1915-1947
Burmese political leader
1. Introduction
Aung San (pronounced ‘Ong San’) was a Burmese nationalist politician, known as ‘the Father of the Nation’ for his role in securing his country’s independence. He supported the Japanese invasion of Burma in 1942 in the hope of liberation from British rule but switched allegiance to the Allies shortly before the end of World War II. He was premier of the UK colony of Burma from 1946 until he was assassinated in 1947, together with most of his cabinet, seemingly by a rival. Six months later Prime Minister Clement Attlee, Churchill’s successor, transferred rule to Burma as an independent country. Aung San’s daughter Suu Kyi was state counsellor (equivalent to prime minister) from 2016 to 2021.
2. Stories
- Stories about Aung San’s great-uncle prompted him to become politically aware from a young age.
- The onset of World War II provided Aung San with new opportunities to agitate for independence.
- The Japanese invasion of Burma was one of the main causes of the Bengal famine in India in 1943.
- UK prime minister Clement Attlee made major concessions to Aung San during discussions in January 1947, to Churchill’s dismay.
- Six months later, Aung San and six members of his cabinet were assassinated.
- Despite Aung San’s assassination, the Burma independence timetable was unchanged, prompting strong comments from Churchill.
- Aung San’s wife Khin Kyi and his daughter Aung San Suu Kyi have both played prominent roles in their country’s representation and development.
Stories about Aung San’s great-uncle prompted him to become politically aware from a young age.
Burma (now usually referred to as Myanmar)* came under British control over the course of three Anglo-Burmese wars from 1824 to 1885. It was a province of British India from 1862 until being made a UK colony in 1937. The city of Rangoon (now Yangon) in the south was occupied during the first war; Mandalay, the capital of the northern region, was occupied during the third. The conquest of the north, directed by Churchill’s father Randolph as secretary of state for India, was partly intended to counter French expansionism in south-east Asia. Burma’s main resources were teak forests, oil and rubies, and it also provided a strategic location for a British port between India and Singapore.
Aung San’s great-uncle Bo Min Yaung (‘Bo’ being an honorific for a senior military officer) participated in the resistance movement after the third war, leading attacks on British forces for two years until he was captured. He was offered a position as a local governor but refused it and was executed.
Aung San’s grandmother told him stories as a child about his great-uncle which instilled in him an early sense of resistance to foreign rule. Although initially very quiet, hardly talking until he was eight, he learned public speaking at secondary school and became involved in nationalist activities as a student at Rangoon University. He edited a magazine that published an article criticising British rule and was expelled when he refused to divulge the name of the author. His friend U Nu (‘U’ being an honorific equivalent to ‘Mister’), who later became the first prime minister of independent Burma, was expelled at the same time for making anti-British speeches. Aung San organised a student strike which spread to Mandalay, resulting in his and U Nu’s university places being reinstated.
After graduating in 1938 he became general secretary of Dobama Asiayone (the ‘We Burmans Association’) whose leaders took the title ‘Thakin’ (‘Master’), commonly used for Europeans, as an indication of Burmans becoming masters of their own country. He helped to organise various labour strikes, became secretary general of the Communist Party of Burma and co-founded the Marxist-oriented People’s Revolutionary Party which later became the Burma Socialist Party.
* There is still dispute about the name change to Myanmar made by the military junta that came to power in 1988, with objectors claiming that the junta was not authorised to make it.
The onset of World War II provided Aung San with new opportunities to agitate for independence.
Upon the outbreak of war, Aung San promptly founded another organisation, the Freedom Bloc, to try and unite various Burmese nationalist groups. He attended an Indian National Congress gathering in north-east India, meeting Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose. He then set out for Amoy (also known as Xiamen) in south-east China, possibly to make contact with the Chinese Communist Party, but discovered on arrival that it was occupied by the Japanese, who arranged for him to travel to Tokyo. There he met Colonel Keiji Suzuki who had visited Burma a few months earlier in the guise of a journalist to make plans for a Japanese invasion to cut off Chinese supply lines and to secure natural resources during American trade restrictions (see Hideki Tojo).
Taking advantage of the situation, Aung San returned secretly to Burma and recruited some former colleagues for six months of training by Suzuki and other officers on Japanese-occupied Hainan island in southern China. These ‘Thirty Comrades’ formed the beginning of the Burmese Independence Army, taking a blood vow of loyalty and adopting noms de guerre, Aung San’s being Bo Teza (Teza meaning ‘fire’). They initially recruited around 3500 Burmese volunteers and added more over time, supporting the Japanese invasion of Burma which drove the British out in the first half of 1942.
A puppet Burmese government was installed, headed by Ba Maw with Aung San second-in-command as minister of war. In August 1943, Japan declared that Burma was now an independent country but Aung San became increasingly disillusioned. He secretly formed the Anti-Fascist Organisation (‘AFO’) in August 1944 to try and unite various groups against their new de facto rulers. Meanwhile Allied attacks were made against the Japanese by the ‘Chindits’ (long-range jungle penetration units), run by the maverick Orde Wingate who had earlier conducted audacious missions in Palestine and Abyssinia.
Indirect contact was established between the AFO and Allied forces. In March 1945 the Burmese army was sent by the Japanese to resist an Allied advance but they switched sides under Aung San’s direction. Aung San met the British commander General Bill Slim shortly afterwards and merged his forces with those of the Allies, sharing in the progressive recapture of Burma until final Japanese surrender in September 1945.
The Japanese invasion of Burma was one of the main causes of the Bengal famine in India in 1943.
Although it has become fashionable in some circles to attribute much of the Bengal famine of 1943 to Churchill for failing to send sufficient relief,1 the causes were numerous and complex, each contributing to the occurrence and scale of the famine. It is estimated that two to three million died from starvation and famine-related disease.
Major factors were the Japanese invasion of Burma in 1942 and the threat of a subsequent invasion of India (which was indeed attempted the following year), combined with various natural disasters. The loss of rice imports from Burma caused alarm in India, particularly in Bengal (now West Bengal in north-east India, and Bangladesh). Panic buying, hoarding, profiteering and corruption pushed food prices up, exacerbated by a severe occurrence of crop disease, a cyclone in October 1942 and floods. The cyclone killed 14,500 people and destroyed food stocks. The floods inundated fields, spread the crop fungus and led to a high incidence of malaria. Rice that was going to be used for seeding the next harvest was consumed, leading to a low crop in 1943.
Bengal initially continued to export rice to Ceylon despite being unable to source sufficient food for itself from other Indian provinces which had erected trade barriers in response to the loss of Burmese rice imports. The anti-British Quit India campaign (see Mohandas Gandhi) added to civil unrest, further disrupting the economy and increasing the risk of invasion. Indian nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose actively supported and participated in the Japanese incursion.
Arthur Herman, author of Gandhi and Churchill (2008), a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize, argues that the famine would have been worse without Churchill and that his critics understate the exigencies of a dire wartime situation. Churchill’s appointment of Field Marshal Wavell as viceroy of India in 1943 greatly improved the distribution of emergency supplies. Churchill also arranged for significant quantities of wheat to be shipped to India from Australia, despite the risk of them being sunk by the Japanese navy. His request to Roosevelt for additional wheat was turned down due to wartime constraints and shipping losses. Nevertheless, diversion of British merchant ships from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic continues to be blamed by some for aspects of the famine (see also Frederick Lindemann).
UK prime minister Clement Attlee made major concessions to Aung San during discussions in January 1947, to Churchill’s dismay.
After World War II, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander of South East Asia Command, agreed to transfer senior wartime Burmese army officers into the newly formed Burma Army under British command. This was particularly controversial in Aung San’s case because in addition to fighting for the Japanese he was also nearly tried in 1945 for an alleged war crime of unlawfully executing a village chief. However, he was appointed deputy chairman of a transitional government called the Executive Council, equivalent to prime minister.
In January 1947 Aung San visited London and formed an agreement with Labour prime minister Clement Attlee that Burma would become independent on an accelerated timetable. Under Attlee’s predecessor, Churchill, this was to have taken place after three years of transition under a British-appointed governor, followed by elections and a new constitution that would provide Dominion status within the Commonwealth on the same basis as Canada and Australia. However, Aung San insisted on full independence within a year, with no transition period or dominion status, which Attlee conceded for various reasons including fears of an insurrection in Burma, much-diminished UK resources after the war, and other emergencies that were considered to be more pressing, particularly in India and Palestine.
Attlee made a statement in the House of Commons ahead of Aung San’s visit. Churchill responded that it was said that in the days of Pitt the Elder that one had to get up very early each day not to miss British gains in territory, but that under Attlee the opposite was the case. He despaired that ‘The British Empire seems to be running off almost as fast as the American Loan’, referring to World War II debt payment problems due to a dollar shortage. He added that ‘The steady and remorseless process of divesting ourselves of what has been gained by so many generations of toil, administration and sacrifice continues’.2 He declared that ‘This haste is appalling. “Scuttle” is the only word that can be applied.’3
Six months later, Aung San and six members of his cabinet were assassinated.
The Executive Council normally met at Government House in Rangoon under the chairmanship of the British governor but on 19 July 1947 it met without him at the low-security building of the Secretariat. Three men shot the guard outside the meeting room, burst in and fired at the occupants, killing nine: Aung San; seven other politicians including Aung San’s eldest brother Ba Win, minister of trade; and a bodyguard.
The killings were seemingly organised by Aung San’s rival, U Saw, Burma’s prime minister from 1940 to 1942. During the war U Saw had been sent to Uganda for detention by the British for seeking to cooperate with the Japanese. After release, he attended independence discussions in London but refused to sign the settlement made with Attlee due to disagreements with Aung San.
After the assassinations, U Saw and five others were tried, convicted and hanged. The murder weapons had been supplied by British army major Henry Young who was jailed but soon freed on a technicality. Many other weapons were found in waterproof containers in a lake at U Saw’s house, possibly intended for an insurrection. British army captain David Vivian was convicted of supplying these and was jailed. The army officers appear to have acted on their own initiative, possibly for profit rather than political motives.
Nevertheless, various conspiracy theories developed, mostly related to alleged British intentions to destabilise Burma. Some involve John Stewart Bingley, a British Council representative, to whom U Saw wrote from prison. Bingley was interviewed by police and soon left the country. There have been allegations that a UK-based group of former Burma officials called ‘The Friends of the Burma Hill Peoples’ was somehow involved. U Nu, independent Burma’s first prime minister, denied any British involvement and so became a suspect himself in some of the conspiracy theories.
The date of 19 July is Martyrs’ Day in Myanmar, a public holiday, marked by vehicle horns at 10.37 a.m., the time of the shootings. Government officials regularly visit the Martyrs’ Mausoleum in Yangon, where six of the assassinated are buried and some of the ashes of another are kept. The other two are interred in a Muslim cemetery in Yangon.
Despite Aung San’s assassination, the Burma independence timetable was unchanged, prompting strong comments from Churchill.
In November 1947, the Burma Independence Bill came before the House of Commons, introduced by Attlee, who explained the provisions agreed by him with the new Burmese Prime Minister U Nu by treaty a few days earlier. Within the previous three months, hundreds of thousands of people had been killed in India and Pakistan after their sudden independence, prompting fears of violence in Burma, particularly after the recent assassinations.
Churchill said that although Attlee was not ‘the murderer who has placed an obstruction on the [railway] line’, he was nevertheless ‘the signalman who has made a fatal mistake’. He predicted ‘the horrors and disasters which have overspread her great neighbour [India] and which should ever haunt the principal actors in this tragedy’. He highlighted the behaviour of Aung San, who ‘went over to the Japanese, and raised what we might call a Quisling* army to come in at the tail of the Japanese and help conquer the country for Japan. Great cruelties were perpetrated by his army.’4 This referred to retribution for anti-Japanese opposition against some British-supported tribes, particularly the Karen (pronounced ‘Cur-RENN’).
Churchill explained that as prime minister, in order to shorten the war, he had reluctantly agreed to Aung San’s forces being integrated into the British army when they switched sides upon seeing that the Japanese were losing. Nevertheless, he ‘certainly did not expect to see U Aung San, whose hands were dyed with British blood and loyal Burmese blood, marching up the steps of Buckingham Palace as the plenipotentiary of the Burmese Government’.6 He said that there were grave doubts that the frontier tribes had given their genuine assent to the process and that they were already preparing for revolt.
Shortly after independence, long-term civil hostilities began. Before Aung San’s assassination, he had been able to bring about some degree of unity between groups with disagreements. It remains contested as to what extent he could have continued this had he lived after their common objective of independence had been achieved.
* ‘Quisling’ refers to Vidkun Quisling, leader of the Norwegian government which collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. The term has become synonymous with ‘traitorous’.
Aung San’s wife Khin Kyi and his daughter Aung San Suu Kyi have both played prominent roles in their country’s representation and development.
Aung San met Khin Kyi (pronounced ‘Kin Chee’) while she was a nurse and he was injured in hospital in 1942. They married the same year and had four children including Aung San Suu Kyi (pronounced ‘Ong San Soo Chee’), the youngest, who was two years old when her father was killed (Suu was her grandmother’s name; there is no family name).
After Aung San’s death, Khin Kyi represented his constituency in parliament and a few years later became minister of social welfare. She was Burma’s ambassador to India in the 1960s. Aung San Suu Kyi accompanied her there, leaving to study at Oxford University.
In 1972 Aung San Suu Kyi married English historian Michael Aris, a private tutor of the royal children in the Kingdom of Bhutan. After a year together in Bhutan, they moved back to the UK for further studies. They only saw each other five times after Aung San Suu Kyi moved to Burma in 1988, initially to look after her ailing mother, then staying to lead a democracy movement. Aris was denied a visa to visit, and his wife feared leaving Burma in case she was refused re-entry. Aris died of cancer in 1999, aged 53.
Burma came under military rule after a coup in 1962. Elections were held in 1990 in which Aung San Suu Kyi’s new National League for Democracy won 80 percent of the seats, but the military refused to hand over power and kept her under house arrest for 15 out of the following 21 years. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her ‘non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights’.6
The military’s direct rule ended in 2011 but was reimposed in February 2021. Aung San Suu Kyi was released during that period and became state counsellor in 2016. Her lack of support for the Rohingya (pronounced ‘Roe-HIN-jer’), a persecuted Muslim people, has resulted in many of her honours being withdrawn, including her honorary Canadian citizenship. The military placed her under arrest again in 2021.
3. Biographical summary
| Occupation | Army officer, activist, politician |
| Territory | Burma |
| Career | General Secretary, Dohbama Asi-ayone (‘We-Burmans Association’) (1939-40). Founding member and Secretary General, Communist Party of Burma (1939-40). Co-founder, People’s Revolutionary Party (1939), later the Burma Socialist Party. Minister of Defence (1943-45). President, Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (1945-47). Founder, People’s Volunteer Organization (paramilitaries, 1945). Deputy Chairman, Executive Council (premier of Burma) (1946-47). |
| Born | 1915 in Natmauk, Magwe, British Burma (41 years younger than Churchill); birth name Htein Lin |
| Father | Pha (U Pha, including honorific), lawyer; died age 51 |
| Mother | Suu (Daw Suu, including honorific), landholder |
| Siblings | Youngest of nine children (three daughters, six sons); brother Ba Win (born San Tin) (1901-1947), politician |
| Education | Yenangyaung High School; Rangoon University |
| Spouse | Khin Kyi (1912-1988), m. 1942 until Aung San’s death; nurse, politician, diplomat |
| Relationships | |
| Children | Two sons, two daughters: 1. Aung San Oo (son) (b. 1943), engineer; US citizen 2. Aung San Lin (son) (1944-1953); drowned age eight 3. Aung San Suu Kyi (daughter) (b. 1945), former state counsellor (prime minister) 4. Aung San Chit (daughter) (1946); died in infancy |
| Died | 1938 at the Dolmabahçe Palace in İstanbul, aged 57, from liver 1947 in Rangoon, British Burma, aged 32 (18 years before Churchill); assassinated |
| Resting place | Martyrs’ Mausoleum, Yangon, Myanmar |
| Nickname | Bo Gyoke (‘General’); Thakin (‘Master’); Father of the Nation; Omoda Monji (Japanese name); Bo Teza (‘Fire General’, nom de guerre) |
| Height | 5’5” (1.74 m) |
| Time magazine | Twice on front cover: 1923, 1927 |
4. See also
Arab nationalism (against Ottomans)
- Al-Gaylani, Rashid Ali
- Al-Husseini, Amin
- Lawrence, T.E.
Turkish role in World War I
- Aga Khan III
Turkish re-occupation of Smyrna
- Onassis, Aristotle
Churchill controversies
- Arab and Kurdish self-determination
- Dardanelles/Gallipoli
- Imperialism
- Middle East borders
- Warmongering
5. Further reading
Atatürk
- Kinross, Patrick, Atatürk (Orion, 2012)
- Macfie, Alexander Lyon, Atatürk (Taylor & Francis, 2014)
- Mango, Andrew, Atatürk (John Murray Press, 2011)
Gallipoli/Dardanelles
- Bell, Christopher M., Churchill and the Dardanelles (Oxford University Press, 2017)
- Gilbert, Martin, ‘What About the Dardanelles?’, The International Churchill Society, 2005 <https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-126/the-dardanelles-and-gallipoli/>
- Gough, Barry, Churchill and Fisher: The Titans at the Admiralty Who Fought the First World War (James Lorimer Limited, Publishers, 2017)
Turkey
- Salutas, Mehmet Ali, and William Charles Brice, ‘Churchill in Turkey, 1943’, International Churchill Society, 2005 <https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-126/churchill-in-turkey-1943/>
- Stone, Norman, Turkey: A Short History (Thames and Hudson Limited, 2013)
6. References
1 See, for example, Madhusree Mukerjee, Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II (Basic Books, 2010).
2 Winston S. Churchill, ‘Burma Constitution Discussions’, Hansard, 1946.
3 Winston S. Churchill, ‘Burma’, Hansard, 1946.
4 Winston S. Churchill, ‘Burma Independence Bill’, Hansard, 1947.
5 Winston S. Churchill, ‘Burma Independence Bill’, Hansard, 1947. The phrase has echoes of Churchill’s reference in 1931 to Gandhi ‘striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceregal palace’: see Mohandas Gandhi.
6 The Nobel Prize, ‘Aung San Suu Kyi’, 1991.