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Myanmar 101: The life and legacy of Bogyoke Aung San

• July 4, 2017

A brief history of Burma’s path from colonial rule to independence and the life and untimely death of its most celebrated hero.

By JARED DOWNING | FRONTIER

THE LEGACY of Bogyoke Aung San transcends political and social lines, and he is the closest figure modern Myanmar has to a founding father.

Yet during his lifetime, the nationalist icon was a communist, a fascist and an anti-fascist, at times railing against the colonial government and at others taking up arms alongside British soldiers.

In the end, he was loyal to nothing and no one apart from a single-minded, immovable dream of an independent Burma.

Aung San the student

Aung San was born in a village in Magway Region in 1915, with the given name Htein Lin.

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His father, a lawyer, provided a comfortable but unremarkable middle class upbringing and an education that enabled the young man to attend Rangoon University, where his introspective and solitary demeanour was said to have been offset by an unusual charisma and charm.

Aung San, as he came to be called, at once became a strong voice within a student movement that was clamouring for independence. He joined the Rangoon University Students Union and edited its magazine. Aung San and his colleague, the future prime minister U Nu, were threatened with expulsion after the magazine published an anti-British column.

University officials backed down amid a student boycott, and Aung San’s career as a nationalist leader continued to bloom. In 1938, he joined the radical anti-colonial organisation Dobama Asiayone , the “We Burmans Association”, whose members derisively adopted the title thakin , an honorific formerly reserved for Europeans.

Thakin Aung San spent the next few years forging links between various nationalist groups. He helped found the Communist Party of Burma and then the People’s Revolutionary Party, and was a key instigator of the wave of nationwide strikes and protests that characterised the late 1930s.

As the demonstrations grew more frequent, the British response grew more brutal, and there was little of the bubbling unrest that could not be traced to the young Aung San. Finally, suspecting the Dobama Asiayone of plotting a revolt, the colonial police issued a warrant for Aung San’s arrest.

Aung San the soldier  

By driving Aung San into exile, the British delivered a dangerous political weapon into the hands of the Japanese.

In August 1940, Japan contacted Aung San in China, took him to Tokyo and began grooming him to be – they hoped – a puppet leader.

Aung San fully embraced the Japanese vision for him and the independent Burma they promised to help him achieve, and he began learning Japanese and espousing fascist rhetoric.  

In February 1941, he snuck back to Rangoon before returning to Japan with a group of trusted young associates – among them the future dictator Ne Win – who became famous as the “Thirty Comrades”. They underwent rigorous training on Hainan Island, then occupied by Japan. On the eve of the invasion of Burma by the Japanese, the Thirty Comrades were positioned to lead the new Burmese Independence Army.

So it was that Aung San, under the nom de guerre Bo Teza (“General Fire”), and the Thirty Comrades marched beside the Japanese Imperial Army as it drove the British and their allies out of his homeland. Rangoon fell in March 1942.

(On a lighter note, Aung San married Daw Khin Kyi in September that year.)

In 1943, the Japanese declared Burma an independent nation. Aung San was appointed Minister of War and with the rank of Bogyoke, or major-general, headed the newly-restructured Burma Defence Army (the position of head of state went to pre-war activist Dr Ba Maw).

But the “independence” was clearly a sham. The Japanese occupation was utterly brutal for the Myanmar people, and utterly disillusioning for the Bogyoke.

Aung San the rebel

In 1944, the former Japanophile founded the underground Anti-Fascist Organisation and began colluding with the Allies, who had launched a series of offensives late that year to reoccupy Burma.

On March 27, 1945 – a date celebrated as Armed Forces Day – Aung San marched the BDA out of Rangoon under the pretence of engaging the approaching British, only to turn its guns on the Japanese.

The contribution of the BDA’s support for the Allied reoccupation is debatable, but Aung San’s intention was always to put the AFO in a position to secure the country’s independence.

When peace settled over a war-ravaged Burma after the Japanese surrender in August 1945, Aung San, his party and his army were ready to face their former rulers in a new, political battlefield.

The last gasp of colonialism 

In 1945, the pre-war Governor of Burma, Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith, was reinstated and returned to Rangoon with an official White Paper outlining a plan that would end in the nation’s independence – eventually.

Under the British plan, elections to establish Burma as a self-governing member of the British Commonwealth would follow a long period of reconstruction and political re-organisation. In the short term, Burma would get a multi-party Executive Council appointed by the governor.

But years of war and political chaos had left Aung San, his Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (the successor of the AFO) and their sympathisers with little patience for the trappings of colonialism.

They held more political cards than the British and they knew it. Burma spent 1946 on the edge of an all-out revolution as Aung San squared off against Dorman-Smith. He snubbed Dorman-Smith’s attempts at compromise, stirred up popular vitriol against the British crown and even started his own paramilitary group, the People’s Volunteer Organisation.

In March 1946, one of the Thirty Comrades publicly accused Aung San of being involved in the cold-blooded execution in 1942 of a village headman suspected of working with the Allies during the Japanese invasion.

Aung San did not deny the charge of murder. But the accusation backed the British into a corner: If they arrested Aung San it could lead to an uprising but if they declined to take action it would show that they had finally run out of cards to play.

fmv2i51aungsanillustration2.jpg

Illustration by Jared Downing | Frontier

The British had, indeed, played their last card. Bloody post-war uprisings were occurring throughout the empire and London did not have the stomach for another one in Burma.

Dorman-Smith was dismissed. Facing the threat of a national strike, Britain struck a deal for full independence within a year. Aung San travelled to London and on January 27, 1947, signed the agreement with Prime Minister Clement Attlee. Aung San was to be the prime minister of an elected constituent assembly.

Elections for the assembly were held in April; the AFPFL won 196 of 202 seats.

Aung San the martyr

Aung San had stared down the British but he was far from the only political player in Burma. Many ethnic factions and formerly exiled politicians had sacrificed everything to stay loyal to the British during the war, and they also wanted seats at the new table.

On February 12, 1947 – a date celebrated as Union Day – Aung San signed the Panglong Agreement with Kachin, Chin and Shan representatives, establishing guidelines for political autonomy.

But others were reluctant to cooperate, especially the Karen, who had boycotted the April election. Many groups had remained loyal to the British as the BIA marched with the Japanese and the fighting had left a legacy of tense relations with the majority Bamar.

But perhaps Aung San’s fiercest nemesis was conservative pre-war prime minister U Saw, who had always been a staunch opponent of the AFPFL. However, his animosity turned to utter hatred when gunmen – whom U Saw suspected to be acting at the behest of Aung San – attacked his car. The bullets missed U Saw, but they shattered the windows and flying shards of glass badly injured his face.

It was U Saw’s men who stormed the Secretariat in downtown Rangoon on July 19, 1947 and gunned down Aung San, six members of the Executive Council, a cabinet secretary and a bodyguard. The infamous event has been remembered since as Martyrcs’ Day.

Aung San was just 32 when he died, a mere six months before Burma finally became independent, on January 4, 1948.

Aung San’s unwavering will made him a hero of the campaign for independence and, in a role cut tragically short, the leader of the first Burmese government since the end of the Third Anglo-Burmese War in 1885. However, he also left behind a nation deeply divided, with political and ethnic factions feeling bullied, ignored or betrayed.

Whether his uncommon intelligence, charisma and courage could have spared Burma decades of tyranny and civil war is impossible to say. But the legacy of Aung San, at least, has been a rare constant in a century of mingled strife and peace.

Jared Downing

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Myanmar and Aung San: The resurrection of an icon

The shift in the country’s political iconography that began under President Thein Sein in 2011 has picked up pace since Aung San Suu Kyi took power.

In this post on The Interpreter, Andray Abrahamian recently drew attention to the Myanmar government’s decision to name a bridge in southern Mon State after the country’s national hero, Aung San, rather than leave the matter in the hands of the regional authorities. As the post noted, the issue has become a source of tension between the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) and the local community, one that could easily have been avoided.

This case highlights the central government’s continuing dominance of the 14 provincial assemblies in Myanmar, which have long struggled to exercise a substantive role. There is another way of looking at the bridge-naming controversy, however, and that is as an example of the shift in the country’s political iconography that began under President Thein Sein in 2011 and has picked up pace since Aung San Suu Kyi took power in 2016.

Ever since it regained its independence from the UK in 1948, successive governments in Myanmar (known until 1989 as Burma) have placed considerable importance on the use of flags, crests and other symbols to foster a sense of shared history, encourage national unity and in various ways promote loyalty to the government of the day.

The most potent of these symbols has been the hero of Myanmar’s independence struggle, General Aung San, who was assassinated with his provisional cabinet in 1947. His image was appropriated by the armed forces and, after Ne Win’s coup in 1962, was widely used to help legitimise socialist rule. For decades, Aung San’s picture hung alongside Ne Win’s in all government offices and at many public venues.

After a new military council took over in 1988, Ne Win’s portrait was taken down. That was not unexpected, but those of Aung San posed a different kind of problem. For, during the 1988 pro-democracy uprising, and again during the 2007 ‘Saffron Revolution’, pictures of the national hero were used by demonstrators to drum up popular support and call for regime change. They were also potent reminders that Aung San was the father of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Before they were regulated by the regime, NLD publicity materials depicted Aung San alongside Aung San Suu Kyi, emphasising not only the familial connection but also the striking physical similarity between them. Aung San Suu Kyi often received visitors at her Yangon home, surrounded by photos and paintings of her father, and she routinely referred to him (and their blood relationship) in her speeches.

The military regime countered by reducing Aung San’s public profile. Most of his portraits were removed. Also, in a major break from past practice, none of the banknotes issued by the Central Bank of Myanmar after 1990 included a picture of Aung San. His image was replaced by neutral designs like the mythical chinthe , or leogryph. Nor did Aung San’s portrait appear on any of the country’s new postage stamps. 

This policy was not without risks, as the regime exploited the fact that Aung San had helped create modern Myanmar, and founded the armed forces. However, it resented efforts by other sectors of society to claim him as their own. When Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Myanmar from the UK in 1988 and began to campaign for democracy, she directly challenged the military government’s efforts to monopolise Aung San’s legacy.

In response, the regime tried to undermine Aung San Suu Kyi’s claim to her father’s mantle. It emphasised her marriage to a foreigner and her education abroad (in India and the UK). The state-controlled press accused her of turning her back on her country, and ‘prostituting herself’ to the West. She was labelled a ‘traitor puppet’. The regime even refused to cite her full name, referring to her as Mrs Michael Aris (her husband’s name) or simply Ma (a diminutive form of address) Suu Kyi.

After the inauguration of Thein Sein’s reformist government in 2011, however, this policy was abandoned. Aung San was once again permitted to be part of the public consciousness. In 2012, for example, the refurbished Aung San museum in Yangon resumed normal visiting hours (since 1999, it had only been open for three hours each year). Official restrictions were lifted on the portrayal of Aung San in local movies.

This shift in attitude was perhaps best demonstrated by a photo published in 2014 of the new president meeting Aung San Suu Kyi, under a portrait of her father. One topic discussed at this meeting was the reintroduction of Aung San’s image to public life. In 2016, Aung San Suu Kyi and the armed forces chief attended a ceremony at the Martyr’s Mausoleum, which was dedicated to her father and other fallen independence heroes.

Most recently, on 17 March this year, a postage stamp was issued to commemorate the 70 th anniversary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It depicts Aung San, who is described as the ‘father of modern-day Myanmar and the country’s first foreign minister’. There are still no banknotes in circulation that carry his portrait, but a new currency issue is being considered that may do so.

Several explanations have been offered for Aung San’s return to the pantheon of national heroes and reappearance in Myanmar’s official iconography.

One obvious reason is the advent of governments that openly acknowledge Aung San’s commitment to national unity and democratic rule. Despite his politicisation by both the military regime and opposition movement, he remains a popular icon that almost everyone in Myanmar can embrace. In that sense, he is like Sun Yat Sen, the only person depicted on the postage stamps of both Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China.

Another reason is the election of the NLD government in 2015, and in particular the appointment last year of Aung San Suu Kyi as State Counsellor. She has strong political and personal interests in promoting Aung San, both as a national hero and the father of the country’s de facto leader. It is probably not a coincidence that Aung San Suu Kyi is also Myanmar’s Foreign Minister, the position commemorated on the latest postage stamp.

A third possible reason is to remind everyone of Aung San’s key role in the 1947 Panglong Agreement between his provisional government and three major ethnic groups. Conveniently forgotten are the agreement’s flaws, its limitations and the later broken promises, but public references to her father help boost Aung San Suu Kyi’s own attempts to forge a nation-wide peace agreement through the ‘21 st Century Panglong’ process.

Despite the machinations of the military regime, Aung San was never forgotten by the people of Myanmar. His official rehabilitation has been long overdue. To push this policy at the expense of national harmony, however, would be to take the matter too far. Indeed, by overriding the wishes of the Mon State authorities, simply to name a bridge, Naypyidaw is threatening the very unity and stability that Aung San tried so hard to establish 70 years ago.

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• The Political Legacy of Aung San

In this Book

• edited by Josef Silverstein
• Published by: Cornell University Press

This work compiles selected speeches, letters, and statements by the father of Burmese independence, Aung San. The editor's introduction offers an overview of this remarkable man's life, thought, and achievements. The documents included here provide insight into the politics of Aung San—an eminently pragmatic leader focused on attaining both national unity and social harmony—through his own words.

Table of Contents

• Half Title, Title Page, Copyright
• Editor's Preface
• pp. vii-viii
• Introduction
• Document 1: Blue Print for Burma
• Document 2: Defence of Burma, January 30,1945
• Document 3: Major General Aung San Pledges to Fight for Country
• Document 4: Letter from Aung San to Supreme Allied Commander Regarding Conversion of BNA to Burma Army
• Document 5: Memorandum on the Proposed Reorganization of Burma Patriotic Forces
• Document 6: Agreed Conclusions Reached Between the Supreme Allied Commander, SEA, and Major General Aung San at a Meeting at HQ SEAC, Kandy, on Friday, 7th September 1945
• Document 7: Exchange of Letters Between Adm. Mountbatten and General Aung San
• Document 8: Statement of General Aung San, Commander, PVO, May 8,1946
• Document 9: U Aung San's Explanation of the Break Between the AFPFL and the Burma Communist Party
• Document 10: Four Speeches of U Aung San on the Aung San-Attlee Agreement of January 27,1947
• Document 11: U Aung San's Appeal to Pay Land Revenue, Rent, and Agricultural Loans
• Document 12: U Aung San's Burmese New Year's Day Speech, April 17,1947, following AFPFL Victory in the Constituent Assembly Election
• Document 13: The Fourteen Points
• Document 14: Summary and Quotations from Aung San's Concluding Speech to AFPFL Convention, May 23,1947
• Document 15: Bogyoke's Seven Points
• Document 16: Burma's Challenge
• Further Series Titles

Additional Information

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The Political Legacy of Aung San

• Edited by: Josef Silverstein
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• Language: English
• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Copyright year: 1993
• Edition: Revised Edition
• Audience: General/trade;
• Main content: 169
• Keywords: Asian Studies ; History ; Political Science & Political History
• Published: May 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781501718953

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• Contemporary History (post 1945)

(1915—1947) politician in Burma

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(1915–1947)

Burmese political activist, who led the movement for independence from British rule.

Britain's annexation of the remaining core of independent Burmese territory in 1886 was strongly opposed by Aung San's family, who became prominent in national resistance. Aung San himself became an anti-British activist in the period between the two World Wars and, as secretary of the students' union at Rangoon University, worked with fellow activist U Nu to lead a major students' strike in February 1936. In 1939 Aung San became secretary-general of the nationalist Domama Asi-Ayone (We-Burmans Association). In 1940, while in China seeking support for Burmese independence, Aung San was approached by the Japanese, who helped him raise a ‘Burma Independence Army’ to support their invasion of his homeland. Between 1943 and 1945 Aung San served as a minister of defence in Ba Maw's puppet government. However, disenchanted by Japanese promises and performance, Aung San switched his allegiance to the Allied cause in March 1945. After the Japanese surrender, by retaining a cadre of key personnel to establish a People's Volunteer Organization, Aung San successfully resisted British efforts to neutralize him. Subsequent negotiations provided for Burmese independence by January 1948. The elections of April 1947 gave the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League, which Aung San had helped to form, 196 out of 202 seats. Despite being denounced by Burmese communists as an instrument of British imperialism, Aung San was committed to national independence outside the framework of the British Commonwealth.

On 19 July 1947 prime minister-designate Aung San, his brother, and five governmental colleagues were assassinated by a bomb during a session of the Executive Council. U Saw, Aung San's long-time rival, was later executed for his role in the murder. Half a century after his death Aung San's daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi, became the rallying point for democratic opposition to the military dictatorship of Burma (renamed Myanmar).

From:   Aung San   in  Who's Who in the Twentieth Century »

Subjects: History — Contemporary History (post 1945)

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Reference entries, aung san u (b. 13 feb. 1915), aung san (1914–47), aung san (1915–1947), aung san (1916–47).

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Aung San Suu Kyi Moved to Unknown Location From Prison by Myanmar Junta

The unexpected relocation was attributed to a heat wave, and came as the military government is facing increasingly emboldened rebel forces.

By Sui-Lee Wee

Myanmar’s ousted civilian leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, has been moved by the military junta to an unknown location from a prison in the capital, Naypyidaw, raising questions about her safety.

Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and U Win Myint, the country’s former president, were relocated “to a safe place because of the high temperatures in the prison,” Zaw Min Tun, the military spokesman, said Wednesday, without disclosing their location. Temperatures in Naypyidaw hit 114.8 degrees Fahrenheit, or 46 degrees Celsius, in the past week.

Few people in Myanmar believe that the military is genuinely concerned about Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s welfare.

The unexpected movement of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, 78, comes as the military is under intense pressure from a rebel alliance. In recent months, it has suffered its worst losses since seizing power in a coup in 2021.

Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who was deposed in the coup and is still widely revered in the country, is serving a 27-year sentence on corruption and other charges. Rights groups and supporters say the charges were trumped up and meant to keep the Nobel Peace laureate from elected office. Kim Aris, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s younger son, said he believes the junta could use his mother as a potential “bargaining chip.”

“As the fighting is getting closer and closer” to the capital, he said, “they are getting more desperate and trying to put things in place that might protect them a little bit.”

Mr. Aris, speaking by telephone from his home in London, said he received a brief letter from his mother at the beginning of the year, the first time he had heard from her since the coup. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi told him that it was cold in prison at that time and she had problems with her teeth.

In a separate telephone interview, a lawyer for Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of a gag order prohibiting him from talking publicly about the case, said he was puzzled about the latest move, adding that he believed the military was exploiting his client for its own purposes.

Some of her supporters fear that the military government could use her as a pawn to mollify opposition forces, or even as a human shield.

She was “escorted away in heavily secured vehicles” late on Tuesday, according to U Kyaw Htwe, a spokesman for Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s political party, the National League of Democracy. She left all her belongings behind, and her whereabouts was unknown.

“It’s challenging to speculate on her situation, as it remains uncertain whether her relocation is temporary or permanent,” Mr. Kyaw Htwe said.

The military, which has in some way or form ruled Myanmar for more than half a century, has long been threatened by Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s enduring popularity. For 15 years, it held her under house arrest, briefly freeing her at some points and then detaining her again. It released her in 2010 , as it was moving toward a power-sharing arrangement, and she returned to politics, her party winning landslide elections.

In 2020, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi repeated that feat, winning by an even bigger margin. On Feb. 1, 2021, just hours before she and her fellow lawmakers were to take their seats in Parliament, the military arrested Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, Mr. Win Myint and senior members of her party, accusing them of committing voter fraud.

In the years since, the country’s pro-democracy movement has moved on beyond Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi . But she remains a household name, and analysts have speculated that she could be used as a prop to show that the military is ready to open talks with her.

Since the coup, Myanmar has devolved into a state of civil war. For more than two years, the military battled thousands of armed resistance fighters, with the rebels holding ground in the countryside and the government in the big cities.

But, in recent months, opposition forces have scored significant victories against the military, raising hopes that the end could be near for the junta. Starting last October, an alliance of rebel forces took several key towns from the military in northern Shan State. In western Myanmar, the Arakan Army, an ethnic armed organization, said it had captured several battalions and army bases.

Earlier this month, rebel forces said they launched a drone strike on military targets in Naypyidaw. Last week, rebels belonging to the Karen ethnic group captured Myawaddy , a key trade town on the Thai border.

“My hunch is that Min Aung Hlaing is backing down a bit,” said U Khin Zaw Win, the director of the Tampadipa Institute, a policy advocacy organization based in Yangon, referring to the commander in chief of the armed forces who orchestrated the coup.

“Militarily, he can’t turn it around,” Mr. Khin Zaw Win said. “He has this ace card, whose name is Aung San Suu Kyi, and he wants to make sure that this card remains in his pocket.”

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated how long Myanmar’s military has controlled the country. It is more than half a century, not nearly half a century.

How we handle corrections

Sui-Lee Wee is the Southeast Asia bureau chief for The Times, overseeing coverage of 11 countries in the region. More about Sui-Lee Wee