Nationalism: The Wrong Framework for Understanding Local Activism in Myanmar
Photo: Robert Sharp via English PEN/Flickr
Nationalism is on the rise globally. From ‘America First’ in the United States and ‘Brexit’ in Britain to ‘Hindutva’ in India, nations’ leaders rally their followers around nationalism. For international audiences, the term ‘nationalism’ fits popular sentiments in favor of putting one’s nation first at a particular moment. Also, ‘nationalism’ as an accepted lexicon makes the job of reporters’ and writers’ easy as they try to explain wide-scale national phenomena to their readers. But, beyond news headlines, the term ‘nationalism’ fails to explain grassroots movements ranging from anti-gun protests and women’s rights movements in the United States to extreme environmentalism in the United Kingdom. Similarly, Myanmar and its struggles, especially those that involve ethnic and religious minorities, are often understood and analyzed through the lens of nationalism. However, even the plural ‘nationalisms’ does not adequately describe emerging ethnic and geographical mobilizations against the state and against dominant groups such as Burmans or Bamar.
Nationalism is not a catch-all term. This ISEAS Perspective paper by Tharaphi Than seeks to unpack what nationalism means in Myanmar amidst growing struggles on the part of minorities—ethnic, religious, and geographical—for various goals, ranging from the state’s recognition of their identities to environmental protection, federalism, and confederacy. Distinguishing between the terms ‘nationalism’ and ‘activism’, the paper argues that the popular notion of ‘nationalism’ or ‘amyothayay’ in Burmese undermines and misrepresents local activism. That notion also leads readers to fail to distinguish civic movements from widely known ‘Burman-and-Buddhism’ promotion movements such as Ma-Ba-Tha, or the Organization for the Protection of Race and Religion. Branding local activism as ‘nationalism’ also inevitably frames grassroots movements through Burman-Buddhist-centered lenses.
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