a 'nation of intent' in burma

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A 'nation of intent' in Burma: Karen ethno-nationalism,nationalism and narrations of nationAnanda Rajah

To cite this Article: Rajah, Ananda , 'A 'nation of intent' in Burma: Karenethno-nationalism, nationalism and narrations of nation', The Pacific Review, 15:4,517 - 537To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/0951274021000029413URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0951274021000029413

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A ‘nation of intent’ in Burma: Karen ethno-nationalism, nationalismand narrations of nation1

Ananda Rajah

Abstract Fully-formed nationalisms do not emerge from nothing. Nor arethey inextinguishable expressions of pre-modern forms of identity and polit-ical aspirations. The argument in this paper is that if they are fully formed,they have to emerge from ethno-nationalism; that is, out of ethnic identi�-cation-writ-large, where ethnic identi�cation becomes ‘mapped’ onto thatlarger thing called a ‘nation’. Ethnic identi�cation, however, requires a trans-formation in modes of consciousness and atavistic ethno-histories beforeethno-nationalism and then full-blooded nationalisms can come into being.The argument is made in relation to the Karen nationalist movement inBurma. Karen nationalism emerged out of ethno-nationalism that wasfostered by Christian missionary interest and ethnological attempts to setout a Karen ethno-history. Missionary writings offered Christian-educatedKaren, in colonial times, the basis for a ‘narration of nation’ and for viewingthemselves not merely as an ethnic group but a ‘nation’.

This paper sets out the ceaseless unfolding of this ‘narration of nation’ thatbegan in the nineteenth century and now tragically occurs in refugee campsin Thailand because of drastically altered politico-military conditions inBurma since the late 1980s. These narrations can only be understood in termsof their discursive history and how this history has been shaped. Thesenarrations are examined with a view to addressing some key theoretical issues

The Paci�c Review, Vol. 15 No. 4 2002: 517–537

Ananda Rajah teaches in the Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore. His research interests concern ethnicity, ethnic relations and the state, the Thailand–Burmaborderlands, state-building, development and modernity in Southeast Asia and the sociologyand anthropology of religion. His articles on the Karen in northern Thailand, and the Kareninsurgency and ethnic con�ict in Burma have appeared in Mountain Research andDevelopment, Mankind, Sojourn: Social Issues in Southeast Asia, Southeast Asian Journal ofSocial Science, Boundary and Security Bulletin and Geopolitics and International Boundaries.He is a joint compiler of The ASEAN Reader (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1992).

Address: Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore, Block AS1 #03-10, 11 Arts Link, Singapore 117570. E-mail: [email protected]

The Paci�c ReviewISSN 0951–2748 print/ISSN 1470–1332 online © 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journalsDOI: 10.1080/095127402100002941 3

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contained in more recent studies of nationalism and nation-state-making as modern phenomena and how ethno-nationalism is transformed intonationalism.

Keywords Ethno-nationalism; nationalism; ethno-history; Karen; Burma.

Forgetting, I would even go so far as to say historical error, is acrucial factor in the creation of a nation, which is why progress inhistorical studies often constitutes a danger for [the principle of]nationality.

(Renan 1990: 11)

Introduction

All nations-in-the-making and seemingly established nations require somebasis for ‘nation-ness’, by which I mean the individual, subjective experi-ence of a shared sense of identi�cation with a community larger than onecan in fact empirically experience but which is nevertheless felt to be‘authentic’. It is commonly supposed that this takes the form of nation-alism. But even nationalisms must be constructed. As Ernest Gellner(1983: 56) once observed:

Nationalism is not what it seems, and above all not what it seemsto itself. . . . The cultural shreds and patches used by nationalismare often arbitrary historical inventions. Any old shred would haveserved as well. But in no way does it follow that the principle ofnationalism . . . is itself in the least contingent and accidental.

Fully-formed nationalisms, in other words, do not emerge from nothing.Nor are they inextinguishable expressions of pre-modern ethnie asAnthony Smith (1986) argues. The argument in this paper is that if theyare fully formed, they have to emerge from ethno-nationalism; that is, outof ethnic identi�cation-writ-large, where ethnic identi�cation becomes‘mapped’ onto that larger thing called a ‘nation’.2 Ethnic identi�cation,however, requires a transformation in modes of consciousness and atavisticethno-histories before ethno-nationalism and then full-blooded nation-alisms can come into being.

This contribution is concerned with this process among the Karen, anethnic minority in Burma. It sets out the ceaseless unfolding of a ‘narra-tion of nation’ – to use Homi Bhaba’s (1990) phrase – that began in thenineteenth century and now tragically occurs in refugee camps in Thailandbecause of drastically altered politico-military conditions in Burma sincethe late 1980s. The reproduction of narrations of nation in these campscan only be understood in terms of their discursive history and how thishistory has been shaped. This paper draws on earlier work (Rajah 1990a,

518 The Paci�c Review

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1993) for this purpose with a view to addressing some speci�c issuescontained in more recent studies of nationalism and nation-state-making.

It may be located, therefore, in relation to O’Leary’s classi�cation of the-ories of nationalism (1998: 77), which reveals a ‘gap in theorizing on move-ments for local autonomy as nations of intent’ as noted by Wee (2001: 9).The emergence and reproduction of Karen narrations of nation, Karenethno-nationalism and nationalism in Burma since the nineteenth centuryhave something to offer towards �lling this lacuna. While I accept that sucha theoretical de�ciency exists, I nevertheless share the views of Gellner(1983, 1996), Anderson (1991), Connor (1994) and Benjamin (1988) thatnationalism, nations and nation-states are modern phenomena. My posi-tion is that nations and their political entailments are the creation of eliteswho, in their subjective experience of ethnic identi�cation-writ-large as ‘authentic’ identity, utilize ethno-nationalism/nationalism as ideology to this end. This draws on Benjamin’s work in particular, because of the close attention it gives to the differences between primary and sec-ondary nation-states and the speci�c processes involved in the making ofthe latter.

The nation-state, ethno-nationalism and nationalism reconsidered

The terms ‘ethno-nationalism’ and ‘nationalism’ are often used inter-changeably. This interchangeability has been of little consequence inaccounts and theories of nations, nationalism and nation-state-making.Given the theoretical de�ciency noted by Wee (2001), a useful distinctioncould well be made between the two. Nationalism is an ideological pheno-menon. While it is made up of ‘cultural shreds and patches’, it does notemerge fully formed. What then precedes nationalism? I suggest we mayuse ‘ethno-nationalism’ to depict the antecedents of nationalism.

Ethno-nationalism offers a basis for nation-ness, but it is primarilycultural. It is constituted of ‘cultural shreds and patches’ and includesatavistic ethno-history. Such ethno-histories based on written records andorally transmitted narratives are also cultural constructs. They are not thesame as histories imbued with the methodological re�exivity that gener-ally distinguishes modern, academic historical writing. Ethno-nationalismis ethnic identi�cation-writ-large where ‘the roots of ethnic identity lie ina presumption of common or shared descent’ (Keyes 1997: 153).3 The soci-ology of ethnicity and ethnic identi�cation is now well understood. Whileethnicity and ethnic identi�cation rely on ‘markers’ (language, religion,dress, and so on) it is ultimately the presumption of descent, as Keyespoints out, that underlies such identi�cation. This theoretical anthropo-logical contribution undermines whatever utility an inherently essentialistconcept like ethnie might have. Atavistic ethno-histories, I might add, arethe corollary of the presumption of common or shared descent.

A. Rajah: A ‘nation of intent’ in Burma 519

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Ethno-nationalism in the sense set out above does not necessarilypresuppose a political community. In colonial and post-colonial situations,it is only when the idea of the modern nation-state and its distinctivefeatures – i.e. political rights in relation to other similarly constitutedgroups, territoriality, borders, sovereignty (‘self-determination’) andequality with other nation-states in the international order – are anti-cipatorily assimilated to ethno-nationalism that ethno-nationalismbecomes full-blooded nationalism.

The cultural, social and political aspects of the transition from ethno-nationalism to nationalism may be set out schematically as shown in Figure1. Both ethno-nationalism and nationalism are creations of modern-educated elites. The emergence of ethno-nationalism and nationalisminvolves a transition from the pre-modern to the modern. Central to thisis a change in modes of consciousness where elites are able to conceiveof new forms of social groups and consociation in experientially non-empirical terms that transcend the empirically grounded, locale-speci�cways by which communities in pre-modern societies identify themselves.4

It is this to which Anderson (1991) was really referring when he used theterm ‘imagined communities’.

The process is non-reversible but neither is it complete. I am not awareof any post-colonial state where nationalist elites have sought to recon-stitute pre-modern socio-political structures upon gaining independence.Even when they have used cultural elements (symbols, titles, regalia, andso on) drawn from pre-colonial times, ethno-histories or nationalistrhetoric that hark back to a mythical ‘Golden Age’, they have never imple-mented a social structural return to the past. If anything, they aspired toequality with colonizing states within the international order. This couldonly assume form, if not complete substance, by replicating the socio-political structures of colonial powers.

Again, this too is contained in the extension of Anderson’s argumentthat the idea of the nation-state is a ‘modular’ one; that is, it became‘transportable’ largely through colonialism. Anderson, however, does nottell us exactly how this modularity is possible. It is only possible becausemodern modes of consciousness are transferable. Such modes ofconsciousness are a pre-condition for ethno-nationalism to emerge. Whenethno-nationalism becomes coupled with the idea of the nation-state andits distinctive features, then full-blown nationalism may be said to exist.With that, comes the ‘movement’ towards the making of a nation-state incolonial situations and, in post-colonial conditions, movements towardsseparatism or local autonomy.

What colonialism did was to bring new modes of consciousness tocolonies making it possible for ethno-nationalism and nationalism to comeinto being. The reproduction of these modes of consciousness, in turn,made it possible for separatist and local autonomy movements to emergein the post-colonial states of Southeast Asia – the Karen separatist move-ment in Burma being a case in point, as argued here.


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Karen nationalism and separatism

In 1949, one year after Burma was granted independence, an active, intran-sigent Karen separatist movement with a predominantly Christian lead-ership emerged. The political aspirations of the movement, led by theKaren National Union (KNU), are explicitly stated in its manifesto (KarenNational Union, n.d.a), which lists:

1 The establishment of a Karen state with the right to self-determination.2 The establishment of national states for all the nationalities, with the

right to self-determination.3 The establishment of a genuine Federal Union with all the states

having equal rights and the right to self-determination.4 The Karen National Union will pursue the policy of National Demo-

cracy.

These aims are based on recognizably modern political ideas. They are adistillation of Karen nationalist thought, but what does this nationalismconsist of?

The same document states in a section entitled ‘The Karen, A Nation,Their Nature and History’:

The Karens are much more than a national minority. We are a nationwith a population of 7 million, having all the essential qualities of anation. We have our own history, our own language, our own culture,


Figure 1 Ethno-nationalism and nationalism

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our own land of settlement and our own economic system of life.By nature the Karen are simple, quiet, unassuming and peace lovingpeople. . . .

Historically, the Karens descend [sic] from the same ancestors asthe Mongolian people. The earliest Karens . . . settled in Htee-HsetMet Ywa (Land of Flowing Sands), a land bordering the source ofthe Yang-tse-Kiang River in the Gobi desert. From there, wemigrated southwards and gradually entered the land now known asBurma about 739 BC. We were, according to most historians, the �rstsettlers in this new land. . . . Here we lived characteristically simple,uneventful and peaceful lives, until the advent of the Burman.

(Karen National Union, n.d.b)

What we have here is a fully-�edged nationalism asserting claims to terri-tory, sovereignty and political rights founded on an ethno-nationalismcontaining assumptions of cultural commonality and uniqueness, essen-tialized attributes, and the rei�cation of questionable history andethnology. All of this is constructed in opposition to an oppressive Burman‘Other’. Central to this is ethnic identi�cation transmuted into the iden-ti�cation of a Karen nation. What is of interest here is the rei�cation ofquestionable history, an ethno-history, for that is what enables ethno-nationalism and, in consequence, nationalism.

Conjectural history and amateur ethnology: the making of aKaren narration of nation

This Karen ethno-history – this narration of nation – can be traced to theconjectural histories and naïve ethnological accounts of Karen ‘tribes’ byChristian missionaries in Burma in the nineteenth century.

Among the Karen in Burma and Thailand are to be found differentcreation myths or ‘origin narratives’. An indication of their variety maybe seen in accounts offered by J. G. Scott (writing under the Burmese penname of ‘Shway Yoe’) and A. R. MacMahon – both British colonial admin-istrators in Burma – and David Marlowe, an anthropologist working inThailand and writing in the 1970s.

When Yuwa created the world he took three handfuls of earth andthrew them round him. From one sprang the Burmans, from anotherthe Karens, and from the third the Kalas, the foreigners. The Karenwere very talkative and made more noise than all the others, andso the creator believed that there were too many of them, and hethrew another handful to the Burmans, who thus gained such asupremacy that they soon overcame the Karens and have oppressedthem ever since.

(Shway Yoe 1963: 170)


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In ancient times there were seven brothers, whose parents divideda bamboo bucket into seven pieces and giving a piece to each ofthem told them that they would become the representatives ofdifferent peoples and clans, and after having been estranged fromeach other for a season, would eventually come together again, andliving in peace and friendship, would bring with them their portionsof the bucket and restore the latter to its original shape.

(MacMahon 1876)

At the beginning there were two people. The grandparents did not tellme who they were or where they came from, only that there were twopeople who were the father and mother. One day, in the mud of theirpaddy �eld they found 101 crabs and ate them. Then it followed that�rst woman gave birth to 101 children. Each of these children had hisown language. They were the Karen, the Lua’, the Northern Thai, theShan, the Burmese, and so on. That is how it was in the beginning. NowI have always heard it said by my parents and in the words of the grand-parents that all people everywhere were from the same parents. Theyare all children of the same parents.

(Marlowe 1979: 169)

The last narrative shares thematic similarities with a Chin and northernThai narrative (Lehman 1963: 32; Davis 1984: 290).5 None of these narra-tives has contributed towards the making of a Karen ethno-history.

These examples illustrate three general points: �rst, the same ethno-linguistic group can have a variety of origin narratives; second, some narra-tives of this kind may be shared by different ethno-linguistic groups; and,third, not all origin narratives result in ethno-histories. The central ques-tion is this: of various narratives, how did a particular set of narrativescome to constitute a Karen ethno-history on the basis of which Karenethno-nationalism could be constructed? What Karen ethno-history indi-cates is that when ethno-histories emerge they do so contingently, but theynevertheless require an ‘historical template’.

American Baptist missionaries provided this template. When they �rstarrived in Burma, they were unsuccessful in converting ethnic Burmans(who were more-or-less Buddhist) because the Burmese court showedlittle tolerance for their activities (Knowles 1829: 142–3, 161–77). Theythus turned their attention to non-Burman populations. Of these, theplains- and hill-dwelling Karen proved the most fertile ground for theirevangelical mission. The missionaries were as much interested in under-standing Karen culture, language and customs as they were in convertingthe Karen, undoubtedly a necessary adjunct to their evangelical mission.

The work of the missionary Francis Mason was instrumental in even-tually generating Karen narrations of nation. Mason was interested inKaren origin narratives and, quite remarkably, recorded narratives bearing


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uncanny resemblances to the story of the Creation in the Old Testament.E. B. Cross reproduced an account by Mason (also a Baptist missionary)in the Journal of the American Oriental Society (1853/54: 300–1):

God is complete and good, and through endless generations willnever die.

The earth is the footstool of God, and heaven his seat. He seesall things, and we are not hid from his sight. He is not far from us,but in our midst.

Cross notes the existence of other narratives of the ‘Creation’ and their‘almost exact resemblance to the Scripture history of it’, and offers trans-lations by Mason:

He created man, and of what did he form him? He created man at�rst from the earth and �nished the work of creation. He createdwoman, and of what did he form her? He took a rib from the manand created the woman.

He created spirit or life. How did he create spirit? Father Godsaid: ‘I love these my son and daughter. I will bestow my life uponthem.’ He took a particle of his life, and breathed it into their nostrils,and they came to life and were men.

Thus God created man. God made food and drink, ice, �re andwater, cattle, elephants and birds.

(Cross 1853/54)

The parallels are remarkable. One wonders how much of this was providedby Mason and how much existed in the Karen narrative. It is certain,however, that Mason’s efforts led to concerted attempts by other mission-aries to compile Karen narratives with a view to establishing additionalconcordances with biblical lore. Of these, Cross (1853/54: 302–4) foundthe following noteworthy because of the resemblance to the biblicalaccount of the fall of man:

Ywah in the beginning commandedBut Nauk’plau came to destroyYwah at the �rst commanded,Nauk’plau maliciously deceived unto death.The woman E-u and the man Thay-nai –The malicious �end enviously looked upon them.Both the woman E-u and the man Thay-naiThe dragon regarded with hatred.The great dragon deceived the woman E-u,And what was it he said to her?The great dragon took the yellow fruit of the tree,


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And gave it to Ywah’s holy daughter.The great dragon took the white fruit of the tree,And gave it to Ywah’s son and daughter to eat.They kept not every word of Ywah,Nauk’plau deceived them. They died.They kept not each one the word of Ywah,Then he deceived and beguiled them unto death.They transgressed the words of Ywah,Ywah turned his back and forsook them.And after they had broken the commandments of Ywah,Ywah turned his back upon them and left.

Ywah (‘Yuwa’ in Scott’s account) may be described as a cosmogonic deity.Cross glosses Nauk’plau as an ‘evil being’ and ‘devil’, but Nauk’plau, amale form, and Mükaulee, a female form, occur in some other narrativesand they may also be viewed as cosmogonic deities (Keyes 1977: 52).

The resemblance is striking. However, this was the last instance of aconcordance between Karen origin narratives and Old Testament lore.Further attempts to seek out such concordances went unrewarded. AsCross (1853/54: 304) candidly noted, ‘the traces of Scriptural history inthe Karen traditions of later events, so far as have been discovered, areexceedingly feeble and obscure’.

Nevertheless, a body of work existed suf�cient to fuel the productionof conjectural histories. The �rst of such speculations was Mason’s inter-pretation that the Karen must have been descendants of one of the ‘tenlost tribes of Israel’. This interpretation took into account the (spurious)morphemic similarity between the term ‘Ywa’ for the cosmogonic deityand the Old Hebrew term for God, ‘Yahweh’.6 The implicit assumptioncan only be that ethno-linguistic groups (‘nations’) carry memories ofancient lore and may retain ‘core’ religious terms despite linguistic andcultural change.

Mason subsequently abandoned this view because Karen narrativescollected later did not lend themselves to the establishment of furtherparallels with the Old Testament. Mason was, however, still interested inwhat Karen narratives might reveal of the origin and history of the Karen.One narrative – the story of Taw Me Pa (‘Boar’s Tusk Father’) – hadparticular signi�cance for Mason. His interpretation of it has beenprofoundly in�uential in the production of a Karen ethno-history andethno-nationalism. As summarized elsewhere:

The narrative recounts the travels of Taw Me Pa (‘Father of theBoar’s Tusk’), the mythical patriarch, who kills a wild boar. The boar,however, is a magical one and does not actually die. It escapes butleaves one of its tusks behind. Taw-me-pa �nds it, uses it to makea comb, and as he combs his hair with it, he becomes young again.


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His family does the same, with the same results. His children beara great many offspring, and they in turn have many children. Asthey all use the comb, their numbers are not reduced by death andthe land they occupy becomes over-populated. The old-young patri-arch therefore decides that he should set out in search of new landto settle. As he travels further a�eld, he loses his children or descen-dants after he crosses a ‘sandy river’ or ‘river of sand’. The descen-dants are left behind because of some misadventure. The narrativeends with a declaration that when the descendants are freed fromsin, the patriarch will return and lead his descendants across the riverto the pleasant land which he has found beyond.

(Rajah 1993: 250–1)

This is based on an account by Andrew Gilmore (1911) who used a trans-lation by J. B. Vinton (both of whom were missionaries). Gilmore (1911:81) makes the point that:

Dr Mason interpreted it to mean a ‘river of running sand’, i.e. a riverconsisting of sand. He came to the conclusion that the desert of Gobiwas meant by this, and interpreted the legend to mean that theKarens had crossed this desert during the migration into Burma.Subsequent writers have followed Dr Mason here.

The signi�cance of Mason’s interpretation cannot be underestimated.Whereas his earlier speculation that the Karen were one of the ten losttribes of Israel situated them within the Jewish diaspora making a uniqueKaren identity problematic, his revised opinion offered educated Karena distinctive collective identity and migratory ‘history’ of their own. SawAung Hla, a Karen nationalist writer, later elaborated upon this inter-pretation (c. 1931).

Karen ethno-nationalism and nationalism

The efforts of Mason and his fellow missionaries had a profound impacton the Karen. As Renard (1980: 41) observes, ‘This focus on their origins,their kin and history served to foster Karen national consciousness’.However, the quasi-ethnological pursuits of the missionaries were not, inthemselves, suf�cient to generate such a consciousness. Their other activ-ities were also important. This included the creation of a literate tradi-tion through the introduction of a writing system based on Sgaw Karenand the Burmese script devised by the Reverend Jonathan Wade in 1832(Jones 1961: v), the establishment of schools, hostels and printing presses.No less important was the provision of a supra-local network of connec-tions and organizations through Karen churches (Keyes 1977: 56).


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These developments brought educated Christian Karen out of the pre-modern world and into the modern. They wrought a transformation inmodes of consciousness so that educated Karen were not merely able toenvision a shared or common descent for all Karennic-speaking peoples,but also how to organize the Karen trans-locally. The church-based supra-local organizations were a model for the constitution of social groups andnew forms of consociation.

In 1881, sixty-eight years after the arrival of Adoniram Judson and hiswife Ann Hasseltine Judson, the �rst American Baptist missionaries toBurma, the Karen National Association (KNA) was established inToungoo. As Renard (1980: 41–2) records:

Dominated by Christian Sgaws, the KNA appealed to all Karens tounite for their development and for their defense against Burmanbrigands. Members of the KNA sought to make the Karens a progres-sive, advanced people. By the end of the nineteenth century, someKarens in Burma were already studying abroad, taking well-placedjobs in the bureaucracy of British Burma, and coming to dominateindigenous portions of the armed services in Burma. Many of theseindividuals had risen from illiterate backwoods . . . moved to themajor cities of Burma, and become doctors, lawyers and army of�-cers. As prominent Karens they wanted a past comparable to theirstatus. Thus, Karen national consciousness developed in the late1880s, encouraged by the missionaries’ in�uence to accept uncriti-cally their traditional tales.

The KNA was not a political association. Membership was open to allKaren without regard to religion and its aims were ‘to promote Karenidentity, leadership, education and writing and to bring about the socialand economic advancement of the Karen peoples’ (Smith 1991: 45,emphasis added; see, also, Smeaton 1887: 201, 221–6). The establishmentof the KNA (which later came to be the explicitly political Karen NationalUnion with a military arm, the Karen National Liberation Army orKNLA) was a self-conscious assertion of a culturally-based ‘nation-ness’.It was the �rst manifestation of a pan-Karennic-speaking nation of intent,one that transcended dialectal, religious and locale-speci�c differences withentirely modern, secular, civic aims. The KNA, in short, represented theinstitutionalization of Karen ethno-nationalism.

When ethnic Burman anti-British rebellions broke out in Lower Burmain 1886, Karen-armed levies raised by the British played an importantpart in helping to suppress them. In a telling statement about their role,J. B. Vinton wrote:

I never saw the Karen so anxious for a �ght. This is just welding theKarens into a nation, not an aggregate of clans. The heathen Karens


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to a man are brigading themselves under the Christians. The wholething is good for the Karen. This will put virility into our Christianity.. . . From a loose aggregation of clans we shall weld them into anation yet.

(Cited in Smith 1991: 45)

Vinton had evidently come to see that the Karen were not yet a nation.The elite Christian-educated Karen of the KNA clearly shared this viewfor they had begun to see the Karennic-speaking peoples, despite theirinternal differences, as a nation-in-the-making whose identity needed tobe promoted.7 Yet, as the name of the organization (Karen NationalAssociation) indicates, they obviously held the view that the congeries ofKarennic-speaking peoples were in some sense a nation but one that hadto be realized. The KNA and its aspirations exemplify that curious biva-lent orientation common to all forms of ethno-nationalism and nation-alism – atavistically looking backward to the past and forward to the futurewhere the nation seemingly is never quite in the present.

The transition from Karen ethno-nationalism to a fully-�edged nation-alism did not occur overnight. It began with British plans for administra-tive reforms in the late nineteenth century that led KNA leaders to thinkin terms of collective political interests. This gathered momentum in theface of Burman nationalism, which emerged out of the Young Men’sBuddhist Association. It was only in 1920 that we see clear evidence ofKaren ethno-nationalism articulated in a form that linked ethnic identitywith political rights. In a criticism of the Craddock Reforms of that year,Sidney Loo Nee, a lawyer and spokesperson for the KNA, argued that beingthe second largest ‘indigenous race’ in Burma, the identity and interests ofthe Karen should be protected by separate electorates (Smith 1991: 51). In1928, Dr San C. Po, regarded as the father of the Karen nation, issued the�rst call for an independent Karen state (Smith 1991: 44–51).8 Electoratesare locale-speci�c. Sidney Loo Nee’s proposal, however, recognized localeswhere the Karen were a majority in relation to rights to political repre-sentation. It was a demand for a modern form of political administration.San C. Po’s call, on the other hand, was not concerned with political rep-resentation within the colonial state. It was a critical, political leap forwardfrom ethno-nationalism into full-blown nationalism, for he explicitly madethe link between Karen nation-ness and territoriality and sovereignty.

The reproduction of Karen narrations of nation

As Karen ethno-nationalism was being transformed into Karen nation-alism, the �rst and only ‘comprehensive’ Karen ‘history’ was published.Its appearance was, undoubtedly, part of this transformation. It was writtenin Sgaw Karen and published in Rangoon. This was Saw Aung La’s Kanyauata Si Tai Si (History of the Karen, c. 1931).9 This ‘de�nitive’ ethno-history


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was the apotheosis of narrative development based on missionary attemptsto interpret Karen origin narratives. As Renard (1980: 42) notes:

Sau Au Laù’s collection of Karen myths and stories which he thenorganized more or less chronologically, creates considerable problems,however. First, there is so little material in T’ai, Mon, and Burmanhistories to verify these Karen stories. Second, rather than evaluatingthem, Sau Au Laù apparently accepted almost all the stories he hearduncritically. So desirous was Sau Au Laùof describing a glorious Karenpast that, perhaps without intending to be misleading, he wrote an enhanced history of the Karens with little proof to support hisclaims.

It could well be called the ‘master narrative’ of the Karen nation. Thebook is extraordinarily rare. Very few copies (if any) exist in the handsof members of the KNU along the Thailand–Burma borderlands. Nothaving seen an original edition or whole copy, I can only surmise thatparts of it have been copied by hand, typed, cyclostyled or photocopiedand circulated among members of the KNU.10

The KNU manifesto, referred to earlier, draws on Saw Aung Hla’s work.When the KNU and its military arm, the Karen National Liberation Army(KNLA), were in control of substantial areas of Karen State in Burmaand along the Thailand–Burma border, versions of his ethno-history weretaught in primary and secondary schools established by the KNU. Thisensured the reproduction of Karen ethno-history, ethno-nationalism andnationalism as part of the KNU’s educational policies. The use of delib-erately created national symbols – a national coat-of-arms based on bronzefrog drums, Karen dress, a national �ag, a national anthem and LiberationDay parades – played no little part in this process.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, two publications were available fromthe KNU. They were written in English with the purpose of publicizingthe Karen cause to an external readership. The �rst, entitled Karens andCommunism, and Karens Fight for Peace (Saw Moo Troo and Mika Rolley,n.d.), contains an account of what being Karen means:

According to the tribal traditions of the Karens their earliest knownpatriarch is Poo Htot-meh-pah, boar’s tusk father. Hence in answerto the question ‘Who is a Karen?’ one of the answers should be (1)one who can claim his ancestry to Poo Htot-meh-pah and (2) onewho possesses, maintains and cultivates the legacies bequeathed tohim by the said forebear and his predecessors.

(Saw Moo Troo and Mika Rolley, n.d.: 1)11

The publication lists what a Karen heritage consists of: the knowledgethat there is a God, the Divine Being; high moral and ethical standards;


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honesty; simple, quiet and peaceful living; hospitality; language; nationalcostumes; and aptitude for music. Karen inhabitation of Burma, prior toall other groups, is described as follows:

From central Mongolia our forefathers moved down south to Tibetand afterwards further down along both sides of the Irrawaady [sic],Sittang and Salween rivers settling down scatteringly everywhere [sic]between these rivers and thickly in the Irrawaddy Delta. After themcame the Talaings [i.e., Mon] and the Burmese respectively in biggerwaves. Then they lived together or side by side with the subsequentsettlers many of them became Buddhists [sic].

(Saw Moo Troo and Mika Rolley, n.d.: 2)

The second publication, The Karen Revolution in Burma (Lonsdale, n.d.),is primarily concerned to set out the reasons for the Karen struggle.12 Asection called the ‘The origin of the Karens’ states:

According to tradition the home-country of the Karens was the landcalled by them – ‘Htee-Hseh-Meh-Ywa,’ ‘Water pushes sand �ows.’It means that it was a land that Sand Moves or Flows as a river – ‘TheRiver of Sand.’ Perhaps it might be the Gobi desert, which is directlytowards the north. That region is Mongolia. Thus it seems that theKarens came from Mongolia, and they were a tribe of the Mongolianrace. It was as such that the Karens were described by a great manyhistorians as an off-shoot of the main race, the Mongolian race.

(Lonsdale, n.d.: 22)

Lonsdale (n.d.: 23) then presents a chronology of migration fromMongolia:

1. Migration of the Karens from Mongolia 2617 BC.2. Arrival of the Karens in East Turkestan 2013 BC.3. Migration of the Karens from East Turkestan 1866 BC.4. Arrival of the Karens in Tibet in 1864 BC.5. Migration of the Karens from Tibet 1388 BC (the Karens settled

down in Tibet for 476 years).6. Arrival of the Karens in Yunnan in China 1385 BC.7. Migration of the �rst group from Yunnan to S.E. Asia 1128 BC.8. Migration of the second group of the Karens from Yunnan to

S.E. Asia 741 BC.9. The last arrival of the second group to enter S.E. Asia 759 BC.

This chronology lists Saw Aung Hla’s work in the bibliography. The authorsof both publications state that they do not represent the KNU, but thepublications are unequivocally sympathetic to the KNU’s cause.


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When I interviewed General Saw Bo Mya (then President of the KNUand Commander-in-Chief of the KNLA) in 1981, he said:

The Karen migrated down to China from Mongolia and down intoBurma. The Karen are peace-loving people and for that reason theysuffer. Thieving and robbing is not in the Karen line. The Burmesemigrated after the Karen. The Burmese are more aggressive than theKaren and exploit all peoples. They came and encroached on Karenland and the Karen say there is so much land so the Karen movedaway. Because we are peace-loving people we gave way. . . . Later onthe Burmese not only took away what the Karen owned but perse-cuted them.

What contemporary Karen nationalist ethno-history asserts, evident inthese reiterations of Saw Aung Hla’s work, is that the Karen precededthe Burmans into Burma and that they therefore have a prior claim toland. This migratory ethno-history, in other words, makes it possible toclaim that the Karen are more indigenous than the Burmans.13 In nation-alist usages, Karen ethno-history is intimately linked to indigenism asideology (Wee 2001: 17–18).

Karen narrations of nation in refugee camps in Thailand

The quasi-hegemony over the reproduction of Karen ethno-history, ethno-nationalism and nationalism exercised by the KNU was, however, shat-tered with the collapse of Manerplaw, the KNU’s headquarters, in 1992.This was the culmination of the Burmese armed forces’ sustained offen-sives against the Karen, beginning in 1989 one year after a massive pro-democracy uprising in the cities and towns of Burma. The uprising wasbrutally suppressed. Soon after, the Communist Party of Burma implodedprimarily because of mutinies within its ranks by ethnic Kokang and Waelements. This led to a series of cease�res between the military regimeand several ethnic insurgent movements. These cease�res allowed theregime to devote greater manpower and resources to an effort to crushthe KNU and KNLA, which had refused a cease�re.14 The fall ofManerplaw was brought about through collusion between the Burmesemilitary and disaffected Buddhist Karen elements of the KNLA who ledthe Burmese troops through the mine�elds that surrounded Manerplaw.15

The defectors have since designated themselves the Democratic KarenBuddhist Army (DKBA) and now function as surrogates of the Burmesemilitary. Their emergence shows that even in nation-states-in-the-making,fault-lines can exist.

The loss of Manerplaw led the KNU and KNLA to adopt a fully-�edgedguerrilla warfare strategy whereas previously they had employed a strategyof guerrilla and conventional warfare. This doctrinal shift meant the


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concession of a considerable amount of territory. The Burmese military’scounter-insurgency operations involved an intensi�ed re-application of along-standing, ruthless strategy called the ‘Four Cuts’ ( pya ley pya). It isso-named because it aims to cut off food, funds, intelligence and recruitsto the insurgents. This includes forced relocations of entire communitiesinto ‘strategic villages’, con�scation of food that is then re-issued as rations,destruction of crops, ‘taxes’ and a shoot-on-sight policy after curfew hours.Civilian villagers have also been press-ganged into carrying militarysupplies and made to walk in front of Burmese troops acting as human‘mine detectors’.16

Manerplaw’s destruction and the counter-insurgency operations had anumber of consequences. First, the KNLA’s command and controlstructure was decentralized, a direct consequence of its decision to pursuefully-�edged guerrilla warfare. Second, it resulted in an in�ux of Karenrefugees into Thailand where they now number approximately 120,000,accommodated in twenty-six refugee camps along the Thailand–Burmaborder. Third, KNU members, who previously held positions in the civiladministration of the Kawthoolei ‘government’, were dispersed throughoutmany of these camps. They play key roles in the running of the arti�cially-constituted forms of refugee social organization because of their education,administrative experience and ability to deal with Thai of�cials and theThai military – which seek to sequester them and regulate their movements– and Thai non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and internationalnon-governmental organizations (INGOs) that seek to provide humani-tarian relief. The majority of refugees lack education. They come fromlargely subsistence-agricultural communities in Karen State in Burma, andmany of them are not even ethno-nationalists, let alone nationalists.

These developments have had profound consequences for the repro-duction of Karen narrations of nation and, thus, Karen ethno-nationalismand nationalism. Their re-telling has been signi�cantly in�uenced by theconditions in which they are reproduced; no longer in the Karen quasi-nation-state of Kawthoolei, which manifested an almost palpable localautonomy, but the severely circumscribed conditions of life in refugeecamps.

The reproduction of Karen ethno-history and the engendering of Karenethno-nationalism and nationalism vary from camp to camp. In the campswhere KNU members possess the ‘shreds and patches’ of Saw Aung Hla’smaster narrative, Karen ethno-history continues to be taught to childrenin schools set up by KNU members. The details of this ethno-history,however, vary depending on the derivative texts in the possession of schoolteachers. Where these texts are unavailable, Karen ethno-history may notbe taught at all. But, in one notable instance, it is being taught based onmemory.

Thra Victor is a teacher in Mae Ramat camp, which houses approxi-mately 4,700 refugees. He plans to write a three-volume work on the pre-


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colonial history of the Karen. When asked how he intends to go aboutthis without access to a library and references, he pointed to his head andsaid it was all contained therein. He said:

The �rst Karen historian is Saw Aung Hla. According to him, in2234 BC, the Karen moved from Babylon to Mongolia and arrivedin Mongolia in 2197 BC. They left Mongolia for East Turkistan in2017 BC and arrived in 2013 BC. They moved again in 1866 BC andarrived in Tibet in 1864 BC. They moved again in 1388 BC and arrivedin Yunnan in 1385 BC. Then one group of Karen left Yunnan in 1128BC and arrived in Burma in 1125 BC. The second group of Karenleft Yunnan in 741 BC and arrived in Burma in 739 BC. The Monhistorian Pyi Daw Tha Oo Tun Yie wrote that Mons left Tibet forBurma in 692 BC. And in Burma, they saw and attacked the nativepeople whom they called ‘Kari’. ‘Kari’ is Karen, so even the Monhistorian wrote that the Karen came in earlier than them. We arethe �rst group to come to Burma. The Burman historians wrote thatthe Karen came into Burma only in AD 20. But this is too late.

(Ng 1999/2000: 23)

Conclusion

So, in some of these camps, Karen ethno-nationalism is being recreatedanew with the further reproduction of Karen ethno-history. But the artic-ulation of Karen nationalism is, however, weak because many realize thatthey may never return to their homelands in a nation-state that was oncein-the-making. For many older uneducated Karen, the sense of Karennation-ness is ambiguous. Their yearnings are not for a nation-state yet-to-be, but a return to their villages and local communities, to live their way oflife as they knew it, free from predation by the Burmese armed forces.However, the fact of living in the same refugee camps with Karen fromother unfamiliar and indeed hitherto unknown locales in Karen State hasmeant that they can now descry the idea that Karen-ness may well extendbeyond the locale-speci�c communities which provided them with their pri-mary identi�cations. Associated with this is a sense of common sufferingand dispossession of their lands on which they were dependent for theirlivelihoods, caused by a generalized Burman Other. Out of this and theceaseless narration of nation in refugee camps will come, yet again, Karenethno-nationalism and nationalism, as well as refugee-warriors.

Notes

1 A preliminary draft of this paper was �rst presented at the Panel on ‘Politicalfaultlines in Southeast Asia: pre-modernist atavisms in post-colonial nation-states’ (22–25 March 2001, Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian


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Studies, Chicago). This version was presented at the Symposium on ‘Politicalfaultlines in Southeast Asia: movements for ethnic autonomy in nation-statestructures’ (15–16 October 2001, Southeast Asia Research Centre, CityUniversity of Hong Kong).

2 See Rajah (1990b) for a discussion of how such ‘mapping’ came about in thecase of Laos.

3 Keyes has consistently made this theoretical argument, now well supported byempirical data. See Keyes (1976, 1979, 1981, 1995, 2001).

4 This formulation owes much to the work of Geoffrey Benjamin on the ‘deep’sociology of religion (1987), nation-state and its mysti�cations (1988), andindigeny and exogeny (2000).

5 See Rajah (1993) for a discussion of these narratives across ethno-linguisticgroups.

6 See also Keyes (1977: 52). The identi�cation of Ywa with Yahweh was �rstmade by the Reverend Jonathan Wade in 1832 (Renard 1980: 90).

7 The leadership of the KNA consisted largely of teachers and lawyers, manyof whom had studied in Britain, Western Europe and America (Smith 1991:50).

8 The history of the emergence of Karen nationalism is a long and complex oneand is excellently covered by Smith who points out, with great insight, thatBurman and Karen nationalisms were transformations of cultural movementsinto national movements.

9 The work was reprinted in Bangkok, c. 1970 (Renard 1980: 253). Karen nation-alist writers translate Kanyau ata Si Tai Si as ‘The Karen History’, whereasRenard renders it as ‘History of the Karen’. The difference is not a matter ofscrupulousness in translation, or free as against literal translation. ‘Ata’ (/a?//ta/) functions as the equivalent of the possessive case in English, which makesRenard’s rendition more ‘faithful’. The translation by Karen writers (whoseEnglish is by no means elementary) employs the de�nite article ‘the’. It assertsthat Saw Aung Hla’s history is a de�nitive history. Saw Aung La was a jour-nalist and had some education in English (Renard 1980: 41). In rendering hisname in this paper, I use the conventional but not phonetically rigorous wayof transcribing Burmese terms into English. It is not uncommon for ethnicKaren, especially in Rangoon, to bear Burmese names. Renard’s transcriptionof the name relies on the Calmon system (a system devised by the RomanCatholic missionary of that name), which is based on Sgaw Karen. Renard’stranscription is, in fact, a faithful rendition of how the journalist-historian’sname would be pronounced in Sgaw Karen. Sgaw Karen lacks �nal conso-nants (other than a glottal stop). The �nal ‘ng’ in ‘Aung’ would have beenelided by Renard’s informant in translating and transcribing the name of theauthor.

10 I have no doubt that this practice existed amongst nationalist Karen in Burmaand in the KNU. In 1981, when I visited the KNU’s headquarters, I was showna hand-copied version of San C. Po’s Burma and the Karens by his daughter,Thra Mü Rose Po, who was, at that time, Principal of the Karen TeachersTraining School, Kawthoolei. Kawthoolei is the name that nationalist Karenhave given to the nation-state they aspire to. Thra Mü Rose Po had copiedthe entire work on lined foolscap paper before she left Rangoon to join theKNU in the late 1970s. She explained that copies of the book (long out ofprint) were unobtainable in Rangoon and very few copies existed in publicand university libraries. As she did not want to ‘steal’ (as she put it) a librarycopy, she hand-copied one in immaculate copperplate (marking the pagina-tion of the original) in the expectation that the hand-copied version would beuseful to the KNU.


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11 Htot-meh-pah is the Taw Me Pa referred to earlier. The authors, however,have pre�xed the term with ‘Poo’ (‘grandfather’). Although they have trans-lated the compounded term as ‘boar’s tusk father’, the term properly trans-lated would be ‘Grandfather of Boar’s Tusk Father’. They thus recognized thateven Boar’s Tusk Father would have had ancestors. Pre�xing ‘Poo’ to the termwas clearly an attempt at ‘pushing back’ Karen ethno-history.

12 Despite the name, the author is either an Anglo-Burman or a Karen. Whilewell written, the syntax does not suggest a ‘native-speaker’ of English.

13 It is hardly coincidental that the new website of the Karen National Unionshould have the address http://www.tawmeipa.org/. The KNU’s web page washosted by the Karen Solidarity Organization at its website (http://www.karen.org/), but in March 2001 the KNU proceeded to set up its own website.Given that ‘karen.org’ had already been registered, a new address would haveto be all-encompassing in a way that would represent symbolically the Karennation. ‘Tawmeipa’ would seem to be the only meaningful alternative to‘Karen’ for this purpose given Karen ethno-history.

14 See Rajah (2001) for a fuller account and analysis of these developments.15 Their disaffection was largely over alleged discrimination against Buddhist

Karen in the KNLA who were regularly passed over in promotions and contin-uously assigned to the battlefront without respite.

16 See the website of the Karen Human Rights Group for detailed accounts ofthe abuses in�icted on civilian, non-combatant Karen populations in Burma(http://www.khrg.org).

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a 'nation of intent' in burma

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