Book Summary
Since independence in 1948, Burma has suffered from many internal conflicts. One of the longest of these has been in the Kachin State, in the north of the country where Burma has borders with India to the west and China to the east. Being and Becoming Kachin explores the origins of the armed movement that started in 1961 and considers why it has continued for so long.
The book places the problems that have led to hostilities between the political heartland of Burma and one of its most important peripheries in a longer perspective than usual. It explains how the experience of globalisation and international geopolitics from the late eighteenth century onwards produced the modern politics of exclusion and resistance. It also uses detailed ethnographic research to explore the social and cultural dynamics of Kachin ethno-nationalism, providing a rich analysis that goes beyond the purely political. This analysis also provides new insights on the work of Edmund Leach and recent representations of Zomia proposed by James C. Scott.
The research draws upon an extensive range of sources, including archival materials in Jinghpaw and an extensive study of ritual and ritual language. Making a wide variety of cross-disciplinary observations, it explains in depth and breadth how a region such as the Kachin State came into being. When combined with detailed local insights into how these experiences contributed to the historical development of modern Kachin ethno-nationalism, Being and Becoming Kachin encourages new ways of thinking about the Kachin region and its history of armed resistance, which has implications for how we understand many similar, troubled borderworlds in Burma and beyond.
The book places the problems that have led to hostilities between the political heartland of Burma and one of its most important peripheries in a longer perspective than usual. It explains how the experience of globalisation and international geopolitics from the late eighteenth century onwards produced the modern politics of exclusion and resistance. It also uses detailed ethnographic research to explore the social and cultural dynamics of Kachin ethno-nationalism, providing a rich analysis that goes beyond the purely political. This analysis also provides new insights on the work of Edmund Leach and recent representations of Zomia proposed by James C. Scott.
The research draws upon an extensive range of sources, including archival materials in Jinghpaw and an extensive study of ritual and ritual language. Making a wide variety of cross-disciplinary observations, it explains in depth and breadth how a region such as the Kachin State came into being. When combined with detailed local insights into how these experiences contributed to the historical development of modern Kachin ethno-nationalism, Being and Becoming Kachin encourages new ways of thinking about the Kachin region and its history of armed resistance, which has implications for how we understand many similar, troubled borderworlds in Burma and beyond.
Contents
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1: GLOBAL HISTORIES, LOCAL EXCLUSIONS CHAPTER 2: RITUAL, IDEOLOGY AND POLITICS CHAPTER 3: BOUNDARIES & BORDERS CHAPTER 4: MILITARISATION & THE CONTEST OF MODERNITIES CHAPTER 5: WAR & INDEPENDENCE |
CHAPTER 6: DIMOKRASI PRAT TO RAWT MALAN!
CHAPTER 7: VIOLENCE CHAPTER 8: VIRTUE CHAPTER 9: TRANSNATIONAL SYMBOLS IN NATIONAL SPACES: THE IDEOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE MANAU CONCLUSION |
Introduction
The Introduction considers perspectives on modern Kachin ethno-nationalism from the vantage point of different communities in Burma, India, China and Thailand. It discusses anthropological representations of ‘the Kachin’ in the work of Edmund Leach, Jonathan Friedman and lately that of James C. Scott, and examines the political implications of these representations. The Introduction also considers why historians in particular have found it difficult to undertake detailed studies of this region. It highlights the limitations of over-privileging the mandala as the defining historical intellectual apparatus, despite it being a model borrowed from much historical writing on South East Asia. The methodological approach and objectives of the book are outlined in relation to these issues, with a particular focus on Jinghpaw dynamic political expansionism as a critical historical construct. It concludes by briefly outlining each chapter to follow.
(Map created by Pablo de Roulet)
(Map created by Pablo de Roulet)
Chapter 1: Global Histories, Local Exclusions
Chapter 1 discusses the encounters between the British East India Company in early nineteenth century Assam and Singpho communities who had expanded their territorial possessions in the region because of the regional disorder of the previous century. These encounters are placed in the context of changes in the nature of the state in Asia as well as in European trading empires, raising questions about the relevance of a simple dichotomy between notions of ‘state’ and ‘non-state’ at this time in this region. The effects of the nascent Assam tea industry are discussed in relation to Singpho migration and the internal dynamics of kinship relations. The creation of local hierarchies that influenced relations across the Patkai are also considered. The failure of the Company to develop local political institutions that could map onto Singpho-Jinghpaw political culture is explored through the Singpho revolt of 1843 and the effect of this in creating a local outcome of political exclusion.
(Image is a page from J. B. Neufville's work 'On the Geography and Population of Asam' published in Asiatick Researches, Vol XVI, 1828.)
(Image is a page from J. B. Neufville's work 'On the Geography and Population of Asam' published in Asiatick Researches, Vol XVI, 1828.)
Chapter 2: Ritual, Ideology and Politics
Chapter 2 considers the 1843 revolt from the perspective of the trans-Patkai region and its possible connections with the Opium Wars. Political and cultural contexts of Singpho-Jinghpaw interaction with a wider world are explored in detail, the spread of gumlao revolt being an outcome of the region wide pressures that were placed upon this region in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Evidence of ideological change in Jinghpaw models of power is then suggested by a close examination of a ritual called the Tawn Nat, which emerged partly in relation to changes seen at the Burmese court during this time. The chapter proposes that in the light of this regional transformation, it would be inappropriate to consider ‘Kachin’ ideological models as being insulated from the political developments that were taking place across this region, and these changes were important in the later development of modern Kachin ethno-nationalism.
(Photograph of Tawn Nat hkungri, courtesy of Pungga Ja Li)
(Photograph of Tawn Nat hkungri, courtesy of Pungga Ja Li)
Chapter 3: Boundaries and Borders
Chapter 3 examines the changing political framework of the region from the late nineteenth century through to World War I as fluid political boundaries were transformed into bordered territories. It describes how local elites in the Yunnan boundary region managed the transition zone of the mountains between Burma and China and the role that they played in the local political system after the Panthay revolt and just prior to the fall of the Konbaung Dynasty in Burma. The chapter then describes how old and new elites were created in this process of geo-political transformation. However, the chapter focuses in particular on the eastern borderworld, where great ethnographic complexity became rationalised in line with new and emerging political needs. It describes in detail how a local system of cross-group relations expressed as a ritual system became a model for later Kachin ethno-nationalist ideological expansion influenced by these administrative changes.
(Map of the Burma–Yunnan boundary drawn by Captain Hobday, 1890-1, courtesy of the British Library)
(Map of the Burma–Yunnan boundary drawn by Captain Hobday, 1890-1, courtesy of the British Library)
Chapter 4: Militarisation and the Contest of Modernities
Following on from discussion of emerging ideological models of modern ‘Kachin’ ethno-nationalism in Chapters 2 & 3, Chapter 4 examines closely how a new elite group emerged from a social entity now called ‘Kachin’ who were to have great influence upon these developments: the Kachin soldiers who signed up to imperial military structures between the two World Wars. It describes how the social context of recruitment created pressures within Kachin society when these soldiers were demobilised. It also describes how a new social development organisation emerged from this group, led by Subedar Major Jinghpaw Gam. Neither gumsa nor gumlao, but representing a new orientation for political and social interaction, and with a strong orientation towards social welfare and education, it also had much in common with anti-colonial movements seen across the region and should be understood in this light. Pawng Yawng Hpung established an ideological framework upon which modern Kachin ethno-nationalist movements could truly be established.
(Photograph of King's Orderly Officers in London, courtesy of Jaw Lum Htu)
(Photograph of King's Orderly Officers in London, courtesy of Jaw Lum Htu)
Chapter 5: War and Independence
This chapter considers the impact of World War II on the Kachin region. It examines evidence for the motivations of Kachin volunteers during the war in the Kachin Levies and other organisations. It then considers the demographics of this conflict and its impact on the development of politicised Kachin youth groups. Their role in developing political strategy for Kachin State in the Union of Burma at the Panglong Conference and Frontier Areas Committee of Enquiry in 1947 is discussed in detail. The chapter then considers the developments in this region in a broader regional context to understand how related communities in Burma, India and China interacted with each other and with their respective national governments during the early post-World War II years.
(Photograph of Kachin Volunteer Women, Myitkyina, 2002, courtesy of Lt Col Sam Pope)
(Photograph of Kachin Volunteer Women, Myitkyina, 2002, courtesy of Lt Col Sam Pope)
Chapter 6: Dimokrasi Prat to Rawt Malan!
This chapter considers the failure of early attempts at democracy in the Union of Burma and the slide towards conflict in the Kachin region. It uses detailed analysis of the life story of one of the founding soldiers in the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) to explain how many of the themes of the book – migration, exclusion, educational disadvantage, perceptions of threats to the self – become woven together at this time to create an outcome of violence. The chapter describes the early efforts to raise funds for an armed movement and the ways in which moral justifications for these acts were given. It also describes the disappointment that emerged in the political culture under U Nu and the Sama Duwa Sinwa Nawng to explore further the notion of Kachin political consensus building as a critical dynamic in the social justification of armed revolt.
(The village of Hpimaw on the Burma–China border in the 1920s, courtesy of Brighton & Hove Pavilion and Museums)
(The village of Hpimaw on the Burma–China border in the 1920s, courtesy of Brighton & Hove Pavilion and Museums)
Chapter 7: Violence
This chapter outlines a context against which armed revolt in the Kachin region can be understood at a social level during the period 1961-94. However, it focuses on how the ideological justifications of this were resolved by Kachin ethno-nationalists within the mainstream KIA/KIO movement. It looks in detail at how the language of ethno-nationalism itself changed to promote a construct of Wunpawng as a local equivalent of Kachin, and the foundations of this term. It then considers this conflict in a broader regional perspective to understand better how the experiences of different parts of this borderworld were both interconnected and locally distinct, producing three distinctive identities of Singpho, Kachin and Jingpo within the national systems of India, Burma and China respectively.
(Wunpawng descent groups in a KIA textbook by H. Naw Awn)
(Wunpawng descent groups in a KIA textbook by H. Naw Awn)
Chapter 8: Virtue
This chapter considers the impact of conversion to Christianity among the Kachin peoples of Burma and the role that conflict has had in promoting Christianity as a principle ideological foundation for the social movement of Kachin ethno-nationalism. The chapter challenges the perception that Christianity was a majority belief system before the late 1970s and explores some of the different social dynamics that produced this large scale conversion beyond the colonial period. The chapter also explores the boundaries between Christianity (specifically American Baptist doctrinal orthodoxies), Theravada Buddhism and autochthonous belief systems to show how ideological perceptions of threats to the self and the community have been modelled by Kachin Christian ethno-nationalists within the Kachin Baptist Church. The chapter then describes how the social prevalence of this belief system among Kachin youth has subsequently created significant shifts in comprehension of ‘Kachin’ history and society, which have also had a transformative effect upon modern Kachin ethno-nationalist ideologies in the present.
(Cover of Myihtoi Ma, the magazine of Nawng Nang Theological College, Myitkyina, Kachin State, 1997–8)
(Cover of Myihtoi Ma, the magazine of Nawng Nang Theological College, Myitkyina, Kachin State, 1997–8)
Chapter 9: Transnational Symbols in National Spaces: the Ideological Transformation of the Manau
This chapter considers the manau as both a symbol of modern Kachin ethno-nationalism and as a vector for understanding some of its local, regional and historical complexities. It considers the recent developments of these festivals in India, Burma, Yunnan and Thailand as a way of understanding how local and regional dynamics affect the relationships between Singpho, Kachin and Jingpo communities across the region. The chapter begins by explaining the modern emergence of the manau festival from the colonial period onwards, looking in detail at the aesthetic symbolism of the form in different contexts. This enables us to appreciate the constantly evolving and discursive nature of this form by exploring multiple events separated by both distance and time. The chapter concludes by proposing that the manau has managed to attain and sustain its relevance because of its transformative capacities, and as such, it is a fitting symbol for the essential qualities of Kachin ethno-nationalism historically and through which many of the themes of this book are brought together.
(Manau posts at Ban Mai Samakkhi, Chiang Mai Province, Thailand, 2007. Photograph by the author)
(Manau posts at Ban Mai Samakkhi, Chiang Mai Province, Thailand, 2007. Photograph by the author)
Conclusion
The conclusion refers back to the original intentions outlined in the Introduction and comments on how the preceding chapters have expanded upon those intentions. It proposes that further work of a similar kind in relation to other regions is greatly desired, but outlines some of the impediments to such work. The conclusion states that the book has demonstrated the complexity of Kachin ideological systems and Kachin political culture and how the underlying causes of conflict in the Kachin region cannot be reduced to a simplistic political narrative. However, Burmese national politicians have yet to engage with the kind of complex history outlined in this book. However, recognising the limitations of previous analysis is an important element of any national reconciliation and political rehabilitation.