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2 India stands by Myanmar status
quo By Bertil Lintner
CHIANG MAI - Myanmar's principal foreign
ally China has shown in the wake of the military
junta's recent armed crackdown on pro-democracy
demonstrators that Beijing is more interested in
maintaining stability than pushing for democratic
regime change. So then could India, Myanmar's
other key regional ally, be persuaded to use its
influence to facilitate political change?
The United States, the European Union and
even Myanmar exiles in New Delhi, who have
recently demonstrated outside the Indian
Parliament, have all appealed
to what Indian politicians proudly proclaim is the
world's largest democracy to live up to those
ideals and push for change in Myanmar.
India and Myanmar share a complicated and
delicate history, one marked as much by mistrust
as amity. In recent years India has shifted its
diplomatic support from Myanmar's hamstrung
pro-democracy movement towards the ruling military
junta, driven by realpolitik imperatives including
greater access to Myanmar's untapped energy
resources and its support in putting down ethnic
insurgent groups active in remote border
territories.
India's still delicate
rapprochement with Myanmar means that New Delhi
will no time soon answer the West's call to take a
more assertive policy position with regard to the
military junta. Indeed, India's foreign policy has
never been guided by promoting democracy in other
countries.
On the contrary, "democratic"
India was the Soviet Union's main ally in Asia
during the Cold War, because it suited the
regional security interests of both countries.
India has not even pushed for democracy in one of
its closest neighbors and allies, the Himalayan
kingdom of Bhutan, one of the world's last
remaining absolute monarchies.
India's
relations with Myanmar are even more troubled and
delicate than China's. During the British colonial
era, Myanmar, then known as Burma, was made into a
province of British India, which it remained until
1937 when it became a separate colony. During that
time, large numbers of Indians migrated or were
brought in by the British as laborers. The
railways, post and telegraph, the police and the
civil service were also staffed with people of
Indian origin.
Just before World War II,
the Indians numbered over 1 million of a total
population of about 16 million at the time and 45%
of the former capital Yangon's population was of
South Asian origin - Hindu, Muslim and Sikh. Their
numbers were reduced when the Japanese invaded in
1941 and many of them fled to India. But many also
remained until the war was over, and even after
independence in 1948.
The role Indians
played as intermediaries between the colonial
British and the native population gave rise to
sometimes fierce anti-Indian sentiments.
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, the Myanmar
nationalist movement had strong undertones of
communal tension. Even today, people of South
Asian origin are often looked down on in Myanmar,
popularly referred to as kala a Burmese
language pejorative meaning "foreigner" or
"Indian". Curiously, Caucasians are still called
kala pyu, which translates from the Burmese
to "white Indians".
Still, Myanmar's
relations with India were in the main cordial
after independence. Myanmar's first prime
minister, U Nu, was known to be a close friend to
his Indian counterpart Jawaharlal Nehru and both
leaders were prominent figures in the Cold
War-inspired Non-Aligned Movement. Indeed, India
helped Myanmar survive its first difficult years
as an independent state, including crucially when
various political and ethnic insurgent groups
threatened to break the new country apart. Without
India's massive military and economic aid, U Nu's
government would most probably have collapsed.
Xenophobic backlash However,
Indo-Myanmar relations chilled after General Ne
Win's military coup and seizure of power in March
1962. After a few years in power, his
revolutionary council moved to nationalize
privately owned businesses and factories, of which
an estimated 60% were owned by people of Indian
origin. Thousands lost their property and
livelihood and during the four-year period
spanning 1964-68 some 150,000 Indo-Burmese left
the country.
Many leaders of the formerly
democratic Myanmar also fled, among them U Nu, who
went into exile in India. The Indian government
put him up in a stately residence in Bhopal, where
he remained for well over a decade before
returning to Myanmar under a general amnesty in
1980. Bilateral relations between India and
Myanmar remained more or less stagnant until
Myanmar's 1988 uprising for democracy, which was
brutally crushed by the military.
In an
official statement issued in the wake of the
violence, India expressed its support for the
"undaunted resolve of the Burmese [Myanmar] people
to achieve their democracy". The Burmese language
service of the state-sponsored radio station
All-India Radio (AIR) became even more outspoken
in its criticism of Myanmar's military government,
which made it immensely popular with the
population at large.
In response,
Myanmar's state-run Working People's Daily
newspaper began publishing outright racist
articles and cartoons against AIR and ethnic
Indians in general, attempting to revive the
anti-kala xenophobia of the 1930s. But even
then it was clear that India's hard diplomatic
stand was not driven by illusions of serving as a
regional guardian or promoter of democracy.
India shares a 1,371-kilometer frontier
with Myanmar and ethnic insurgents fighting
against New Delhi have long used
under-administered territories in Myanmar as
sanctuaries to conduct cross-border raids into
India's sensitive northeastern areas. Myanmar's
only reaction to this situation had been to mount
half-hearted and essentially futile military
operations against the insurgents, mainly ethnic
Nagas.
It was widely believed in New Delhi
in the late 1980s and early 1990s that a new
democratic government in Myanmar would likely take
a more tactful approach. India's sympathy for
Myanmar's pro-democracy movement was further
strengthened by the fact that until December 1989
its prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, was a personal
friend of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Their acquaintance dated to the early
1960s, when her mother, Daw Khin Kyi, served as
Myanmar's ambassador to India. Suu Kyi's father,
national independence hero Aung San, had also
known Rajiv's grandfather, Nehru personally. But
at the time it was also clear that India's support
for Myanmar's pro-democracy forces was also guided
by an Indian desire to counter its main regional
rival China's growing influence with Myanmar's
internationally isolated generals.
About
1993 India began to re-evaluate its strategy due
to concerns that its policies had achieved little
except to push
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