Conclusion

This concluding chapter refers back to the original intentions outlined in the Introduction and comments on how the preceding chapters have expanded upon those intentions. It proposes that further work of a similar kind in relation to other regions is greatly desired, but outlines some of the impediments to such work. It says that the book has demonstrated the complexity of Kachin ideological systems and Kachin political culture and how the underlying causes of conflict in the Kachin region cannot be reduced to a simplistic political narrative. Burmese national politicians have yet to engage with the kind of complex history outlined in this book. However, recognising the limitations of previous analysis is an important element of any national reconciliation and political rehabilitation.

Boundaries and borders

This chapter examines the changing political framework of the region from the late nineteenth century through to World War I as fluid political boundaries that were transformed into bordered territories. It describes how local elites in the Yunnan boundary region managed the transition zone of the mountains between Burma and China, and the role that they played in the local political system after the Panthay revolt and just prior to the fall of the Konbaung Dynasty in Burma. The chapter then describes how old and new elites were created in this process of geo-political transformation. It focuses in particular on the eastern borderworld, where great ethnographic complexity became rationalised in line with new and emerging political needs. It describes in detail how a local system of cross-group relations expressed as a ritual system became a model for later Kachin ethno-nationalist ideological expansion influenced by these administrative changes.

Transnational symbols in national spaces

This chapter considers the manau as both a symbol of modern Kachin ethno-nationalism and as a vector for understanding some of its local, regional, and historical complexities. It considers the recent developments of these festivals in India, Burma, Yunnan, and Thailand as a way of understanding how local and regional dynamics affect the relationships between Singpho, Kachin, and Jingpo communities across the region. The chapter begins by explaining the modern emergence of the manau festival from the colonial period onwards, looking in detail at the aesthetic symbolism of the form in different contexts. This enables us to appreciate the constantly evolving and discursive nature of this form by exploring multiple events separated by both distance and time. It suggests that the manau has managed to attain and sustain its relevance because of its transformative capacities.

Virtue

This chapter considers the impact of conversion to Christianity among the Kachin peoples of Burma and the role that conflict has had in promoting Christianity as a principal ideological foundation for the social movement of Kachin ethno-nationalism. It challenges the perception that Christianity was a majority belief system before the late 1970s and explores some of the different social dynamics that produced this large-scale conversion beyond the colonial period. It also examines the boundaries between Christianity (specifically American Baptist doctrinal orthodoxies), Theravada Buddhism, and autochthonous belief systems to show how ideological perceptions of threats to the self and the community have been modelled by Kachin Christian ethno-nationalists within the Kachin Baptist Church. It then describes how the social prevalence of this belief system among Kachin youth has created significant shifts in comprehension of ‘Kachin’ history and society, which have also had a transformative effect upon modern Kachin ethno-nationalist ideologies.

Introduction

This introductory chapter considers perspectives on modern Kachin ethno-nationalism from the vantage point of different communities in Burma, India, China, and Thailand. It discusses anthropological representations of ‘the Kachin’ in the work of Edmund Leach, Jonathan Friedman, and lately that of James C. Scott, and examines the political implications of these representations. The chapter also considers why historians have found it difficult to undertake detailed studies of this region and the dangers of over-privileging the mandala as the defining historical intellectual apparatus. The methodological approach and objectives of the book are outlined in relation to these issues, with a particular focus on Jinghpaw dynamic political expansionism as a critical historical construct. The chapter concludes by briefly outlining each chapter to follow.

War and independence

This chapter considers the impact of World War II on the Kachin region. It examines evidence for the motivations of Kachin volunteers during the war in the Kachin Levies and other organisations. It examines the demographics of this conflict and its impact on the development of politicised Kachin youth groups. It discusses their role in developing political strategy for Kachin State in the Union of Burma at the Panglong Conference and Frontier Areas Committee of Enquiry in 1947. The chapter also looks at the developments in this region in a broader regional context to understand how related communities in Burma, India, and China interacted with each other and with their respective national governments during the early post-World War II years.

Militarisation and the contest of modernities

Following on from discussion of emerging ideological models of modern ‘Kachin’ ethno-nationalism in Chapters 2 and 3, this chapter examines how a new elite group emerged from a social entity now called ‘Kachin’ who were to have great influence upon these developments: the Kachin soldiers who signed up to imperial military structures between the two World Wars. It describes how the social context of recruitment created pressures within Kachin society when these soldiers were demobilised. It also describes how a new social development organisation emerged from this group, led by Subedar Major Jinghpaw Gam. Neither gumsa nor gumlao, but representing a new orientation for political and social interaction, and with a strong orientation towards social welfare and education, it also had much in common with anti-colonial movements seen across the region and should be understood in this light.

Dimokrasi Prat to Rawt Malan!

This chapter considers the failure of early attempts at democracy in the Union of Burma and the slide towards conflict in the Kachin region. It uses detailed analysis of the life story of one of the founding soldiers in the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) to explain how many of the themes of the book — migration, exclusion, educational disadvantage, perceptions of threats to the self — become woven together at this time to create an outcome of violence. The chapter describes the early efforts to raise funds for an armed movement and the ways in which moral justifications for these acts were given. It also describes the disappointment that emerged in the political culture under U Nu and the Sama Duwa Sinwa Nawng to explore further the notion of Kachin political consensus building as a critical dynamic in the social justification of armed revolt.

Ritual, ideology and politics

This chapter considers the 1843 revolt from the perspective of the trans-Patkai region and possible connections with the Opium Wars. It explores the political and cultural contexts of Singpho-Jinghpaw interaction with a wider world, and concludes that the spread of gumlao revolt was an outcome of the region-wide pressures that were placed upon this region in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Evidence of ideological change in Jinghpaw models of power is then suggested by a close examination of a ritual called the Tawn Na, which emerged as a discourse in relation to changes seen at the Burmese court during this time. The chapter proposes that in light of this regional transformation, it would be inappropriate to consider ‘Kachin’ ideological models insulated from the political developments that were taking place across this region, and these changes were important in the later development of modern Kachin ethno-nationalism.

Global histories, local exclusions

This chapter discusses the encounters between the British East India Company in early nineteenth-century Assam and Singpho communities who had expanded their territorial possessions in the region because of the regional disorder of the previous century. These encounters are placed in the context of changes in the nature of the state in Asia as well as in European trading empires, raising questions about the relevance of a simple dichotomy between notions of ‘state’ and ‘non-state’ at this time in this region. The effects of the nascent Assam tea industry are discussed in relation to Singpho migration and internal dynamics of kinship relations and the creation of local hierarchies. The failure of the Company to develop local political institutions that could map onto Singpho-Jinghpaw political culture is explored through the Singpho revolt of 1843 and the effect of this in creating a local outcome of political exclusion.