Writer of Conviction and Courage

By Myint Zan

Ludu (``The People'') Daw Amar, an eminent and revered Burmese author, passed away earlier this month in Mandalay, Burma, at the age of 92. She was respected throughout the country by people from all walks of life.

Daw Amar (roughly translatable as Ms. Firm, ``Daw" being an honorific for elder Burmese women) made her mark on the Burmese literary and political scene at a very young age. While still studying at Rangoon University she was one of the leading students who participated in a strike against the University and British colonial authorities in what is now known as the second ``University Student Strike'' of February 1936. Later, Amar met journalist, U (``Mr.'') Hla (``Handsome") and they were married in 1939. After their marriage U Hla (a native of lower Burma) relocated to Mandalay, Burma's cultural capital and hometown of Daw Amar. U Hla died in August 1982.

As the proprietors and editors of a premier private newspaper Ludu (until it was permanently shut down by the then military government in July 1967) both Hla and Amar, starting from the early 1950s, were known by the honorific prefix Ludu.

Daw Amar had had more than her fair share of the slings and arrows of misfortune. In the mid-1950s her husband U Hla was sentenced to three years imprisonment for sedition. During that period she mainly ran the Ludu daily newspaper as well as looking after her children who were growing up.

It would seem that the ``firm" leftist views of the Ludu couple passed down to at least two of their offspring in an even more radical way. Daw Amar's eldest son, Soe Win, while studying at Rangoon University ``went underground'' in 1963 to join the Communist rebels. (The Communist Party of Burma, or CPB, was established in August 1939. After independence in January 1948, when the CPB went underground, it was outlawed in March 1948 and it still is to this day). Sadly, in 1968, during the CPB's ``internal purges'' in its jungle stronghold, Soe Win was killed. Daw Amar's second son Pho Than Jaung (``buddy steel'') was imprisoned without charge or trial for nearly six years from July 1966 to May 1972. On the verge of being rearrested in August 1976, Pho Than Jaung managed to escape to join the CPB rebels and the mother and son never met again. On suspicion of being in contact with Pho Than Jaung, both the Ludu couple were imprisoned. Daw Amar ― as she had told me ― for ``one year, one month and one day" from 1978 to 79. Her youngest son Nyein Chan (the writer Nyipulay) spent more than eight years in jail from December 1990 to early 1999. Like his late father, he was convicted for sedition, only this time it was by a much more authoritarian regime.

During the time when the Ludu newspaper was published, both husband and wife had their own separate columns. U Hla's columns entitled (in translation) ``General things that I want to write about'' was less ideological and softer in both substance and tone than the columns Daw Amar authored under the heading ``Comments on moving world events.'' During the mid-1960s, the Ludu editorials and especially Daw Amar's columns were scathing in their condemnation of the Johnson administration's policies in Vietnam.

Daw Amar's literary contributions extend far beyond political matters. In 1964 she won the national literary prize for her book Artistes Loved by the People ― a meticulous study of musicians and artists mainly from Upper Burma. Though she had made many outstanding contributions about Burmese culture in the books published after 1964 she never won any more national literary prizes awarded by the government. Apart from the fact that most of her family's, including her own, political views and stance were unpalatable to the authorities, the additional reason for this ``non-award'' was due to her principled stand when she started writing around 1967 in direct, highly accessible ``colloquial Burmese'' rather than the ― at least at times ― contrived and in a sense elitist literary or formal style.

Since about a quarter of a century before her death hundreds of persons from all over the country gathered on November 29 each year in Mandalay to pay tribute to Amay (``Mother") Amar. For all those who revered her, Daw Amar in her later years was simply known as Amay.

At what may be considered the start of Daw Amar's literary and political career more than seventy years ago, during the February 1936 Rangoon University students' strike, another prominent Burmese literary figure ― the late Minthuwun (1909-2004) gave her a poem. In his own handwriting, part of which read, in adapted translation, as follows:

The crooked (way) is not the ``straight" (up right way)

Supine-ness is not firmness

Don't let the crookedness prevail over that of uprightness

Don't let firmness become supine-ness

The poem used her name ``Amar" firmness as a starting point and as an exhortation. Amay Daw Amar's life is an ample testament that the Mother lived up to her name of principled firmness: a life indeed of kindness as well as conviction which can only be a source of inspiration and courage for all those who mourn her passing.

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