Saya San and the Burmese Rebellion

This account of the Burmese Rebellion of 1930–1931, and the role of its leader, Saya San, emphasizes the importance of traditional elements in what is commonly regarded as a nationalist uprising. The apparently nationalistic symbols of the Rebellion had magical and protective functions that were not appreciated by the British at the time of the Rebellion. The importance of nationalism in Burma in the 1930s has been overestimated, while the strength and continuity of traditional appeals has been incompletely understood. A comparison of the tactics of U Ottama, a cosmopolitan revolutionary, with the less modern but more successful efforts of Saya San, suggests that the rural Burmese of 1930 were more responsive to symbolic appeals than to programmatic designs for reform. The Western-educated elite of Burma were at first surprised and perhaps embarrassed by the primitive uprising in the countryside, but they eventually embraced the Rebellion and its symbols. Thus the Saya San Rebellion was a key stage in the transition of Burmese nationalism; to the urban elite, it vividly demonstrated the survival of traditional values in the countryside, while proving that a peasant uprising could achieve only temporary success without specific and negotiable aims, which required modern political skills.