1

THE ROLE OF DOBAMAR ASIAYONE IN MYANMAR POLITICS

(1930-1938)

After the early nationalist movements of Myanmar slowly faded away with the

splits of the GCBA (General Council of Burmese Associations) in the 1920s, a

new political element led by Myanmar youths emerged in the Myanmar

political arena. The disintegration of the GCBA created the leadership vacuum

in the independent movement. Under this condition, younger nationalists who

were inclined toward leftist ideas attempted to fill this vacuum. The reason

why Myanmar youth of that period pursued the leftist ideology was deeply

concerned with the social and economic conditions of the people. During the

Colonial period, Myanmar people occasionally had to face with the economic

hardship especially in the late 1920s. The Great Depression began in the

United States in 1929 and spread rapidly worldwide. British Empire including

Myanmar was no exception of the crisis. As a rice export country, Myanmar

agricultural economy was seriously affected by the Great Depression. The

prices of shipped paddy at Yangon jetty gradually declined from 200 rupees

per hundred baskets in 1924 down to 140 rupees in 1930. This was only for

the merchants. For the poor Myanmar farmers, they had to sell the rice to the

merchants with much lower price. The real selling price at the paddy fields

was just about 50 rupees around 1930. This downfall of the prices of rice

made the conditions of poor Myanmar people more intense. Many farmers

and other cultivators lost their lands to the usurers mostly the Chettyars and

became the tenants and landless laborers. The figure of landless laborers

increased from 1,027,597 in 1921 up to 1,512,290 in 1931. In this situation,

many former cultivators moved to the cities particularly to Yangon and

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Mandalay to find hard labors for their survival. 1 But they faced with more

difficulties at the cities because much of the works had already been

monopolized by the Indian immigrants. In fact, many Indian natives migrated

to Myanmar since the early colonial days. Their migration increased rapidly

during the early decades of 20th century. These Indians settled down in

Yangon and could monopolize much of the professions and hard labors such

as professor, lawyer, school teachers, accountant, medical practitioner,

postman, soldier, dairy man, mali, coolies, etc. In reality, the native Myanmar

people already had less positive attitude to the Indian immigrants because of

the high-handed manners of moneylender Chettyars and the thrust of cheaper

Indian land coolies in the agricultural sector in late 1920s. 2 It made the

negative feeling of the natives to the immigrants intense. Now the shifting

natives who moved from villages to the cities were facing again with the

Indian monopoly in every aspect at the Myanmar capitals. As everyone can

imagine, a racial riot was inevitable to break out in the cities.

The first Indo-Burmese Racial Conflict which occurred in May 1930

was actually a very complex issue with a lot of political involvement. The main

figures who caused this conflict were Mr. T. Cooper (a European

representative in the Legislative Council and a business man), U Chan Htun

( a police gazette officer), Lanmadaw Po Toke (the gang master who

dominated Lamadaw and other nearby towns). The incident stemmed from

the boycott of Indian Coringhi stevedores from the Scindia Steam Navigation

1
Thein Pe Myint, တစ်ထောင့်ကိုးရာသုံးဆယ်တစ်ဝိုက်မြန်မာပြည်နိုင်ငံရေး
သမိုင်း (History of Myanmar politics around 1930) Yangon, Nantthar Press, 1970, pp. 53-
55. (Hereafter cited as Thein Pe Myint, Myanmar politics around 1930)
2
Dobamar Asiayone Thamine Pyusuyay Ahpwe (ed.), တို့ဗမာအစည်းအရုံးသမိုင်း
အကျဉ်းချုပ်, (A Brief history of Dobama Asiayone), Volume-1, Yangon, Sarpay Baikman
Press,1976, pp. 116-117. (Hereafter cited as A Brief history of Dobama Asiayone)
 3

Co. Ltd. The Indian stevedores demanded the company to raise their daily

wages from Rs 1.50 to Rs 2. When the company declined their demand, the

Indian stevedores went on strike on 10 th May 1930. They thought if they did

not go to work, there would be nobody to deal with the jobs at the port. Then,

their employers would come to agree with their demand to rise their daily

wages. However, U Chan Htun and Mr. T. Cooper had already predicted what

could happen and found the solution for the strike. They contacted Lanmadaw

Po Toat who was serving as a stooge for the corrupted politicians. U Chan

Htun asked Po Toat to find 2,000 natives who were willing to work as coolies

in Yangon jetty for Rs 1.5 per day. As soon as the Coringhis went on strike,

the trucks filled with Myanmar coolies arrived at the jetty and replaced the

vacuum of the Coringhis. Seeing what happened, the Coringhis strikers gave

in their demands and attempted to negotiate with their employers. Soon they

reached an agreement to accept company's offer for Rs 1.75 per day. Thus,

the Coringhis ended the strike. When the native laborers came to their work

the next day without knowing this situation, they only faced with the ridicules

and insults of the reinstated Coringhis laborers. As the leaders of the

Burmese laborers were from the criminal gangs of Po Toat, they immediately

started a brawl with the Coringhis. Although it was just a clash between the

native coolies and Inidan coolies over the jobs at the Yangon port, the Yangon

newspapers exaggerated the conflict and portrayed it as a racial conflict.

Finally, the clashes and assaults between the two gangs of laborers quickly

spread as an Indo-Burmese racial conflict to the capital and other cities. The

riot which lasted four days caused the deaths of some natives and about 250

Indians. Although the riot died down on 29 th May with the efforts of the elderly
 4

leaders from both communities, the infuriating feeling of the natives being

insulted by the foreign Indians did not easily fade away.1

On this occasion, some politically strong-minded youths utilized the

Indo-Burmese Conflict for their political benefit. They perceived the conflict as

the attack of the aliens on the native people. At the very evening of the riot

started, Ko Hla Baw, Ko Ba Thaung and some friends held a mass meeting at

Botathaung playground. At the meeting, they declared that the Burmese had

no more reason to tolerate the arrogance of Kala people and instigated the

audience to drive out the foreigners from the land of the Burmese. With the

sudden motivation and enthusiasm, those who attended the meeting shouted

heartily and repeatedly the word "Doh Bamar".2 This was the first appearance

of the word "Dobamar" as a slogan in the public meeting. Soon after the riot,

Ko Ba Thaung, published a pamphlet named 'Naingganpyu Sarzu Ahmat Tit'

(Reform Series No. 1). The motto of it was described on the front page as

follows:

Bamarpyithi Dopyi (Burma is our country),

Bamarsarthi Dosar (The Burmese literature is our literature),

Bamarsagarthi Dosagar (The Burmese language is our language).3

All these mottos were an alarm for the Myanmar people to promote the dignity

of national identities, Myanmar literature and language. At the end of the

1
(a) Thein Pe Myint, Myanmar politics around 1930, pp.79-84
(b) Sagaing Han Tin, မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော်မှတ်တမ်း-၃ (The Record of Myanmar State-
III), Yangon, Pyithu Arnar Press, 1969, pp. 300-1.
2
Thuriya Newspaper, memoir of Thakin Hla Baw concerning the inception of the DBA, 20. 6.
1938
3
Dobamar Asiayone, နိုင်ငံပြုစာစုအမှတ်-၁, (Reform Series No. I), Yangon, Pyigyi
Mandai, 1930, p.1 (Hereafter cited as Naingganpyu-I)
 5

pamphlet, the name 'Dobamar Asiayon, was described as the publisher of the

pamphlet.1 Thus, the new association which would try to fill the leadership

vacuum began to appear in the Myanmar nationalist movement.

The most noticeable expression of the Dobama Asiayone would be the

use of “Thakin” prefix in front of the names of the members. The term “Thakin”

meant Master or Lord and was used in mentioning to the members of the

royal families and higher officials as a respectful expression in the monarchial

time. Now, the young Myanmar nationalists decided to adopt the Thakin prefix

to their names as a means to cultivate "the spirit of master" in the minds of

fellow people. In this way, the Dobama Asiayone (DBA) gradually became

popular among the Myanmar youths.2

Until this time, it seemed like the DBA had not been formed as a

systematic organization yet with the unstable leadership and indefinite party

policies. One thing that made the DBA to become a fully political organization

was its conferences. By holding conferences, they could draw the public

attention and brought important figures into their organization. The

Conference which was held in Yenangyaung was one of those attempts to

organize the DBA as a solidified political organization. The conference was

declared open on March 30, 1935 at 2 p.m. 3 The most noteworthy incident

that took place during the conference was the enrollment of Mr. Maung

Hmine. Mr. Maung Hmine is one of the pseudonyms of U Lun, a well-known

1
Naingganpyu-I, p. 8
2
(a) Thakin Kodaw Hmaing, သခင်ဋီကာ, (Detailed and explanatory writing about Thakin),
First edition, Yangon, Sarpaylawka Press, 1965, pp. 162-163
(b) Khin Maung Latt, မီးတုတ်သိမ်းမောင်ကြီး၏ဘဝနှင့်နိုင်ငံရေးလှုပ်ရှားမှု
များ (Life and Political Movements of Meedok Thakin Thein Maung Gyi) Yangon,
Sarpay Baikman, 1987, p. 42-43 (Hereafter cited as Khin Maung Latt, Meedok Thakin
Thein Muang Gyi)
3
တို့ဗမာအစည်းအရုံးသမိုင်း, (History of Dobama Asiayone), Yangon, Sarpay Beikman
Press, 1976, p.175 (Hereafter cited as History of Dobama Asiayone)
 6

literary figure who was later to be a winner of the Stalin Peace award. On

becoming a Thakin, he called himself Thakin Kodaw Hmine, an equivalent to

Master Lord Hmine.

During the Yenangyaung Conference, the Thakins were able to elect

the following Executive Committee for the year 1936:

President — Thakin Ba Sein

Vice President — Thakin Lay Maung

Secretary — Thakin Thein Maung

Joint Secretary — Thakin Tun Ok

Treasurer — Thakin Tun Khin

Information — Thakin Nyi

Members — Thakin Han, Thakin Tun Shwe, Thakin Ba

Thus, after five years in the political arena, the Thakins were for the

first time able to form a proper party with a central executive. The popularity of

the Yenangyaung Conference also helped the DBA to gain foreign contacts.

Soon after the First Conference, the President, Thakin Ba Sein, made a brief

tour of the principal towns in India. The vice-president, Thakin Lay Maung, left

Yangon on July 6, 1935 at the invitation of an Indian journalist, Sri Hari Rao. 1

While the two Thakin leaders were away in India, their comrades in

Myanmar launched a countrywide campaign to form district organizations.

The extent of their achievement can be gauged by the number of delegates

registered at the Second Conference held at Myingyan on June 27 through

1
History of Dobama Asiayone, p.176
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29, 1936. While the Yenangyaung conference had been attended by forty

delegates, the Myingyan conference was attended by over two hundred from

seventeen districts.1 The conference opened with the singing of the Dobama

Song. The chairman was Thakin Kodaw Hmine while Thakin Ba Sein acted as

the master of ceremonies. One of the new members who enrolled to the DBA

at the Myingyan conference was Prince Hteik Tin Kodaw Gyi, a grandson of

the Crown Prince Kanaung.2 One outstanding event at the conference was

the recognition of the Dobama Song as the national song. Moreover, from the

Myingyan Conference, the Thakins passed their first resolution which was

declaring to contend for seats in the House of Representatives in the 1936

election to wreck the British administration from within.3

To implement this ambition, a meeting of the executive committee of

the DBA which was held in July 19, 1936 decided to form a political unit. It

was Komin Kochin Party (KMKC) which would serve as a spearhead of the

DBA to assault the British administration system by taking seats in the

parliament. The party's Executive Committee members were as followed;

President - Thakin Han

Vice President- Thakin Mya

Treasurer - Thakin Tun Khin

Secretary - Thakin Kant Tint

Information - Thakin Thein Maung

1
History of Dobama Asiayone, p.197
2
Thakin Ba Sein, သခင်များလွတ်လပ်ရေးကြိုးပမ်းမှု, (Thakins’ Struggle for
Independence), Yangon, Taing Pyi Pyu Press, 1943. p.60
3
History of Dobama Asiayone, p.201
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Member - Thakin Ba Sein4

In 1936 general election, three KMKC members were elected for the

House of Representatives (Legislative Council). They were Thakin Mya,

Thakin Hla Tin and Thakin Ant Gyi. Thakin Mya, about 40 years old at that

time was one of the boycotters of the 1920 student strike and respectable

senior person among his colleagues. Although few in number, the KMKC

members of the House of Representatives were noticeable. At the first

session of the House of Representatives, held on February 10, 1937, they

expressed their contempt for alien rule by remaining seated when the entire

House stood up to greet the governor as he entered the Assembly. They also

refrained from joining the other members when they stood to pledge their

allegiance to the Crown. Their most rebellious action during the first session

was their dramatic walk-out in protest against the stipulation that all members

of the House of Representatives must conduct debates in the English

language. Furthermore, a mass meeting was held to denounce this stipulation

of using English language in the Assembly. This mass meeting was held at

the Town Hall under the auspices of the DBA. The meeting was attended by a

large crowd which included many monks. The KMKC representatives issued a

pamphlet entitled: "No Burmese to be spoken in Burma is an insult to the

whole Nation." The first paragraph of their pamphlet asked; "If speaking

Burmese is not permitted in Burma, in what country shall it be spoken?" Their

other activities in the House of Representatives were less spectacular but

they made use of every opportunity to harass the government. One such

opportunity was a confrontation during the question period, when it was

4
ကိုယ့်မင်းကိုယ့်ချင်းစာတမ်းအမှတ်-၁, (Manifesto No. 1 of the Komin Kochin
Party), Myingyan, Mingala Yaung Shein Press, 1936.
 9

normal procedure to challenge the government. The KMKC members

demanded information about Myanmar nationalists who had been imprisoned

or who had been exiled in connection with the Saya San uprising. They also

inquired about the Thakins who were detained in prison.1

While the KMKC members were harassing the authorities in the

Legislative Council, the remaining leaders of the Dobama concentrated their

attention on building up their organization. The third conference of the DBA

was held in Pyay in March 1938. In fact, the Third Conference at Pyay was

held in the eighth years of the DBA’s existence. It is worthwhile summarizing

how far the Thakins had come from their humble beginnings. By 1938 two

important auxiliary organizations of the DBA: the KMKC and the Bama

Letyone Tat, had been formed and placed under the direct control of the DBA.

Actually, the Pyay conference turned out to be a turning point for the DBA.

During the conference, disagreements and personal conflicts broke out

among the DBA leaders. At the conference, Thakin Thein Maung was elected

as President. Later, President Thakin Thein Maung dismissed Thakin Ba Sein

and Thakin Kyaw Yin (both were the members of the executive committee

and propagandists of the DBA) from the executive committee without the

consent of other executive committee members. In August 1938, the

executive committee was reconstituted and Ko Aung San and Ko Nu (the

leaders of Rangoon University Student Union) came to join the DBA. They

were appointed as propagandists in the place of Thakin Ba Sein and Thakin

Kyaw Yin. Among the DBA’s members, there were some people who objected

the immediate appointment of the young student leaders as members of the

1
ကိုယ့်မင်းကိုယ့်ချင်းတည်ထောင်မှုစာစုအမှတ်-၁, (Collection of Records No. 1 on
the Komin Kochin Party Establishment), Yangon, Bama Art Press,1936. pp. 22
 10

executive committee and the dismissal of Thakin Ba Sein and Thakin Kyaw

Yin. Although the DBA was not officially split, two rival groups were formed

within the DBA itself: the DBA led Thakin Ba Sein and the DBA led by Thakin

Kodaw Hmine in which Thakin Aung San and Thakin Nu involved.1

Despite those internal conflicts and disunity among the leadership, the

DBA could still dominate the late 1930’s Myanmar politic arena. Their

profound impact in Myanmar politics can be seen in the 1300 Revolution, a

nation-wide general strike against the British imperialist government. The

1300 Revolution began with the Oilfield Workers’ Strike that broke out in

1938. It was named for the Myanmar traditional year the revolution occurred.

In 1938, the BOC’s workers from Chauk demanded their employee to

increase their daily wages, to give them medical leave when necessary and to

recognize Myanmar religious holidays. The Company rejected their demands

and fired the workers instead. Then, the workers decided to go on strike. The

news spread from another BOC company in Thanlyin and another strike broke

out in that town as well. In November, the oilfield workers from Chauk

marched to Yangon under the leadership of Po Hla Gyi to express their

general dissatisfactions.2

The Oilfield Workers’ Strike was originated from the disagreement

between employers and employees. But the DBA saw it as an opportunity to

disturb or even to take down the British administration by turning the workers’

strike into a nation-wide general strike. They showed their support to the
1
(a)တို့ဗမာအစည်းအရုံးပြည်ညီလာခံ, (Dobama Asiayone’s Pyi Conference), Yangon,
Dobama Press, 1939 p.7
(b) U Thein Hlaing,ခေတ်သစ်အရှေ့တောင်အာရှ, (Modern Southeast Asia), First edition,
Yangon, Yarpyae Press, 2015, p.119
2
Thakin Ba Tin, တစ်ထောင့်သုံးရာပြည့်အရေးတော်ပုံမှတ်တမ်း (The Record of the
Thirteen Hundredth Year Strife), Yangon, Myawadi Press, 1964, p.23
 11

Oilfield Workers’ Strike and could persuade Po Hla Gyi to accept the “Thakin”

prefix in his name. In this way, Po Hla Gyi, the leader of workers’ strike

became Thakin Po Hla Gyi.1 The government could predict that the Myanmar

nationalists would take advantage of the workers’ strike and tried their best to

stop it. But their actions made the situation worse. When the Oilfield Workers’

strike arrived at Magway, Ko Ba Hein and Ko Ba Swe, the leaders of Magway

University Student Union joined with the strike and gave anti-British speech to

the audience. The British authority took immediate action and arrested the two

student leaders.2

The government expected that the workers’ strike would be solved

when the company and its employees came to reach an agreement. They did

not want any external forces get involved in the workers’ strike so that it would

not evolve into a bigger problem like general strike. That was why they

immediately arrested the student leaders so that any individual student or

student organizations would not dare to involve in this Oilfield Workers’ Strike.

But their action resulted in a reverse outcome which was completely opposite

to their expectation. When the news of arrested student leaders spread,

student protesters in Yangon surrounded the Secretariat to show their support

for Oil Field Workers’ Strike and demanded to release the student leaders.

When the protesters were charged by mounted police, a student named Ko

Aung Kyaw was killed. Then, the situations were getting worse and became

out of control. As oppose to the expectation of the government, the workers’

1
Ludu Maung Thit Lwin, တစ်ထောင့်သုံးရာပြည့်ရေနံအရေးတော်ပုံ, (The Oilfield Strike
of 1938), Mandalay, Kyipwayay Press, 1967 pp.13-14 (Hereafter cited as Maung Thit Lwin,
Oilfield Strike)
2
Aung Kyi Soe Myint, ၇၈နှစ်မြောက်၁၃၀၀ပြည့်အရေးတော်ပုံ မေဒေး (သို့မဟုတ်) ကမ္
ဘာ့အလုပ်သမားနေ့, (78th Anniversary of the 1300 Revolution May Day (aka) International
Worker’s Day), Eleven Journal, 1 May 2016.
 12

strike had now turned into a nation-wide general strike. The police even had

to use the guns to separate the crowd. In Mandalay, when the police shot into

the crowd of protesters, 17 people got killed. According to the government’s

announcement, 33 people were killed in this incident when the real number of

people who got killed or injured could be more than that. 1 Now it is time to see

the result of this 1300 Revolution. The whole incident lasted nearly two years.

After this, the workers returned to work, some died of illness or injuries but the

BOC company yielded some demands and everything got back to normal

position.2 The 1300 Revolution broke out when the DBA split into two groups.

However, it can be seen that the DBA leaders could make a political profit

from an ordinary workers’ strike by turning it into a nation-wide general strike.

That showed the profound aspect of the Dobama Asiayone in Myanmar

politics during the colonial period.

1
Donal M. Seekins, Historical Dictionary of Burma, Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. p.478
2
The Day Myanmar’s Oil Workers Downed Tools, The Irrawaddy Journal. 8 January 2020