 / 5 magnitude tended to be restricted to loans sophistication was required to explain the without collateral. Typical cultivator loans charges of ―usurers,‖ ―parasites,‖ ―loan secured against land seem to have averaged sharks,‖ ―shylocks,‖ ―leeches,‖ ―vampires,‖ from 9 to 15 percent. To modern eyes, used ―dragons‖ – and all the other derogatory to assessing interest rates in formal financial labels that have been created for the markets in a low inflationary environment, moneylender down the ages. Of course there rates of 12 to 25 percent look quite high. were, and no doubt are, many examples of Compared to typical moneylender rates of rapacious moneylenders bent on the era, however, they were surprisingly expropriating land and bonding labor low. This was especially true when one through debt. Economists, however, are considers the interest rates charged by the (arguably) rarely satisfied with simple Chettiars’ competitors – the credit provided answers that ascribe generalized economic by Burmese moneylenders, shopkeepers behavior to moral predilections. As such, (indigenous and non-indigenous), landlords, especially over the last three decades, a large employers and so on. On this score, the literature has grown up that has attempted to Chettiars compared very favorably. The explain the behavior of moneylenders and interest rates charged by non-Chettiar the markets they operate in. Prominent in moneylenders in Burma varied enormously, this literature is the concept of ―transaction but it is amongst this cohort that ―true costs.‖ In the context of moneylending, usury‖ was perhaps apparent. This was ―transaction costs‖ is the umbrella term used especially the case with regard to so-called by economists to refer to the expenses that sabape loans – advances made ―in kind‖ creditors confront when making a loan. (usually in rice) to cultivators to be repaid These include the costs of identifying and after harvest. Such loans, most often made screening borrowers, processing and by Burmese landlords to their cultivator dispersing loans, collecting and monitoring tenants and farm labourers, were subject to repayments, assessing collateral, ―policing‖ all manner of social norms, but the interest and salvaging loan delinquencies, and so on. rates applicable on them usually ranged Such costs are essentially invariant to the from 8 to 10 per cent per month – in per size of the loan – meaning that they loom annum terms between around 150 and 220 larger, in percentage terms, the smaller the per cent. size of the loan. Of course, it is precisely such ―small‖ loans that are usually the stock A Modern Appraisal of Chettiar Interest and trade of moneylenders. Very little data Rates has survived regarding transaction costs for the Chettiars in Burma, but modern studies The interest rates charged by moneylenders of informal lenders in Burma and elsewhere such as the Chettiars have, until recently, typically estimate ―administrative costs‖ of attracted little in the way of intellectual about 5 to 10 per cent of their loan book. attention. This is understandable. For Given advances in information technology millennia the actions of moneylenders have in the intervening decades, it is difficult to been easily explainable as simply the imagine that the administrative costs of the manifestation of malice and greed. As such, Chettiars in Burma could have been any very little in the way of nuance or less. There remains much controversy over
6 / Spring 2009 Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group the extent to which transaction costs can the colonial government in 1930, gives us a reasonably explain high moneylender flavor of Chettiar customer relations: interest rates, but if the numbers above are only proximately accurate for the Chettiars Chettiars have no fixed hours and do not in Burma, their interest rate charges hardly observe public or official holidays. Except seem usurious. for their own festivals of Pangani Uthram (in March or April) and Thaipusam (in A ―flipside‖ to the transaction costs burden January), when business may be stopped for on moneylenders such as the Chettiars is about four days in all, they are ready to that their services imposed relatively lower transact business on any day and at any transaction costs on their customers. time. This is often a great convenience to Borrowers, like lenders, face a raft of depositors who wish to withdraw money, transaction costs when seeking a loan – and also to some borrowers whose costs which are, for the most part, simply the circumstances make it desirable for them to mirror image of the transaction costs noted conceal from others the fact that they are above on lenders. Borrower costs, especially borrowing. Beyond transaction costs, the for rural clients, rise according to the degree question of risk – and risk premiums – must of ―formality‖ of the arrangements imposed also be factored in when considering the by the lender. The more ―formal‖ the interest rates charged by moneylenders. The arrangements, the less ―access‖ poor, and/or greater the likelihood of borrower default, geographically marginalized people have to the greater the need for an interest rate credit. This is important since it is typically margin sufficient to cushion the lender the case that most poor borrowers consider against loss. Arguably, moneylenders have ready access to credit as rather more always lent to borrowers, and into economic important than its cost (something widely- environments, of greater risk than recognized in the modern ―microfinance‖ considered acceptable to more formal movement). Juxtaposed against high interest lenders. Indeed, one of the hitherto assumed rates then are what are usually convenient advantages moneylenders possess over their access and low transaction cost attributes of more formal competitors – their proximity to moneylenders – minimal loan procedures, their clients (noted above) – is an example quick cash availability, flexible payment and of the heightened risk they face from being maturity schedules as well as the costs less geographically diversified and more savings that result from the fact that the exposed to covariant shocks. moneylender usually lives amongst his borrowers. Such general ―virtues‖ of Reasons for the Success of the Chettiars moneylenders were readily apparent in the operations of the Chettiars in Burma. Most How to account for the extraordinary Chettiar loans were organized in under an dominance of the Chettiars in rural finance hour and Chettiars were more or less in colonial Burma? A traditional answer, accessible all day, every day. The following widely-held amongst contemporary extract from the Burma Provincial Banking European observers, ascribed the success to Enquiry, a far-reaching inquest into credit various cultural attributes, especially as they arrangements in Burma commissioned by related to the education of young Chettiar
Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group Spring 2009 / 7 males into the ―secrets‖ of banking. little sum saved is invested at the Representative of such a view, rich in the highest rate of interest possible... So stereotypes and prejudices of the era, was particular are the Chettis where this assessment of Edgar Thurston, the money is concerned that, according legendary author in 1909 of the (Indian to the stories current about them, if government-published) Castes and Tribes of they have a visitor – even a relative – Southern India: staying with them longer than a day he is quietly presented with a bill for A Nattukottai Chetti is a born his board at the end of the visit. banker. From his earliest childhood he is brought up on the family A modern, and arguably superior, traditions of thrift and economy. explanation of the success of the Chettiars When a male child is born in a in Burma would draw attention to the nature Nattukottai Chetti’s family, a certain of Chettiar organization in Burma. And, of sum is usually set aside to particular importance in this context, the accumulate at compound interest and role of ―trust‖ as the keystone of Chettiar form a fund for the boy’s education. finance. Of course, trust is the foundation of As soon as he is ten or twelve, he finance of all kind. Financial intermediaries begins to equip himself for the of any stripe depend upon trust, without ancestral profession. He not only which their assets (merely promises to pay learns accounting and the theory of when all is said and done) are worthless, and banking, but he has to apply his without the trust of depositors and investors knowledge practically as an there would be nothing to ―mediate‖ in any apprentice in his father’s office. Thus case. In modern banking systems such trust in a Chetti’s training, the theory and is established by norms of behavior that practice of banking are not divorced have been centuries in evolution, shaped by from each other, but go hand in the state, the law, and other institutions hand, from the very start. When a (such as a central bank) that are easy to boy is married he attains a identify but hard to replicate. responsible position in the family. Though, being a member of the joint In the case of the Chettiars, ―trust‖ was a Hindu family system, he may not function of caste and kin rather than more make a separate home, yet he must impersonal institutions, and most Chettiar bear his own financial burden. He is firms were formed by partnerships of allotted a share in the paternal, or individuals connected through marriage, ancestral, estate and he must live on home village ties and other loose forms of it. He alone enjoys all that he may kinship. Interestingly, because of Hindu earn and suffers for all that he may inheritance laws based on primogeniture, lose. So he naturally grows self- partnerships were generally not formed reliant and ambitious, with a keen between close ―blood‖ relations. This trust desire to build a fortune for was manifested in a number of ways, himself…Strict economy is including via a unique inter-firm scrupulously practiced, and every lending/deposit system between Chettiars
8 / Spring 2009 Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group that not only provided individual Chettiar contracts, commission-based payments, and firms with much of their financing, but also so on. constituted a most effective framework of ―prudential‖ arrangements that acted to The Chettiars sent into the Burmese dampen systemic risk. Alleviating systemic countryside as agents were exclusively male, risk in a modern financial system is the and were almost never accompanied by responsibility of a central bank, but in the spouses or other family members. Their Chettiar arrangements this role was ―tour of duty‖ was usually for three years, subsumed by collective ―caste‖ after which they returned to Chettinad responsibility. (many to marry) for around six months, before further postings elsewhere in Burma. Perhaps the most important way through Most Chettiars seemed to have lived an which trust was manifested in the spread of extraordinarily frugal existence, with such Chettiar operations in Burma, however, was expenses as they had (including via the way it was embodied in their accommodation) usually met by the firm ―agency arrangements.‖ The use of ―agents‖ they represented. Typically between half and allowed Chettiars without financial means two-thirds of their entire triennium salary to establish their own firms (usually in the was paid a month after taking up their rural hinterland) to act as agencies for their station, whereupon it was mixed in with the wealthier kinsmen. Chettiar agents had proprietors’ capital advance and employed almost complete discretion on the lending in making loans. Key to an agent’s out of their patron’s money and, indeed, likelihood of establishing their own firm they usually enjoyed ―power of attorney‖ later was not so much their salary, but the generally over what might be regarded as size of the ―bonus‖ they were able to secure the activities of the ―joint‖ firm. The at the end of their three year service – which arrangement seems to have been enormously typically amounted to around 10 percent of successful in creating appropriate incentives the profits they generated. for the agent, and Chettiars firms boasted not only that their agents strived harder than It All Comes Crashing Down… employees of European banks – but that as a consequence Burma had little need for such Chettiar success in Burma came to a institutions organized on formal (―Western‖) shuddering halt with the onset of the global lines. Unwittingly, since the problem had yet depression of the 1930s. An event with to find a name, in their agency arrangements severe economic repercussions in most the Chettiars also solved what is known countries, in Burma these were manifest within the discipline of economics as the primarily in the near total collapse of paddy ―principal and agent‖ problem. In the prices. Paddy prices had been trending modern world solving the problem – which downwards across the latter half of the simply refers to the dilemma of how to 1920s, but they went into a precipitous ensure that the agent acts in the best interests decline after 1930, reaching their nadir in of the principal – has generated all manner 1933 when prices fell to less than a third of of methods, including franchising, incentive that prevailing a decade earlier. They remained at unremunerative levels until after
Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group Spring 2009 / 9 the Second World War. The impact of the presented by a Karen witness to the Burma collapse in paddy prices was soon felt Provincial Banking Enquiry: amongst the cultivators of Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta, many of whom, after Tersely and pointedly speaking, suffering immense hardship as they tried to Chettiar banks are fiery dragons that remain on their land, walked away from parch every land that has the their paddy fields in search of employment misfortune of coming under their as subsistence labor. wicked creeping. They are a hard- hearted lot that will ring out every At the end of the chain of distress were the drop of blood from the victims Chettiars. Unable to collect even interest without compunction for the sake of payments on their loans, increasingly they their own interest…[T]he swindling, came to foreclose on defaulting borrowers cheating, deception and oppression and to seize the pledged collateral. For the of the Chettiars in the country, most part this was land. The result was what particularly among the ignorant would prove a catastrophe for Burma’s folks, are well known and these are, future as vast tracts of the country’s to a large extent, responsible for the cultivatable land passed into the Chettiars’ present impoverishment in the land. hands. By 1938 the proportion of the land in Burma’s principal rice growing districts in Anti-Chettiar feeling in Burma during the the hands of the Chettiars reached an depression soon turned into anti-Indian (and astonishing 25 percent. With new Chettiar anti-foreigner) feeling generally, and in the loans also drying up, much of this land – and latter half of the 1930s communal riots notwithstanding the evidence pointing to became commonplace. These were Chettiar efforts to keep cultivators on their particularly severe in Rangoon – which over land, and to nurse borrowers generally – fell the fifty years from 1872 went from a city fallow. Joining the spiral of falling paddy whose population was overwhelmingly prices was thus falling production, too. Burmese to one in which, by 1930, had become predominantly Indian. The The alienation of much of the cultivatable Chettiars themselves were a tiny proportion land of Lower Burma, a tragic and seminal of the Indian population in Rangoon (and event in the political economy of Burma, the rest of Burma), the vast majority being would also prove to be the equally tragic poor Tamil laborers and sharecroppers. climax to the story of the Chettiars in the Whilst the Chettiars were reviled for their country. Exposed to the (understandable) perceived wealth and success, most of these anger of indigenous cultivators and the other Indian migrants were despised for their demagoguery of Burmese nationalists of all poverty and for the competition they stripes, they became easy scapegoats not just presented to equally poor and desperate for the current economic distress, but the Burmese in search of work. foreign domination of Burma’s economy more generally. The following testimony, In the wake of the Indo-Burmese riots, relatively mild in the scheme of things, was Burma’s colonial government (which under the so-called ―Dyarchy‖ constitution
10 / Spring 2009 Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group consisted of a Representative Assembly, but Chettiars died on the long march out of with most significant powers reserved still Burma (most on the road from Rangoon to for the Governor) drew up a series of laws Assam) but, given the high death toll designed to limit the role of moneylenders amongst the full cohort of fleeing British such as the Chettiars in the future. A sop to and Indian merchants, workers and a rising cohort of Burmese politicians, these administrators in 1942, it could not have laws restricted the interest rates been trivial. moneylenders could charge, imposed limits on the total amount of interest arrears that After the war the Chettiars were, to all could build up, required the maintenance of intents and purposes, prevented from proper and regular accounts, and required returning to Burma. Burma achieved that all moneylenders be registered. Another independence in 1948 and the country’s new set of laws, transparently directly aimed at constitution declared that the state would the Chettiars, disallowed the passing of land hold ultimate title over all of the country’s into the hands of non-resident cultivatable land. Land use rights were moneylenders, eliminating in one stroke the available to cultivators, but this was of little ability to pledge land as collateral to such benefit to the Chettiars, since farmers they lenders. Most of these laws were not were not. The Chettiars sought promulgated before the Second World War compensation for their lost property, and the began, but they returned after the war and issue became something of an irritant to the following Burma’s independence. They otherwise close relationship between the largely remain on the books, where today governments of newly-independent India they number amongst the many inhibitions and Burma. Meaningful progress on this to the development of a modern functioning front, moreover, was slow. When a military financial system. coup brought Burma’s democracy to an end in 1962, any hopes the Chettiars might have War and Flight entertained for compensation were finally, irrevocably, dashed. The property they had On March 7, 1942, Rangoon fell to the acquired in roughly a century of forces of Imperial Japan. On May 1, moneylending in Burma was effectively Mandalay followed, and what remained of nationalized by the new Burmese regime the Burmese colonial government evacuated and, alas, ultimately dissipated by the same. Burma for the ―hill-station‖ of Simla, India – and exile. In a matter of months British Some Final Thoughts rule in Burma had come to an end. The British would, of course, return temporarily The story of the Chettiars in Burma ended after the war, but a chapter of Burma’s tragically, but it is not without useful lessons history had come to a close. for those concerned for the country and its prospects. One of these lessons – essentially The Chettiars also fled Burma in front of the a warning – is that it highlights the dangers Japanese advance, but for them there would that come from circumstances that lead to a be no triumphant homecoming (however concentration of economic wealth in the fleeting). We do not know how many hands of an ethnic minority. Such a
Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group Spring 2009 / 11 concentration took place in the colonial era place at the Université de Provence in via the Chettiars, but it is happening again Marseille next July (2010). (See the call for in Burma today. Now the resented ethnic papers at the end of this issue.) But this past minority is economically-dominant Chinese June a smaller conference was held there, business owners and traders rather than this one for Francophone specialists on Indian moneylenders, but the oft-predicted Burma. Thanks to the support of NIU’s backlash will surely follow the familiar Center for Burma Studies, I was able to pattern. attend the conference and I include below an informal account of the papers that were A second lesson from the story of the presented. Chettiars is more hopeful and, for that, all the more welcome for those of us all too I can’t help adding that Marseille is a familiar to pessimism when it comes to beautiful city with a rich history. After the Burma. This lesson is simply that Burma’s conference ended, I had one more day to development disaster can perhaps be turned wander about the place and found that extra around rather more quickly than we often time very enjoyable. Particularly fascinating suppose. The application of sound property is the old quarter (called ―Le Panier,‖ rights, together with the provision of meaning ―The Breadbasket‖) whose narrow adequate capital (as supplied back then by streets drenched in sunshine is evocative of the Chettiars) brought about a twenty-fold a broadly-shared Mediterranean culture. As increase in Burma’s agricultural output in some of us joked at dinner after the the latter-half of the nineteenth century. conference was over, ―Marseille, it’s Today Burma is someway off having a practically Italy!‖ —The Editor government interested in applying sound property rights, or facilitating the flow of The first session consisted of three adequate capital, but it will not be for ever presentations concerning bibliographical and thus. And, in this, lies hope. historical sources on Burma presently found in France. Louise Pichard and Cristina Sean Turnell Cramerotti gave an account of Burma Department of Economics related holdings relating to in various French Macquarie University libraries. Although, these are not ______comparable to those to be found in Great Britain, for obvious historical reasons. Still, Burma Workshop (Atelier Birmanie) it appears that there exist certain collections Université de Provence well worth keeping in mind, as the digitization of library resources now makes Marseille, June 18-20, 2009 it much easier to access previously more ______obscure such materials.
In keeping with the ongoing pattern of Christine Hemmet, from the Musée du Quai holding our conferences at NIU in Branly, acknowledging that she was not alternation with sites outside the U.S., the herself a Burma specialist, wished to make next Burma Studies Conference will take better known to Burmanists what sorts of
12 / Spring 2009 Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group materials were available at that institution, other very intriguing photos from the and some of their holdings look quite museum’s collection, many dating from the tantalizing.1 Hemmet showed a number of 30s, including some taken in the Chin Hills. interesting photographs in the museum’s holdings. Given my own interests, I was A third talk in the same opening panel, that particularly intrigued to learn that a French of Sylvie Pasquet, differed slightly in that it ethnomusicologist, a Mme de Chambure, focused on how Chinese sources and had done much research in mainland Burmese ones reflect contrasting takes on Southeast Asia in the 1930s, including trips the relations between the two countries. to Burma in 1929-1934. Apparently, though, Pasquet reads both Chinese and Burmese, so while her notes and photos are now at the she is well-qualified to point out these Quai Branly, the instruments that were contrasting perspectives: they turn on the housed at the Musée de l’Homme are to be fact that the Chinese always took Burma’s deposited at the University of Paris in relationship with them to constitute a frank Nanterre.2 Hemmet showed a number of recognition of China’s suzerainty, while the Burmese took it to represent more of a
fraternal bond. This contrast not only goes 1 For those not up on their French cultural politics, the Musée du Quai Branly replaces way back in time but may still characterize the old Musée de l’Homme. It seems that the their respective attitudes to this day. (Sylvie original intention was to call it something told me in conversation later that she started along the lines of the Museum of the First Chinese at Langues Orientales in Paris when Peoples but this aroused a storm of she thought she might like to go into the controversy, since it evoked the diplomatic service. The entrance exam conceptually fraught notion of ―primitive‖ required a second Asian language, and since peoples. In the end, it was decided that the she had been one of hordes of students least tendentious way to name the museum taking Chinese, her criterion for choosing a was after the quai upon which it is located in second language was to find the one with the Paris. It’s as if the Museum of Natural lowest enrollment. Burmese won that History in New York were to be named the Museum at Central Park West and 86th St., a competition easily, and so Burma studies are policy that would probably help out visitors now blessed with Sylvie’s remarkable to the city find it but mystify them enough to qualifications.) keep them from feeling the need to do so. The second panel focused on linguistic 2 There is a complicated and even at times matters. Mathias Jenni, whose post is in sordid history concerning the dislocations Zurich but who has recently taken over Southeast Asian studies have undergone in teaching Mon at Langues Orientales France in the past thirty years, with fights (INaLCO) in Paris, gave a presentation on over who has legitimate claims over books the vagaries of language contact between and other collections figuring prominently in Mon and Burmese. It seems that when, the process. I don’t expect ever to learn the during Pagan’s early glory, the Burmans whole story, but there are of course a great many different versions and it can be fun to first found in Mon access to cultural ask people for their various, always highly refinement and religious distinction, dramatized, renderings. language contact tended to favor Mon’s
Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group Spring 2009 / 13 transmission into Burmese. Then for several that these commonalities set such languages centuries thereafter influences went both apart from other languages, such as Karen ways. But in the colonial era and since, Mon and Shan, also to be found in the same has tended to receive more from Burmese region. Alice, by the way, was, like than the other way around, as might be François, remarkably calm and gracious expected from the Burmans’ relatively throughout the conference, which is not easy greater political strength. Nevertheless, for conference-organizers anywhere. certain fundamental differences between the two languages, such as the fact that Mon is Catherine Raymond led off the second day not a tonal language, discourage some kinds of the conference with her account of of exchange between the two. Listening to Buddha images in Burma and their relations Mathias’s interesting account, I couldn’t with such images from elsewhere in help thinking of French and English, since Southeast Asia (among the Shan, the Khmer, French was the language of prestige at the etc.) and even as far afield as Tibet. The ―English‖ (but really Norman) court after stock in trade of art historians is of course to 1066—during the early Pagan period, one note tiny details that enable them to might say. But now it seems clear that distinguish products of one area from those English enjoys greater prestige: how else to of another and to trace the flow of influences explain that the way to say in French that among them. This seems just as painstaking something is ―really cool‖ is to say that it is as noting, as a linguist like Mathias Jenni ―vraiment cool‖? Mathias demonstrated does, affinities between Mon turns of phrase something else about language contact when and Rangoon variations on standard we spoke (in English) at lunch the next day. Burmese expressions. The patience either I was struck at how much his English kind of detective work, art historical or reminded me of Thai friends’ English, with linguistic, takes is astonishing. Listening to respect both to the timbre of his voice and Catherine, I was struck at how much the the tones that seemed to lie just beneath the history of Buddhism and the history of surface of his otherwise excellent English. Buddhist iconography must have to tell each Justin Watkins, linguist extraordinaire, other, as scholars trace out the various assured me that that was Swiss German schools and concepts that moved, along with intonation coming through. But Mathias told images, through the Buddhist areas of Asia. me he had lived for twenty years in Bangkok, which I think probably explains Following Catherine’s presentation, things better than taking yet another potshot Claudine Bautze-Picron recounted how at the poor German-speaking Swiss (the Westerners reported on Pagan over the Appalachians of the German-speaking centuries, from the earliest reports on. She world). paid particular attention to the many photographs Westerners took of the site Alice Vittrant, a linguist and co-organizer starting in the nineteenth century, showing with François Robinne of the conference, us a number of them. Some she couldn’t showed in the final presentation of the day show, since they have disappeared, but that that there exist a number of common she knew of them—of their having been features of Tibeto-Burman languages, and
14 / Spring 2009 Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group taken but since lost—only demonstrated the sobering demonstration of how much harm considerable depth of her research. can be done by the archeologically uninformed. Many readers of the BBSG will Christophe Munier also showed us images know what valuable work Pichard did in but of paintings, delightful ones, dating from Pagan to assure the long term viability of the the Nyaungyan period, to be found at sites site’s many treasures. So it is distressing to located in the region of Monywa, Magway learn what extensive ―restoration‖ has been and Mandalay. Focusing on scenes that done in Pagan since the 90s, putting new occur only here, in an area extending from stupas on top of ruins, or even, starting with Powin Taung to Yezagyo (a region just only the merest hints of old walls as a basis, above the confluence of the Chindwin and building whole structures, in an effort to the Irawaddy), Munier takes these scenes of restore Pagan ―to its former glory.‖ It is a palace guardian in conversation with an disturbing but not surprising that acolyte, and ones of him engaged in an government officials should find this argument with his wife, as setting the region exercise to their liking, casting them as they apart, possessing its own particular tradition. think it does in the light of virtuous lay He suggests that the nearby presence of a supporters of Buddhism. It seems appalling, community of Muslims and another one of though, that, according to Pichard, many Europeans may explain the development of foreign donors, including many the iconography of the palace guard in this Singaporeans and Taiwanese (of Burmese region. He considers these scenes relating to origin?), should have provided a great deal alcohol consumption and adulterous of funding for these projects. Such support relations, depicted in a humorous mode, as for any officially sponsored projects in indicating a trend toward a more popular Burma today seems less naïve than morally and humane approach to Buddhist negligent, but perhaps it is only immensely instruction. unthinking.3 Pichard’s only positive
Anna-May Chew reported on ongoing research she has been conducting at another 3 I shouldn’t be too proud. When I went on a site near Monywa, but in this case in walking tour of an old quarter of Toulouse grottoes still in use as meditation sites. the day before going to Marseille, our guide Continual renovation of some sites reduces showed us several ―hôtels particuliers,‖ their archeological interest. But inscriptions mansions, dating from the 18th century. Only dating back as far as the eighteenth century after we had seen two or three vestibules are found in them, and Chew sees in some of with magnificent staircases but peeling paint the materials interesting indications of the and pockmarked plaster did it occur to me transition from the Ava to the Amarapura that it was out of historical respect, not styles. stinginess or neglect that the owners had failed to keep these places up. If I owned one of them, I would be sorely tempted to If Munier’s and Chew’s presentations restore them ―to their former glory‖ by pointed to how much interesting grabbing a spatula and paint brushes. That archeological work is being done in Burma way, guests would be impressed by the today, Pierre Pichard’s presentation was a magnificence of my surroundings, and I
Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group Spring 2009 / 15 comment was to note that these additions such that getting about poses considerable have been so poorly built that one good challenges. Rarely has grandiosity taken earth tremor will probably bring a great such literal and impractical form. many of them down. And he told me later at Three archeologists, Jean-Pierre Pautreau, dinner that while the supplementary Anne-Sophie Coupey, and Emma Rambault, construction has been dreadful, little inside members of the Mission Archéologique or below the original structures has been Française de Myanmar, then presented disturbed. So archaeologically the damage findings on funerary practices in the Bronze has been less thorough-going than one might Age based on four hundred and sixty burial fear. sites discovered in Central Burma. Noting similarities with findings in other sites in François Tainturier presented some results Thailand and northern Vietnam, they from his ongoing research about royal pointed out that their work sheds light not initiatives to establish new capitals, with only on funerary practices but also on particular emphasis on the case of metalworking more generally in late Mandalay. While apparently similar to prehistory, and also on the origin and spread earlier Burman kings’ practice of setting up of exchange patterns, both local and long a new capital in such places as Shwebo, distance, during that period. Ava, and Amarapura, Mandalay’s founding reflected changing ideas about the nature of Another archeologist, Ernelle Berliet, a city. By the time of the city’s construction, reported on her research on a military the British were well-embarked on making outpost established by Pagan, one of forty- Rangoon conform to their expectations of three such forts built at the foot of the Shan what a city should be. This, plus the British Hills. They are alluded to in the Glass triumphs in the first two Anglo-Burman Palace Chronicle. The one she chose to Wars, induced King Mindon to place as study, Thagara, is located near Meiktila. The much importance on areas outside the palace presence of relatively well-preserved as those within it, and to make royal support ramparts and the absence of current for Buddhism particularly salient. Tainturier inhabitants whose lives would be disrupted draws on maps and parabaik, in addition to by an archeological dig made it an better-known textual sources, to make his appropriate choice among the many sites she very interesting analysis. considered. Yet the fact that the fort was apparently in use till the end of the Ava Guy Lubeigt then reported on the latest such period indicates both how sturdily built it Burman project to found a new capital, was and how militarily useful it was namely, Naypyidaw. Showing astonishing considered. photographs, he made vividly clear the immense proportions of the place, with Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière spoke of new hugely wide roads (and round-about to developments in the spirit cult in Rangoon. scale) and great distances between buildings, The Ministry of Culture has seen fit to classify nat pwe as performances, but ones would happily discount the mutterings of a that must conform to regulations of that few nay-saying historic preservationists. bureaucracy’s devising: no more pop songs
16 / Spring 2009 Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group and over-the-top costumes but rather, in how both events and foreign ideas inflected both cases, appropriately traditional ones. the meanings and implications those words And, in light of Rangoon’s shifting took on, and how they shifted, over the demographics, as the cult’s likeliest decades between 1820 and 1880. supporters have been forced to move to the city’s outskirts, relatively few nat pwe now Alexandra de Mersan pointed out the take place in town. Familiar nats with conundrum of how to conceive of the known stories, furthermore, are tending to Arakanese. Are they a distinct ethnic group? be displaced in people’s consciousness by How does one deal with the variety of their guardians of pagodas, more generic figures religious affiliations? Their linguistic with vaguer identities and histories. relationship with Burmese is also complex. In the end, their identity can only be Gustaaf Houtmann discussed the way that considered a tenuously constructed one, Buddhist concepts, particularly those of even if it strikes many people in Burma as samsara, loka, and nirvana, permeate obvious and unproblematic. Burmese political discourse and have done so, although in varying ways, ever since the François Robinne discussed the similarly days of Aung San. In the anti-colonial vexed question of what identity is assigned struggle, opposing the British was taken as to Chinese Muslims living in Mandalay. At comparable to an individual’s efforts to different points in modern Burmese history, proceed on the spiritual path away from they have been identified on identity cards suffering and toward nirvana. Aung San was as ―of Chinese origin (Muslim),‖ or clear that politics always remains bound to ―Burmese, Indian, Muslim,‖ while the worldly, to loka and samsara: that colloquially they are referred to as politics stems from defilement, indeed that ―Panthay,‖ a word perhaps derived from defilement makes politics necessary. U Nu ―Parsi.‖ They now self-identify as Burmese wished to get beyond politics in order to but are concerned that their children marry pursue what really matters, namely, nirvana. other Muslims, and, like many elite groups Daw Aung San Su Kyi, Gustaaf showed, intent upon maintaining their superior taking up another strand in her father’s economic power and family connections, Buddhist vocabulary, now places more often find no appropriate spouses for their emphasis on metta (loving kindness) than daughters, who remain unmarried. At ―freedom from fear,‖ because to have no present, for that matter, many leave Burma fear of moral constraints enables the sort of to live abroad. political action she opposes. Céline Coderey has conducted research in Aurore Candier presented an analysis of Arakan concerning the many ways people nineteenth century texts in which members think about and act upon sickness. of the religious and political elites tried to Buddhism, the spirit cult, magic, astrology reconcile political events with and both Burmese and Western medicine all Burmese/Buddhist understandings of enter into their understandings of what kingship and morality. In a close causes sickness and how best to respond. investigation of specific terms, she showed While no single source predominates in their
Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group Spring 2009 / 17 thinking, a consistent assumption in this such good form when it was forty years ago array of ideas has it that sickness signals a this past fall that I signed up for Burmese disruption in the harmony that should with her and we started in with ka kyi and prevail between the social and cosmic hka gwe at Langues Orientales in Paris. orders. ______
Justin Watkins discussed the preliminary Recent Dissertations on Burmese Topics findings of his brief but clearly very fruitful ______research on sign language use at the Mary Chapman School for the Deaf in Rangoon. As I have mentioned a few times in recent He demonstrated some signs of various issues of the Bulletin, there is a gratifying origins, including some which appear to be rise in scholarly activity taking place today indigenous Burmese signs, some calqued in and about Burma. The number of people from spoken Burmese, and some showing that attended the Burma Studies Conference the influence of other sign languages which last fall in De Kalb gave clear evidence of the school has had exposure to at various that fact, as do, too, the lively exchanges times over the years, including Korean Sign that take place through the good offices of Language and ASL. He also demonstrated Mike Charney and his Burma Research some signed sentences indicating syntactic clearing house. To enable readers to learn patterns which both conform to and more about recent academic achievements, I contradict the word order of spoken include the following abstracts of some Burmese. He pointed out that there remains dissertations submitted in the past few years, much to be investigated on the subject of plus brief accounts of what these newly- Burma's sign languages - in particular the minted scholars are up to now. I would differences between Yangon and Mandalay welcome information about other recent signing, and efforts to agree on common dissertations that could be noted in future signs for a unified Burmese/Myanmar sign issues of the Bulletin. —The Editor language. Erik Braun Denise Bernot, known to all the people present at the conference and responsible for Erik received his Ph.d from the Committee the training of a great many of them, gave on the Study of Religion at Harvard the last presentation. She discussed the University in 2008. Janet Gyatso supervised many ways that the human body can be his work. Charles Hallisey and Donald made a tool for use in a great array of Swearer also served on his committee. Erik, productive activities and illustrated that currently Assistant Professor of Religious point with notes and photographs from her Studies at the University of Oklahoma in fieldwork experiences in Burma. I should Norman, is now turning his dissertation into add that throughout the conference Denise a book, while drawing on some of the more made interesting and germane contributions technical material for one or more articles. to discussion, posing some intriguing question to virtually all of the presenters. It was a particular delight for me to see her in
18 / Spring 2009 Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group Ledi Sayadaw, Abhidhamma, and the to view how a conservative figure negotiated Development of the Modern Insight the disjuncture between the pre-colonial Meditation Movement in Burma world in which he was born and the challenges to Buddhism presented by the Scholars in Buddhist Studies and related colonial transformation of Burmese society. fields have long acknowledged the Burmese Pre-colonial knowledge and practices served monk Ledi Sayadaw (1846-1923) as an as the resources for Ledi Sayadaw's important figure in the start of the modern development of meditation as he responded insight meditation (vipassana) movement in to the perceived threats posed by the Burma, yet no scholarly work to date has technological developments, societal focused on his specific role in shaping that fragmentation, and missionary attacks of the movement. This dissertation is an colonial period. Ledi Sayadaw stands as an intellectual biography of Ledi Sayadaw that example of someone who had clear analyzes the nature and extent of his connections to a pre-colonial heritage, even contributions to the complex origins of while he reformulated Burmese Buddhism insight meditation in the modern era. into a modern form that promoted insight meditation as a mass movement. This study connects the events of Ledi Sayadaw's life—from his birth in the ______Konbaung dynasty of Burmese kings to his death in the fully entrenched British colonial Jane Ferguson state—to particular texts he authored that shed light on his understanding of what Jane received her Ph.d from the Department meditation is and what it can do. His of Anthropology at Cornell University under writings show that his vision of the ideal the supervision of Andrew Wilford in 2008. Buddhist life for the laity stressed doctrinal She is now Lecturer in Asian Studies at the study, especially of the Abhidhamma, in Australian National University in Canberra. addition to simplified meditative practices formulated through an Abhidhammic Rocking in Shanland: Histories and perspective. Using print technology, Popular Culture Jams at the Thai-Burma preaching, and social organizations, Ledi Border Sayadaw promoted meditation and study as key means for Buddhists to make sense of This dissertation is an ethnography of inter- the modern world. Doctrinal study and related ethno-national history and popular meditative practice were understood to work culture re-interpretation in a contested zone together in a Buddhist's life for at the Thai-Burma border. Based on over soteriological and social benefits. two years’ fieldwork amongst Shan former insurgent soldiers and stateless migrants, I Examination of Ledi Sayadaw's life and focus on how concepts of nation and work offers not just the chance to ethnicity encrypted in artifacts of popular understand local circumstances in Burma culture are meted out and re-signified that contributed to meditation's modern through the semiotic skills of this group of efflorescence; it also offers the opportunity politicized and/or marginalized Shan people.
Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group Spring 2009 / 19 Prior to presenting the ethnographic this vision also anticipates recognition of the findings, I examine how Burmese, Shan and hypostatized Shan nation within a larger Thai nation-building projects have presented cosmo-political order. upland Southeast Asian history. By ______comparing the ways in which these three nations have narrated historical events, I Pamaree Sukariat interrogate notions of symbolic difference – hence ―ethnicity‖ – and strategies of and for Pamaree completed her dissertation in the cultural distinction over the longue durée. In Department of History at Chulalongkorn so doing I flesh out not only how these University in Bangkok, working under the categories have changed from pre-colonial, supervision of Sunait Chutintaranond, in to colonial to the Cold War periods of 2006. She is currently affiliated with the history in upland Southeast Asia, but also Department of History and Art at Prince of the ways in which nation-building projects Songkla University, Pattani Campus, often anachronistically project contemporary Thailand. categories onto past societies for the purpose of garnering political solidarity. Although Dynamism of Thai-Myanmar Warfare the decades-long insurgencies in Burma are From the Mid-16th Centuiry to the Mid- often attributed to post-colonial 19th Century disintegration, ethnography of popular culture practice presents compelling This thesis aims to study the dynamism of evidence as to how national identities and Thai-Burmese warfare from the mid-16th so-called ethnic conflicts have been century to the mid-19th century by analyzing crucially framed by the black market this warfare within the historical context of economies and culture industries of the the growth and development of Burmese region during the Cold War. states: the first Toungoo, the restored Toungoo, and the early Konbaung empires, Therefore, in order to tackle the ways in respectively. The studies indicate that the which this group of Shan people interrogates continuities and changes of Burmese states’ and re-signifies popular culture, I have power structure, governance structure and divided my analysis according to proclaimed ―Mandala‖, together with the technological platform or genre: jokes and changing economy and international trade, folklore, Shan print media, Burmese rock which were the external factors causing the music, Shan rock music, Burmese cinema, changes within the Southeast Asian region, Shan video production, and finally a were the significant factors and conditions Buddhist novice ordination ritual. driving the continuous changes in Thai- Ultimately, I argue that the effective Burmese warfare from the mid-16th century production of a hypostatized Shan nation is to the mid-19th century. The changing a project of reworking and re-signifying aspects were the nature of the conflict texts in the local milieu. Through this leading to the wars, the military operation process, these actors’ vision of the future (both tactics and strategies), and the nature includes a fully-fledged Shan nation, and of warfare. because of the use of popular culture genres,
20 / Spring 2009 Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group Burmese states’ war strategies toward Thai The Changing Nature of Conflict between states mainly corresponded to Burmese Burma and Siam as seen from the Growth proclaimed ―Mandala‖. The first Toungoo and Development of Burmese States from and the early Konbaung empires the 16th to the 19th Centuries. ARI Working incorporated the Thai state, the center of Paper, No. 64, March 2006. Ayutthaya, within their ―Mandala‖;
Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group Spring 2009 / 21 a means of comprehending the challenges preservation understood themselves both posed by colonialism and responding to individually and collectively. points of conflict. The response to ______colonialism in Burma between 1885 and 1920 subtly shaped Buddhism and produced Recent Publications of Note modes of collective identity alternative to ______those proposed by nationalism and colonial rule. Although the BBSG no longer provides This dissertation examines a number of complete coverage of new publications Buddhist projects, their conflicts with about Burma as it did during Daw May Kyi colonial rule and discourse of the decline of Win’s editorship, it seems worthwhile to the sāsana. Organized thematically, it offers include notices about books or articles four studies of projects undertaken by people might not otherwise come across. Buddhist associations that highlight key Here are three items concerning recent issues in their tactical engagement with materials of interest to Burmanists. —The colonial discourse and the struggles over Editor meaning. The first examines how efforts to preserve pariyatti textual study brought Come Rain or Shine: an account of the earlier Buddhist reform techniques together “Saffron Revolution” in Rangoon with colonial technologies to produce a moral community based on shared The Mizzima News Agency has sent the responsibility for the sāsana. Then a study following announcement concerning their of Buddhist education explores how a publication of a short book about the events conceptual disconnect between colonial that took place in Rangoon in 2007. education policy and the pedagogical goals —The Editor of Buddhist monasteries opened space for new formulations of Buddhist learning. An What was it like to be on the streets in investigation of concerns about moral Rangoon in September 2007 when the hopes decline looks at how focus on behavior in of a nation, dominated by saffron robes, moral reform campaigns shaped how bravely took to the streets? Now, courtesy of Buddhists came to understand themselves Mizzima News Agency, an eyewitness within the moral community. The last study account brings to life the 2007 Burma investigates how direct confrontation with uprising that captivated the world’s British officials over issues of respect attention. inflected Buddhism as a public and political entity and came to shape expectations of the Come Rain or Shine is the first book to be category of religion. Together these released featuring day-to-day accounts of investigations paint a picture of a period of last year’s Saffron Revolution, the dynamic change and interaction that came to subsequent military crackdown and the subtly shape what was understood as aftermath of Cyclone Nargis the following Buddhism in the public discourse and how May. those who took responsibility for its
22 / Spring 2009 Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group Providing the reader with a unique ―sense of http://www.asiapacificms.com/papers/pdf/bu the street,‖ the book includes over 50 color rmese_military_staying_power.pdf photographs taken by Mizzima reporters and contributors. Additionally, the book can be Articles related to Burma in the Journal of benefit to individuals and groups in of Current Southeast Asian Affairs advocacy work as well as assisting in raising awareness of the situation inside the Dr. Marco Bünte sends the following notice Southeast Asian country. about articles in a German periodical. –The Editor Come Rain or Shine incorporates the experiences and writings of both Mizzima I would like to draw your attention to the staff and external contributors – including latest issue of the Journal of Current reflections on the comparison between the Southeast Asian Affairs published by the protests of 1988 and 2007 by Mizzima German Institute of Globaland Area Studies Editor-in-Chief Soe Myint and an analysis (GIGA) in Hamburg. It includes three of the economic underpinnings of the articles on Burma/Myanmar and, therefore, current crisis by Sean Turnell of Burma might be of interest to you. The articles on Economic Watch and Sydney’s Macquarie Burma's/Myanmar's refugee problem are University. written by Stephen Hull (Karen Human Rights Group), Inge Brees (University of For more information on how to order Come Gent) and Susan Banki (Griffith Rain or Shine, please write to University). You can also find the articles [email protected] online, since the journal has been transformed into an academic open access Easy access to Bertil Lintner articles journal. Please visit:
I pass along the following announcement http://hup.sub.uni-hamburg.de/giga/jsaa from Mike Charney’s Burma Research listserve. —The Editor You can also find book reviews and other articles on this page. A large number of pdfs and htmls of articles on Burma by Bertil Lintner can be found on Dr. Marco Bünte, Editor the Asia Pacific Media Services Limited Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Asian website at: Studies GIGA German Institute of Global and Area http://www.asiapacificms.com/articles/ Studies Leibniz-Institut für Globale und Regionale Additionally, another section of the site has Studien a presentation made by the same author in Rothenbaumchaussee 32 / 20148 Hamburg March 2009 in Japan at Aichi Gakuin Germany University entitled: "The Staying Power of Tel. 0049-(0)40-42887423 / -4107945 (Fax) the Military Regime in Burma," which is also in downloadable pdf:
Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group Spring 2009 / 23 ______The project is jointly sponsored by the Institute, the Myanmar Book Aid The Nargis Library Recovery Project Foundation, and Ashin Nyanissara, abbot of ______Sitagu International Buddhist Academy.
Efforts to aid Burma recover from the "We're off the ground," writes John trauma of Cyclone Nargis are ongoing. Badgley. "We completed our first Even though the initial event was over in a demonstration project: a 20 foot container of matter of only a few hours, mitigating the 8,000 books donated by the University of effects of a disaster of such magnitude Washington and Halfprice Books was requires many years of work. One admirable shipped in November, 2008, and distributed project aims to restore libraries affected by for use by 16,000 students in February, the storm. Here follows an overview of the 2009. A committee of Burmese librarians project. Interested readers can learn more sorted and distributed the books to libraries about it by turning to the web page and schools where they were most needed. www.myanmarbookaid.org. We are now sorting more books and raising —The Editor money for additional shipments."
On May 3, 2008, Cyclone Nargis completed Rebuilding Libraries its devastating sweep across the Irrawaddy delta in Myanmar (formerly called Burma), The more ambitious phase of the project passing directly over Yangon. No natural involves rebuilding and furnishing libraries disaster has taken so many lives or destroyed by the Nargis cyclone, providing destroyed so much habitation in Myanmar. books and laptops, and helping to train community librarians to access world One of the casualties of Nargis has been the knowledge. Business owners in towns and destruction of many of the nation's libraries. cities often have access; training programs Despite its poverty, Myanmar has more than exist in most cities at small cost. In addition 30,000 community libraries, in addition to to our Myanmar NGO, Book Aid and 150 college and university libraries. Preservation Foundation, and Ashin Burmese have long valued reading: their Nyanissara's NGO, our project is assisted by appreciation for literary and other local businesses and monasteries. documents is evident throughout their known history. But Nargis has exacted a Donations are Welcome terrible toll on people's access to books. Please send checks to: Nargis Library In 2008, the Nargis Library Recovery Recovery Project % Institute of the Rockies, Project was born out of the vision of John P.O. Box 603, Edmonds, WA 98020. The Badgley, retired librarian/professor from Institute of the Rockies is an IRS-accredited Cornell University and founder of the 501c-3 organization and will continue Institute of the Rockies, and U Thaw Kaung, sponsoring this project until we gain our founder of Burma's library diploma program own tax status later this year. This means and retired Central Universities Librarian. your donations are tax deductible.
24 / Spring 2009 Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group ______Alternatively, if you wish to donate directly to our Myanmar-based foundation, please Burma Studies Conference 2010 email us for details. Several hundred Call for Papers Burmese have donated, mostly residents in ______Singapore and Yangon, so we can purchase Burmese texts to replace those destroyed in Burma in the Era of Globalization school libraries. Most contributions came through purchase of donated books our The next International Burma Studies libraries deemed more suitable to Conference will be held in France, at individuals than to public use. Our five-day l’Institut de Recherche sur le Sud-Est book fair in February raised over six million Asiatique (IRSEA-CNRS), Université de kyats, which helped restore holdings in 60 Provence, Marseille, 6th-10th July, 2010. libraries around Pyapon. Our next container of 50,000 books, donated by Thrift Books, Deadline for submission of panel will be sorted and distributed by mid-June, proposals: 1 December 2009 and a third container should be underway by early July. Thrift Books has donated a Deadline for paper proposals (titles and million books, or as many as the libraries abstracts): 30 March 2010 and public can absorb, all books that fit within the conspectus designed by the We invite panel participants to focus their Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation proposals on the theme of understanding Foundation. Burma/Myanmar’s position vis-à-vis processes of globalization. How does Book Donations globalization contribute to change – or not – in Burma and also to our perceptions of We still need donations of good quality Burma? Such an overview should be academic texts in English or Burmese consequent to a multidisciplinary and (except for proselytizing literature). The interdisciplinary approach by specialists in libraries of the University of Washington anthropology, sociology, linguistics, and Cornell University have contributed political science, economics, history and 6,000 books for these first shipments. Other archaeology; as well as in religion, donors in London and Bangkok are literature, art and architecture. gathering titles. Please email us to confirm before sending books to P.O. Box 603, Interested participants are asked to organize Edmonds, WA 98020. and submit panel proposals with 500-word abstracts by 1 December 2009.
Individual papers, for which a 250 word abstract is requested, are also welcome and will be duly integrated into the conference sessions by the organizers. The deadline for
Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group Spring 2009 / 25 the individual paper proposals is 30 March Marie-Hélène Cardinaud 2010. l’Institut Nationale des Languages et Civilisations Orientales (INaLCO), Paris In addition to the title and abstract of the [email protected] proposed panels and papers, please include the contributors’ names and academic Jacques Leider, Ecole Française d’Extrême affiliations if applied, mailing address, email Orient (EFEO), Paris address, and specify equipment needs for the [email protected] presentations. Alice Vittrant, Université de Provence, Contacts: Marseille [email protected] Please send the requested information to: Chargés de mission: Burma Studies Conference, 2010 Véronique André, Centre de Recherche et de Université de Provence IRSEA-CNRS 3, Documentation sur l’Océanie (CREDO), Place Victor Hugo, Marseille 13003, France Marseille [email protected] Conference Primary Email Contact Address: Louise Pichard-Bertaux, Maison Asie- [email protected] Pacifique (MAP), Marseille [email protected] Organizing Committee: For further information regarding the Conference co-chairs: Conference, please visit our websites: www.grad.niu.edu/burma Catherine Raymond, Director, Centre for Burma Studies, Northern Illinois Sponsored by: Center for Burma Studies University, (CBS), Northern Illinois University, USA; DeKalb IL 60115 USA Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO, [email protected] Paris); Institut de Recherche sur le Sud-Est Asiatique (IRSEA-CNRS, Marseille); François Robinne, Director Maison Asie Pacifique (MAP, Marseille); Institute of Research on South-East Asia at Université de Provence (Aix-Marseille 1); Marseille (France) Ville de Marseille. [email protected] Conference fee: Co-conveners: Euros 180 prior to April 30, 2010 Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière, Euros 220 thereafter Centre Asie du Sud-Est (CASE-CNRS), Paris [email protected]
26 / Spring 2009 Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group