The Burmese need to break free of double-slave mentality - subservience towards leaders and deference to Expert views

Why do the Burmese look to foreign experts for the problems which 3 generations of Burmese ourselves have been unable to find solutions for?

Why do we waste time and look across our borders hoping some morons preferably in the West - who don't speak our languages, never lived in our midst, never experienced our difficulties, never fought our battles with us - would give us good and strategic advice???

If these outside philistines want to write about, talk about and bullshit about our misery and our difficulties while turning themselves into Gurus that's fine.


It's one of the tried and true career-building exercises - dissecting the problems of the oppressed and the downtrodden - the Wretched of the Earth.


But should we or do we need to attach any credence to anything these experts pump out as "expert veiws"? - is the question every self-respecting and thinking Burmese should ask of themselves.

No one other than the late Aung San, the father of Daw ASSK, derided the Burmese NOT to turn anyone into the all-knowing Cult-like leader, in his speech at Shwedagon Middle Terrace on 17 Jan 1946. Revolutions or attempts to change systems of government have no chance of succeeding if there is no ground-swell of resistance BY EVERY CITIZEN.

Foreigners have contracted this terminal Burmese disease of Cultism which Aung San prophetically warned against 65 years ago: every time they write about Burma most of it isl about what Daw Aung San Suu Kyi should, or should not do, would or would do. Every single utterance she makes is put under magnifying glasses and are dissected, and meanings extracted or read into.

As long as Burmese remain stuck in this double-slave mentality - subservient towards those in leadership positions - in skirt or in green uniform, and deferrential towards foreigners who claim unwarranted expertise on things Burma I think Burma will remain a colony of the Burmese generals and a brothel of intellectual raw materials on which foreign experts will build their careers, while pumping out pathetically patronizing bullshit packaged as "specialist knowledge".

If we have any self-respect as Burmese we will break free of this double slavery: mental subservience to influential leaders and seeking to find worthy ideas from experts. The answers lie with us - not with leaders nor the experts.

We live in a world created by generations of western imperialists - Yellow Imperialism of Beijing still has a way to go, as far as building its hegemonic hold on the popular imagination.



Among the Burmese - just like among many brown, yellow, black and mixed skinned crowds - expertise is seen as more credible if it is produced and presented by men and women of White Skin.

Too many White experts Gene Sharp, ICG consultants, Ashley South, Richard Horsey and the list goes on - dishing out too many useless and failed ideas our way while sharing in no responsibility when the Burmese have failed to change the regime and its inhumane system of government.

Too many crocodiles in our swamp shedding tears.

The sooner the Burmese, that is, the class of us natives that comes into contact with and is in a position to interact with these international experts (on everything), realize how slavish and colonial we have been in our own struggles, the closer we will be to finding solutions to our problem of getting rid of the tyranny, by any means necessary.

Dr Zarni (m.zarni@lse.ac.uk) is Visiting Fellow, Department of International Development, LSE in United Kingdom.