Tragically, they also prove that the people of
Burma have little more to pin their hopes on than supernatural intervention. According to Tosa, “rumour is an ambivalent and weak weapon because in focusing upon and interpreting these political activities, the Burmese people cannot but help admit that the regime are masters of power.”
In a more down-to-earth way, Leehey describes how that power works in her chapter about Burma’s publishing industry and the country’s literary scene. Even more than its likewise dictatorial predecessors, “the current regime attempts to make itself the centre of authority and truth,” while independent writers try to bend the rules by writing in a “crazy way” to outsmart the censors and get their message through to the public. But sometimes writers and magazine editors have been more direct than that. In 1995 they appealed to the authorities to ease controls because they were detrimental to Burma’s international image. Hardly surprisingly, however, the situation got worse as the military government instead tightened the rules for private publications. “The lesson for members of the literary world, it would seem, is not to complain,” Leehay concludes. The general public appears to have learnt the same lesson, as no one dares to speak out against a regime that remains universally despised.
But despite the generals’ firm grip on power, Houtman argues that their “authoritarian instruments have failed to create enduring structures of state.” Power by the gun and personality is the rule of the game in Burma, not a strong state steeped in ancient traditions, as some Western academic sycophants are trying to tell the world.
According to Houtman, the importance of personalities dominates even the democratic movement and its foreign supporters—and here no-one is more important than Aung San Suu Kyi. She has been likened to a “female bodhisattva” by her countrymen, and called “Burma’s Saint Joan” by Vanity Fair. The junta, on the other hand, dismisses her as “Mother of the West”, while not denying the supernatural characteristics attributed to her.
The last chapter is supposed to look into “the future of Burma”, and does that by examining how the Burmese raise their children, and how much they value their sons and daughters. Sadly lacking is a political analysis of where Burma actually stands at the turn of the 21st century—which is just as important, or even more so, as diving into the depths of social and medical anthropology.
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