The Return of the Galon King

History, Law, and Rebellion in Colonial Burma

Maitrii Aung-Thwin

• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9780896804708
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

In late 1930, on a secluded mountain overlooking the rural paddy fields of British Burma, a peasant leader named Saya San crowned himself King and inaugurated a series of uprisings that would later erupt into one of the largest anti-colonial rebellions in Southeast Asian history. Considered an imposter by the British, a hero by nationalists, and a prophet-king by area-studies specialists, Saya San came to embody traditional Southeast Asia's encounter with European colonialism in his attempt to resurrect the lost throne of Burma.

The Return of the Galon King analyzes the legal origins of the Saya San story and reconsiders the facts upon which the basic narrative and interpretations of the rebellion are based. Aung-Thwin reveals how counter-insurgency law produced and criminalized Burmese culture, contributing to the way peasant resistance was recorded in the archives and understood by Southeast Asian scholars.

This interdisciplinary study reveals how colonial anthropologists, lawyers, and scholar-administrators produced interpretations of Burmese culture that influenced contemporary notions of Southeast Asian resistance and protest. It provides a fascinating case study of how history is treated by the law, how history emerges in legal decisions, and how the authority of the past is used to validate legal findings.

Chapter 3

LEGISLATING REBELLION

Ethnology and the Formation of Counter-Insurgency Law

If one were to focus exclusively on the series of telegrams, letters, and reports that have been associated with the earliest accounts of the Rebellion, it would appear that notions of Burmese kingship were informing the character of the uprising in Tharrawaddy, reconfirming the template established earlier by administrative gazetteers and Bertram Carey’s 1914 manual on Burmese uprisings. Drawn primarily from the Burma Rebellion General File and specifically within the Public and Judicial records of the India Office (L/PJ/6/2020), the bulk of these sources delineate the official story of the Rebellion, beginning with the initial outbreak in December 1930 and ending with the question of releasing imprisoned rebels in 1935. Although it was clear that officials were somewhat uncertain as to what the causes of the uprising might be in its earliest stages, such disparities were soon offset by documents such as “The Tharrawaddy Outbreak” and “Causes of the Tharrawaddy Rebellion,” which definitively cast the minlaung model as the explanation for the outbreak of violence in December 1930.¹ At face value, the files within L/PJ/6/2020 appear to present the official perspective on the Rebellion as being more or less consistent; officials seem to have unanimously attributed the uprising to the periodic rise of a pretender king who captured the imagination and support of a receptive peasantry. What might arguably have been interpreted as a series of spontaneous and diverse expressions of peasant activism was effectively contained by the idea of a single movement, centrally organized around the persuasive influences and manipulative designs of a dynamic leader. R. C. Morris’s “Causes of the Tharrawaddy Rebellion” fostered coherency among the earliest series of archival materials (January–March 1930) by providing a consistent argument that unified the disparate documents that marked the first representation of the uprisings in the files under the L/PJ/6/2020 designation.

Archival coherency reinforced the notion that a set of uniform cultural traits characterized the uprisings, effectively smoothing over the possibility of variation and difference in the record by establishing the minlaung model within official explanations. Political, legislative, and judicial priorities not only informed the organization of these documents within the archive, but reflected the lens through which the rebellion was conceived and constructed in order to meet this demand. Legislative procedure, legal precedent, and the institutional relationships between administrations in New Delhi and Rangoon prescribed the way in which knowledge about the Rebellion would be produced, documented, and archived for the Province of Burma. Attempts to establish coherency in official documentation was as much an expression of administrative consolidation within counter-insurgency policy as it was a reflection of British India’s prescriptive influence over Burma.

One might presume then, given the manner in which the Rebellion Files were organized within the Public and Judicial records, that Saya San had been connected to the event surrounding the uprisings from its earliest stages and beyond. A broader examination of the sources suggests that Burma officials were actually presenting several narratives at one time, addressing a range of theories to meet administrative demands related to the acquisition of emergency powers. Focusing on these stories reveals not only the uncertainty (on the part of officials) surrounding the events associated with the Tharrawaddy outbreak, but the way in which counter-insurgency legislation condensed and conflated the series of outbreaks into a single rebellion and a single narrative. The existence of multiple narratives in the history of the Saya San Rebellion can be detected within official “British” and “Burmese” discourses.

In the process of projecting Tharrawaddy’s criminalized past into the events of 1930–31, administrative officials in Rangoon moved to secure special legislation in order to provide local government with more effective counter-insurgency measures. This process required constant communication and coordination with the government of India, which oversaw affairs in British Burma and acted as a liaison between Rangoon and London. In addition, discussion was allowed in regard to counter-insurgency policy in the Burma Legislative Council, drawing heated debate over these ordinances and subsequent bills. Notions about the nature of Burmese peasant beliefs and behavior were recorded, regularized, and rehearsed within the context of legislative debate and discussion that pertained to their passage. Particular characteristics of Burmese peasant life were identified as, and translated into, a counter-insurgency prose that presented tattooing, wondering monks, and various aspects of spirit worship as subjects understandable within the context of terrorism. By introducing these proposals through the procedural infrastructure of the Burmese Legislative Council, Carey’s ethnology was effectively authenticated and maintained in official debates, proceedings, and related documentation.

Between January and April 1931, officials in Burma and New Delhi negotiated the promulgation of two rebellion-specific ordinances that provided the legal flexibility and authority deemed necessary to launch a comprehensive counter-insurgency campaign. Drawing on a model provided by the Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1925, Burma officials sought a single ordinance that would enable police to detain without trial those “persons suspected of offences” and provide legal officers with special tribunals that could try “terrorists” and “revolutionaries” under certain sections of the India Penal Code.² Among other demands, local government also sought power to control the press, arrest without warrant suspected rebels, and prohibit “drilling” among village associations, in an attempt to curb the growing influence of these organizations in rural locales.

Whereas on paper these powers were directed toward restoring social stability, these ordinances would also affect the way in which the situation in Burma was conceptualized as elements of rural life began to be evaluated in reference to counter-terrorism policies. Requests to make “tattooing and the distribution of charms…a penal offence” reinforced the notion that particular Burmese practices could be read as warning signs indicative of rebellion. Despite New Delhi rejecting such profiling as being of “doubtful legality,” trial records would in fact reveal that tattooing and the distribution of amulets would remain dominant characteristics of the Rebellion. Colonial ethnology informed the way in which legislation would be constructed, signaling an important intersection of colonial ethnography and law.

Counter-insurgency law was represented by two temporary pieces of legislation: the Burma Rebellion Trials Ordinance (BRTO) and the Burma Criminal Law Amendment Ordinance (BCLAO).³ Rangoon officials hoped to secure powers quickly and molded their proposals along the model of the Bengal Criminal Amendment Act of 1925. The BCLAO was promulgated on January 31, 1931, to enable government to control the movement of suspected rebels and provide the administrative means to process the inordinate number of rebels that were being held under detention. By creating a tribunal with special procedural provisions that were designed to “stop the activity of leaders of whose guilt they are convinced but of which they cannot produce sufficient evidence to secure conviction in the courts,” Rangoon officials “seized on an Ordinance which would meet their immediate needs.”⁴ By merely appearing before these courts, suspects had already been targeted and identified as “rebels.”

At the time of their enactment however, separate narratives of resistance (beyond the framework of the Rebellion Ethnology) were being rendered for the situation in Burma since particular security conditions on the ground were required to demonstrate the need to secure extra powers from London. The passing of the Ordinance/Bill depended on Burma officials persuading both their Indian and London superiors that such extraordinary judicial and policing powers were warranted to respond to extraordinary circumstances. These alleged circumstances, involving terrorist cells from Bengal, were eventually overshadowed by the Rebellion Ethnology and the figure of Saya San, but the story behind the securing of special-rebellion legislation reveals an important stage in producing the conditions within which the rebellion narrative was written.

Legislating Rebellion

On the evening of January 12, 1931, the secretary of state for India received a secret telegram from New Delhi, conveying information about the rebellion in Burma. It described how quickly Burma officials were able to ascertain the origins of the rebellion, despite the uprising being barely three weeks old. Important documentary evidence had been discovered demonstrating that the rebellion had been in planning for two years, under the silent patronage of the General Council of Burmese Associations, the most outspoken political opposition party of the colonial government.⁵ More sinister however, was the revelation that the Council had been in touch with the Bengal Revolutionary Party, a terrorist organization that felt that insurrection in Burma was “more suited to Burmese temperament than assassination on Bengal line[s].”⁶ Bengali terrorists allegedly believed that arms were available in Rangoon and that the organization of dacoit cells in rural areas was instigated in order to obtain funds for weapon purchases.⁷ Due to this recent intelligence and the continuing violence in the Tharrawaddy district, the secretary of state learned that Burma officials were requesting permission to enact a special ordinance that would expand the policing and prosecutorial powers of the local government. Rangoon officials were seeking the inclusion of sections 121–123 of the Indian Penal Code (which pertained to waging war against the government of the king-emperor) because it was believed that the terrorist activities of the Bengal Revolutionary Party were involved with the open rebellion occurring in Lower Burma.⁸

One hour later, the Secretary of State received another telegram describing the details of the legislative provisions being sought by Rangoon and their plan for implementation. Specifically, Burma officials sought provisions for the establishment of special tribunals in order to try the large number of offenders that had been arrested in relation to the rebellion.⁹ Additionally, they urged the immediate issue of a policing ordinance following exactly the provisions of the Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Act (1925), due to the connection being established between the Bengal Revolutionary Party and the uprisings in the countryside. Although by the fall of 1931 these two separate requests would eventually be combined under the Burma Criminal Law Amendment Act, India officials recommended that their counterparts in Burma keep the matters distinct because they were concerned that securing two objects in a single ordinance left the potential for overall rejection by London.¹⁰ In addition, if the decision to establish special courts for trial of the rebels was approved, Rangoon felt that there would be “ample justification for inclusion to that end of sections 121 to 123 of the Indian Penal Code.”¹¹ Even though officials initially used an external terrorist threat as a reason for securing these sections, it would be Saya San, not the Bengal Revolutionaries, who would end up being charged with waging war against the king-emperor.

New Delhi officials were somewhat reluctant to allow “immediate” action as proposed by their Burma subordinates. One issue in particular was using the expansive powers to arrest alleged rebels since experiences in Bengal suggested that keeping a large number of revolutionaries together tended to allow for better communication among them.¹² New Delhi preferred that the legislation be used only in select cases, even suggesting shortening procedures for trials and curtailing the right of appeal.¹³ Although Rangoon initially resisted reducing the numbers to be tried under ordinary courts, officials eventually modified their view and said that arrests (using the regulations stated in the proposed legislation) would be limited and based on “individual cases.”¹⁴ This pattern of placating New Delhi and London would continue throughout the year in order to secure the administrative powers Rangoon officials wanted. In fact, forty minutes later the Secretary of State read that the local government “would definitely prefer effective action should be taken against a comparatively few than ineffective action against a considerable number.”¹⁵ In the end, Burma officials managed to persuade London to approve temporarily the Act against terrorism on January 31, 1931. Although the use of Regulation iii (sections 121–123 of the Indian Penal Code) would only be allowed through a New Delhi review of individual cases, the matter of creating a special tribunal was to be addressed separately.

Despite assurances that Burma’s newly acquired policing parameters would be applied on a limited scale, officials in London learned that Rangoon authorities were stressing the need for courts with large powers and summary procedure in order to “dispose” of “the not less than three-hundred” accused rebels.¹⁶ Citing the recommendations of their Chief Justice of the High Court, the Burma Government suggested that the special tribunal be modeled along the lines described in a typical Martial Law Ordinance. In an included extract from the said Ordinance, the structure, authority, and procedures of the special tribunal were described along with the relationship between the local government and the tribunal. Although the powers and p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Maps and Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Section I: History
• Section II: Law
• Section III: Rebellion
• Bibliography
• Index