Containing the Self-Interested Individual: Moral Scepticism of Political Parties in Myanmar

Abstract

In this article, I examine a persistent set of concerns regarding the political party system in Myanmar that I read as emerging in response to a Theravāda Buddhist-grounded conception of human nature as inherently self-centred, biased, and morally ignorant. Although these critiques come from political actors anchored in different ideologies and situated in different historical periods (including the early twentieth-century politician U Ba Khaing, contemporary military leaders, and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy), I argue that the resonance of their critiques with this understanding of human beings has imparted a consistent disciplining and delegitimising effect on opposition and minority parties. However, the same conception of human nature has led other Burmese political commentators (including the independence hero General Aung San and the nineteenth-century minister U Hpo Hlaing) to construct opposing arguments that present collective, participatory political action or engagement as the necessary response to human moral deficiencies. Putting these arguments in conversation helps to reveal the disciplining aspects of the critiques of parties and offer alternative justification – still in accordance with this conception of human nature – for a robust and inclusive party system.

Introduction

Since well before the first political parties were formed and legalised within electoral systems, politicians and commentators have disagreed on their effects and the risks associated with them. Despite the near-universal institutionalisation of parties – including within non-democratic electoral regimes – they are frequent targets of critique for their presumed tendency to foster factionalism or engender corruption. Some of these critiques appear to be universal, but other evaluations of critiques of political parties reveal additional facets and effects when situated within their particular cultural and discursive contexts. In this article, I examine a persistent set of concerns regarding the political party system in Myanmar that I read as emerging in response to a Theravāda Buddhist-grounded conception of human nature as inherently self-centred, biased, and morally ignorant. Although these critiques come from political actors anchored in different ideologies, I argue that the resonance of their critiques with this understanding of human beings has imparted a consistent disciplining and delegitimising effect on opposition and minority parties. However, the same conception of human nature has led other Burmese political commentators to construct opposing arguments that present collective, participatory political action or engagement as the necessary response to human moral deficiencies. Putting these arguments in conversation helps to reveal the disciplining aspects of the critiques of parties and offer alternative justification – still in accordance with this conception of human nature – for a robust and inclusive party system.

I begin by situating this study within the growing field of Comparative Political Theory (CPT), which seeks to understand “non-Western” systems of thought on their own terms, displacing the hegemonic position of the Western canon in thinking about politics, and within studies of political thought in Burma/Myanmar. Next, I explain the particular understanding of human nature that I see operating within these accounts, through the figure of the pu htu zin, a morally deficient being that encapsulates many of the characteristics of the quintessential self-centred political actor. I then consider five Burmese accounts that either critique political parties through reference to the “problem” of the pu htu zin, or provide ways to reframe this problem through participatory political engagement. These accounts include the early twentieth-century political writer U Ba Khaing; a succession of recent military leaders; Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD); the anti-colonial political leader General Aung San; and the late nineteenth-century minister U Hpo Hlaing.

Methods and Approach

I situate this article within the emerging subfield of CPT, which has sought to “deparochialise” political thought within the globally privileged Western canon, by including thinkers, positions, methods, and knowledges from “non-Western” places and cultures, or from marginalised perspectives within the Western tradition. ¹ Discussion among CPT scholars is often characterised by hyper-reflexivity, and most of the terms used in the previous sentence (Western, non-Western, tradition, culture) are the subject of active critique and debate, as participants seek to avoid generalising, essentialising, and reifying, even while recognising and contesting the power dynamics that continue to govern the practice and teaching of political theory in academic institutions, dynamics that privilege the thought and views of predominantly white, male, heterosexual individuals from Europe or North America (Godrej, 2009; Idris, 2016; Williams and Warren, 2014).

My engagement with Burmese thinkers and texts consists of several interpretive shifts. First, I seek to situate each thinker contextually, with regard to her or his political and intellectual context and also with a general sense of who she or he might be in conversation with. Because these thinkers span over a century of time, not all were in direct conversation with each other. However, in reading them all as engaging with the political implications of a particular conception of human nature, I also seek to draw out resonances that cross ideological positions and I construct some accounts as providing ideational resources to respond to critiques that would not have been contemporaneous. This is a common approach within the discipline of political theory more generally, and allowing these disparate accounts to “speak to” each other on a topic of shared interest is an aspect of treating work from non-Western or marginalised perspectives as capable of generating theory both within and beyond the tradition within which they are usually categorised.

I am also interested in reading their work as having been produced from a space broadly influenced by Theravāda Buddhist ideas. In constructing this analysis, I am not suggesting that there is a singular or unitary conception of “Burmese Buddhist political thought,” although my focus is on these thinkers’ engagement with a particular conception of human nature generated from Theravāda Buddhist doctrine. While part of my argument relies on identifying a consistent understanding of this conception – through the figure of the pu htu zin, explained in the next section – I also demonstrate a wide range of interpretations of its significance within the field of the political, sometimes explicitly for political parties, sometimes for participatory politics more generally.

Finally, and again, consistent with common methodology within the discipline of political theory, I develop my own interpretive understanding of some of their ideas, moving beyond the contexts in which they were first iterated to “think with” their ideas in a way that would likely not have been envisioned by the thinkers themselves. It should be readily apparent, for example, that the late nineteenth-century minister U Hpo Hlaing did not directly comment either on the party system or on the discourses critical of political parties that have been produced in recent decades by either military leaders or leading figures in the NLD, and it is also true that his ideas do not commonly circulate in Burmese public discourse today. But this does not mean that his insights regarding the moral import of collective deliberation cannot be developed in such a way that they can be oriented as an alternative assessment of the role of parties in Myanmar’s contemporary electoral politics. These imaginative, interpretive reformulations are part of the methodology of political theory, here undertaken in conversation with multiple thinkers in the Burmese tradition.

My own positionality is relevant in adopting this interpretive approach. I am a white, male scholar, educated in the West, who has conducted fieldwork in Myanmar for approximately a decade and a half. My own personal spiritual practice is rooted in the Burmese Buddhist tradition, yet I recognise that, while mediated through Burmese monks and lay teachers, it likely diverges from many of the ways that Buddhism is lived and practised in Myanmar. My understandings of these thinkers and texts aim to be as embedded as possible, while recognising limits to that possibility, enacted through cultural sensibilities and affective positions that I might appreciate but do not internalise, differential linguistic access (I speak and read Burmese, but as a non-native), and a range of other factors, not least the privileged position that I occupy as a foreign researcher in the country. However, none of these factors ought to limit one’s ability to “think with” insights and theory from a given perspective. If we understand interpretive engagement with political thought to be generative rather than authoritative, we must position any given interpretive account as partial, open to critique and revision, but intended to be part of an ongoing conversation. It is in that spirit that the following analysis is offered.

While studies of Buddhist political thought are generally under-represented in academia, there has been previous attention to this field in Burma Studies. ² Several works that are particularly notable for adopting methods of engagement that resonate with the approach laid out above are Manuel Sarkisyanz’s Buddhist Background of the Burmese Revolution (1965), which sought to situate U Nu’s political reform project in the 1950s within the context of Buddhist moral ideas about welfare and political participation, and Gustaaf Houtman’s Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics (1999), which identified a number of ways in which the conflict between the military and the democratic opposition in Burma in the 1980s and 1990s took place with reference to Buddhist ideas, symbolism, and practices.

The argument developed here builds on my (Walton, 2015) invocation of a “disciplining” discourse of unity in contemporary Burmese politics. In that analysis, disunity is understood in moral terms, as a reflection of the egotism and self-interestedness of a given actor or political group. In Myanmar, political parties – even in accounts from those defending and promoting democracy – are often understood to be vehicles for the expression of particularistic interests, whether those of an individual, identity group, or other political actor. Importantly, the power of this discourse is amplified by the moral censure attached to claims of egotism. That is, within a Theravāda Buddhist world view, the illusion of “self” is understood to be the foundation for all other misperceptions and related misguided actions within the world. “Disunity is the result of a group of individuals committed only to their own benefit; it is a result of moral failure” (Walton, 2015: 5). The next section elaborates on this figure of the self-interested individual.

The Political Implications of Self-Centred Human Nature

In the analysis that follows, I argue that the figure of the pu htu zin haunts Burmese attempts at institutionalising electoral systems and party politics. This term, a Burmese iteration of the Pāli word puthujjana, is often translated as “ordinary worldling,” and elsewhere (Walton, 2015, 2016) I have positioned it as an influential conception of human nature within Theravāda Buddhist belief and practice. “In the Buddhist soteriological system a puthujjana […] is defined as one who has not experienced the life-transforming insight into selflessness which alone guarantees liberation [Pāli nibbana, Bur. Neikban] from worldly existence [Pāli samsara, Bur. Thanthara]” (Adam, 2008: 116). The pu htu zin is not inherently good or evil, simply ignorant, yet this fundamental state of ignorance encapsulates and perpetuates the profound tragedy of human existence, as diagnosed by the Buddha.

Specifically, the pu htu zin is ignorant of three characteristics of existence that the Buddha identified, namely anattā (Bur. anatta), anicca (Bur. aneitsa), and dukkha (Bur. doukkha). Anattā is understood as the state of selflessness, or as the realisation that one ultimately lacks control over anything. Anicca is impermanence: everything that comes into existence will inevitably pass away. Dukkha, often glossed as “suffering,” can refer to actual feelings of physical pain or emotional distress, but refers more widely to a sense of dissatisfaction that emerges based on ignorance of the first two characteristics, and a desire for things – and self – to have an abiding essence.

Thus, the pu htu zin clings to the belief that things can be permanent, that they can be controlled. Because of this basic ignorance, his life is characterised by dukkha, suffering encountered in negative experiences, but also in positive experiences that will not last. The desire for permanence and control also animates a wider range of desires and cravings, leading the pu htu zin to self-centred thought and action. This unrestrained desire also motivates intentional action, which generates kamma (Bur. kan), locking people into a continual cycle of rebirth (samsara). More importantly for the critiques considered in this article, self-centredness rooted in ignorance makes the pu htu zin morally unfit to rule himself – let along others – as his actions will constantly be conditioned by negative defilements and biases. It is this persistent conception, of people as morally flawed, self-centred actors, that I argue animates Burmese scepticism towards political parties.

While the term pu htu zin regularly appears in monastic sermons and texts, it does not seem to have been frequently used by political figures in Myanmar over the last century. Instead, I argue that we can find the figure of the pu htu zin invoked through its qualities – specifically, its moral deficiencies – and through terms that construct its idealised opposite, the detached, other-oriented moral exemplar. In the writings and speeches considered below, the quality of egotism (Bur. atta seit) is often attributed to both scheming party leaders and self-centred voters. Here, a mind (seit) governed by a belief in a permanent self (atta) leads one to prioritise one’s own interests, or to not recognise a greater purpose. Another way to express the general condition of the pu htu zin is through the notion of “wrong view” or “wrong understanding” (thekkaya deihti), which refers specifically to ignorance of the three characteristics of existence as well as the cause and effect logic that underpins kamma. Additionally, several of the commentators below refer to the influence of the four agati: desire, anger, fear, and ignorance. Taken individually or in combination, these are understood to create bias or partiality, to obscure a clear understanding of a given situation, and the condition of the pu htu zin is susceptible to these agati.

The self-regarding pu htu zin is contrasted, implicitly or explicitly, with the morally superior other-regarding figure. In some of the accounts below, the claim is that the speaker occupies this position; this is more explicit in the case of military rhetoric, more implicit in the NLD’s “Union party” rhetoric. But the notion is also made more explicit in language that elevates sedana (Pāli cetanā; goodwill, benevolence, selfless intention) as an essential characteristic of the good politician or good citizen. Numerous other accounts make clear that this is not only an aspect of the political discourse of NLD leadership (Wells, 2019), but of previous generations of political leaders (Houtman, 1999; Walton, 2015: 6), military officials (McCarthy, 2008: 311; Philp and Mercer, 2002: 1591), and a wide range of political actors today (McCarthy, 2016: 319).

The figure of the pu htu zin presents an additional layer of complexity in that some canonical sources emphasise the fact that even kings are ultimately subject to the same type of ignorance or bias. ³ One of the texts that deals particularly with this dynamic is the Cakkavatti-Sīhanāda Sutta. ⁴ Relating the story of a moral and effective king who rules over a realm of happy and satisfied subjects, the sutta also provides an example of a king whose conduct is not in accordance with the Buddha’s moral teachings, leading to the drastic material decline of his realm and its inhabitants. I have tracked several interpretations of the Cakkavatti-Sīhanāda Sutta (and its variants in other texts) by Burmese authors, noting the claims that “the moral conduct of the king sets an example for his subjects but also has tangible effects on the prosperity of society” and that “the actions of those subjects, whether moral or immoral, will bear similar fruits in the society as a whole” (Walton, 2016: 87). ⁵ These two claims underlay different stances on whether an influential individual is necessary for the moral uplift of society or if the community itself is capable of shifting the direction of moral – and thus, material – travel. This ambivalence is present in several of the accounts considered below, informing positions on whether parties can be effective or appropriate vehicles for political participation.

The analysis here also represents a challenge to a common distinction made by many analysts of Burmese politics that certain figures represented or represent a defined “secular” perspective. ⁶ Historically, General Aung San and U Nu have frequently been posited as the exemplars of the respective “secular” and “religious” positions. While individuals like U Ba Khaing and General Aung San advocated for Burma to be a secular state, their writing also demonstrated an explicit engagement with Buddhist ideas, symbolism, and rhetoric, often adapted through a critical Marxist lens. The same can be said for generations of military leaders, whose invocations of Buddhism are too often taken as cynical instrumentalism, a characterisation which ignores the fact that they too are Buddhists embedded within the moral belief structure of kamma (Jordt, 2007). In what follows, I argue that a particular Theravāda Buddhist conception of humans as pu htu zin has influenced Burmese thinking about political parties and political participation across a wide range of ideological positions, since the initial introduction of parties to the country.

Burmese Critiques of Political Parties

Following from the previous description of the pu htu zin, the analysis below breaks Burmese concerns regarding political parties ⁷ into several types of problems related to the effects of a party system and the tendency of parties to exacerbate negative intentions or characteristics. ⁸ On the one hand, political parties are understood to promote egoism, simply channelling or even augmenting the self-centred nature of the pu htu zin. The second line of criticism accuses parties of promoting narrow interests, either of individuals or particular identity groups, a collective version of the self-centred critique that is contrasted with individuals or groups that either present themselves as or presume themselves to be other-regarding, or committed to a greater goal.

The perspectives considered below do not proceed chronologically, nor are they meant to be exhaustive. They do, however, span a range of ideological positions, including between political figures more committed to an electoral democracy and those who governed the country through decades of authoritarian military rule. Indeed, part of the purpose of examining these different individuals’ views is to show that even avowedly democratic parties and politicians are compelled to engage with the challenge presented by the figure of the pu htu zin in a democratic context. The thinkers in the first three sections (U Ba Khaing, recent military leadership, and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD) all explicitly engage with questions of party politics. I read the second two thinkers (General Aung San and U Hpo Hlaing) as contending with the challenge that the pu htu zin generates with regard to political participation more broadly, and I interpret the implications of their reasoning for questions about the role and effect of political parties.

U Ba Khaing

One of the first critiques of political parties in Burma was U Ba Khaing’s Political History of Myanmar published by the Nagani Book Club in 1937. ⁹ 1937 was the year in which Burma’s administrative separation from India was made official, although the Government of Burma Act had legislated it in 1935. Technically, the first election in which Burmese political figures could stand was the 1920 Indian Legislative Assembly election, but a series of elections throughout the 1920s produced limited participation due in part to organised boycotts by emerging nationalist groups (Taylor, 2009: 180–189). The party system was thus newly introduced to Burma and, according to Robert Taylor, most people’s political interests remained focused at local levels, with deep scepticism as to the benefits of supporting a national party or candidate and reluctance to upend local arrangements between power brokers (2009, 166). U Ba Khaing was a founding member of the Fabian Party but was scathing in his analysis of the mixture of political parties, a gullible electorate, and self-serving political elites. In his book, he recounted the early decades of the country’s independence struggle at the turn of the century, first praising the wunthanu athin (patriotic organisations that rallied rural populations in support of self-rule) then eventually criticising them, along with the influential General Council of Burmese Associations for succumbing to factionalism.

U Ba Khaing’s disappointment in the party system reflected his scepticism of the ability of individuals to lead morally and of party members to hold leaders accountable for their behaviour, rather than merely following them in the hopes of personal gain. The high degree of personalism also impeded the institutionalisation and development of the party system itself. He contrasted the situation in Burma with that in the metropole:

A pathetic state of Burmese politics is that political parties do not have [a] definite ideology. In England there is no such thing as Baldwin’s party, or Landsberry’s party, or Mac Donald’s party, or Lloyd George’s party. The parties in England are Conservative, Socialist, Labour, Liberal, which are based on party ideology. (quoted in Zöllner, 2006a: 113)

Of course, while parties in England were not named after individuals, they were not above the influence of personalism, but U Ba Khaing seems to have had in mind an idealised programmatic model of party organisation, in which a declared ideology would guard against the vagaries of individual leaders’ whims.

Without such an ideology, people would have nothing to meaningfully unify them, beyond the charisma and sway of the leader:

As the parties are named after persons there can be no definite -ism; only activities that follow the will of the leaders prevail. This is the greatest defect in Burmese politics; it is the duty of the people to correct it. (Zöllner, 2006a: 113)

This criticism is again rooted in concern about individuals’ ability to be effective leaders in which they work for the benefit of the larger community rather than their own; here U Ba Khaing not only suspects that the masses won’t be able to make selfless decisions, but that immoral and ego-driven leaders will exacerbate this process. Not only would this negate any potentially beneficial aspects of the party system, it would also undermine the broader struggle for national independence, dragging the country down through the mundane squabbles of morally fallible and self-centred humans.

U Ba Khaing’s critique mirrors some of the internal tensions present in the Cakkavatti-Sīhanāda Sutta, mentioned briefly above, about the relationship between leaders and masses, especially with regard to influence and moral conduct. He appears to be sceptical that any actor in this arrangement, from would-be party leaders to rank-and-file membership, is capable of lifting themselves out of the self-regard that inevitably characterises the pu htu zin. Without a moral paragon, political parties will remain mechanisms that are shaped by and replicate human failings, nothing more than vehicles for self-aggrandisement or mindless following.

Contemporary Military Leadership

The pu htu zin model also shapes military views of the value or risks of political parties as an ordering device for democratic participation. Military leaders have had a particularly strong and persistent view of political parties as evidence of factionalism and disunity. Some of this can be traced to concern over splits in the ruling Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL) in the late 1950s (Sein Win, 1989) that military leaders of the time saw as destabilising. This helped to generate the justification for a temporary handover of power to a military Caretaker government from 1958 to 1960 and then the more permanent military coup in 1962. Partly as a result of this history, military leaders have, for decades, been keen to emphasise that they take part in “national politics, as distinct from party politics” (The National Ideology and the Role of the Defence Services, 1960; quoted in Tin Maung Maung Than, 1993: 33). This was, perhaps, something of an ironic slogan during the period of single party rule under the Burma Socialist Programme Party from 1962 to 1988, but military leaders of the time presumed the interests of their party to be equivalent to the interests of the state and its people as a whole. Gustaaf Houtman has also explored this notion of the military as apolitical, noting various ways in which its leaders and spokespeople placed it beyond politics or beyond division. General Saw Maung, who led the military government for several years after the coup in 1988, went so far as to declare, “I don’t know anything about party politics” (quoted in Houtman, 1999: 69).

The language of national politics versus party politics is morally encoded. An institution that works on behalf of national politics – as the military claims itself to be – is painted as selfless, rising above individual interests and capable of grasping the political path that is best for the broader community. By contrast, the denigrating of party politics labels it as essentially partial and self-interested, and therefore morally underdeveloped, even dangerous. Again, this is not to say that the military’s arguments here are not disingenuous, as its leaders have consistently acted in their own best interest. But the moral implication of their critique, particularly when directed at parties or organisations working on behalf of specific ethnic or political interest groups, is notable. A recent example that explicitly invoked this moralised language to denigrate ethnic political demands was a November 2019 press conference given by Major General Soe Naing Oo, head of the military’s (unironically named) True News Service. He stated, “The (ethnic armed groups) have deep-seated biases. If they drop those biases and focus on the country and the people, peace will be achieved quickly” (Htoo Thant, 2019).

Speaking more generally about citizen participation in elections, in a speech on Armed Forces Day on 27 March 2005, Senior General Than Shwe also invoked the risk of bias when he warned of the dangers of a return to the disorder and chaos that characterised the parliamentary period. He stated that “Genuine democracy can flourish only when each and every citizen possesses reasoning power and is able to vote for delegates without [the] four agati [forms of partiality]” (Burma, 2005: 24). Recall that being subject to the four agati (desire, anger, fear, and ignorance) is a core characteristic of the pu htu zin. There is clear overlap between Senior General Than Shwe and U Ba Khaing, in believing that most people would be incapable of resisting the pull of an influential leader, and that this is likely to be either self-serving or destructive for the country. Similarly, a 2008 editorial from the government-run New Light of Myanmar seemed to suggest a proper way of “implementing democracy,” closely connected to right moral behaviour, in opining that the failures of the parliamentary period (1948–1958, 1960–1962) were “not because of democracy, but because of those who implemented democracy, and those who were desperate to come to power with egotism, attachment to the party concerned, and selfishness, and those who bore jealousy and disturbed others” (Kyaw Min Lu, 2008b).

A related discourse from military leaders and propagandists, that makes indirect reference to the perils of the pu htu zin in politics, is the idea that there is a minimal (yet unspecified) level of maturity necessary to practise democracy. This idea was widely promulgated in editorials and other commentaries in the government-run New Light of Myanmar following the 1990 election, which was won in a landslide by the NLD, although the military government of the time refused to recognise the result; accusations of immaturity – directly primarily towards the democratic opposition – subsequently became a staple of regime rhetoric. A 2008 editorial, notable in that it was printed the month after the military government’s constitution was ratified in a widely criticised referendum, stated that, “In the run-up to the 1990 election, political parties were mushrooming. The number of political parties stood at 235, and that implied that the people were not mature enough in the party politics without any political experiences” (Kyaw Min Lu, 2008a).

This language has not only functioned as a morally disciplining critique of the probable factionalism of the party system and of particular parties within it, it has also facilitated the indefinite deferral of the military’s formal withdrawal from politics. When, in 2013, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing indicated to Thailand’s then-Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra that the military planned to reduce its role in politics, deputy information minister and presidential spokesperson U Ye Htut clarified that “Former Senior General Than Shwe said the constitution could be changed as needed when all groups involved in our democracy are mature,” adding “We can’t say when [the withdrawal of the military from politics] will start because it depends on the maturity of all groups” (Soe Than Lynn, 2013). Then-President Thein Sein (himself a former general) reinforced this notion in a March 2014 speech to Parliament, where, speaking of the military’s role in politics, he said: “Reducing the army’s role gradually depends on internal peace and development as well as the maturity of the democracy.” And Senior General Min Aung Hlaing brought all of the tropes together in a 2015 interview, saying that the country needed a

maturing of the multiparty democracy system […] We – the armed forces – favor national politics, not partisan politics. We are not rigid on the constitution […] We have already signed a nationwide cease-fire agreement. But we need a mature and stable political situation in our country. We need to gradually change. Right now we are not ready. (Weymouth, 2015)

While part of the motivation behind the military’s depiction of Myanmar’s political system as “discipline-flourishing democracy” is to retain influence and decision-making power, the constraints on democratic participation also seem designed to counter the risk that democracy represents, when examined through the lens of the pu htu zin understanding of human nature. Without ignoring the (ironically) self-aggrandising interest behind the limited and guided transition the military put in motion, we should also recognise its resonance with persistent concerns about human bias in politics, amplified by the role of political parties. ¹⁰

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, the NLD, have spoken of parties in ways that challenge the dismissive attitude of the military, but also deploy the pu htu zin moral imagery in additional disciplining ways. In the following paragraphs, I draw on transcripts of a series of public talks she gave in 1995–1996, when she was confined at her home in Yangon under house arrest. ¹¹ At the time, military authorities allowed her to come to the front gate and talk with supporters on the weekends. These meetings developed into routinised “conversations at the gate,” where other party members would collect questions from the audience for her and other senior NLD officials to answer. The tone of the sessions alternated between informal joking about the repressive conditions in the country and gentle but insistent admonishment, for people to assert themselves and resist regime demands. Because the 1990 election was still relatively fresh in people’s experiences, but familiarity with multi-party democracy was equally new for a population that had been ruled by a one-party state for three decades, she frequently discussed concepts and critiques related to political parties, making these texts a particularly fruitful source on the subject.

Seeking to resuscitate the image of political parties, she repeatedly and explicitly rejected the military’s distinction between national politics and party politics (a distinction which had obviously been oriented critically at the NLD since the party’s formation, but which also reads as increasingly disingenuous today, as more members of the military retire to form or join political parties [Nyi Nyi Kyaw, 2019]). In a speech on 30 September 1995, she said “I think that party politics is vital for a democratic system. I think that those who make a distinction between national politics and party politics, […] treating the latter as something inferior do not believe in democracy” (quoted in Zöllner, 2014: 93).

However, her additional statements about parties and citizens are clearly morally inflected in ways that make reference to the pu htu zin model of human self-centredness. Moments later in the 30 September speech, seemingly channelling U Ba Khaing, she noted that “one of our weaknesses is personalized politics […] we change a policy because we like a person [or] we tend to change a policy in fear of a person” (quoted in Zöllner, 2014: 95). In another talk a few days later, she noted, “Human beings tend to be more or less self-oriented and egoistic” (quoted in Zöllner, 2014: 175).

Further distinguishing her views from those of the military leaders or a critic like U Ba Khaing, she has regularly presented a democratic political system as not in danger of being corrupted by morally imperfect individuals, but rather as a system that can constrain the worst impulses of self-centredness and guard against personalisation in party politics. On 8 October 1995, she declared that a “proper political system” was “established on genuine cetana or goodwill for the sake of the people […] If politics are for our party, for our interest or for our institution, our system cannot be a proper system” (quoted in Zöllner, 2014: 150). Here she made clear that party politics was acceptable as long as the party was not the ultimate end of politics. She also discussed this topic at length in a speech on 14 October 1995, in response to a question about the relative importance of system or leadership:

Human nature is liable to moral decay. The purpose of a good system is to curb this human tendency […] Turn your back on me once my actions undermine democracy. Personalized politics are not good for the country, not for me. (quoted in Zöllner, 2014: 174–175)

Through these speeches, we see a picture of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi as operating within a conception of the pu htu zin, but seeing democratic political institutions as an appropriate and effective way to manage human moral deficiency. However, this image becomes more complicated when we see the ways in which she and her party have engaged critically with other parties, particularly those based on ethnic identity. Similar to some military commentators, she has been dismissive of ethnic populations and parties, labelling them at times as impediments to democracy, and implying that they are self-centred, focused on their particular interests rather than what she perceives to be the national political priority of ending military rule and the military role in politics (Walton, 2013: 16). I have argued that, although often her language is less directly critical, her comments reflect the position of normativity that she enjoys as an ethnic Burman Buddhist, where there is a presumption – again, in some respects, parallel to the military position described above – that her political efforts are automatically in the service of the greater good, and seen as universal in contrast to the more specific efforts of ethnic nationalities to address issues of ethnic inequality.

The same positionality characterises the NLD, which, despite persistent perceptions among non-Burman ethnic nationality parties that it is, in essence, a Burman party, has adopted campaign rhetoric in the lead-up to the 2020 election that labels itself a “Union” party ( The Irrawaddy, 2018). ¹² I argue that we can see assertions of the NLD as a “Union” party – a clear attempt to distinguish ethnic nationality-based parties as not fully representative of the entire union – as similar in function to the national politics versus party politics distinction favoured by the military; this rhetoric disciplines people and groups, codes them as self-centred, as morally deficient, and limits democratic participation, all while valorising the NLD as somehow standing above partisan activity. ¹³

General Aung San ¹⁴

The man who is widely acknowledged as having guided Burma to independence had a relatively short political career, as he was assassinated at the age of thirty-two, less than a year before the country declared independence in 1948. General Aung San’s electoral career was preceded by a period of student activism in the early 1930s. He later joined the prominent nationalist group, the Dobama Asiayone (“We, the Burmese Association”), and was a founding member of the Communist Party of Burma in 1939. After allying with the Japanese during their World War II occupation of Burma, then switching sides to join the British and other ethnic groups to expel the Japanese, he became the president of the AFPFL, the coalition party that would spearhead the handover from Britain and dominate Burmese parliamentary politics through the 1950s.

In February 1940, he published an article in Dagon Magazine entitled “Different Types of Politics.” While the article itself only engages minimally with the question of political parties, we can see General Aung San attempting to respond to critiques like that levelled by U Ba Khaing several years earlier, to rebut the idea that politics was a dirty business and to encourage and legitimate broader popular participation by convincing people that politics consisted of “all of the affairs of human society” (quoted in Mya Han, 1998: 92). ¹⁵ In laying out his vision of the political, he developed an argument that I suggest skillfully reoriented the pu htu zin model – without rejecting its moral logic – by embedding it in an ideology critique of capitalism, and reminding readers of its universal validity (applied to kings and leaders as well as the general population).

In presenting his understanding of politics, General Aung San drew on the canonical Aggañña Sutta, which tells a tale of human moral degeneration that precipitates conflict and requires the election of the first ruler, Mahasammata, to impartially adjudicate societal disputes. ¹⁶ He paid close attention to the moral components of the narrative, noting how it originated from the greed displayed by a single individual that eventually spread through the population. In assessing the lessons to be drawn from the story, he focused on the evil of private property, as it was the fencing off and claiming of land that escalated conflict. In his reading, private property ought to be understood as “wrong view” (Bur. thekkaya deihti), rooted in ignorance of anattā, in this case implying no control or ownership (Mya Han, 1998: 94). It was this ignorance – characteristic of the pu htu zin – that caused people to believe that they could possess property, and to feel the need to defend it against others.

While General Aung San acknowledged the moral deficiencies of the pu htu zin, he altered the narrative in important ways. First, note that in his formulation, property-owning elites would be tainted by this ignorance to a greater degree. In fact, later in the text he explicitly rejected attempts by elites to manipulate belief in kamma in order to justify their position and denigrate the masses:

The people who were benefitting [from the government-supported system of private property], began to say “It’s because of our kutho [merit, Pāli kusala].” Those who weren’t getting any benefit didn’t know that the correct response would be “It’s not because of your kutho. It’s because you have organized this immoral [a-dhamma] system.” Instead, they started to think, “[We’re poor] because of our kan [Pāli kamma].” (Mya Han, 1998: 96)

Here I suggest he offered not only a critique of capitalism, but a path to Buddhist moral development (overcoming at least some of the ignorance of the pu htu zin) through political action. If people could come to see the capitalist system of private property ownership as not just rooted in greed and ignorance, but fundamentally a-dhamma (immoral or unjust), they could work to dismantle it, in the process, freeing themselves and others from “wrong view.”

The second intervention General Aung San made related to the figure of the pu htu zin was to downplay the role of Mahasammata, the “first king” of the Aggañña Sutta. He subversively used an account that had previously been appropriated in order to legitimate monarchical authority to empower the masses (as opposed to the political elites), focusing on the actions of the people in setting up a government and in authorising Mahasammata’s decision-making power. Later in the essay, he explicitly pushed back against the self-centred pu htu zin model, arguing that “The fact that the term parahita [‘welfare of others’] is part of our political vocabulary is an indication of the noble human desire for development. One human characteristic is intelligence [that can be used] to improve the common welfare” (Mya Han, 1998: 99). He also further foregrounded popular participation and leadership in politics, claiming that, armed with a proper understanding of the world, people would not be stuck waiting for a min laung (challenger to the throne) or a setkya min (universal monarch). “Politics concerns everyone; everyone must participate” (Mya Han, 1998: 101).

General Aung San not only knocked political and economic elites down a few pegs – even suggesting that they might be more deluded than the masses in a crucial moral respect – he also rounded out the problematic image of the pu htu zin, acknowledging human moral failings, but insisting on the presence of other-regarding sentiment as well, realised through collective participation, a topic that will be considered further in the next section. However, when it came to actual party politics, his record was more suspect, as the AFPFL was roiled in 1946 and 1947 with high-profile disputes and defections (Maung Maung, 1989). Similarly, while he is often acknowledged as the only person capable of bringing Burma’s diverse ethnic groups together in the struggle for independence, his rhetoric and attitude towards non-Burman ethnic groups in that period often displayed a similar attitude to the NLD, that only he was uniquely capable of valuing national political goals above personal interest, while their demands were reflective of narrow group interest (Walton, 2008: 897–898).

U Hpo Hlaing

General Aung San drew attention to the process of participating in collective political action as a way to overcome the individual moral weaknesses of humans as pu htu zin. Yet this subject had already been considered almost six decades prior by the scholar and minister U Hpo Hlaing. While it may seem odd to invoke the arguments of a late nineteenth-century Burmese thinker, writing at the end of the period of monarchy but decades before political parties were introduced to Burma, ¹⁷ I argue that U Hpo Hlaing provided further insight into the “problem” of the pu htu zin that has persisted to the present in Burmese electoral politics. I do not claim that his writing has had any direct influence on party politics in Burma/Myanmar – indeed, he was dismissed as a minister after presenting it to the king and his reforms were never implemented – but rather that, if we understand sceptical views of the efficacy of party politics as related to the nature of human beings as morally deficient pu htu zin, U Hpo Hlaing’s reflections provide an alternate way of assessing the validity (even necessity) of including particularistic perspectives in political decision-making.

U Hpo Hlaing was a scholar and minister to the last two kings of the Konbaung Dynasty, Mindon and Thibaw. He wrote the Rajadhammasangahagyan (Rules of Kingship) in 1878 as a manual of advice for King Thibaw. In it, he proposed an assembly in which the king would hold discussions with his officials in order to arrive at the best decisions for the country. In discussing the proper way to hold these assemblies, he warned his readers about the four agati (biases/partialities), the negative states that arise fundamentally from wrong views about the nature of existence. The failure of a political body to act in a unified way would indicate that some or all of its members were under the influence of these factors and, as a result, acting according to their own narrow interests. A unified assembly, on the other hand, had overcome divisions precisely because its members had developed their moral practice to overcome the agati.

We can read U Hpo Hlaing as drawing our attention to the essential role of deliberation in decision-making and the need for collective participation, which can generate both individual and collective benefits:

Those who have positions in government must take particular care in watching these four paths to avoid. People in ruling positions may agree that the four agati [biased] ways are to be avoided, but for the average person in government service there is no way of avoiding these four wrong ways in his work; there will either be someone that he loves, or that he hates – he will not know the whole story – he will be afraid of someone’s stubborn anger. As has been said on the seven rules of aparihaniya [stabilizing; avoiding decay], if a number of people get together for any sort of action, there can be no question of following the agati way. In such assemblies what one man does not know another will; when one man has feelings of hate, another will not; when one is angry, another will be calm. When people have agreed in a meeting and preserve their solidarity, there will be no need for fear. For these reasons, we must affirm that if a number of people conduct their business in an assembly there is no way in which the four wrong ways can be followed. (Bagshawe, 2004: 174)

To reiterate, U Hpo Hlaing was not speaking explicitly about political parties and because he likely had in mind a relatively small assembly of advisers, there is a mode of direct engagement implied in his argument that parties do not provide, indeed, that parties were designed to help manage in modern electoral democracies. But we can read his position as providing a response to the critical perspectives of military and democracy leaders considered above, perspectives that I demonstrated were themselves characterised by partiality, in their attempts to paint their own positions as universal and oriented towards the greater good, while denigrating others (particularly opposition and ethnic political parties) as self-centred. Consistent with General Aung San’s approach to the “problem” of the pu htu zin, U Hpo Hlaing emphasised the universal character of this conception of human nature, arguing that even kings could be subject to bias and needed advisers to participate in political decision-making. If we extrapolate his argument to a modern electoral system, we might see political parties – with their distinctive platforms, agendas, and ideologies not (solely) as a reflection of self-interest and moral deficiency but rather as reflecting a range of positions and concerns present in a given society. The political process requires the presence and input of all of those positions, not simply to generate more representative policies that better reflect the diverse perspectives, needs, and concerns of the citizenry as a whole, but also because it is only the interaction between these positions that allows a polity to generate morally superior – that is, less subject to bias and ignorance – decisions.

There are, of course, risks in pushing the expansion of U Hpo Hlaing’s arguments too far. In the context of a relatively small assembly of advisers to a monarch, the interaction between particular perspectives might be productively dynamic, something we could not expect in a modern electoral democracy that uses a party system to indirectly represent the interests of its tens of millions of citizens. The more modest insight from his argument, however, is one that can be marshalled to repudiate critiques from dominant or normative political figures that either view the proliferation of parties as evidence of moral degeneracy or that dismiss the particularised concerns of some parties as antithetical to the broader national interest, and thus delegitimise them as self-interested. On the contrary, political parties can be understood as an essential (albeit admittedly imperfect) institutional response to the “problem” of the pu htu zin in the modern electoral democracy; they are conduits of the multiplicity of perspectives within the polity that allow for a range of views to be represented and considered. Through this process, political actors are exposed to the particularity and partiality of their own positions, and presented with the opportunity to overcome their own agati (biases and ignorance) in collectively formulating policy for the entire political community.

Conclusion

In this article, I have argued that the figure of the pu htu zin – a Theravāda Buddhist-grounded conception of human nature as inherently self-centred, biased, and morally ignorant – underlies many Burmese critiques of political parties, spanning nearly a century of political systems and present across a range of ideologies. While critiques of parties as channelling narrow self-interest and as vehicles for self-aggrandisement can be found in political systems around the world, I demonstrate that the distinctive ground of Buddhist moral understanding has particular political consequences in Myanmar, namely the amplified moral disciplining force of these critiques (whether expressed as partiality, self-centredness, or immaturity) and the delegitimation of particular groups. The analysis here does not seek to position Buddhism or Buddhist ideas as singular or determinative with regard to views on political parties or on political dynamics in Myanmar more generally, but rather to reveal the additional interpretive positions that are present in the critical narratives of political figures representing a range of ideological positions yet operating within a shared political space significantly shaped by Buddhist ideas.

While many commentators are willing to see the self-aggrandising disingenuousness of the military’s distinction between national and party politics, I argued that we ought to see the NLD’s description of itself as a “Union” party as functionally equivalent, reinforcing scepticism of (certain) people’s readiness and worthiness to participate in ways that are not self-centred. These are not objective empirical assessments from party leaders; they should be viewed as political statements that have strong disciplining and delegitimising effects, enhanced by the resonance with Buddhist moral ideas. This discourse therefore limits the participation of certain groups that have particular interests that are not adequately recognised in mainstream politics today and have not been recognised historically. Put in terms of my earlier argument regarding ethnic Burman privilege, we can see how it is socially and politically plausible for Burman military leaders or for the (mostly Burman) leaders of the NLD to say that they are working in the national interest, when the national interest is generally configured around a normative, majority Buddhist, Burman interest, albeit given a neutral, allegedly all-encompassing “Myanmar” veneer. ¹⁸

Within this dominant political discourse – sceptical of the utility and value of political parties for a number of reasons, but specifically critical of parties that express more particularistic values and grievances – Myanmar’s plural range of ethnically and religiously diverse political actors and communities are likely to find limited success. But ideas from other Burmese thinkers can be read as providing more creative and collectively oriented responses to the “problem” of the pu htu zin that invite – even necessitate – participatory politics. Both General Aung San and U Hpo Hlaing make arguments that advocate for broader and deeper forms of political participation as an institutionalised response to individual human bias or ignorance. We can see their accounts as helping to challenge and reveal the partiality of the disciplining critiques from military and NLD leaders. Thinking about the implications for Myanmar’s electoral politics, if political agendas from non-Burman ethnic nationality parties and actors – for increased decentralisation of power and decision-making and affirmative action-like programmes designed to redress historical repression and resulting inequality – are rejected as self-centred and contrary to national political unity, then the influence of this Buddhist moral world view is likely to inhibit efforts at reconciliation. If, on the other hand, political parties are seen as essential channels for articulating diverse concerns that, in reflecting the variety of identities and lived experiences in Myanmar, can help to overcome bias and generate more representative policies, then we might imagine a more inclusive space for political participation.