Amitav Ghosh - Incendiary Circumstances - A Chronicle of the Turmoil of Our Times

I arrived in Rangoon on Sunday, July 28, just in time to make it to the gateside meeting on University Avenue. The week before, the American secretary of state, Warren Christopher, had been in Jakarta and had censured the government of Burma, but his censure was largely rhetorical and ineffective. He stopped short of sanctions, and I wondered what Suu Kyi's response would be. In the past she had characteristically hesitated to call for any kind of economic boycott; she had now changed her position. The new wave of foreign investment, she had concluded, merely "put more money in the pockets of the privileged elite. Sanctions," she said, "would not hurt the ordinary people of Burma."

The meeting was a large one — about six thousand people. Looking around, I spotted the familiar faces of several people, some of them occupying the same spots as before, like restaurant regulars. Suu Kyi was, as before at the Sunday meetings, flanked by two senior colleagues from the National League for Democracy.

On my previous visit I had been astonished by her performance. She was full of merriment, giggling and flirtatious. Several months later she was still animated, but the lightheartedness was no longer there.

She had changed. So too had the city. The next day I went downtown, into the main business district, and found that an entire block had been transformed. The graceful but shabby old colonial arcades — untouched, like so much of Rangoon, for decades — had been torn down, and in a matter of months had been replaced with a maze of office buildings, hotels, and shops. In a nearby marketplace I discovered that the value of the currency had dropped by a third and that the price of foodstuffs had risen dramatically.

I was taken to one of Rangoon's new coffee bars by Ma Thanegi, a friend from my last visit. Ma Thanegi is an artist. She joined the democracy movement in 1988 and became an extremely active member; she even worked as an assistant to Aung San Suu Kyi and was a close friend. But then she was arrested and imprisoned for three years. By the time of her release, she had had enough of politics — she wanted to look after her own interests — and she opened an art gallery with an American expatriate.

Ma Thanegi was concerned about recent developments, especially Western trade sanctions. Her view was that a trade boycott would work only if it was a total boycott, involving all countries. And was that realistic? If only Western companies pulled out, there would be many Asian ones prepared to take their place. These new companies, Ma Thanegi said, would have less regard for Burmese workers and the local environment than those they had replaced.

Ma Thanegi had lived her whole life in Rangoon. She came of age during General Ne Win's Burmese Way to Socialism. "We lived under self-imposed isolation for decades," she said. "There was absolutely nothing, no opportunities at all, but we struggled on. Ma Ma," as she refers to Suu Kyi, "says we have to tighten our belts and think about politics. But there are no more notches to tighten on our belts."

Ma Thanegi wasn't a member of an especially privileged elite — she was middle-class. She wasn't a selfish international trader, eager to devour Burma's natural resources. She wasn't looking for a quick and easy return. Ma Thanegi was tired of coping with scarcity.

I saw Aung San Suu Kyi the next day. As I walked through the familiar blue gates, I noticed a striking new addition: a large bam-boo-and-thatch pavilion. It had been built to house the delegates of the party conference; most of those who had originally been invited did not get to see it.

When Aung San Suu Kyi appeared, I congratulated her on the success of the conference. With a self-deprecating smile, she described it as "routine party work." The achievement, she said, was in SLORC's reaction: it showed "how nervous SLORC was of the democracy movement."

Suu Kyi's face seemed strained and tired. It was now more than a year since she'd been freed from house arrest, and I found myself wondering whether her freedom was not in its way as much a burden as a release. It seemed as though the impossibly difficult task of conducting a political life under the conditions imposed on her by SLORC had proved just as hard as the enforced solitude of the preceding years. Those conditions seemed to be making her into a different kind of political figure.

She was quick to confirm the change. After she was released, she said, she made a point of being conciliatory, "but SLORC did not respond. And we have to carry on with our work. We are not going to sit and wait for SLORC to decide what we want to do… That's not the way politics works."

Suu Kyi had not, as far I knew, responded publicly to the recent ASEAN meeting, in which Burma was granted its new observer status, and I was eager to know what her thoughts might be. I asked her if she was surprised by the warmth of Burma's welcome.

She dismissed my question. It was only normal that the association should welcome a new member.

Her reply surprised me.

No, she said, really. There was nothing unusual about it.

I persisted. At a time when many nations were talking about taking actions against Burma, the Southeast Asian leaders spoke about a policy of constructive engagement, which seemed like an endorsement of the regime.

Again I was dismissed. Picking her words carefully, Suu Kyi said, "I don't quite understand why one talks about constructive engagement as being such a problem. Each government has its own policy, and we accept that this is the policy of the ASEAN nations. I sometimes think that this problem is made out to be much bigger than it really is… Just because [these governments] have decided on a policy of constructive engagement, there is no need for us to think of them as our enemies. I do not think it's a case of us and them."

I was witnessing, I realized, Suu Kyi the tactician. She was choosing her words with such care because she wanted to ensure that she did not alienate the leaders of nations who might otherwise think of her as a threat.

I was struck by the differences in Suu Kyi's manner. That other time I had had several glimpses of her earlier selves — the writer and researcher, the scholar trying to reach for the right words to articulate subtle gradations of truth. She now seemed much more the politician, opaque and often abrupt in her answers. The change was inevitable, perhaps, and possibly necessary, but I still found myself mourning it.

Suu Kyi now had a party line. "We think," she said, "that sanctions are the right thing. Further investment in Burma is not helping the people." It is, she said, serving only a privileged elite. "It is increasingly obvious that investments made now in Burma only help to make SLORC richer and richer. And that is an obstacle to democratization."

I mentioned some of the arguments I had heard — that sanctions will lead only to the Western companies being replaced by their Asian counterparts — and this remark too was peremptorily dismissed. Without Western investment, she said, "I think you will find that confidence in the Burmese economy will diminish. It is not going to encourage the Asians to come rushing in. On the contrary."

At my previous meeting with Suu Kyi, I'd asked her whether she was contemplating a call for mass civil disobedience. She had remarked that she couldn't tell me even if she had been, but she'd gone on to add, on a note of barely disguised frustration, that if the people wanted democracy, then they were going to have to do something to get it. When I asked her about civil disobedience this time, my question was curtly dismissed. "We never discuss our plans in advance," she said. "You know that."

Even so, I was left wondering. That morning I had talked to a diplomat who was certain that if Suu Kyi called for civil disobedience, the country would follow. It would grind to a complete standstill, he said. I asked myself if that might be the future.