 Okay. Good evening, everyone. This is the fifth international affairs program for Shankar Academy. Today we will speak about the latest developments in Myanmar. I think it will be of some interest for us to know what led to the developments and the history of Myanmar. The importance of Myanmar is that it is a very close neighboring country of ours. Unfortunately, Myanmar has been through very hard times because of various reasons. But it became independent almost at the same time as India did. And both of us, both India and Myanmar were part of the British Empire. And both of us started as democracies. But Myanmar went through a lot of troubles and tribulations since their freedom in 1947. And what happened was a culmination of all that. So we simply have to kind of look at the history of Myanmar and see what happened and what implications it has for India and also for the rest of Southeast Asia and the world. So what happened was that the parliament was supposed to meet after having had elections in November 2020 in the midst of the pandemic. So the government in power was a coalition government between the military and the elected representatives of the people. And this was a kind of an unholy alliance because the military was ruling over Myanmar for many years. And in 2016 was for the first time when the military cooperated with the civilians. And under the leadership of the name you might know, Hong San Su Chi. You must know the spelling A-U-N-G, Hong San S-A-N-S-U-U and then Chi. It is written as K-Y-I but it is Chi. So Hong San Su Chi or the political leader. And she has a history. She is the daughter of the of a prime minister of Burma at that time who was assassinated. And Hong San Su Chi's mother was appointed as ambassador to India. And then she grew up in India studied in India and so on. And then she got married to an Englishman and lived in London for many years. And then she came back to Burma in 1988. She came basically to look after her mother who was very sick. So but at that time there were already some democratic movements in action against the military. The military took over power in 1962. The leader of the military who was Nevin, General Nevin, you must have heard the name. And General Nevin took over, dismissed the democratic government and took over as prime minister. And he was a very peculiar kind of president and dictator. And he was something like an early incarnation of President Trump. He was crazy in many ways. What he did first was to close down the country. And I said that you know this is Burma's own socialism, Burma's own democracy, etc. I called it all. And then virtually cut off the country from the rest of the world. And imposed military dictatorship. And actually it did several things which oppressed the people of Burma. At that time it was called Burma. It became Myanmar later. And at that time Burma was one of the more prosperous countries of Asia, more prosperous than Thailand or Singapore at that time. But because of his policies and also the expulsion of the Indians, about a million Indians who were the well-to-do Indians in the country were asked to leave. And they all had to come to India and settle here. And he did not allow any of them to take their wealth or money or gold or anything. And they had to flee with just the clothes they had. And at that time India never took interest in the internal affairs of other countries, even if it meant exodus of a lot of Indians. So we nearly accepted this one million Indians in India and settled them down in different places and rehabilitated them. That's all that we did. We did not seek any compensation for them. We did not demand anything for them, and such as that was our policy at that time. And this resulted in extreme poverty in Myanmar, in Burma. And since there was no trade, there was no cooperation or any support from the rest of the world, it became poorer and poorer. But military was very strong and therefore they oppressed them. And slowly by the year 1988 there was some kind of a movement for democracy. And Aung San Suu Kyi, who was of course the daughter of the prime minister, was assassinated. And had a democratic background. She lived in the UK for many years. And she thought that this was wrong for the people to be oppressed like this by the army. And therefore she established her political party at that time and tried to demonstrate against the army. And since General Nevin was a very hardcore autocrat, he suppressed her and put her in house arrest for many, many years. And even after, there was an election in 1990, even after the elections, which her party won, she was not allowed to take over the authority. And she continued in prison. And various charges were made against her. And therefore she was not released for a long time. At this time, because of her work for human rights and for the liberation of the people of Myanmar, she was given the Nobel Peace Prize. And this even made Nevin even more angry because it appeared as though the rest of the world was honoring her while he was keeping her in prison. And therefore, after some time, there was some kind of election again in 2016. The election was again this time won by the military and many seats were won by Mongsansuji. So, till then she was resisting the army and she would have again gone back to prison rather than come to power. And she decided to make a compromise with the devil, as it were, with the army. Because she thought she was growing old and Burmese democracy was not coming to any success. And therefore perhaps the best way would be for her to cooperate with the army. At that time, they had of course developed a constitution which had some peculiar features. The majority of the members of the parliament would be from the army. But a minority would be elected from outside. And Mongsansuji was the leader of the democratic group. And the army was going to be in parliament in any case. So she took this very difficult decision to work with the army because she thought a bit of democracy may be better than no democracy at all. And she herself felt that maybe she will not live to see the day when Burma would be independent. So this is a decision that she took which was not much appreciated by most people in the world because she was a Nobel Prize winner. And she had won the Nobel Prize because she fought against military dictatorship. And then for her to join a government with the military was not appreciated by most people. But then they realized that this was a pragmatic way. And therefore people accepted it. People thought that this would be the beginning of democracy, a path to democracy. And in 2016, she was shown in as the de facto Prime Minister. Because she could not be a real Prime Minister because in the constitution, they had written that any Burmese or Manmari citizen who is married to a foreigner can never be the Prime Minister or President of Myanmar. This they had written down specifically to exclude her from power. So she could not become Prime Minister, but she was the democratic authority. The president was the chief of the army. And then so this government was sown in 2016. And the arrangement was that the president would be selected by Aung San Suu Kyi. And the army chief will have the equal rank with the president. And then Aung San Suu Kyi would be called, she was not called the Prime Minister, but she was called State Councilor. State Councilor was some kind of a Prime Minister. And she was given all the importance and respect as the Prime Minister. And she worked out some kind of a minimum program with the army. So there was relatively comparatively peaceful time between 2016 and 2020. But you must remember that Burma or Myanmar at that time had a large number of insurgencies, various tribes operating in different parts of Myanmar, particularly in the border areas, were rebelling against the central government. And there was a lot of confusion. Many of them had their own independent governments, they had their own independent income. And they did not accept the leadership of the main capital. And all these problems were there. And Aung San Suu Kyi, together with the army, tried to make compromises with many of these groups in order to unite Myanmar under one government. And at that time, a new capital was also established, Nipidok, it is known as, because Yungon, Yungon was the capital, originally Rangoon, and it became Yungon. And the capital itself was shifted to the center of the country, where there was a huge capital with large roads and parks and buildings and all were built, which was much beyond the capability of Myanmar itself. But they got the support from China, because China wields a lot of influence in Myanmar. And so they also built this dramatic capital, which has broad roads and nothing like that, a city like that is not around in any part of Asia at this time. So that was an unnecessary expenditure, but they built it for the sake of the prestige of the country. So while this was all happening, and many of these tribal groups were making peace with the central government, there was an uprising in a state called Rakhine state. You may have heard about it, and Rakhine has a Muslim population called Rohingyas, and there were, of course, the normal Buddhist Burmese were there, but together with that, there were these large number of Rohingyas. And these people had come from Bangladesh at one time after the Bangladesh Revolution, and they came as refugees and settled in Rakhine state. But they were mostly Muslims, and they were suspected of some kind of terrorist intentions by the Buddhists in that state. So some kind of conflict arose between the Rohingyas and the Buddhists in the Rakhine state, particularly after an incident in which some of the Muslims attacked some Buddhist monks. And the central government intervened, and there was a virtual genocide. Many of these Rohingyas were killed, and the others ran away either to Bangladesh or to other countries or some of them perished on the way. This became an internationally noticed tragedy and violation of human rights. And this was considered a genocide, you know what a genocide is, to kill a group of people just because they belong to that particular group and that particular race and that particular group. And the Myanmar government was accused of genocide, and many of them went to Bangladesh. Some had come to India years before that. About 20 years, some of them had migrated to India, and there was pressure on us to throw them all also out of India. At that time, our Prime Minister had some sympathy for the Myanmar government, and he tried to send some of these out, but then the Supreme Court prevented it, and so they continued here. And people in Bangladesh were in great misery, and the world got their attention to that and tried to resolve this problem. And finally, we also agreed to support Bangladesh to retain these people. But in any case, this brought a bad reputation to Myanmar government, which was not only the army but also the Ong San Suu Kyi and her party. So people expected Ong San Suu Kyi to oppose this genocide and also this expulsion of Rovingyas from Myanmar, who went to Bangladesh and were in camps. But she decided to support the army on this in a very clear and very strong manner they supported the army. And this surprised the world community because Ong San Suu Kyi's image was that of a liberator, of a human rights activist, or someone who believed in democracy, believed in unity, etc. That was already damaged to a certain extent because of her joining with the army, but that was acceptable. And US government were cooperating with her, many neighboring countries, ASEAN countries, India was also working with this government. And therefore, in spite of all that, in spite of the problems of the army, she was respected. But at the same time, this Rovingyas action had weakened her reputation. And there was even demand in some western countries that the normal price for peace should be taken away from her. Of course, the normal price was not taken away, but still some of the other honors that she had received from human rights organizations, etc., were taken away. So she became some kind of a persona non grata with the western countries. You know what it means, somebody who is not favored by the western countries. But she did not relent and she fought the case against Rovingyas. And the case went to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. So there the case was considered and Ong San Suu Kyi personally went to the International Court of Justice and argued that that case, even though she did not win it, but this added another dimension to Ong San Suu Kyi's position. But at the same time, she was friendly with the army. She knew that her reputation was ruined, but still she decided to continue with the army and try to rebuild the country. She went to China and continued the cooperation in business with China. She went to India and also to various other countries. And the western sanctions were removed and therefore got a bit of cooperation, international cooperation was developed. And as normal, the elections, the next elections were scheduled in 2020 November, just a few months ago. And in the elections, she won her political party won, but obviously, there were some differences between her and the military. And the military kept quiet, but they kept saying that there were some irregularities in the elections. But nobody expected military to intervene at this time. When the parliament was about to meet on 1st of February, the army stopped them, postponed the parliament and arrested Ong San Suu Kyi and others and she is back in prison. What the army has done is they have said that these elections were a fraud, almost the same allegation that President Trump was making, without any evidence though. But it was just an excuse to dethrone Ong San Suu Kyi and to end the democratic process. And this has been a setback in the history of Myanmar, starting from 1947 onwards. The people of Myanmar never had a peaceful democratic functioning. They always had to go through the tribal conflicts in some of the areas. Then the military dictatorship from 1962 to 2011. And then some kind of democratic government and then democracy plus the army from 2016. And so there was never peaceful economic development in Myanmar. Two things were special about Myanmar. First is that Myanmar is a Buddhist country and Buddhists are very tolerant people. So though they revolted now and then, when a structure was established, the Buddhists had the tendency to accept that, because after all, they thought in terms of God and spirituality and salvation and so on and they didn't want to be harsh on anybody. So I have lived in Myanmar for two years and that was because of Nevin's time and Ong San Suu Kyi was in London and that time she was not in politics. But at that time we had very little relationship with Myanmar because they did not believe in dealing with India or any of the democratic countries. They had only a relationship with China and a little bit with South Korea and Japan. So India really did not have much to do there except to look after some of the Indian community which was very interested in Indian culture and arts and films and so on. And we had to meet any Burmese officer. The only way was to go and play God with them because they will not receive you in their office because that means they have to do some work. So it was quite a disappointing time that I had there. There was nothing that we could do because of the policies. That was another story. Anyway, so what happened on 1st of February has created quite a stir in the international community because they are all expecting that the government more or less the same government as existed will come into being with a President from Ong San Suu Kyi's party and herself as State Councilor with the rank of Prime Minister and maybe the government will come back to normal. So now there is an emergency for one year. That means at least for one year there will be no elections and the army will control everything and Ong San Suu Kyi and her friends, the other leaders are in check. And this is cost-discovered but the sympathy that she would have normally got was not there because she was considered someone who had was in league with the army as though she was having a deal with the devil. And that was something, a reputation that she had got. And therefore the reaction from most of the countries was rather mild. The criticism was mild because she was not such a hero as she was earlier. And people have said, yes democracy must come back. The Chinese said that all the both sides should work together for peace and democratic process. India's own criticism was very mild. We said we believe in the law of law and order of the country and the democratic process should continue. So generally not totally condemnatory of the military but urging both sides to stop the agitation and get together and form a new government. But of course the army is not going to listen to any of these and we can expect a period of more confusion and problems within Myanmar. We originally when Ong San Suu Kyi was not taken into the government, we protested and for some time we did not even deal with the military government in Myanmar because we were pro-democracy. That was during Mr. Narasimha Rao's time. But then as things moved and we realized that the army was in a strong position, we decided to deal with the existing government rather than support Ong San Suu Kyi. Of course she was very upset about it. She came to India and complained about it. She said I am a daughter of India and how come that we are not taking my interest etc. But then for us it was a pragmatic policy to deal with the government in position in Myanmar. So even during the pure military dictatorship, India, we had an ambassador there but we re-established our relations and we tried to do various things together with Myanmar. Some of our senior officials visited Myanmar. The consideration that time was Myanmar was already under the control or influence of China and if India remained away from Myanmar, the Chinese influence would only increase and India will get isolated. And that is why we decided to support the military government and it became easier when Ong San Suu Kyi was also in the government. So though we would have liked the pure democracy, we accepted. That has been India's policy. We are a democracy but we do not dictate our democracy to other countries. The other countries have to choose their own system. And whatever was that system, we accepted it. We did not impose our system on anyone. But if we are asked about democracy, we will say that is the ideal situation and if anybody needed help, we will provide that. But we would not unilaterally push democracy on anybody's country. So this went on and we tried to help. Some projects were established. We were able to invest in Myanmar to some extent and we supported the efforts of the government to unify the country. There was really any problem between us. And recently the foreign secretary and the military chief, army chief, went to Myanmar. This is not normal. Normally, the foreign secretary goes separately or the army chief goes separately. But we recognized the fact that the regime in Myanmar was some kind of hybrid that is both the army and the civilian. The visit of the foreign secretary to Myanmar. And one of the things that it was as a part of cooperation for in the fight against coronavirus in the region. India has taken the leadership. We have a kind of vaccine diplomacy at the moment. As part of it, we also gifted a large amount of vaccines to Myanmar as a special case. Though we do not have enough vaccines ourselves, we have been giving some vaccines to our neighboring countries as a gesture of goodwill. So that also we did. And in addition, we also gifted to the Myanmar army, Myanmar Navy, submarine for their activities, for exploration of the sea, etc. So our expectation was that the present regime will continue. So what has happened today will not dramatically change the situation. I think we don't know, but I think we will still continue to work with the military government that because we have so many interests in Myanmar and those have to be protected. As far as Aung San Suu Kyi's future is concerned, I'm sure India will be happy if she comes back to power. But if anything happens, we'll have to study the situation. So India's reaction to this has been basically saying that we would like the process of democracy to continue. But we would urge both sides to work together to build a government again. So these are the details of what has happened, a little bit of history. But from your perspective, from the point of view of your examination, you must know a few points about Myanmar. First of all, it is an important country in Southeast Asia. It's a large country and it has wealth in the sense of agricultural wealth, it has the rivers, etc. But more than anything else, the largest deposits of precious stones and the jewelry are in Myanmar. That is their main income. The best rubies in the world, the best precious stones are available. What they do is they have an international auction every year and their main income comes from there. And they have food, plenty of food and fish. So the country is not starving. But because of the bad administration, they don't have the kind of infrastructure that other Southeast Asian countries have. But since the removal of the sanctions, I went there about four or five years ago. I found a different Myanmar, more buildings, bigger projects and so on. So it's not a poor country. But for us, Myanmar is very important strategically because we have a common border and we have certain problems in the eastern sector of India, the Nagas and these states where are some rebels who actually fight against the Indian soldiers and then run away to Myanmar to hide. And this was a big problem during the military regime because the military regime will not allow Indian Army to enter Myanmar in order to fight these insurgents. So this was a major problem and there was a lot of drug trafficking. And also China was part of it. Chinese Communist Party was very prominent there. And they seem to be supporting these insurgents who used to come inside India, create problems and go back to Myanmar. This changed a few years ago when Myanmar agreed to India joining with the Myanmar forces to fight the insurgents. And though, and therefore we made a lot of advance in creating peace in that region and also promote border trade, which is traditional. So that is one important in Myanmar, is an important country. And it is in our interest to keep it out of Chinese influence. And we should do everything possible to do that. And that is why our first priority is good relations with Myanmar rather than promoting democracy by ourselves. Democracy we prefer. But at the same time, we accept any kind of government that the people of Myanmar select for themselves. So that policy you must remember. Of course, all these details of various governments coming to power and the changes that took place, those are details which may not figure in your examination paper. But you should remember the main characters. First, Ounu, who was the Democratic Prime Minister, who was very friendly with India, with Prime Minister Nehru, and he consulted him. And at that time also there was a United Nations General Secretary called Outhant. That is another name you should remember. Ounu was the first Prime Minister who handed over power to the army in 1962. And after that, there was a Secretary General called Outhant who was a very prominent Buddhist also. And he had a full term as the Secretary General of the United Nations. And he was very friendly to India and we had very many useful contacts with him at that time. And then you must remember Nevin. He was General Nevin. But all these names start with O. O is like Nistak. O is not part of the name. When you say Noom, when you say Ounu, he is Mr. Noom. When he is Outhant, he is Mr. Thant. And Oonevin is Mr. Nevin. So this you must remember. So these names you should know, apart from that of Aung San Suu Kyi. And these names you should know because you may be asked to write a note or write a essay on Myanmar, etc. So these are important. And also you should know that the democratic process is in advance. But at the same time events have caused a setback and then you need to follow what is happening between now and your examination so that you know where exactly Myanmar stands, where exactly its status is as a democratic process and what India's relationship whether it is going to suffer or will continue our cooperation with the Myanmar regime. All these have to be seen in the future. Thank you very much.