The true inspiration behind the political ideals and acumen of Aung San Suu Kyi

People who are acquainted with the name Aung San know of Aung San Suu Kyi. Equally, people for whom Suu Kyi is a famous name also know of Aung San. Aung San and Suu Kyi, father and daughter, share symbolic resemblances when it comes to Burma’s politics.

While the late Aung San is held as a symbol of the country’s independence, Nobel Peace laureate Suu Kyi, who celebrated her 61st birthday on June 19, is regarded as a symbol of democracy. But this heritage could hardly have come directly from her father—she was just two years old when Gen Aung San, Burma’s founding father, was assassinated by political rivals in 1947.

“My father died when I was too young to remember him,” Suu Kyi wrote in a preface to her biography Aung San of Burma, published in 1984. So, who was Suu Kyi’s mentor and who inspired her to become a national leader of her father’s stature?

The answer can only be her mother, the late Khin Kyi, who was regarded as one of Burma’s most influential women of her time, although she never achieved the fame of her husband and daughter.

“Daw Khin Kyi made her children, from their earliest years, aware of their father’s heritage,” wrote M Than E in an article, A Flowering of the Spirit: Memories of Suu and Her Family, which was published in Suu Kyi’s book Freedom From Fear. M Than E, once a famous singer and retired senior staff member of the UN’s secretariat, is a close friend of Aung San’s family.

Some other close friends believe as well as being a conscientious mother, Khin Kyi was her daughter’s political and cultural mentor. “In front of her mother, Daw Suu looked like an innocent child, not knowing anything, including politics and things like that,” said the celebrated poet Tin Moe, who had meetings with Khin Kyi and Suu Kyi in the 1980s.

Khin Kyi was very well informed and knew a lot about Burma’s politics, although she rarely paraded her knowledge, said the poet.