18.06.2006
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Birthday Letter
Burmese culture is not a birthday culture. Birthday parties, entailing cutting cakes, blowing candles, and making birthday wishes, are not common in average Burmese families. Like Akan people in West Africa, Burman Buddhists name their children after the day of the week they were born. When Burmans speak of birthdays, they usually refer to the day of the week on which one was born, rather than the date of the year. In fact very few people remember each other’s birthdays in Burma. A Burman would quietly celebrate his or her own birthday by making merit, as opposed to merrymaking in the West, at his or her home, at a monastery or at a pagoda.
Nonetheless, Burmese people do remember and celebrate the birthdays of the people they revere and adore. Just as Christians celebrate Jesus’ birthday on 25th December, Burmans mark Buddha’s birthday on the full moon day of the month of Kason in Burmese calendar. Buddha’s birthday, also known as the Buddha Day, falls in May. The birthday extravaganzas of celebrated monks, paid for and promoted by their followers, are also common.
In the worldly realm, every Burmese knows the birthday of their national hero Aung San. Most Burmese, who were born after the independence, grew up reciting the primary school panegyric which reads: ‘‘The 13th day of February is the birthday of Bogyoke (Aung San)/ Born to pleader U Pha in 1915.’’ Aung San, the founder of Burma’s modern army, was assassinated in 1947, a few months before the country’s independence.
Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP), which tried to legitimate itself on the legacies of Aung San, even declared the 13th February ‘Children’s Day.’ Just as Stalin exploited Lenin’s image to gain himself legitimacy, the socialist-era strongman Ne Win had used Aung San since the 1960s. In the 1988 people’s uprising, Aung San’s daughter rightfully reclaimed what journalist Barbara Victor calls Aung San factor from the socialist government. The military junta, replacing the socialist regime in 1988, therefore, has had to reconstruct its identity. The generals cannot compete with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi for Aung San factor. Thus they have had to distance themselves from his image. Aung San’s face is not printed on Burmese coins and notes any more. Aung San’s photographs have been removed from government offices. The panegyric poem, praising Aung San, has also disappeared from school textbooks.
On their part, Burmese student activists have also been able to capitalize on the birthdays of influential figures. After all, birthdays, and funerals, for that matter, are social occasions which present rare opportunities to Burmese opposition forces to come together in their extremely repressive society. The most memorable political birthday has to be the 1976 ‘Hmaing Centennial’, which marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of the anti-colonialist writer Thakin Kodaw Hmaing (1876-1964). In Rangoon alone, about 130 students were sentenced to five to fifteen years imprisonments in August 1976 for organizing highly politicized birthday of Hmaing. One of the activists, Tin Maung Oo, an ethnic Chin student from Rangoon Art and Science University, was sentenced to death and executed by the socialist regime.
Birthdays of well-known dissidents and acclaimed writers continue to haunt the Myanmar junta. In literary circles, birthdays of eminent writers are organized by their admirers. The birthday parties of the late poet Min Thu Wun (1909-2004) had been known for poetry recitals. Every year, on 10 May, a number of Burmese writers would flock to Kalaw in southern Shan State, to say birthday wishes to literary legend Dagon Taya, who was born in 1919. As Ludu Daw Amar, the most respected lady writer in Burma, turned ninety in November 2005, about 800 artists, poets, journalists and student leaders gathered at her house in Mandalay. If not for the moral authority of Daw Amar, the gathering of this magnitude and nature would not have been possible.
The senior writers, from Ludu Daw Amar and Dagon Taya, to Ludu U Sein Win, have witnessed the making and breaking of Burma. They have had to endure their shares of hardship and government’s persecution for their political convictions. And their convictions seem to grow stronger with their age. They remain articulate critics of the present military regime and continue to inspire younger generations. Their birthdays, even if they are long gone, will be commemorated by the people. Similarly, the birthdays of the great dissidents, such as Min Ko Naing and U Win Tin, will always be remembered. Min Ko Naing, born on 18 October 1962, had spent a total of sixteen of his birthdays behind bars. U Win Tin turned seventy-six on 12 March 2006 in notorious Insein prison in Rangoon. He has been there since July 1989.
Another significant birthday in recent history was that of General Mya, the head of Karen National Union (KNU), which has been fighting against the military regime for ethnic Karen’s self-determination since 1947. When the KNU was invited to a peace talk in Rangoon in January 2004, the then Prime Minister General Khin Nyunt hosted General Mya’s seventy-sixth birthday. The unprecedented and unusually amicable gesture of the junta means that General Mya, a steadfast freedom fighter all his life, is held in very high regards even by his foes. In contrast, one could ask, who cares the birthday of the head of the Myanmar junta, Generalissimo Than Shwe?
The most notable birthday in Burma and, probably in the world today is Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s. The Burmese people inside the country has not had a chance to honour Daw Suu on her birthday. Since 1989, The Lady has spent most of her birthdays under house-arrest. Even her family members have not been allowed to see her on her birthdays. Outside the country, Burmese exiles and their friends have been holding events, marking Daw Suu’s birthday on 19 June every year. Birthdays are jolly affairs as long as the birthday person is around. The detainee Daw Suu’s birthday events have always been sad and solemn occasions for her well-wishers, whose freedom is inseparable from Daw Suu’s.
'One of the most influential dissidents in exile, Dr. Salai Tun Than, has announced that he would go back to Rangoon on Daw Suu’s birthday to do a solo protest. In response, the junta has nullified his Myanmar passport. The Lady’s birthday also highlights the plight of hundreds of unsung political prisoners, whose names, let alone whose birthdays, one might never know.
One could imagine that Daw Suu would turn sixty-one quietly and contemplatively. As a devout Buddhist, she would be making merit, meditating and sending metta (loving-kindness) to her captors in the hope of national reconciliation.
Ko Ko Thett
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Comments
Ko Tin Nwe said _
Thank you U Ko Ko Thet for a very imformative Birthday letter. You are indirectly comparing and praising all the good famous freedomfighters and highlighted the bad notorious gangleader Generalissimo Than Shwe's status. I hope and pray that Daw Suu could be able to have a chance to read your article.....
Chit Ko Ko said _
Dear KKT, thanks for your information about Daw Suu's birthday. I do agree that "Metta" is a key that to open the door of peace and national reconciliation.
Your Comments here_