Genealogy of a Rebellion Narrative: Law, Ethnology and Culture in Colonial Burma
Author(s): Maitrii Aung-Thwin
Source: Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Oct., 2003, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Oct., 2003), pp.
393-419
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of Department of History,
National University of Singapore
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393
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 34 (3), pp 393-419 October 2003. Printed in the United Kingdom.
? 2003 The National University of Singapore DOI: S0022463403000407
Genealogy of a Rebellion Narrative: Law,
Ethnology and Culture in Colonial Burma
Maitrii Aung-Thwin
This article re-examines the history and historiography of the Saya San Rebellion
(1930-32), Burma's most famous peasant uprising and one of Southeast Asia's
most frequently examined anti-colonial movements. By retracing the documents
most intimately connected to the rebellion s official narrative, this study recon
structs the legal and administrative context within which this particular history
was made.
The depth and breadth of scholarship devoted to Asian resistance and rebellion have
grown in recent years, benefiting from the efforts of scholars who have challenged the
ways in which we approach the study of popular revolts and protest. For the most part,
South and Southeast Asian specialists have treated popular resistance movements during
colonial times as a particular type of text or script wherein everything from indigenous
conceptions of power, community, kingship and religion to ideas of millenarianism and
invulnerability can be read from these largely confrontational and violent expressions of
protest.1 Rebellion narratives have served as points of departure as well, leading scholars
to problematise our categories of analysis, to notice the competitions between the sub
altern and urban insurgents, and to reconstruct the way in which criminality was defined
and managed by the colonial state.2 Contemporary scholarship has been especially
productive, directing our gaze to 'everyday' expressions of resistance and the subtle
Maitrii Aung-Thwin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History, National University of
Singapore. His e-mail address is hismvat@nus.edu.sg
The author wishes to thank the anonymous readers for the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies and Profes
sors Victor Lieberman, Rudolf Mrazek, Thomas Trautmann, John K. Whitmore, Reynaldo C. Ileto, Bruce
Lockhart and Michael Aung-Thwin for all their careful and helpful comments. Special thanks to the Asia
Research Institute, National University of Singapore for providing a post-doctoral fellowship under which
this article was written.
1 See, for example, Michael Adas, Prophets of rebellion: Millenarian protest movements against the
European colonial order (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979); James C. Scott, The moral
economy of the peasant: Rebellion and subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1976); Reynaldo Ileto, Pasyon and revolution: Popular movements in the Philippines, 1840-1910 (Manila:
Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1979); Emanuel Sarkisyanz, Buddhist backgrounds of the Burmese
revolution (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1965); and Hue-Tarn Ho Tai, Millenarianism and peasant politics in
Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983).
2 Ranajit Guha, Elementary aspects of peasant insurgency in colonial India (New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1983); Ann Laura Stoler, '"Cold blood": Hierarchies of credibility and the politics of colonial narra
tives', Representations, 37 (1992): 151-89; Anand A.Yang, Crime and criminality in British India (Tucson,
AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1985).
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394 MAITRII AUNG-THWIN
strains of 'avoidance protest' that lie constantly beneath the surface of normative
behaviour. These studies have stretched our analyses further, encouraging us to take
account of 'unconscious' actions that undermine authority, the role of gender in resis
tance and the possibility of examining rituals in an 'everyday' frame of mind to test them
for evidence of the subversive.3 Our attention has moved away from the large-scale anti
colonial movements in order to seek those hidden, submerged and silent narratives
within daily life that we assume are present and waiting to be read.
Before we move completely away from rebellion narratives in favour of the more
minute and subtle narratives of resistance, it may be prudent to pause and re-examine
our earlier subjects thoroughly. Although major uprisings may not provide us with mate
rial that might contribute to the discourse on everyday forms of protest, they still have
relevance within other current and ongoing discussions of issues such as the colonial
production of knowledge, the tensions within Empire, archival studies and the role of law
in history and memory.4 A case in point is the Saya San Rebellion (1930-32), an insurrec
tion in colonial Burma that has been examined fairly extensively for its colourful imagery
and features of Burmese culture - encapsulated in the figure of Saya San, a 'prophet-king'
who utilised amulets, tattooing and Buddhist millenarianism as part of his rebellion
rhetoric. Interestingly enough, while scholars all have studied this particular narrative of
the Saya San Rebellion for what it revealed about indigenous Burmese culture specifically
or Southeast Asian social history in general, few have examined it for what it can tell us
about the setting which produced it, namely the administrative institutions of colonial
Burma. Studying the ethnology of this narrative or constructing a 'genealogy' of the Saya
San story offers a history of its making and imagining and of the ideas most closely
associated with its character. In other words, the study of narrative can tell us about the
history of its formation and the context in which it was conceived. As Nicholas Dirks
urges in his call for an 'ethnology of the archive', such an approach will 'move us away
from the certainties of linear and autonomous textual history ... dissolving texts into
contexts even as contexts constantly become reabsorbed by other texts and historical
traces'.5
It will be suggested that the narrative of the Saya San Rebellion was as much a part of
the competition between interests in India and Burma as it was an event specific to
Burmese history. Furthermore, a 'genealogy' of this rebellion narrative will also intro
duce the specific social and legal contexts through which this particular history and its
specific sources were created. This study aims to renew our interest in rebellions and
3 James C. Scott, Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1985); Michael Adas, 'Bandits, monks and pretender kings: Patterns of peasant resistance and protest
in colonial Burma, 1826-1941', in Power and protest in the countryside: Studies of rural unrest in Asia,
Europe, and Latin America, ed. Robert P. Weiler and Scott E. Guggenheim (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 1982), pp. 75-105; Contesting power: Resistance and everyday social relations in South Asia, ed.
Douglas Haynes and Prakash Gyan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
4 History, memory, and the law, ed. Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns (Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 1999); Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and its forms of knowledge: The British in India
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Colonial subjects: Essays on the practical history of anthro
pology, ed. Peter Pels and Oscar Salemink (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999); and Tensions
of empire: Colonial cultures in a bourgeois world, ed. Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1997).
5 Nicholas B. Dirks, 'The crimes of colonialism: Anthropology and the textualization of India', in Pels
and Salemink, eds., Colonial subjects, pp. 153-79.
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GENEALOGY OF A REBELLION NARRATIVE
395
specifically the Saya San uprising by suggesting that a genealogical approach to th
narrative raises troubling questions as to the credibility of the evidence upon which
sequence of events and the interpretation of Saya San's place within it - as reconstruc
by the British - were based.
The narrative of the Saya San Rebellion, the 'factual' elements of the story, can
traced back to official reports that were compiled during and shortly after the upris
ended.6 Most historians cite the confidential Blue Book report, The origins and cause
the Burma Rebellion 1930-1932 (OCBR, published in 1934) as their primary source
this event. The official narrative, considered to be factually accurate by commentato
proceeds in the following manner. In the final days of December 1930, official
New Delhi were informed by telegram that a small uprising had erupted in Tharrawad
District in the Province of Burma.7 Reports indicated that a band of Burmese had ta
up arms and succeeded in capturing a forestry outpost and a few other governmen
installations, resulting in the deaths of one British official and several village headm
Although Rangoon authorities were initially unconcerned, New Delhi and Lond
witnessed in the following weeks the escalation of what would became one of the larg
anti-colonial movements ever encountered in Southeast Asia. Officials would soon a
ciate the name Saya San with the uprising, in reference to the mysterious peasant lea
who reportedly had revived ancient symbols of kingship in order to inspire the peasan
to move against the colonial state. Operating through a network of village associatio
that he and his lieutenants had founded, Saya San convinced his followers that he w
restore the Burmese monarchy with himself as their new king and revitalise the Buddhist
religion, which had been in decline since the final annexation of the country in 188
Peasant cultivators, already frustrated by the drop in paddy prices, the privatisation
communal forestry lands and the increasing burden of state taxes, were quick to resp
to Saya San's propaganda campaign involving a mixture of anti-tax rhetoric, Buddh
prophecies and invulnerability rituals.
Despite the initial confidence of the local administration, New Delhi soon d
patched additional military support at the request of the Rangoon government, wh
quickly deployed the troops to the affected areas. A few days later, reports indicated that
the rebel king's mountain headquarters had been successfully located and burn
forcing the leader to flee northwards into Upper Burma.8 During the early months
1931, Saya San's alleged movements could be tracked as the rebellion spread through
6 See, for example, India Office Record archives (London), Government of Burma, L/PJ/6/2020, Bu
Rebellion Files (BRF), Frames 448-55, Report on the rebellion in Burma up to 3rd May, 1931, comm
paper, 3900 (1931); Frames 22-44, Origins and causes of the Burma rebellion 1930-1932 (1934) (hencef
OCBR); Frames 572-7, Report on recent rebellions in Burma, police document, 9 May 1931; Frames 58-70
The rebellion in Burma, April 1931-March 1932; Frames 661-77, Causes of the Tharrawaddy rebellion
March 1931. All sources bearing an L/PJ/6 designation are from the BRF sections of the microfilm; spec
frames will be indicated where relevant.
7 L/PJ/6/2020, Frame 792, Telegram, Government of India (G/I), Home Department (HD) to Secret
of State for India (S/SI), repeating Telegram from Government of Burma (G/B), 24 Dec. 1930.
8 L/PJ/6/2020, Frame 782, Telegram, G/I, HD to S/SI, repeating Telegram from G/B, 2 Jan. 1930.
of the earliest assessments of the rebellion, written a week after the rebellion first broke out, is in Fra
766-73, Letter No. C30, 29 Dec. 1930, G/B to G/I, HD.
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396 MAITRII AUNG-THWIN
the country into the Shan District of north-eastern Burma. However, in August 1931
he was apprehended and placed before a Special Tribunal to be tried for treason. In
November 1931, after a series of appeals, he was executed under Sections 121/121A of the
Indian Penal Code for having waged war against the British King-Emperor. By the end of
the insurrection, 1,300 rebels had been killed and up to 9,000 had surrendered.
To British officials, Saya San was merely a personification of a recurring theme in
Burmese history: the rise of a minlaung (translated by the British as 'pretender king',
though 'imminent king' is perhaps more accurate) who during the course of British rule
would periodically rally the peasants in the hope of resurrecting the Burmese monarchy.
In fact, a 1914 manual for civil servants describing the nature of these insurrections
seemed to anticipate the very situation in Tharrawaddy almost prophetically, as officials
later commented. Throughout 1931, reports did in fact seek to present Saya San as a
minlaung, implying that the uprisings were as regular to Burmese culture as Buddhism,
for the 'Burman' was 'by nature a restless subject' and prone to 'credulity'.9 Thus the
earliest understandings of the Saya San Rebellion were informed by knowledge about
Burmese culture and the character of uprisings since 1885.
Carey's minlaung tradition
Patricia Herbert first noticed that several documents linked to the traditional
characterisation of the rebellion were ultimately connected to B. S. Carey's official publi
cation Hints for the guidance of civil officers in the event of outbreak of disturbances in
Burma (1914), intended to be a reference manual for officials who were unfamiliar with
the types of uprisings 'which were expected to occur from time to time'. Carey hoped to
provide a manual that could tell 'what is likely to happen, what is [the] accepted method
of dealing with the situation, and how to take the vigorous offensive against the enemy'.
The pamphlet described the ways in which putative claimants to the throne {minlaung)
would seek to resurrect the Burmese monarchy. In a systematic description of how such a
movement would proceed, Carey summarised counter-insurgency tactics and strategy.
'What will happen in the future will be very much the same as what happened in the past,'
he suggested, a virtual invitation for future officials to interpret the rebellion within his
preset scheme.10
In fact, whole passages of Carey's 1914 publication were cut and pasted into reports
written in 1930-31, revealing the type of perspective that was being projected onto the
events surrounding the Saya San uprisings.11 For example, paragraphs describing how
Burmese history 'is a record of sudden and successful rebellion resulting in the seizure of
the throne' or how there were many 'prophecies' that 'the throne of the King of Burma
will be won again' were lifted from the manual and inserted into the prose - and therefore
into the policies - of counter-insurgency officials. Future rebels were expected to
9 L/PJ/6/2020, Frames 578-85, B. S. Carey, Hints for the guidance of civil officers in the event of outbreak of
disturbances in Burma, first printed in 1914 and reprinted in 1931.
10 Quotations from ibid., Frames 579-80; Patricia Herbert's comments are in her important The Hsaya
San rebellion 1930-1932 reappraised (Melbourne: Monash University Centre of Southeast Asian Studies,
1982), pp. 2-3.
11 See comments in ibid, and notice the explicit references to Carey's minlaung motif in L/PJ/6/2020,
Frames 766-73, Letter of 29 Dec. 1930; Ralph Clarence Morris, Causes of the Tharrawaddy rebellion, and
OCBR.
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GENEALOGY OF A REBELLION NARRATIVE
397
resemble those in the past, following the model of other minlaung who practised in
nerability rituals turning bullets into water, and 'believed in such things as flying tigers,
winged spears and magic'.12 By quoting and adopting Carey's predictions, reports s
as the OCBR formed a continuum of documents that linked the understanding of up
ings from the late nineteenth century with those in the 1930s. The implicit offic
assumption was that the majority of Burmese remained unmoved by new legislativ
opportunities made in the legislative council and unable to appropriate other form
political expression despite the tutelage of Britain's civilising mission.
Herbert's study looks mainly at Burmese sources to offer a different reading of
rebellion's character, but her initial linking of Carey's manual with the official Blue B
report (OCBR) is of crucial significance, for it reveals the way in which post-Annexa
ideas about rebellion and Burmese identity continued into the pages of official doc
ments describing events in the 1930s. Moreover, the nature, tone and perspective o
Carey's characterisation of'disturbances in Burma' would endure not only in subseque
reports on the rebellion, but in the very arguments and positions presented by Brit
prosecutors in the multiple trials that occurred throughout and after the uprising
Rangoon's decision to portray this new uprising in Tharrawaddy as a type of revolt t
had been more or less predicted, accounted for and successfully extinguished in the p
may have been an attempt to assure New Delhi and London that the situation in Burm
was unremarkable and certainly not a reflection on the administration or its policies
any event, the story behind the making of the Saya San Rebellion narrative involv
stretching Carey's framework into the time and space of the 1930s.
Existing scholarship on the Saya San Rebellion has concentrated on explaining a
interpreting the rebellion, a demonstration of how influential the official OCBR seems to
have been in directing and influencing the nature of the discourse. In fact, the histo
graphy of the rebellion is based entirely on the report's narrative, which was fram
within a set of binary oppositions (superstition vs. rational, traditional vs. modern
political vs. economic). Scholars responded to the report's casting of events utilisin
similar conceptual pairings, not only mirroring the polemical structures of the repor
contentions, but often recycling the same categories of comparison as well.13
Much of the earliest work on Saya San begins with scholar-officials (C. V. Warren
A. J. S. White, Maurice Collis) who wrote shortly after their tour of duty in Burma
12 Carey, Hints for the guidance.
13 See, for example, John F. Cady, A history of modern Burma (Ithaca and London: Cornell Univer
Press, 1958); Sarkisyanz, Buddhist backgrounds; Harry Benda, 'Peasant movements in colonial South
Asia', Asian Studies, 3 (1965): 420-34, reprinted in Harry Benda, Continuity and change in Southeast
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972); Scott, Moral economy, Adas, Prophets of rebellion; Herb
Hsaya San rebellion; Toshikatsu Ito, 'U Thuriya's rebellion: The anti-colonial uprising in late 19th cen
Lower Burma' (Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Department of Indochinese Studies, Bu
Research Group, 1987), pp. 209-30; and Parimal Ghosh, Brave men of the hills: Rebellion and resistance
Burma 1824-1932 (London: Hurst & Co., 2000). The Saya San Rebellion is also discussed in Robert Tay
The state in Burma (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1987); U Maung Maung, From sangha to laity
Nationalist movements of Burma, 1920-1940 (New Delhi: Manohar Publications, 1980); Htin Aun
history of Burma (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967); and Albert D. Moscotti, British policy
the national movement in Burma (1917-1937) (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1974).
14 C. V. Warren, Burmese interlude (London: Skeffmgton & Son, 1937); A. J. S. White, The Burma of'A
Memoirs of A. J. S. White (London: BACSA, 1991); Maurice Collis, Trials in Burma (London: Fab
Faber, 1938).
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398 MAITRII AUNG-THWIN
These commentators, all of whom had direct access to the official report, chose to accen
tuate the rebellion's characteristics in their personal narratives, relating with colour and
vivid images its more fantastic and superstitious qualities. For these writers, the narrative
was important to their readership for its excitement and the exotic flavour it added to
their stories, so they attempted little or no analysis of the rebellion. Professional scholars
who followed, such as D. G. E. Hall and G. E. Harvey, discussed the origins of the rebel
lion through the terms articulated in the report (economic or political), with the latter
historian choosing 'superstition pure and simple' as the more likely motivating factor.15
Interestingly enough, while Saya San was explicitly mentioned as having organised and
instigated the rebellion, scholarship up to that point had only spoken of the event in
general terms as the 'Burma' Rebellion/Revolt. It was not until almost twenty years after
wards that the focus of the rebellion would shift to Saya San, establishing his current
place in the history of Burma.
Work that followed Burmese independence in 1948 positioned the Saya San
Rebellion under the lens of nationalism, allowing scholars in Burma and abroad to
dismiss the earlier emphasis and negative portrayal of the movement's supernatural
elements in favour of examining its structure and message. Domestic historians, reacting
strongly against colonial assessments of the rebellion, returned the focus to economic
causes, downplaying its more traditional imagery for an interpretation perceived as more
legitimate and applicable to writing a national history. Similarly, this stress on economic
conditions as a causal factor for the rebellion would inspire a generation of scholars in the
West to examine the Irrawaddy Delta region and the rational economy of the peasant as
possible frameworks for understanding Saya San and his followers. Others began exam
ining the political aspects of the rebellion from a more inclusive perspective, consciously
choosing to read the Buddhist elements of the uprising as part of a distinctly 'Burmese'
nationalism. To these scholars, superstition, religion or other traditional beliefs could
be studied for what they revealed about Asian political consciousness. Economics was
certainly a contributing factor in the rebellion, but it was Buddhism that provided the
blueprint for explicating these early nationalist sentiments.
With the florescence of new approaches to the study of peasant movements in
Southeast Asia (notably the work of Reynaldo Ileto), the Saya San Rebellion's supposedly
'superstitious' characteristics came to be examined for what they revealed about indig
enous Southeast Asian culture, no longer needing to be validated under the rubric
of 'nationalism'. Work by Michael Adas and Emanuel Sarkisyanz dared us to consider
the rebellion from a Burmese-Buddhist conceptual framework that espoused competing
notions of time, renewal and change.16 However, even though the field's concern with
'autonomous' perspectives, 'competing' voices and 'alternate' discourses produced
work that championed the world-view of the peasant (like Herbert's careful study), the
fundamental shape and content of the rebellion narrative remained intact.
The resulting studies of the Saya San Rebellion are thus direct legacies of this official
report, not only in the way it was used to secure their interpretations as a primary source,
but also in the way that it influenced how scholars would think about the rebellion.
Studies that sought to understand, validate, dispute, condemn or characterise this
narrative and the arguments, policies and voices it would eventually serve were based on
15 G. E. Harvey, British rule in Burma 1824-1942 (London: Faber and Faber, 1946), p. 73.
16 See Adas, Prophets of rebellion; Sarkisyanz, Buddhist backgrounds; and Ileto, Pasyon and revolution.
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GENEALOGY OF A REBELLION NARRATIVE
399
the arguments and positions articulated by the official report.17 In all of these cases,
basic sequence of events has remained unaltered: Saya San was accepted as having led
organised the rebellion in the minlaungtradition. The different readings ofthat narra
that emerged during the 1930s and those that arose in later scholarship were coun
interpretations, not counter-narratives; they all focused on debating the origins a
causes of the rebellion, understanding the cultural contexts of its distinctive charact
tics, locating the world-view of the peasant or detecting how the rebellion's image
articulated the complex relationships between religion, resistance and nationalism
Burma. These areas of interest were all drawn from issues that the report deem
relevant, thereby framing the nature of analysis and discussion for those who used
Thus, in the historiography of the Saya San Rebellion only one narrative has actually
the light of day and on it rests our entire understanding of Saya San and the peas
movement he allegedly led. The urge to interpret the rebellion and to understand i
motivations led scholars away from noticing a troubling characteristic in the sourc
most closely associated with the rebellion narrative.
Upon a closer review of the official report (OCBR), it is clear that the document
not a primary source for the Saya San Rebellion narrative (as it has been used) as mu
as it is a compilation of data from earlier reports with extracts from judicial reco
that chronicle the proceedings of the Special Rebellion Tribunals which were formed
process captured rebels. Moreover, these judicial passages reveal another peculiarity
that they were copied verbatim from Judgment Summaries, which contained only t
prosecution's arguments in the trial of Saya San. In other words, the report's sequenc
events was a recycling of the version first presented by the prosecution before the Specia
Rebellion Tribunal. The report was hardly a 'primary' source at all.18 Using the repor
historical evidence to prove that the sequence of events actually occurred or was factu
accurate is somewhat imprecise. The trail of documents should have led scholars to
least cite the Judgment Summaries, rather than the report, as some of the closest sources
to the rebellion narrative. With the exception of Adas, Herbert, Oliver B. Pollak an
Kenji Ino, few scholars have even mentioned the judicial records associated with the t
and no-one has examined these proceedings to question their reliability as sources or
examine the historical and legal environment in which the Saya San story cam
be formed.19 Rather than treating the official report as a starting point for studying the
17 The ways in which the historiography of the Saya San Rebellion is a product of these coun
insurgency documents and the institutions that produced them are beyond the scope of this article and
be examined in a forthcoming essay. In brief, the report's contentions that the rebellion was planned,
spontaneous; political, not economic in origin; informed by superstition, not rationality; and tradition
character, as opposed to modern; all served as points of departure for commentators at the time and f
scholars who followed. These series of binary framings were a major component in the discourse of
rebellion and certainly framed the tone and analysis found in the 1934 report.
18 'Primary source' is used here to mean those sources which are most able to validate or confirm an ev
having occurred. For the purposes of this article, it will refer to documents, materials or witness testim
that can be reliably identified as having referred to the events for the first time, before any other source.
is acknowledged, however, that there is always a 'secondary' quality to most documents found in
archive and a 'secondary trace of historical discourse' - to quote Nicholas B. Dirks - to which these sour
are almost always attached; see Dirks, 'Crimes of colonialism', p. 176.
19 Patricia Herbert's Hsaya San rebellion seeks to unravel the traditional colouring that has accompa
previous interpretations and to show how Western political forms of mobilisation, exemplified by
Galon Wuthanu Athin, demonstrate a 'modern' character to the uprising. The present article discusses
problematises the very narrative upon which her provocative study stands.
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400 MAITRII AUNG-THWIN
historiography of the rebellion and the interpretations that were built upon it, one might
consider the document a final version of the rebellion narrative, the outer coating that we
may peel off to reveal how the history of the Saya San Rebellion was produced by and
through the legal and legislative arms of the colonial state.
Precedents to the narrative
The four judicial documents most closely associated with the construction of the
Origins and causes of the Burma Rebellion 1930-1932 were two Judgment Summaries, an
Appellate Judgment and a Judgment Order, the latter being a review of the procedures
and findings found in the appeal.20 The proceedings provide a summary and reconstruc
tion of the Saya San trial on the basis of the evidence and arguments submitted by the
prosecution. Passages from these documents were cut and pasted into the text of the
report to act as 'evidence' for the arguments being made about Saya San; we can already
begin to see the merging of, and ambiguity between, legal and historical evidence. These
passages were generally direct quotations from the prosecution or remarks by the stand
ing Tribunal. Thus, the findings summarised in the four judicial documents covering the
trial were merely transferred to the final official report on the Rebellion. Although the
report would include the narratives of rebel outbreaks in several districts, they were all
connected to the grand narrative involving Saya San.
This initial connection between the OCBR and the judicial documents raises some
important points. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that the narrative was con
structed in an inherently adversarial environment where guilt or innocence rather than
historical accuracy was the concern, it is interesting to note that the history of the Saya
San Rebellion was based in part on the prosecution's intention to convict the man they
believed to be the instigator of the rebellion - suggesting that evidence was being shaped
to fit a preconceived theory. Even if the proceedings had included a record of the
defence's case, the problem of reconstructing events to reach a desired end (in this case
innocence) would still remain. (This may explain why there has never appeared an alter
native 'narrative' or alternative 'evidence' in the history of the Saya San Rebellion. There
has been only one record, one set of evidence and one perspective on which to base any
other view.) Beyond the question of what is included or excluded, it is also interesting to
consider how portions of the arguments are used as 'sources' in the report's text. They
help authenticate and legitimate the report's narrative by referring to its legal past and
specifically to the opinions and observations of the judges most intimately involved
in the trial. By seemingly appealing to the readership's trust and confidence in the English
legal process (in this case the immediate audience were members of the British par
liament), the Rangoon authorities were able to fashion the comprehensive report in a
manner that would satisfy London's sensibilities and demands for a comprehensive
and substantial document. In the end, this codification of what was essentially the
prosecution's reconstruction of events has unintentionally deflected the attention of
historians from the evidence and arguments closest to the narrative's formation. (At the
20 See L/PJ/6/2022, Judgment Summary, 29 Sept. 1931, Special Tribunal Case No. 5,28 Sept. 1931, Frames
684-94; Judgment Appeal No. 1121 of 1931, Special Tribunal Case No. 5, 29 Sept. 1931, Frames 649-64;
Judgement Order, Criminal Appeal No. 1121 of 1931, Special Tribunal Case No. 5, 11 Oct. 1931, Frames
665-83; and Judgement Summary, Special Tribunal Case No. 1 of 1931, 28 Aug. 1931, Frames 755-90.
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GENEALOGY OF A REBELLION NARRATIVE
401
same time, the intellectual climate of the time was interested in different themes a
driven by different questions, a fact which has as much to do with the types of readings
Saya San as do the sources used by scholars.) An examination of the prosecuti
case will provide an opportunity to review the legal record as well as to historicise t
particular setting in which the narrative and its sources were crafted.
The narrative on trial
Although the record is virtually silent as to how Saya San's lawyers defended him
the course of the trial, the judicial summaries provide a clear picture of how both t
prosecution and the Special Tribunal were responsible for constructing and validat
the narrative about the rebellion. The proceedings reveal that the Tribunal had a for
tive influence on the narrative's final shape, for it had the power to decide what could an
could not be included in the evidentiary record. The ramifications of this role for t
history of the Saya San narrative cannot be over-emphasised: the Tribunal was not o
dictating what would be admitted as evidence in the course of the trial, it was in
determining what would constitute the historical record over the long term. Ironical
the basis for determining legal admissibility in the trial was also the criterion for definin
its historical relevance, since the available sources would consist only of the evident
record that the judges accepted and included in their summaries.21 As a consequence,
legal evidence of the trial and the arguments corresponding to its application serve as
primary evidence and methodology behind the history of the rebellion.
The trial records also illustrate the way in which ethnology and perceptions of
Burmese culture were managed and manipulated to support the prosecution's c
acterisation of Saya San. This element of the trial is interesting not for what it says abou
the prosecution's tactics but for the way in which the discourse about these very cultural
traits like tattooing would eventually be canonised by the legal and documenta
apparatus of the colonial state. Knowledge about Burmese culture that was formed
objectified in the context of the trial would eventually find its way into the archiv
historical evidence, devoid of its original context and adversarial colouring. In shor
the trial of Saya San offers a glimpse into the making of a rebellion narrative and t
construction of a Burmese rebel through the processes, ideas and institutions that w
most closely responsible for their shaping.
The thrust of the prosecution's case was to demonstrate how Saya San perfectl
re-enacted the patterns described in Carey's minlaung model and how he had plann
and conspired to rebel through his Galon Organisation (Galon Wunthanu Athin
village network of political cells allegedly linked to the preparation of the rebellion.
contending that Saya San had 'the idea of the Galon Organisation ... since 1928, if n
earlier', prosecution lawyers hoped to establish that Saya San had been planning rebel
two years before the December 1930 uprising. As a result, their task required them
demonstrate that the 'idea' had occurred in 1928 and more importantly, that the Ga
Organisation was indeed a rebel front. In short, the prosecution wanted to show that
uprising was not a 'spontaneous' popular expression of peasant unrest but rather th
result of a well-planned conspiracy.
21 The decisions of the Tribunal set a precedent not only for 'future audiences', but for future historian
well; see Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns, 'Writing history and registering memory in legal decis
and legal practices: An introduction', in Sarat and Kearns, eds., History, memory and the law, pp. 1-24
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402 MAITRII AUNG-THWIN
The pertinent evidence against Saya San begins with a document seized from a
household where he had allegedly resided for ten years. The prosecution contended that
the note demonstrated that Saya San had been 'permanently connected' with 'fomenting
the rebellion' well before the outbreak of violence in late 1930. It stated that a new
organisation by the name of 'Sandati Galon Organisation' would be recognised by the
General Council of Burmese Associations (one of the largest nationalist organisations)
and 'utilised according to the wishes of the laymen members'.22 Although the document
was dated 3 August 1928, there was nothing within the text to link it to Saya San, nor did
it support any allegation that the Galon Organisation was a front for the rebellion. One
had to assume a priori that the prosecution's story about the document's origins and
meaning was accurate in order for it to be valid.
Another document of questionable relevance is a letter dated 14 December 1929,
from Saya San to Saya Nyun, presented as evidence of early rebellion planning. It reads:
The declaration by the Viceroy that Dominion Home Rule would be granted to India is but
a ruse. A political object is achieved only when lives are sacrificed. The Indians in India will
like one man, give up their lives next Pyatho (January 1930). Our party has decided not to
separate Burma from India, and it is when we follow the lead of India (Lit. When the elder
brother dances, the younger brother should dance, and when the elder brother sits, the
younger brother should sit too) that we are acting according to the spirit of the decision.23
This letter was interpreted by the prosecution as 'foreshadowing' the 'violence and
bloodshed' that would befall British officials in the coming months. In a rare indication
of the defence's explanation (referred to in the record because of the prosecution's rebut
tal), Saya San's lawyers claimed that the sacrifices mentioned in the passage had nothing
to do with violence against the authorities but referred to ways in which political leaders
would have to make sacrifices in order to implement policy, especially in reference to the
highly divisive Separation Issue (of Burma from India) that was currently under debate
within nationalist circles. This explanation was rejected by the prosecution, however,
since Saya San was a known
provider of charms and tattooing which rendered the recipients immune to bullets ... (the
blood) can hardly be regarded as referring to the blood to which his men would have to
shed, for according to all the evidence, his men were supposed to be proof against injury, so
the shedding of blood contemplated must have been the blood of the opposite party.24
In other words, the prosecution argued that the 'blood and violence' within the letter
had to refer to the British because the Burmese used tattoos that were believed to make
themselves invulnerable. Therefore the letter was considered direct evidence of Saya
San's intention to rebel in the coming months. However, a simple examination of the
22 The most complete record of the trial is in L/PJ/6/2022, Frames 669-83, Judgment Order, Criminal
Appeal No. 1121 of 1931, Special Case No. 5, 11 Oct. 1931 (henceforth cited as 'Judgment Order'),
from which these quotations are taken. Additional witness testimony included in the record but not dis
cussed here relies on the admissibility of the items and testimony highlighted in this article. Specifically,
I have chosen to skip the testimonies of several prosecution witnesses, as their depositions rest on the
admissibility of a diary, to be examined below.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid., Frames 669-70.
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GENEALOGY OF A REBELLION NARRATIVE
403
document's text shows no reference at all to 'blood and violence' in the first place. The
prosecution's counter-argument (pertaining to tattooing) was actually in reference to
their own commentary on the letter, not the original text itself. Moreover, it had not
been established that Saya San was a tattooing expert, nor had it been shown that he ha
ever contended that immunity to bullets could be attained through tattooing. Th
prosecution's rebuttal rested on assumptions and arguments that stemmed from its ow
comments and prejudices, not from the document under examination.
In fact, there was actually very little reliable material evidence to show that Saya San
had the idea for rebellion in 1928, even though the two documents were admitted into
the record to establish that very point. The 1928 note and the 1929 letter relied on th
prosecution's own unproven characterisations of their meaning and content. Both docu
ments depended on a narrative that was symbiotically and tautologically dependent on
them as sources. Not only are the circumstances surrounding their admittance peculiar,
but their value as reliable sources for the historical narrative is questionable as well.
There was also a long line of witnesses, all supplied by the prosecution. (Due to the
fast-track nature of the Special Rebellion Tribunals, the defence did not have time t
secure witnesses on its own behalf and could only cross-examine the prosecution's wi
nesses. In addition, the defence claimed that witnesses would not come forward to testif
on behalf of the defendant for fear of being implicated with the rebellion).25 San Pe tol
the Tribunal that Saya San had lived with his family for ten years and had given him
membership card that stated the member's name, age, designated company (unit), and
the signature of one Thupannaka Galuna Raja or King of the Galons, Saya San's allege
alter-ego. Another witness, Tun U, testified that in the late summer of 1930 Saya San ha
ordered the printing of 5,000 such cards.26 These cards played a significant role in the case
against Saya San for they refer for the first time to the 'royal' title Thupannaka Galun
Raja. The galon or garuda was a mythical bird in Southeast Asia that was often pitted
against the naga (snake), similar to the association between the fox and the hound. In
fact, members of the organisation were said to have tattooed the image of the galon
defeating the naga, a symbol that reflected Burmese intentions to defeat the British. I
the prosecution's eyes, then, the galon/naga motif symbolised the very idea of rebellion
The membership card, according to the prosecution, not only illustrated Saya San's
rank as leader and founder of the Galon Village Associations, but also signalled hi
self-identification as King of the Galons and his intention to use Burmese kingship as a
ideological platform from which to launch his revolt.27
In their effort to attach Saya San to the formative stages of the rebellion, the
prosecution had to demonstrate that the Galon Associations were the political wing o
25 Ibid., Frame 679.
26 L/PJ/6/2022, Judgment Summary, Special Tribunal Case No. 5, King Emperor vs. Saya San, 28 Aug
1931, 29 Sept. 1931, Frames 684-94.
27 Yet if one looks at the original document, the text also includes the term Thammada, which can mean
'president'. It is interesting that the official report, after having referred to this piece of evidence, excludes
the term in its text. See also Patricia Herbert's comments regarding Saya San's use of this term in Hsaya Sa
rebellion, p. 6. There are some references to the galon (garuda)I naga symbol in Southeast Asian Buddhist
literature, especially in reference to the legend of the Buddhist Saint Upago (Upagupta); see John Strong,
The legend of Upagupta: Sanskrit Buddhism in Northern India and Southeast Asia (Princeton: Princeto
University Press, 1992), pp. 183, 187-9, 191, 204.
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404 MAITRII AUNG-THWIN
the rebellion. Drawing upon an imperfect knowledge of Burmese rituals, mythology and
medicinal practices, the government lawyers melded together an argument that not only
came to criminalise aspects of Burmese culture, but would endure into contemporary
scholarship as the discourse through which these features would be discussed. They chose
specifically to focus on the symbols of the garuda/naga and the act of tattooing.
Although the latter practice had a wide and varied tradition in Burma (such as a means of
identifying one's occupation),28 the British attempted to argue that the act of tattooing
and specifically the depiction of the galon s defeat of the naga purely represented an
initiation ritual that Saya San undertook as part of his recruitment into the rebel
associations. The prosecution contended that the choice of the symbol for the Galon
Organisation and their tattoos was completely intentional, as the depiction of the galon
defeating the naga triggered the 'hereditary lawlessness and contempt of authority' in the
'ignorant, gullible and superstitious' villagers who associated themselves with the galon
and the naga with the British. Thus, the legal connection between the Galon Association
and the rebellion rested upon an anthropological interpretation of tattooing as a practice
and the galon as a symbol of revolt.
The prosecution's argument actually relied on evidence presented in an earlier
rebellion trial connected with the same rebellion (Special Rebellion Case No. 1 of 1931)
in which a prosecution witness, Po Yon, stated that he had once asked an associate why
he was tattooed with the galon. That individual allegedly replied that the symbol repre
sented his fight against the government, for the 'Galon was the symbol of the victory over
the Naga', the symbol of foreigners. In addition, the witness's friend stated that 'if a man
has a gallon tattoo mark on him he become invulnerable, and the shot fired at him
become[s] coloured flour'. The defence countered that the galon tattoo was actually a
prophylactic against snakebite, which drew doubtful criticism from the British high jus
tice, until U Ba U, a Burmese member of the Tribunal, supposedly told the Englishmen
that he (U Ba U) 'had better get down from the bench [and] take [his] seat amongst those
accused', since he too had tattoo marks thought to protect him from snakebite.29
Even though the prosecution's explanation for the meaning of the galon symbol
depended on hearsay testimony and despite the fact that the tattoo apparently had a
vague double meaning (the presence of the naga/British figure was apparently 'read' into
the meaning of the tattoo, since it did not actually appear opposite the galon, as originally
asserted by the prosecution), their interpretation was deemed sufficient to prove that
the galon Village Associations were, by virtue of the tattoo's meaning, the political and
administrative wing of the rebellion. Thus, testimony and evidence referring to meetings
of the village organisations were automatically categorised as signalling rebel activity
- this despite the fact that the formation of village organisations (wunthanu athin, used as
28 Crown service members, soldiers, religious bondsmen, craftsmen and even those monks who failed
their exams were said to receive a special tattoo during the Konbaung period (1752-1886); Michael Aung
Thwin, Pagan: Origins of modern Burma (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1985), p. 90, and The royal
orders of Burma, A.D. 1598-1885, ed. Than Tun, vol. 5 (Kyoto: Kyoto University Center for Southeast Asian
Studies, 1986). See also James George Scott, The Burman: His life and notions (New York: Norton and Co.,
1963 reprint), pp. 39-47.
29 Po Yon's testimony is in OCBR, p. 3; Ba U's account of his remarks is in his My Burma: The autobiogra
phy of a president (New York: Taplinger, 1958), pp. 110-11. These statements cannot be confirmed in the
Judgment Summaries related to the trial.
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GENEALOGY OF A REBELLION NARRATIVE
405
an alternate conduit to the political network established by the British) was a legal and
highly effective way for urban and rural nationalist groups to communicate with each
other. Through the colonial government's counter-insurgency programme, many suc
village associations were censured and shut down.
In fact, tattooing was considered evidence of the rebellion's coherency and organi
sation. Outbreaks in different districts were linked to the Galon Association and Saya Sa
because 'the symbol adopted by the Htandaw Rebels was that of the galon, in the sam
form as the marks found in Tharrawaddy'.30 Yet, when the prosecution came upon
conflicting evidence that contradicted their galon paradigm (if one accepts that inter
preting the meaning of a tattoo is reliable evidence in the first place), they rationalise
their evidence to fit the theory. In one instance, the Special Tribunal found it
a curious thing however that we have not found a single 'galon' tattoo mark on any one of
the accused ... It seems, therefore, to us quite likely that the 'galon' mark had been now
definitely abandoned. The actual tattoo marks of which we have been supplied with the list
are of a varied and puzzling character. The evidence with regard to their signification is
conflicting. It is difficult to find an outstanding common factor among them; but it may be
noticed that the 'necklace design' is found on a very large number of the people accused.
We are of the opinion that this necklace design was part of a symbol adopted by the rebels
indicating sympathy with the enrolment in the rebels' forces.31
Not only was the Tribunal intentionally looking for coherency through tattooing, bu
it adjusted the argument (on behalf of the prosecution) and chose an arbitrary tattoo
(the necklace) to fit the latter's preconceived theory that the rebellion was connected.
Although this adaptation of the necklace design actually dislodged Po Yon's earlier testi
mony linking the galon tattoo to the village associations, out of this methodological
dilemma sprang the idea that it was the very act of tattooing - not the use of a specifi
design - that would become 'a well known concomitant of rebellion in Burma'.32
Naturally, when witnesses were brought forth to testify about meetings involving
these village units, the legal assumption was that they were involved in preparation fo
the rebellion. For example, witness Po Aung deposed that both he and Saya San had been
members of U Soe Thein's branch of the GCBA and that in December 1930 he ha
received a letter from Saya San instructing him to meet at the latter's house in the village
of Shwenakwin, whereupon Saya San told those at the meeting that 'people are no
getting into trouble with the capitation tax. We must collect men and loot guns and ris
in rebellion.'33 Po Aung's testimony was corroborated by another witness, Ba Aye, wh
allegedly had heard the same speech. In all, two witnesses testified that Saya San had
ordered membership cards for the accused rebellion organisation and two witnesses that
he had openly discussed rebelling against the British.
From what can be gleaned from the judicial summaries, the defence seems to
have conceded that the meeting took place but denied that rebellion was the subject o
30 OCBR, p. 3 and L/PJ/6/2022, Frame 498, Memorandum, G/I to G/B, 25 May 1932. New Delhi officials
commented in one case that 'the evidence on which they were convicted was mainly in regard to tattooing',
revealing the extent to which the activity had been criminalised.
31 Judgment Order, L/PJ/6/2022, Frames 665-83, emphasis added.
32 OCBR, p. 3.
33 Judgment Order, Frame 653.
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406 MAITRII AUNG-THWIN
discussion or planning. The tribunal had to decide whose testimony was more credible,
Saya San's or that of the prosecution's witnesses. Curiously, the judges chose to believe
the approvers (prosecution witnesses) based on their own character assessment. In their
ruling on Ba Aye's testimony, the tribunal concluded that he was a 'very resolute person'
who was, in the view of the Court, 'in the innermost counsels of the persons who
fomented the rebellion'. He had also given evidence in earlier rebellion cases that had
been accepted by the Court. In reference to Po Aung, they observed that he must have
been 'a friend of Saya San' and at the same time, 'afraid of Saya San and the
organisation'.34
The Tribunal's criterion for accepting the testimony of the prosecution witnesses
exemplifies the type of reasoning that went into the creation of the legal record. Ba Aye's
testimony was accepted on the grounds that the Tribunal determined 'in their view' that
he was in the 'innermost counsels of the rebellion', a conclusion that had not been estab
lished by the prosecution and was not evident in the witness's statement. More curiously,
Ba Aye had evidently appeared before the Court before as a prosecution witness against
other defendants, as he had agreed to the terms of amnesty offered by the government.
His frequent appearances as a prosecution witness and the acceptance of his testimonies
in past cases seemed sufficient to establish his credibility. Similarly, Po Aung's testimony
was accepted on the unsubstantiated inference (on the part of the Tribunal) that he
was Saya San's 'friend' who was thoroughly 'frightened' of the alleged leader. In both
instances, the witness testimony was accepted on decisions reached by the Tribunal
that were independent of any specific argument presented by the prosecution. Thus, the
argument that Saya San planned and organised the rebellion through the formation of
the Galon Village Organisations as early as 1928 is based in part on two witnesses
whose credibility was established not by the prosecution, but by the judges of the
Special Tribunal. Whether or not Po Aung and Ba Aye were credible witnesses or actually
present in the first place are actually minor points. More crucial to the ethnology of the
rebellion narrative is recognising the way in which this element of the Saya San story
became entrenched within the historical record through the legal processes of the Special
Rebellion Tribunals.
The Tribunal's special procedural flexibility, evident in the deliberation of the
prosecution's opening arguments, became fully obvious as the case turned to recon
structing the events associated with the outbreak of the rebellion in 1930. Whereas
the early direction of the trial had dealt with pre-1930 planning, the main thrust of the
case dwelt on establishing the 'traditional' character of Saya San and demonstrating his
aspirations to rebuild and claim the defunct Burmese monarchy.
The prosecution hoped to show that between the months of October and December
1930, Saya San had begun holding coronation ceremonies in order to consecrate his
identity as the new king of Burma and to recruit and inspire peasant soldiers. The entire
character of the prosecution's case, and indeed the history that stemmed from it, hinged
upon the arguments and evidence that were presented to demonstrate Saya San's
kingship. Interestingly enough, the whole case rested on the testimony of a single witness
and the admissibility of one curious document.
Maung Chone, a prosecution witness, claimed to have been a part of Saya San's
retinue which convened on 28 October 1930 at the pagoda in Taungnyogale village. He
34 Ibid., Frame 654.
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GENEALOGY OF A REBELLION NARRATIVE
407
recounted that the group followed Saya San to a site where he saw two members each pick
up a white flag with the picture of a garuda and a naga, while a third member read
something and declared, 'may there be victory'. Although there was only one witness in
the record to testify to this alleged event, the Tribunal and the Appellate Court deemed
the event to be 'somewhat in the nature of a coronation', despite the fact that nothing
in the testimony itself suggests that the event even remotely resembled a traditional
coronation ceremony.35 Moreover, both judicial summaries and the appellate documents
indicate that it was the Tribunal and not the prosecution that reached this conclusion.
Although the issue at that point in the trial was whether or not the event took place, the
Court's interpretation is important because it illustrates the Tribunal's assumptions
about the nature of the ceremony and the role Saya San was to play within it. These
assumptions were all derived from a single witness, whose ambiguous testimony was
deemed admissible on the Tribunal's determination that 'this man is an extremely stupid
man and too foolish to be able to have made up the story which he tells'.36
The prosecution attempted to support Maung Chone's testimony with what they
claimed was Saya San's diary, the final piece in the puzzle that would tie their case
together. The records do not indicate whether or not the document was even a diary in
the first place (keeping diaries is not a common practice in Burmese culture), and Saya
San is reported to have denied that the 'diary' was his. The prosecution introduced an
expert witness to establish the author of the diary by calling in a Mr Ghosal, principal of
the Insein Detective School, who was asked to compare the writing of the diary with a
written statement known to be Saya San's. In his comparison, Ghosal testified that the
diary was surely Saya San's, for 'whenever the writer of this diary makes a letter contain
ing a circle he draws it in a peculiar manner, and he [Ghosal] finds the same characteristic
in the letters of the appellant'. Neither the defence - nor historians for that matter - ever
questioned Ghosal's expertise, even though his credentials as a handwriting expert rested
only on his personal assurances and he could neither read nor speak a word of Burmese,
which has its own techniques and procedures for writing characters. Ghosal's linguistic
deficiencies were downplayed by the prosecution, which stated that an expert could
identify characteristics of a written language even though 'the expert is ignorant of that
language'. The Tribunal agreed that his testimony on the handwriting was admissible
'provided the expert understands sufficient [sic] of the script to know what the writer of
any document was trying to reproduce on paper'.37 Yet this argument introduced by the
Tribunal (which was supposed to be hearing positions, not introducing them) assumed
a priori that the alleged writer could be identified despite Ghosal's doubtful expertise.
Nevertheless, his opinion was accepted and his testimony that the diary was Saya San's
was admitted into the record.
Perhaps to allay any concerns about Mr Ghosal's inability to read Burmese, the diary
was also examined by members of the Tribunal who were 'acquainted' with the language.
35 Ibid., Frames 670-1. Maurice Collis's description of the coronation ceremony in his Trials in Burma
should not be considered seriously as a primary source for this particular event (as some scholars
have done) since the author was not a witness to these events and may have based his description on
official reports released before his departure from Burma in the spring of 1931. Collis even reveals that he
examined a 'court judgment' as a basis for his description (p. 217).
36 Judgment Order, Frame 671.
37 Quotations from ibid., Frame 681. Consider, for those familiar with written Burmese, the proper
method for writing 'walone (a circle consonant representing the sound 'wa').
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408 MAITRII AUNG-THWIN
They agreed that the general appearance in handwriting was the same. Maung Ba,
the presiding appellate judge, later concurred with his colleagues and commented in his
review that he 'compared the writing in the diary with the writings in those exhibits' and
also found a 'striking similarity between those writings'. Consequently, on the partial
basis of Ghosal's, the Tribunal's and one Appellate Judge's self-declared expertise in
handwriting, the diary was deemed to be Saya San's and entered into the record as such.
The other factor contributing to its admissibility and declaration of 'authenticity' was
that it was deemed 'an exact confirmation of certain evidence relating to certain ceremo
nies spoke [n] of by the prosecution', a characteristic pointing to 'the inherent possibility
of its truthfulness'.38
This statement regarding the authenticity of the diary was slippery at best, for its
argument revealed a peculiar circularity. The Tribunal opined that since the internal
details (within a not-yet-authenticated diary) made reference to events whose own verifi
cation depended on those alleged details, the document in question should be considered
genuine. In short, the admissibility of the diary into the evidentiary record was accepted
as authentic on the grounds that it contained information that seemed to corroborate
the prosecution's story, regardless of its questionable origins. Incredibly, upon this
ruling rests the weight of the prosecution's case and the entire narrative of the Saya San
Rebellion. The original diary has yet to be located.39
The trial of Saya San is an intriguing focus of study because it reveals how a precon
ceived narrative was fashioned and modified within the procedural and methodological
boundaries of the Special Tribunal system to fit the circumstances of the 1930 uprising.
Exploring how this narrative was validated within a particular legal setting exposes how
evidence was presented and qualified to support the history of the rebellion. In addition,
examining the prosecution's case discloses how a particular view of Burmese history
(constant rebellions, periodic appearances of pretenders to the throne) and the minlaung
idea played a singular role in the legal construction of Saya San's criminality. He was
considered part of a longer, chaotic narrative of Burmese history that was attempting
to 'replay' itself in the face of modernisation.40 The implication of the government's
38 L/PJ/2022, Judgment Summary. For the Tribunal's examination, see Judgment Order; Maung Ba's
comments are in Frame 659, 29 Sept. 1931. Patricia Herbert, who accepts the diary as being authentic,
examined a copy published in Bandoola Journal and noted that the use of third person (with a royal
honorific) may indicate that Saya San was 'ambivalent' or even 'embarrassed' about using the normative
traditional royal style (Hsaya San rebellion, p. 7). Her point is that his alleged royal characterisation may
have been overemphasised.
39 Scholars, including the author, have only had access to Burmese-language reproductions of the diary
(appearing in journals and newspapers) or translated versions found in British documents. Extracts of the
diary were released by the colonial police and Criminal Investigation Department to local newspapers.
40 I borrow from Ileto, who suggests that the Filipino rebellion of 1896 was constructed by American
educators as a history of the 'already happened' or as an echo of European history in an 'Oriental setting';
Reynaldo Ileto, Knowing America's colony: A hundred years from the Philippine War (Manoa: University of
Hawaii Center for Philippine Studies, 1999). Although the interpretation of the Saya San Rebellion seems
to be a repetition of early Burmese revolts, it would be interesting to investigate whether other contexts
such as the so-called Sepoy Mutiny or possibly the Moplah Rebellion (in southern India) might have
informed British readings of the Burmese movements. Differing in emphasis, Henk Schulte Nordholt
suggests that much of traditional Bali was invented by colonial administrators eager to 'find' Old Java in
Southern Bali and projected many characteristics, such as imagined Hindu-Javanese legal principles, onto
Balinese society, reflecting a similar production of culture through ethnology and administrative
procedures; Henk Schulte Nordholt, 'The making of traditional Bali: Colonial ethnography and
bureaucratic reproduction', in Pels and Salemink eds., Colonial subjects, pp. 241-81.
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GENEALOGY OF A REBELLION NARRATIVE
409
position was that the Burmese - at least those taking part in the rebellion - were
capable of participating in the political reforms being introduced in India, u
Rangoon and other colonial cities. Yet, Burmese peasants were in fact employing the
modes of political organisation that the British were claiming (through the tone
character of the rebellion narrative) were not being embraced by rural population
networking and utilisation of wunthanu athin clearly indicate that the political land
of Burma in the 1930s was of a varied nature and more complicated than the prosec
and the findings of the Special Tribunal permitted.41 The rebellion narrative wa
smoothing over of these contradictions within Burmese politics, for it created a
distinction between the civil administration and the Galon Village networks by lin
the latter with traditional Burma, even though they were actually modelled on new for
of political mobilisation.
This incongruence with British norms on the part of the Burmese and their
sumed inability to engage in the workings of the colonial state by using the recog
language, institutions and procedures of the authorities are inherent in the argum
and evidence produced in Saya San's trial. Material and testimonial evidence was u
not only to establish the traditional character of the rebellion, but to illustrate the
nature of Burmese political expression. To Rangoon officials, the message was clear
Burmese peasantry could not articulate protest or dissatisfaction in a language other
that of rebellion. In a predictable manner, the prosecution fashioned a case that
sented Saya San as leading a rebellion of superstitious peasants, duped into believing
he could protect them with invulnerability tattoos and spells as only a king of Burm
'quack doctor' might do. In a sense, the very understanding of political leadershi
Burma was being relegated to the traditions and imagery of Burmese kingship, wit
exception of those operating within the colonial administration.
The narrative implied that Saya San and other rural leaders were informed an
constrained by their restrictive history and culture. The criminalisation of Burm
culture, as seen in the stigmatising of tattooing, exemplifies the manner in which a
mon practice became part of the rebel profile. Tattooing was taken out of its cul
context and bounded to a particular temporal, spatial and legal reality that was info
by ideas of rebellion and revolt. Specifically, the galon, a symbol that had a long
varied tradition in Southeast Asia, was soon confined by legal definitions to represen
very concept of rebellion in Burma. In sum, it seems that Burmese culture was on tr
much as Saya San was the focus of the proceedings, for the entire case rested on evi
and arguments that implied that the seeds of rebellion, the roots of the unrest a
the periodic terrorism that characterised the early 1930s could be located within
traditions, values and history of the Burmese.
From this vantage point, the trial of Saya San might even be seen as a 'factory
the production of knowledge, in that Burmese culture was codified, materialised
standardised in the archive of the court. The special procedures, allowances and fle
lity afforded to the prosecution by the Tribunal point to a legal system that ena
knowledge about the rebellion to be carefully accumulated, sanitised and controlled
41 According to Herbert, Wunthanu Athin represented a qualitative break from the minlaung-in
uprisings in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in that the imagery, tactics and message
employed were not derived from pre-annexation traditions (Hsaya San rebellion).
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410 MAITRII AUNG-THWIN
language of law and the methodology of litigation managed the various facets of Burmese
culture that were brought under court examination, their meanings smoothed over
to correspond to the accepted version of events.42 Special Rebellion Tribunal judges
determined the contents of the evidential record, effectively deciding what would - and
especially what would not - become the basis for subsequent reports that would eventu
ally end up as 'historical' documents in the archives. The narrative about the Saya San
Rebellion could not have been shaped in any other way than as it arrived, considering the
theatre and script in which it was constructed. In essence, the trial was as much a perfor
mance of counter-insurgency policy as it was a site for producing counter-insurgency
knowledge.
The very process of creating the narrative was a demonstration and representation of
colonial power to a variety of audiences beyond the local population.43 Making sense out
of a rebellion fraught with cultural and historical contradictions specific to Burma
demonstrated the capabilities and continued relevancy of the Rangoon administration
in Burma to New Delhi superiors (who openly questioned counter-insurgency policies),
as well as those watching events from London. The administration's ability to translate,
dictate and narrate the story of Saya San to the Home Office was as much a measure of its
legitimacy within the empire as it was a statement about its legitimacy in Burma.
Thus, the formation of the Saya San Rebellion narrative is both a story of counter
insurgency within the colony and a story of Empire. The creation of the Special Tribunals
and the laws that extended the administrative, municipal and legal powers of Rangoon
authorities both relied on particular legislation that needed to be passed by the Burma
Legislative Council and also to be sanctioned by London via New Delhi. London was
initially reluctant to allow such expansion of authority, preferring that Rangoon use 'the
ordinary courts or failing that, the Burma Govt should do what was necessary by local
legislation'.44 Yet this was precisely the problem, for the Burma Legislative Council had
already shown signs of resistance to the proposed Ordinances. Pressure from local lead
ership, compounded by hesitation in London and New Delhi, forced Burma officials to
draft an entirely different narrative of the rebellion that would secure official approval
quickly. Ironically, this untold narrative - which coincided with but did not include the
story of Saya San - would ultimately provide the colonial administration in Burma with
the justification to pass the Rebellion Trials Ordinance and the Burma Criminal Amend
ment Ordinance, both of which would have a direct effect on the creation of the Special
Rebellion Tribunals and the narratives that were produced under their authority.
Legislation and hidden narratives
Shortly before noon on 8 January 1931, the Secretary of State for India received an
urgent telegram from Burma seeking special legislation to deal with the acts of terrorism
42 Law was used in colonial Indonesia to interpret and construct culture as well. The 'adat law approach'
used juridical concepts to record local customs and institutions. Schulte Nordholt, 'Making of traditional
Bali' suggests that the legalist approach, which stressed formal rules and institutions, directed the focus of
research as well as informed interpretations of change and continuity. Courts have been considered as
archives in that their records serve 'as the materialisation of memory'; Sarat and Kearns, 'Writing history
and registering memory', in Sarat and Kearns, eds., History, memory and the law, p. 13.
43 Edward W. Said, Culture and imperialism (New York: Vintage Books, 1996).
44 L/PJ/6/2021, Frames 487-8, Minute Paper, Public and Judicial Department, 12 Feb. 1931.
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GENEALOGY OF A REBELLION NARRATIVE
that had erupted in Tharrawaddy District. Special counter-insurgency measures were
urgently needed in Burma to bolster security in response to a growing threat from
Bengali terrorists who were infiltrating the country.45 These insurgents, who were origi
nally in Burma to smuggle 'arms into Bengal from Singapore and the far East' were now
engaging in 'terrorist activities'. Functioning under the title of the Bengal Revolutionary
Party (BRP), these terrorists, who were described as 'mainly Bengali', were estimated to
have nearly 300 members in Burma. Recent activities associated with their handiwork
included increasingly frequent incidents of political dacoity and a failed attempt to derail
a train in the autumn of 1930.46 By 2.30 p.m., reports would add that 'Burman monks
were connected with the movement and involved in the importation of revolvers and
ammunition from the Chinese border', apparently arranged by the infamous Rash Bihari
Bose, 'the notorious absconder' who had conducted revolutionary activities in Bengal
but was apparently never caught. Officials in Burma stressed that the rebellion was not
locally motivated but part of a larger 'definite plan' involving the Soe Thein Branch of the
General Council of Burmese Associations (one of the GCBA's more outspoken arms)
and U Oktama, a Burmese activist who supposedly had ties with the BRP.47
Subsequent telegrams would elaborate on U Oktama's alleged involvement in the
uprising by describing his meetings with Bose and other BRP members while accentuat
ing his outspokenness as an executive member of the GCBA. An official statement by the
acting Governor-General of India even observed that the government had been aware of
a 'terrorist party in Burma' which was 'closely associated with terrorists in Bengal'. The
same group was blamed for 'political dacoity' in the months preceding the rebellion and
there were sufficient grounds for believing that it was 'privy to rebellion in Tharrawaddy
District and that it was the intention of those responsible for that rebellion to organise
rising in different parts of Burma with the view to overthrow Government'.48 Interest
ingly, the events in Tharrawaddy District were being conceptualised as part of a Bengali
tradition of insurgency, an external threat that threatened the security of Burma; Saya
San was not even mentioned.
On the basis of the Bengali narrative, the Burma government quickly proposed to
draft an Ordinance that was modelled after the Bengal Criminal Amendment Bill, which
had been enacted for similar cases of terrorism in the Indian province five years earlier.
The Burmese version would give the authority to detain suspects without trial, to deny
the right of habeas corpus and, most importantly, to form their own tribunals specifically
45 L/PJ/6/2021, Frame 359, Secret Telegram, G/I HD to S/SI, 8 Jan. 1931 (11:45 am). On the background
of the Bengali movement, see Note on the growth of the Bengal Revolutionary Movement in Burma from 1922
to 1930, L/PJ/6/2021, Frames 319-42.
46 L/PJ/6/2021, Frame 358, Secret Telegram, G/I HD to S/SI, 8 Jan. 1931 (12.00 p.m.). It is interesting to
note that the two events were being simultaneously linked to the events in Tharrawaddy that occurred in
late 1930. However, when the official story began to be more closely tied to Saya San, these particular events
disappear from his involvement.
47 L/PJ/6/2021, Frame 360, Secret Telegram, G/I HD to S/SI, 8 Jan. 1931 (3.15 p.m.). U Ottama (Oktama)
was a monk who advocated that the monkhood be more involved in secular affairs, particularly in the
livelihood of peasants; his message was eventually taken up by the GCBA. See Taylor, State in Burma,
pp. 182-3. The connection with Bose is mentioned in L/PJ/6/2021, Frame 358, Secret Telegram, G/I, HD to
S/SI, 8 Jan. 1931 (2.30 p.m.).
48 L/PJ/6/2021, Frames 300-1, Telegram, G/I HD to S/SI, 2 Feb. 1931. On U Oktama and Bose see, for
example, Frames 350-1, Secret Telegram, G/I HD to S/SI, 11 Jan. 1931 (1 p.m.).
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411
412 MAITRII AUNG-THWIN
to handle cases dealing with terrorism. As one Burma official commented, such courts
would be able 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'. It was
promised that the powers conferred by the proposed bill would target only those '[of]
whom there is reason to believe that they are members of a terrorist party in Burma or are
acting in furtherance of terrorist movement'.49
Bengali terrorism, according to official reasoning, was detectable on the basis
of both geography and ethnology, an approach that would eventually find its way
into documents concerning Saya San. As one-time acting Governor of Burma Joseph
Maung Gyi stated to the Burma Legislative Council on the need for the Criminal Law
Amendment Ordinance:
The Hindus believe, Sir, that the Brahmins proceed from the mouth of Brahma and there
fore they are the most intellectual people because they are the teachers of the people. They
are known as Brahmins, but the Kshatriyas and the fighting classes proceed from the arms
and chest of Brahma. Now if you take the map of India, you will see that Bengal is the head
of India, that the North-West Province of Punjab, where the fighting races come from, are
the arms and chest of India. The Bengalis are efficient people and very highly intellectual.
They are a mild mannered people and well disposed as a rule, but out of all the different
districts in Bengal, there is one that lies right to the east nearest to the hills where the wild
tribes go in for head hunting and that is Chittagong, and it is in the district of Chittagong
that the Bengal Revolutionary Association had its birth and the majority of the members of
the Association come from Chittagong.
Beyond Maung Gyi's projection of the 'body' into the continent of India, it is interesting
how Chittagong and the 'Kshatriyas' are criminalised, similar to the way Tharrawaddy
was being constructed as a haven for robbers, dacoits and pretender kings.50 Geography,
in other words, was being used as a determinant for terrorism.
The council members, however, were not convinced, and returned to the issue of the
Ordinance, particularly in respect to the language of the proposal. For example, Section
6, Paragraph 2 stated that
If at any trial under this Act it is found that the accused person has committed any offence,
whether such offence is or is not an offence specified in the First Schedule, the commission
ers may convict such person of such offence and pass any sentence authorised by law for the
punishment thereof.51
This provision essentially allowed the authorities to arrest suspects regardless of
whether the offence was explicitly cited in the Ordinance. Furthermore, detainees could
49 L/PJ/6/2021, Frames 275-8, Telegram, G/I HD to S/SI, 2 Feb. 1931 ('reason to believe'); Frames 343-4,
W. Johnston (Legal Advisor, Docket, Public and Judicial Department), 11 Jan. 1931 ('stop the activity'). A
brief summary of the history of the Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Ordinance can be found in Extracts
from the Bengal Legislative Council and copy of the Ordinance, located in Frames 373-84.
50 The quotation is from L/PJ/6/2021, Frame 122, Extract from Burma Legislative Proceedings, 1931.We
find a case of rebellion being connected to geography for the Shandong region of China; see Joseph W.
Esherick, The origins of the Boxer Rebellion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), p. 39.
51 L/PJ/6/2021, Frames 259-71, Extract from the Proceedings of Council Relating to the Criminal Law
Amendment Bill, 1931, meeting held on 14 Feb. 1931.
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GENEALOGY OF A REBELLION NARRATIVE
413
conceivably be tried under the Rebellion Tribunal, whether or not the case came under its
jurisdiction. Others were sceptical of the entire Bengali connection, noticing that sev
different conflicting narratives had been offered to explain the rebellion and the n
for this anti-terrorism legislation. U Ni complained that 'the government is pursuin
chimera when, among its objects and reasons, it tries to draw a connection between
Tharrawaddy rebellion, the U Soe Thein GCBA and the Bengal Revolutionaries'.52 U N
astute observation anticipates an argument of this article, namely that the authorit
were simply trying to cover all possible explanations by creating counter-insurgen
narratives that would guarantee them the expansion of their administrative powers.
New Delhi officials seemed concerned as well, suggesting that Rangoon separate t
extension of policing powers from their requests to modify the judicial structure and seek
two separate Ordinances, rather than a single law, in anticipation of the possibility t
London might be drawn to squash the entire proposal.53 London had already vo
some reluctance to unilaterally implement the Bengal Criminal Amendment Act, f
fear that the use of expansive powers to arrest suspected rebels would only provid
forum in which a large number of'revolutionaries' might communicate with each oth
In fact, officials quietly admitted that the entire Bengali narrative 'was a little out of dat
However, the Ordinance was passed and even renewed into a formal Act, even thou
the Burma Legislative Council had voted it down 46-39.54 Governor Charles In
utilised his powers of certification to bypass the Council and pass the counter-insurge
legislation anyway, including the Burma Rebellion Trials Ordinance.
Despite the assurances from Burma that anti-terrorism judicial powers would b
applied sparingly, officials in London soon learned that Rangoon authorities had alre
sentenced fifteen detainees to death or transportation and were continuing to reque
authority to 'dispose' of the 'not less than three-hundred' accused rebels.55 Citing rec
mendations from their Chief Justice, Burma officials suggested that the special tribu
be modelled along the lines of a standard Military Law Tribunal and included in th
dispatch an extract explaining the structure, procedures and extent of authority tha
tribunal of this nature might enjoy. Although the provisions of such a court were o
supposed to be implemented if martial law were declared, Rangoon officials hoped
maintain its civilian appearance (and their own authority) by introducing their propos
within the legislative chambers.56
52 L/PJ/6/2021, Frame 128, Extract, Burma Legislative Council Proceedings, 1931.
53 Ibid.
54 L/PJ/6/2021, Frames 501-2, Secret Telegram, G/I HD to S/SI repeating telegram from G/B, 27 Jan. 1931
(5.15 p.m.) ('revolutionaries'); Frame 314, Confidential Minute Paper, Public and Judicial Department, 5
Jan. 1931 ('out of date'). This comment by W. Johnston (a legal advisor) refers specifically to the report
compiled by C. De Wellborne (Lt.-Colonel and Deputy-Inspector General of Police), entitled 'Note on the
growth of the Bengal Revolutionary Movement in Burma from 1922 to 1930'. The vote is mentioned in
Frame 148, Extract Burma Legislative Council Proceedings, 1931.
55 L/PJ/6/2021, Frames 491-2, Secret Telegram, G/I HD to S/SI, repeating telegram from G/B, 12 Feb.
1931.
56 L/PJ/6/2021, Frames 493-6, Extract from draft of Martial Law Ordinance, 12 Feb. 1931. Civil adminis
trators were resistant to the idea of declaring Martial Law, to the consternation of senior military officials
recently arrived from India. A discussion of tensions between the two groups in regard to the formation of
counter-insurgency policy can be found in the memoir of a civil servant stationed in Thayetmyo: White,
Burma of (Af. These civil-military tensions were downplayed by London, as seen in a letter describing
Whitehall's desire for 'Stewart' to offer a 'categorical denial' of any bickering between the two groups of
officials in Burma; L/PJ/6/2021, Frame 117, Letter to Sir Findlater Stewart, 19 Dec. 1931.
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414 MAITRII AUNG-THWIN
The dialogue between New Delhi and Rangoon concerning the framework for these
courts illustrates a concern on the part of both offices that London would perceive the
rebellion as getting out of hand. (The term 'London' is used loosely to mean both
the colonial offices and Parliament, whose members voiced differing perceptions of the
rebellion and used the rebellion for their own domestic political agendas, a subject that is
beyond the boundaries of this article.) Not only would the declaration of martial law
create a perception of civil disorder - a move that would weaken the image of the India
administration -instituting military courts would also leave the impression that the civil
ian government in Burma was incapable of running the province effectively, especially in
a moment of crisis.
The proposed Ordinance gave government the authority to form a Special Rebellion
Tribunal and appoint members at its discretion, provided that the appointees had at
least two years' experience in the Sessions circuit. Additionally, Rangoon could direct the
Special Tribunal to try offences as ordered in writing, giving officials the ability to tell
it what crime a defendant had committed and what law he was accused of breaking,
all this before the trial even took place. In fact, if a defendant's case was assigned to this
Tribunal, then his identity as a rebel was already assumed, simply through what
amounted to arbitrary administrative convenience. Section 14 of the Ordinance permit
ted the court to 'take cognisance of offences without the accused being committed to it
for trial', effectively skipping any preliminary hearing to decide whether a case had any
legal or evidential basis for going to trial in the first place. Moreover, Dr Ba Maw, lead
counsel on the defence team, argued that the arrangements 'deprived the defence of an
opportunity to put the evidence to any effective test by cross-examination' since it was
unable to examine evidence before the trial. In response, the prosecution claimed that in
actuality,
The evidence in this case was very much less than might have been put in but in view
of the fact that the accused was arrested at the very end of the period for which the
Special Tribunal had been constituted... and in order to get him in with the same series of
Tribunals, [the] trial of the accused had to be rushed.57
Beyond the peculiarity of the prosecution's response, which avoided addressing the
defence complaints, this statement revealed that the terms and temporal reality of the
special legislation were determining the speed and circumstances under which the
case against Saya San was being constructed - not the amount, quality or credibility of
the evidence. The prosecution's case was brought to trial in order to proceed under the
special provisions that guided the Tribunal. If nothing else, such a statement should have
attracted the attention of historians, for the trial had been 'rushed'.
The two provisions permitting the Special Tribunal judges to make only a memo
randum of the 'substance of the evidence' and for determining 'the procedures of Special
Tribunals', would have far greater implications for the trial of Saya San, the formation of
the narrative and the direction that the history of the rebellion would take.58 Eliminating
the requirement to compile a complete transcript and thorough recording of the
57 L/PJ/6/2021, Frame 652, Judgment Proceedings, Appeal No. 1121 of Special Case No. 5, 28 Aug. 1931,
p. 4; emphasis added.
58 L/PJ/6/2021, Frame 495, Extract from Martial Law Ordinance, 12 Feb. 1931; emphasis added.
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GENEALOGY OF A REBELLION NARRATIVE
415
evidence in the judgment summaries effectively determined the shape the historical
record would assume. The court documents that serve as the foundation for subsequent
reports (like the OCBR) only contained the prosecution's arguments and evidence
because that was precisely what the Rebellion Trials Ordinance directed the Tribunal to
do. Since the judges were legally under the jurisdiction of the government whose interests
were represented by the prosecution, it is no wonder that all the court sources appear
to judge only the prosecution's evidence as being legally 'pertinent' to the record. The
reliance on these very same sources by administrators illustrates how legislative, legal and
documentation offices were all involved in the production of what would become a
'primary' historical source. Thus, the character of the legislation that formed and guided
the procedures of the Tribunal was the basis for the peculiar way in which questionable
evidence from the trial of Saya San was allowed into the legal record and documented
in a particular manner. Counter-insurgency legislation begat a counter-insurgency
narrative.
Under this new legislation, it was much easier to pass further counter-insurgency
laws with extended powers of arrest, which developed and objectified the profile of a
Burmese rebel and the criminalising of Burmese culture. Working to pass what would
become the Emergency Powers Ordinance, Burma administrators discussed making
provisions to make tattooing and the distribution of 'charms' illegal and applicable as
evidence in support of'offences under Section 121 and related sections of the Indian
Penal Code'. Officials sought sanction to 'legally'
arrest any person [regarding] whom a reasonable suspicion exists that he has promoted or
assisted to promote or intends to promote rebellion against the Authority of Government,
or that he assisted or intends to assist any rebel, or otherwise acted or intends to act in a
manner prejudicial to the restoration or maintenance of law and order.59
The origins of using tattooing as evidence and a sign of rebellion thus lie in the
Emergency Powers Ordinance, setting a legislative and legal precedence for its use by the
prosecution in the trial of Saya San. Thirteen provisions were specifically created to 'deal
with wandering Pongyis [monks] and other emissaries who are chiefly instrumental in
spreading rebellion'. Although London officials expressed concern that this and other
measures requested were of'doubtful legality', court records demonstrate that the basis
for determining the 'intention to rebel' rested primarily on tattoos.60 The Emergency
Powers Ordinance came to embody the intent of rebellion trials and criminal law ordi
nances combined. Although the latter two were secured through a narrative depicting
the Bengali Revolutionary Association's supposed involvement in the uprising, the
full weight and power of the legislation were directed against Burmese suspected as
rebels who were most likely operating independently of other nationalist movements
in neighbouring countries. The exclusion of the Bengali connection in practically
every study of the rebellion suggests that there remain several other contexts in which the
making of this history may be understood.
59 L/PJ/6/2021, Frame 547, Burma Emergency Ordinance Draft, Section 3,1 June 1931. The comment on
charms and the Penal Code is in Frame 541, Secret Telegram, G/I, Home Secretary to S/SI, 9 June 1931.
60 L/PJ/6/2022, Frame 498, Memorandum G/I to G/B, 25 May 1932. On the 'Pongyis and other emissar
ies', see Frames 573-4, Secret Telegram, G/I HD to S/SI, repeating telegram from G/B, 16 May 1931.
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416 MAITRII AUNG-THWIN
The BRA explanation, upon a comparison of documents sent to London, emerged
almost simultaneously with the minlaung version (involving Saya San), roughly two
weeks after the outbreak took place in late December 1930. Although the official Blue
Book contends that officials had known all along 'since 1928' that activities were being
planned by this Bengali network, the competing narrative involving Saya San suggests
that they may have constructed it to cover all possibilities (indicating that they did not
know what was going on) or else that they knew exactly whom they were dealing with and
used the BRA to secure special powers to be wielded against the alleged internal threat
posed by Saya San and others like U Ottama. Regardless of the intentions, the role and
story behind the Ordinances are directly linked to the formation of the trial site in which
the Saya San narrative was created.
Conclusions
The emergence of other contexts and sequences related to the making of the Saya
San narrative suggests that there may be more to study and to question, and eventually
more avenues to interpret the large anti-colonial rebellions in the history of South and
Southeast Asia. Approaching the history of the Saya San rebellion as a type of literary
expression of colonial Burma emphasises an examination of the narrative's anatomy
which places considerable emphasis on the sources, ideas, institutions and contexts
involved in the making ofthat particular history.61 Positioning oneself in such a manner
allows the historian to observe and take part in the assessment of the narrative from a
perspective that avoids having to operate within the dichotomous framing that has
pervaded many interpretations of anti-colonial rebellions. Instead of getting caught in
the web of discourse that is often associated with interpreting such an event through
a myriad of binary oppositions, a study focused on the production of the narrative
takes us to different points of interest and accentuates relationships between ideas and
institutions that might otherwise have been left unexamined.
For instance, this study has proposed that the history of the rebellion was largely a
product of a colonial administration that combined the disciplines of ethnology, law and
geography to form a particular narrative confining Saya San and Burma to a specific time
and place. Tracing the genealogy of the sources has illustrated the role that the legislative,
legal and documentation offices of Burma, India and London played in the formation of
the narrative as well as the way in which their competing visions and tensions may have
contributed to its final shape. In addition, the making of the Saya San Rebellion also
reveals a convergence of the administrator, lawyer and scholar in the production of
knowledge that no doubt finds reference in other colonial environments as well. For
instance, memoirs of many officials have become the primary sources of several scholarly
works while many of their perceptions (and misconceptions) have been codified and
objectified by reports that were also used by subsequent scholars with little scrutiny.62
61 I adopt Johannes Fabian's approach of historicising the historical record by locating the 'praxis and
processes' which produced the documents most closely tied to the official narrative: Johannes Fabian, Lan
guage and colonial power: The appropriation of Swahili in the former Belgian Congo, 1880-1938 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 11.
62 Ranjit Guha, 'The prose of counter-insurgency', in Postcolonial discourses: An anthology, ed. Gregory
Castle (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), p. 71; Dirks, 'Crimes of colonialism', pp. 157-8.
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GENEALOGY OF A REBELLION NARRATIVE
417
Specifically, the memoirs of C. V. Warren and Maurice Collis have been used as primary
sources for the rebellion narrative as a whole, when much of their writing about the
uprising was based only on second-hand knowledge.63 Collis (who served in Burma as a
judge) writes of Saya San's supposed coronation ceremony as if he had witnessed the
spectacle and scholars compound this misconception by citing him. Clearly, the role of
the administrator-scholar in relation to the production of knowledge - and specifically to
knowledge about anti-colonial rebellions - may be a subject worth exploring further.
Naturally, if we are to make administrator-scholars a potential focus of further
investigation, then the archive must also be considered under the rubric of anti-colonial
rebellion studies. For the construction of the Saya San and Bengali narratives had as
much to with the archive as it did with the task of securing counter-insurgency legisla
tion. The collection of'official' documents is itself an objectification of sources, one stage
in the production of what would become the evidentiary record of the rebellion. As
the study of the prosecution's case suggests, the making of a primary 'historical' source
was guided by what the Tribunal felt was admissible 'legal' evidence. Further studies
involving the trial as a site for the production of knowledge may investigate how a scholar
differentiates 'legal' from 'historical' evidence, the role of law in the codification of
knowledge, and the ways one might study the reconstruction of a narrative from 'within'
the context of the trial as well as from 'outside' it. For the history of the Saya San Rebel
lion, law and ethnology were the criteria for what would become a historical source while
the trial provided a unique setting in which a primary source could be created.
The India Office Library and the National Archives of Myanmar function in a simi
lar manner in that both establish the 'primacy' of the documents related to the rebellion
(by including and excluding particular sources) and in a crucial way do the same for the
Saya San narrative itself. In the India Office Records, the Burma Rebellion Files are sepa
rated into four different reels, each containing a different corpus of materials, numbering
about 700 documents per reel. If a historian wanted to examine the documents closest to
the accepted version of events, the trail of documents would lead to those collected in the
microfilm reel under the heading L/PJ/6/2020. The files are arranged in reverse order,
beginning with the documents related to the Parliament's commissioning of the official
report (1933-34), back in time to the first telegram from Burma describing the outbreak
in 1930. A scholar interested in interpreting the narrative (having accepted it as histori
cally accurate) would have little reason to check the other three reels, which contain the
documents related to the Special Rebellion Trials, the formation of the Ordinances and,
of course, the 'other' narratives. Thus, the very organisation of the documents (at least in
microfilm format) may have contributed to the way in which studies of the Saya San
Rebellion were oriented towards interpreting the narrative rather than a questioning of
it.64
63 Warren, Burmese interlude and Collis, Trials in Burma.
64 These very microfilms frame my own methodology as my project traces back the genealogy of the
narrative in much the same way that the documents were presented. However, the interest in the
narrative's heritage and its trial origins compelled me to 'jump' to the other reels, which eventually
revealed the connection between the Tribunals and the Ordinances. For a guide to these materials, see
Andrew Griffin, A brief guide to sources for the study of Burma in the India Office Records (London: India
Office Library and Records, 1979).
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418 MAITRII AUNG-THWIN
This is not to suggest that there is no room for interpretation by tracing the gen
ealogy of the Saya San narrative. Rather, it leads us to speculate on the making of the
narrative and the possible reasons it took the form that it did. Why did Burma officials
choose to paint Saya San and the Galon village associations as a re-emergence of older
forms when they were both as much an outgrowth of British education and political
mobilisation techniques as they were of traditional Burma?
One possibility, which can only be mentioned briefly here, may have to do with
the question of separating Burma (administratively) from India. London officials had
already made moves towards the liberalisation of government in India and similar ques
tions began to be raised in Burma in the late 1920s, resulting in a visit by the India Statu
tory Commission led by John Simon (and hence called the Simon Commission). Official
Rangoon policy supported separation while many opposition parties within the GCBA
preferred to remain attached to India for fear that Burma would otherwise be deprived
of the political concessions being promised to India.65 Separation would loosen the
administrative, political and economic ties Burma had as a province of India, essentially
creating a separate colonial government and, perhaps, the autonomy from India that
Rangoon officials always craved. This preference for separation by the British was
regarded by some Burmese politicians as an attempt to disrupt cooperation between
Indian and Burmese nationalists. Indeed, British officials argued that both the 'electorate
and the council [in Burma] lacked the requisite experience' to take part in the measures
being drafted for India.66 In this light, producing a story of rebellion that argued that the
Burmese were incapable of articulating protest in a vocabulary other than superstitious
rebellion may have been a reflection of those concerns and the political context sur
rounding the separation issue. Framing the nature of Burmese political expression in
easily categorised traditional terms may be regarded as an appeal (on the part of British
administrators in Burma) to demonstrate significant differences with the Indian situa
tion which ultimately supported the position to separate. In hindsight, the narrative of
the Saya San Rebellion may actually be a chapter of two different but related tales - a story
of revolt within Burma and a story of'rebellion' between colonial administrations.
This study began with the premise that it may be a bit hasty to dismiss the relevance
of South and Southeast Asia's large rebellions as a subject of study in favour of'everyday'
forms of protest. Treating rebellion narratives as particular expressions of colonial
society may be as helpful to understanding colonial culture as these texts were to under
standing indigenous Southeast Asian mentalities of protest. Upon further reflection,
there may even be possibilities in combining the methodology and approaches found in
the study of 'everyday' resistance with the study of these larger, more confrontational
expressions of protest. For instance, during the period of the Rebellion, did members of
the Burma Legislative Council employ 'everyday' forms of resistance that relied on an
alternative language based on British legislation, law and parliamentary protocol techniques that originated within the cultural context of the coloniser, as opposed to
those associated with the rural cultures of the peasant? Judging from proceedings related
65 In fact, Saya San's court statement reveals that one of the goals of the Galon Wunthanu Athin was to
oppose the separation of India and Burma. The other two were to resist the use of excess force in the
collection of taxes and to renew free use of forestry products; Judgment Order, Frames 665-83.
66 Cady, History of modern Burma, pp. 284-6.
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GENEALOGY OF A REBELLION NARRATIVE
419
to the passage of the Ordinances, many Burmese members of the BLC were very mu
opposed to the counter-insurgency legislation of 1931 and some, like U Saw, used the
legal training and the media (before they were censored) to voice their discontent and
solicit the support of MPs in London.67
The use of these other 'everyday' techniques by Western-educated urban elites
perhaps a more obvious form of protest than what their rural countrymen might em
- may provide a point of intersection where the methods of James Scott and Mich
Adas could be applied to the study of the Rebellion in an urban as well as a rural conte
A starting point for Burmese studies may well be where Patricia Herbert urged our at
tion nearly twenty years ago in terms of studying the Wunthanu Athin, which seem
much a part of the urban setting as they were a growing influence in the political cul
of the Burmese countryside. The shape of 'everydayness' might have multiple form
and multiple sources of inspiration, applicable to a variety of contexts and segments
colonial society.
Finally, it is within this idea of multiple contexts that an additional approach
studying colonial culture may lie. If we accept that historical narratives are particul
modes of expression (to borrow from Edward Said) or represent a particular genre
literature (following Johannes Fabian) such an approach might lead us to associate th
histories with particular institutions, places or individuals -just as the Saya San narra
leads us to the halls of the Burma Legislative Council and the chambers of the Spe
Tribunal - rather than with a particular academic label. Treating the narrative
descendant of particular legislation, courts and ideas encourages us to study how th
history 'began as a history' and urges us to recognise the particular setting in which it wa
formed (in this case predominantly legal), as opposed to merely working within th
narrative itself and succumbing to the dichotomous constraints that usually accompa
such a method.68 From this perspective, the story of Saya San is one of many colon
narratives and certainly only one of many imaginings of rebellion in Burma. It seems that
such an approach might lead us to compare how the idea of rebellion was expressed
both pre-colonial and colonial settings, making its historical construction a lens thro
which the colonial encounter might itself be examined.69 If we instead interpret the rebel
lion narrative and other such histories to be a type of writing among many other forms,
it might broaden the perspective through which we study colonial culture, allowin
additional examples of histories that were once deemed exclusively 'colonial', 'nation
ist' or 'anti-colonial' to be examined side by side for both content and the localities
which they were born.
67 See for example, U Saw's pamphlet entitled The Burmese situation. A letter to W. Wedgwood Ben
July 1931, L/PJ/6/2020, Frames 304-24. On the cover was a provocative picture of decapitated head
rebels that had been placed on public display. Before the Burma government was able to close dow
Saw's press, several copies were circulated in New Delhi and London, which caused public outcry and
investigation of Rangoon's counter-insurgency policy.
68 These thoughts are based on Said's provocative comments in Culture and imperialism, pp. 303-26.
69 I am inspired by Nicholas B. Dirk's approach to a social history of modern India through an expl
tion of the colonial role in the historical construction of caste; see his Castes of mind: Colonialism and
making of modern India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
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