Aung San: Biography from Answers.com

The Burmese political leader Aung San (1915-1947) was the driving force behind the nationalist movement that won Burma (now Myanmar) its freedom from British colonial rule in 1948.

Born in the township of Natmauk on Feb. 13, 1915, Aung San was the son of fairly well-off parents. He graduated from one of the high schools set up by Burmese nationalists to demonstrate their independence of foreign-provided education, and he received his bachelor's degree from the University of Rangoon. As a university student, he was extremely active politically, serving as president of the Rangoon University Students' Union, breeding ground of nationalist leaders, and as one of the founders of the All-Burma Students' Union.

Editor of Oway, the Rangoon University student magazine, Aung San was expelled from the university in 1936 for printing a slashing personal attack on a college official. The attack had no connection whatsoever with mounting nationalist demands against the British colonial presence but led nonetheless to the 1936 students' strike, the major shaping event of pre-World War II Burmese nationalism.

Like various other Burmese nationalists of the period, Aung San wrote well in both Burmese and English. He was founding member of the anticolonial Red Dragon Book Club (together with U Nu, later to be independent Burma's first premier) and a member of the editorial staff of the only English-language newspaper in the prewar years, New Burma.

Aung San was elected general secretary of the extreme nationalist Thakin (Our Own Masters) party in 1938, and he became the leading young nationalist before World War II and one of the two or three key Burmese political figures in the country. He helped to found the All-Burma Peasants League and, together with Dr. Ba Maw, established the Freedom Bloc to present a united front against the continuation of the British colonial presence. For such activities he was frequently interrogated and detained by the authorities.

Fight for Independence

Aung San went underground in late 1940 to escape arrest by the British and subsequently left the country surreptitiously to make contact with Japanese officials in occupied southeastern China. He traveled to Japan, then returned to Burma to lay the groundwork for subsequent Japanese-Burmese nationalist cooperation against the British.

When he returned to Japan in early 1941, he took with him 29 fellow young nationalists, none of them as prominent politically as himself. He feared that the departure of more prominent figures would arouse British suspicion. Aung San and these others were to lead the so-called Burma Independence Army into Burma from Thailand in 1942, in cooperation with the Japanese, and gain Burmese immortality as the "Thirty Comrades."

The Thirty Comrades were subsequently to rank as the greatest heroes of the Burmese nationalist revolution. Many were to play major political roles in postcolonial Burma, including Gen. Ne Win, who unseated elected premier U Nu in 1958 and 1962 and was Burma's head of government during most of the 1960s.

Suspicious of Japanese intentions toward Burma almost from the start, Aung San nonetheless accepted command of the Burma Defense Army, heretofore the Burma Independence Army. When Burmese "independence" was proclaimed in 1943, Aung San, who had been made a major general, was minister of war in the collaborationist Ba Maw government together with almost all of the other young nationalists. Despite his official position, however, he repeatedly spoke out against the sham character of Burma's alleged independence.

In August 1944 Aung San was the principal moving force behind the establishment of the Anti-Fascist Organization, the clandestine resistance force that subsequently became the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League (AFPFL) and Burma's governing party for the first 10 years of independence after 1948. In March 1945 he led the Burma Defense Army, newly named the Patriot Burmese Forces, into open rebellion against Japan and subsequently into cooperation with the returning British military forces.

Elected president of the AFPFL in 1945 and reelected the subsequent year at a convention attended by 100,000 persons, the youthful Aung San emerged from World War II the best known and most popular of the Burmese political leaders. His demand to Britain for early independence was backed by the support of the overwhelming majority of his politically conscious countrymen. The British governor, Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith, however, regarded Aung San as a traitor and war criminal. Sir Reginald's failure to reach agreement with the Burmese leader led to his replacement by Sir Hubert Rance, with whom Aung San quickly agreed on the composition of an interim government to help rule Burma until independence and to prepare for such independence. Aung San was premier-designate of the soon-to-be independent government.

In January 1947 Aung San, now Burma's acknowledged political leader, led the Burmese delegation to London for independence talks with British premier Clement Attlee. On his return in February 1947 Aung San successfully negotiated the Panglong Agreement, which provided for the participation of various frontier-area peoples in the new Union of Burma, as the emergent Burmese federal state was to be called.

On July 19, 1947 - six months before the coming of independence - Aung San, only 32, and most of the other top nationalist leaders of the country were shot to death by henchmen of an insanely jealous political rival, prewar premier U Saw. The anniversary of the assassinations, known as Martyrs Day, is Myanmar's most solemn national holiday.

Aung San
13 February 1915 – 19 July 1947 (aged 32)
Aung San
Place of birth	Natmauk, Magwe, Burma
Place of death	Yangon, Burma
Allegiance	Burma National Army Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League
Rank	Major General
Battles/wars	World War II

This article is part of the History of Burma series

Early history of Burma
Pyu city-states (c. 100 BC–c. 840 AD)
Mon kingdoms (9th–11th, 13th–16th, 18th c.)
Bagan Dynasty (849–1287, 1st Empire)
Ava (1364–1555)
Pegu (1287–1539, 1747–1757)
Mrauk U (1434–1784)
Taungoo Dynasty (1486–1752, 2nd Empire)
Konbaung Dynasty (1752–1885, 3rd Empire)
Wars with Britain (1824–1826, 1852, 1885)
British Arakan (1824–1852)
British Tenasserim (1824–1852)
British Lower Burma (1852–1886)
British Upper Burma (1885–1886)
British rule in Burma (1824–1942, 1945–1948)
Nationalist movement in Burma (after 1886)
Ba Maw
Aung San
Japanese occupation of Burma (1942–1945)
Democratic period (1948–1962)
U Nu and U Thant
1st military rule (1962–1989)
Ne Win
8888 Uprising (1988)
Aung San Suu Kyi
2nd military rule (1989–present)
Saffron Revolution (2007)
Cyclone Nargis (2008)
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Youth

Aung San was born to U Pha, a lawyer, and his wife Daw Suu in Natmauk, Magwe district, in central Burma in 1915. His family was already well known in the Burmese resistance movement; his great uncle Bo Min Yaung fought against the British annexation of Burma in 1886.^[1]^[2]

Aung San received his primary education at a Buddhist monastic school in Natmauk, and secondary education at Yenangyaung High School.^[3] He went to Rangoon University (now the University of Yangon) and received a B.A. degree in English Literature, Modern History, and Political Science in 1938.

Names of Aung San

Name at birth: Htain Lin
As student leader and a thakin: Aung San
Nom de guerre: Bo Tayza
Japanese Name: Omoda Monchi
Chinese Name: Tan Lu Sho
Resistance period code name: U Naung Cho
Contact code name with General Ne Win: Ko Set Pe.

Struggle for independence

After Aung San entered Rangoon University in 1933, he quickly became a student leader.^[3] He was elected to the executive committee of the Rangoon University Students' Union (RUSU). He then became editor of their magazine Oway (Peacock's Call).^[2]

In February 1936, he was threatened with expulsion from the university, along with U Nu, for refusing to reveal the name of the author of the article Hell Hound At Large, which criticized a senior University official. This led to the Second University Students' Strike and the university authorities subsequently retracted their expulsion orders. In 1938, Aung San was elected president of both the RUSU and the All-Burma Students Union (ABSU), formed after the strike spread to Mandalay.^[1]^[2] In the same year, the government appointed him as a student representative on the Rangoon University Act Amendment Committee.

In October 1938, Aung San left his law classes and entered national politics. At this point, he was anti-British, and staunchly anti-imperialist. He became a Thakin (lord or master — a politically motivated title that proclaimed that the Burmese people were the true masters of their country, not the colonial rulers who had usurped the title for their exclusive use) when he joined the Dobama Asiayone (Our Burma Union), and acted as their general secretary until August 1940. While in this role, he helped organize a series of countrywide strikes that became known as Htaung thoun ya byei ayeidawbon (the '1300 Revolution', named after the Burmese calendar year).

He also helped found another nationalist organization, Bama-htwet-yat Gaing (the Freedom Bloc), by forming an alliance between the Dobama, the ABSU, politically active monks and Dr Ba Maw's Sinyètha (Poor Man's) Party, and became its general secretary. What remains relatively unknown is the fact that he also became a founder member and first secretary-general of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) in August 1939. Shortly afterwards he co-founded the People's Revolutionary Party, renamed the Socialist Party after the Second World War.^[2] In March 1940, he attended the Indian National Congress Assembly in Ramgarh, India. However, the government issued a warrant for his arrest due to Thakin attempts to organize a revolt against the British and he had to flee Burma.^[1] He went first to China, seeking assistance from the government there^[4] (China was still under nationalist government during WWII), but he was intercepted by the Japanese military occupiers in Amoy, and was convinced by them to go to Japan instead.^[2]

World War II period

Whilst in Japan, the Blue Print for a Free Burma, which has been widely, but mistakenly, attributed to Aung San, was drafted.^[5] In February 1941, Aung San returned to Burma, with an offer of arms and financial support from the Fumimaro Konoe government. He returned briefly to Japan to receive more military training, along with the first batch of young revolutionaries who came to be known as the Thirty Comrades.^[2] On 26 December, 1941, with the help of the Minami Kikan, a secret intelligence unit formed to close the Burma Road and to support a national uprising and headed by Colonel Suzuki, he founded the Burma Independence Army (BIA) in Bangkok, Thailand (under Japanese occupation at the time).^[2]

The capital of Burma, Rangoon (now Yangon), fell to the Japanese in March 1942 (as part of the Burma Campaign in World War II). The BIA formed an administration for the country under Thakin Tun Oke that operated in parallel with the Japanese military administration until the Japanese disbanded it. In July, the disbanded BIA was re-formed as the Burma Defense Army (BDA). Aung San was made a colonel and put in charge of the force.^[1] He was later invited to Japan, and was presented with the Order of the Rising Sun by the Emperor.^[1]

On 1 August 1943, the Japanese declared Burma to be an independent nation. Aung San was appointed War Minister, and the army was again renamed, this time as the Burma National Army (BNA).^[1] Aung San became skeptical of their promises of true independence and their ability to win the war. He made plans to organize an uprising in Burma and made contact with the British authorities in India, in cooperation with Communist leaders Thakin Than Tun and Thakin Soe. On 27 March 1945, he led the BNA in a revolt against the Japanese occupiers and helped the Allies defeat the Japanese.^[2] 27 March came to be commemorated as 'Resistance Day' until the military regime later renamed it 'Tatmadaw (Armed Forces) Day'.

Post-World War II

After the return of the British, who had established a military administration, the Anti-Fascist Organisation (AFO), formed in August 1944, was transformed into a united front, comprising the BNA, the Communists and the Socialists, and renamed the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League (AFPFL). The Burma National Army was renamed the Patriotic Burmese Forces (PBF) and then gradually disarmed by the British as the Japanese were driven out of various parts of the country. The Patriotic Burmese Forces, while disbanded, were offered positions in the Burma Army under British command according to the Kandy conference agreement with Lord Louis Mountbatten in Ceylon in September 1945.^[2] Aung San was offered the rank of Deputy Inspector General of the Burma Army, but he declined it in favor of becoming a civilian political leader and the military leader of the Pyithu yèbaw tat (People's Volunteer Organisation or PVO).^[2]

In January 1946, Aung San became the President of the AFPFL following the return of civil government to Burma the previous October. In September, he was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Executive Council of Burma by the new British Governor Sir Hubert Rance, and was made responsible for defence and external affairs.^[2] Rance and Mountbatten took a very different view from the former British Governor, Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith, and also Winston Churchill, who had called Aung San a 'traitor rebel leader'.^[2] A rift had already developed inside the AFPFL between the Communists and Aung San, leading the nationalists and Socialists, which came to a head when Aung San and others accepted seats on the Executive Council, culminating in the expulsion of Thakin Than Tun and the CPB from the AFPFL.^[1]^[2]

Aung San was to all intents and purposes Prime Minister, although he was still subject to a British veto. On January 27, 1947, Aung San and the British Prime Minister Clement Attlee signed an agreement in London guaranteeing Burma's independence within a year; Aung San had been responsible for its negotiation.^[2] During the stopover in Delhi at a press conference, he stated that the Burmese wanted 'complete independence' not dominion status and that they had 'no inhibitions of any kind' about 'contemplating a violent or non-violent struggle or both' in order to achieve this, and concluded that he hoped for the best but he was prepared for the worst.^[1]

He is also believed to have been responsible, in part, for the persecution of the Karen people on account of their loyalty to the British and having fought the Japanese and the BIA.^[2] Dorman-Smith had in fact rejected a request for an AFPFL delegation to visit London and tried to bring Aung San to trial for his role in the murder of a village headman in 1942.^[2] Two weeks after the signing of the agreement with Britain, Aung San signed an agreement at the Panglong Conference on February 12, 1947 with leaders from other national groups, expressing solidarity and support for a united Burma.^[2]^[6] Karen representatives played a relatively minor role in the conference and, as subsequent rebellions revealed, remained alienated from the new state.

In April, the AFPFL won 196 out of 202 seats in the election for a Constituent Assembly. In July, Aung San convened a series of conferences at Sorrenta Villa in Rangoon to discuss the rehabilitation of Burma.

Assassination

On 19 July 1947, a gang of armed paramilitaries broke into the Secretariat Building in downtown Yangon during a meeting of the Executive Council (the shadow government established by the British in preparation for the transfer of power) and assassinated Aung San and six of his cabinet ministers, including his older brother Ba Win, father of Sein Win leader of the government-in-exile, the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB). A cabinet secretary and a bodyguard were also killed. The assassination was supposedly carried out on the orders of U Saw, a rival politician and former prime minister, who was subsequently tried and hanged. However there are aspects of U Saw's trial that give rise to doubt.^[7]

Family

While he was War Minister in 1942, Aung San met and married Khin Kyi, and around the same time her sister met and married Thakin Than Tun, the Communist leader. Aung San and Khin Kyi had three children. Their youngest child, Aung San Suu Kyi, is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and leader of the Burmese Opposition, the National League for Democracy (NLD), and held under house arrest by the military regime. Their second son, Aung San Lin, died at age eight, when he drowned in an ornamental lake in the grounds of the house. The elder, Aung San Oo, is an engineer working in the United States and has disagreed with his sister's political activities. Daw Khin Kyi died on 27 December 1988.

Legacy

His place in history as the Father of Burmese Independence and a national hero is assured both from his own legacy and due to the activities of his daughter. Aung San Suu Kyi was only 2 when her father died. A martyrs' mausoleum was built at the foot of the Shwedagon Pagoda and 19 July was designated Martyr's Day (Azani nei), a public holiday. His literary work entitled "Burma's Challenge" was likewise popular.

Aung San's name had been invoked by successive Burmese governments since independence until the military regime in the 1990s tried to eradicate all traces of Aung San's memory. Nevertheless, several statues of him adorn the former capital Yangon and his portrait still has pride of place in many homes and offices throughout the country. Scott Market, Yangon's most famous, was renamed Bogyoke Market in his memory, and Commissioner Road was retitled Bogyoke Aung San Road after independence. These names have been retained. Many towns and cities in Burma have thoroughfares and parks named after him. His portrait was held up everywhere during the 8888 Uprising and used as a rallying point.^[2] Following the 1988 Uprising, the government redesigned the national currency, the kyat, removing his picture and replacing it with scenes of Burmese life.

References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h Aung San Suu Kyi (1984). Aung San of Burma. Edinburgh: Kiscadale 1991. pp. 1,10,14,17,20,22,26,27,41,44.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p ^q ^r Martin Smith (1991). Burma - Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity. London and New Jersey: Zed Books. pp. 90,54,56,57,58,59,60,65,69,66,68,62–63,65,77,78,6.
^ ^a ^b Maung Maung (1962). Aung San of Burma. The Hauge: Martinus Nijhoff for Yale University. pp. 22,23.
^ Stewart, Whitney. (1997). Aung San Suu Kyi: fearless voice of Burma. Twenty-First Century Books. p. 17. ISBN 978-0822549314
^ Gustaaf Houtman, In Kei Nemoto (ed) - Reconsidering the Japanese military occupation in Burma (1942-45) (May 30, 2007). "Aung San’s lan-zin, the Blue Print and the Japanese Occupation of Burma". Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA), Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. ISBN978-4-87297. pp. 179-227. http://ghoutman.googlepages.com/houtmanAung-sanslan-zintheblueprinta.pdf.
^ "The Panglong Agreement, 1947". Online Burma/Myanmar Library. http://www.ibiblio.org/obl/docs/panglong_agreement.htm.
^ "Who Killed Aung San? - an interview with Gen. Kyaw Zaw". The Irrawaddy. August 1997. http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=719. Retrieved 2006-10-29.

Kin Oung. Who Killed Aung San? White Lotus, 2^nd edition. ISBN 9748496686

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Aung San's resolution to the Constituent Assembly regarding the Burmese Constitution, June 16, 1947
Who really killed Aung San? Vol 1 at YouTube (requires Adobe Flash) BBC documentary on YouTube, July 19 1997

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