Burma Backs U Nu, Asia's New Gandhi

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29200, 10 May 1960, Page 10

Burma Backs U Nu, Asia's New Gandhi

(BV

SIMON KAVANAUGH]

LONDON. High over the steaming teak forests and muddy swirling rivers last week a gentle murmur rose to an eager roar. At his devotions in Rangoon, a chubby little Buddhist looked up startled as he caught its clamorous message. Nineteen million Burmese, free at last to vote as they pleased, knew overwhelmingly what pleased them. U Nu for Burma. Burma for U Nu.

The little man resumed his wide, white smile. Now he knew that the astrologers had been right. Now he could no longer deny his destiny.

Now the people’s urgent invitation had given U Nu the answer to his 18-month-old dilemma.

It had been one thing to hand over the Premiership of his gue-rilla-racked country to a caretaker government of army officers, hoping to ensure free and fair elections. It had been quite another to wait and pray. But now it was going to be all right. Despite the dark fears of others, the army did not intend to cling illegally to power. Moreover, the people wanted him still. The staggering electoral victory of U Nu’s “clean” AntiFacist People’s Freedom League whs proof enough of that. The Gentle Touch Turning back to his contemplation, U Nu knew that the gentle touch had scored again. Humility, neutralism, passionate religious belief, that same wide disarming smile for all. They rarely fail this ardent Asian Gandhi who was once imprisoned for burning the Union Jack, but who can be just as rude about Karl Marx. Mr Khrushchev, looking in on Burma, may well prefer to talk of tea and teak. For it was U Nu, when he was still Prime Minister, who said witheringly of Marx that he had “very limited knowledge; not equivalent to one-tenth of a particle of dust beneath the feet of Lord Buddha.” For U Nu, it is Lord Buddha first and always. And after him, the dream of a Lettish Burma, rooted in local life and tradition. The Way Ahead

Looking to East and to West, the little man sees many marvels. But looking straight ahead he sees a better way for Burma. Working in his own strange way, he has fused the stuff of history and progress into an effective, peculiarly Burmese whole. When U Nu visited the arid Popa Hills to launch a big forestry project, he remembered first, like any good Burmese, that here was the home of the senior of the 37 Nats (spirits). He remembered, too, that almost three-quarters of his people hang coconuts in their houses in tri-

bute to the Nats. So before U Nu delivered his little scientific lecture on the principles of soil conservation, he first appeased the Nat. And his last words were: “May Mount Popa be renovated into a big green forest fyjll of flowers in order that it may be a worthy abode for the Nat.” In the innermost shrine of his beloved World Peace Pagoda, it is written: “This image of the Lord Buddha was cast from the first refined silver produced by Burma Corporation <1951) Limited, by whom the silver was donated for this purpose.” The schools, hospitals and houses must come too, of course. But first Lord Buddha.

Rising daily at dawn to pray, U Nu (it means “Gentle-Na-tured”) set an as.cetic, teetotal, non-smoking, vegetarian example. Politician and Seer

He is a politician, but a seer first. Burma finds no paradox in that. And if he does not always follow' the stars blindly, at least he delayed his daughter’s wedding until the signs were propitious. He permitted his Government to resign, then take office again five minutes later, because astrologers predicted that the omens were favourable for a new Government.

The murmur from the mountains and the jungle says there is nothing wrong, either, with a Prime Minister who shaves his head, dons a priest’s saffron robes and retires to a monastery for a week to pray. But is was violence that blasted U Nu to his gentle eminence. He became the first Premier of independent Burma only after a mad act of assassination had removed Aung San, his predecessor, and most of the Government. He had intended other conquests. He had longed secretly to become Burma’s Bernard Shaw. Ne’er-db-Well

Born in 1906 at Wakema, on the Irrawaddy Delta, U Nu was as a youth the despair of his rice merchant father. He became a drunkard, the ne’er-do-well of his village.

Bqt at 18, he became aware of inner grace. Graduating in philosophy at Rangoon University in 1929, he struggled to write plays and became a schoolmaster.

He then married the daughter of a school board member and returned to University to study law. As the national struggle fired U Nu’s soul, Burma lost a Shaw but gained a leader. With his firebrand comrades, U Nu fought a truculent battle with University authority for his new-found socialism. With them, he emerged into the wider struggle. They became the shock troops of the smouldering nationalist revolution. Serving Lord Buddha and

Burma, U Nu has somehow preserved his integrity against discouraging odds. By IMO he mattered enough to be imprisoned by the British in Mandalay Central Gaol. Strange War Role At Britain’s request, he set off on a goodwill trail to China. But the Japanese had already cut the road. So he played out a strange wartime role: trusted by his people, a member of the Government under Japanese occupation, yet the confidant of the antiJapanese resistance. U Nu appeared to submit meekly when Japanese officers humiliated him. What did indignity matter if independece could be cajoled from them? After the foundation of the Anti-Fascist ' ’ People's Freedom League~ih 1944, events moved fast Four years later U Nu found himself Premier.

Since then, sublimating the hot drama of nationalism, U Nu has matured as he prays Burma may mature.

Still dreaming of an ascetic’s life, he has threatened his Cabinet four times with resignation in favour of the contemplative life. They have not always taken him too seriously. Tempering mysticism with realism, he has been large enough to condone the financing of trips to Rome for Burmese Catholic priests. When the newly-translated Encyclopaedia Burmanica arrived at the docks, he and his Cabinet were there to welcome it with a decorated van stnd a mile-long procession. • Urging his people from slogan to slogan, he has seen these slogans translated in terms of schools, hospitals and libraries. State Buddhism But always there was war in the jungle: the years-old war waged hy the rebel groups of the White Flag (Stalinist) and Karen rebels. And, at last, the deep split in U Nu’s party between the “cleans” who wanted State Buddhism and the “stables” who wanted industrialisation. Now, to his surprise, the little man has swept the board clean. The Army may have achieved more, but the people prefer his way. The future shapes towards State Buddhism, and dwindling power for soldiers and the extreme Left.

U Nu, bearing no malice and seeking no enemies, looks neither to Left or Right. There is too much to be done ahead. (Express Feature Service).