1-9-2007 တြင္ IRRAWADDY တြင္ေဖာ္ျပေသာ ေဆာင္းပါးရွင္ Yeni ၏ေဆာင္းပါးကို ကူးယူေဖာ္ျပျခင္းျဖစ္ပါသည္။
''The Muslim schoolteacher who joined Burma’s martyrs''
Being a Muslim in a country where 87 percent of the population is Buddhist, and where the military government regularly practices ultra-nationalism and uses religion as a political tool, means joining the underprivileged at the bottom of the pile
Being a Muslim in a country where 87 percent of the population is Buddhist, and where the military government regularly practices ultra-nationalism and uses religion as a political tool, means joining the underprivileged at the bottom of the pile
Muslims in Burma regularly suffer social and religious discrimination. Burmese Buddhists commonly call them, Kala, a derogatory term for South Asians and also used insultingly to describe westerners.
While some consider the term abusive and degrading, there’s general acceptance that it takes on a sense of honor, respect and lovingkindness when it’s used in the form Kalagyi (Big Kala), to describe independence hero Abdul Razak.
U Razak rose from the position of headmaster of Mandalay Central National High School to become minister of education and national planning in Burma’s pre-independence government. His career was brought to a brutal end at the age of 49, when he was gunned down by assassins on July 19, 1947, together with independence leader Gen Aung San and seven other cabinet members and colleagues. The nine murdered leaders are commemorated annually on the country’s Martyr’s Day.
Mandalay, where U Razak taught, is a center of Burmese Buddhist faith and culture. Yet U Razak, of ethnic Indian-Burmese origin, was fully accepted by the community.
His former students remember him with affection, retaining a picture of their former headmaster dressed in a white shirt, black jacket and green sarong, holding a cheroot in one hand and a cane in the other. A new book published in July titled U Razak of Burma: A Teacher, a Leader, a Martyr, collects some of their reminiscences.
“Whenever we saw Sayagyi (headmaster), he always smiled back at us. Even when he was holding a cane to punish the students for their misdeeds, one could not see any hint of anger on his face but only a grin on his lips,” retired air force Lt-Col Tin Aung wrote in a school memoir.
U Razak was the child of an Indian father, Sheik Abdul Rahman, a police inspector, and a Burmese Buddhist woman Nyein Hla. While his brothers and sisters chose to be Buddhists, he maintained the Muslim name Razak, in honor of his father. Although nominally Muslim, U Razak was a secularist who deeply loved Burma and encouraged unity in diversity.
As a bachelor of arts student at Rangoon University, the staunchly nationalist U Razak took part in the 1920 demonstrations against the British colonial education system. He demonstratively switched to a BA course with the alternative Council of National Education, established by Burmese nationalists. He graduated with the council’s BA degree, and carried the academic title with pride.
In 1921, U Razak founded the Central National High School in Mandalay and became headmaster in 1922. Envious rivals referred to his school as Nay-jin-dai School—nay-jin-dai describes an undisciplined place where people come and go as they please.
Undeterred, U Razak built his school into one of the two leading academic establishments in Mandalay. It produced an impressive number of national and local leaders, civil and military leaders, diplomats, scientists, sportsmen and women, artists, writers and journalists.
Although a Muslim, the young U Razak won high respect for his proficiency in Buddhist studies and the Pali language. He frequently visited Shwe Kyaung, Mandalay’s “golden monastery,” to study Buddhism and Pali, demonstrating his personal belief that young people need to respect and learn their religion for its moral values and national culture.
U Razak’s school routine ensured that all Buddhists students attended their prayers and religious lessons. The newly emerging national education system frequently ran short of funding and often could not pay staff salaries. But he won great trust among his teachers and the parents of his students with his school program of reinvigorating Burmese studies and promoting Burmese culture, patriotism and nationalism.
U Razak also encouraged his pupils to participate fully in sports. He employed a former Indian boxing champion to train his students, some of whom went on to represent Burma at the Olympic Games.
His approach to sport was to develop character. A retired colonel, Khin Nyo, recalls U Razak telling him: “You yourself were a boxer. Your real character showed up not when you were winning but at the moment when you started to lose. And if you were of lower moral character, you would start using elbows and head, which were forbidden. For the sports on which you do not have to spend much money, such a revelation of one’s true character is common among ordinary people.”
But U Razak didn’t spare the sporting elite, telling the former army officer: “When it comes to expensive sports like golf, the so-called gentlemen, such as top British Indian Civil Servants (ICS), top British commercial and other senior government executives and Burmese ICS take up, they think of themselves as having an impeccable character…But the moment their scoreboards indicate that they are losing, they start to show their true colors by resorting to unscrupulous measures.”
Khin Nyo defined U Razak’s true qualities as selflessness and self-sacrifice. The ex-colonel had cause to test them personally when U Razak was detained, along with other Burmese nationalists, by Japanese occupation forces during World War II.
Gen Aung San ordered Khin Nyo to organize a rescue plan. Khin Nyo gained access to U Razak in jail and briefed him on the plan.
U Razak rejected the plan because it did not include his jailed comrades. “If you rescued me alone and if I followed you, I would be regarded as a selfish person and a traitor by the group,” he reportedly told Khin Nyo. “My name would be tarnished. As it is, my conscience cannot accept this arrangement.”
Khin Nyo later wrote: “[His face] showed clearly that he wasn’t trying to be heroic nor was he thinking of his honor. It was just pure selflessness and the nobility of spirit on his part. It was then that I got a glimpse of his true character.”
The decision nearly cost U Razak his life when allied bombs hit Mandalay and fire swept through the prison. U Razak was rescued by his students.
After the Japanese surrender, U Razak became a leader of the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League in Mandalay. When the governor of Burma, Sir Hubert Rance, asked Gen Aung San and his AFPFL to submit names for the executive council, U Razak was proposed for inclusion in the cabinet as representative of Upper Burma by all Mandalay-based communities led by Buddhist monks.
A major achievement during his very short term as minister of education and national planning was to start the process of establishing a future Mandalay university.
U Razak also won wide recognition for organizing Burma’s Muslims under the AFPFL flag, in preparation for the approaching struggle for independence.
He was elected chairman of the Burma Muslim Congress at a time when the example of Pakistan was being advanced in support of pressure for the establishment of a separate state for Burmese Muslims. U Razak rejected the idea and urged the Muslim community in Burma to be a strong and respected community without hindering national development.
The standards of leadership and ethical conduct embodied by U Razak are often cited as examples for Burma’s new post-independence generation. As one of his pupils, Dr Nyi Nyi, a former deputy minister of education and minister of mines, put it in a recent tribute: “Sayagyi was a leader of men with a vision for the future. He foresaw what would be needed in a newly independent country and started preparing its young people for it.” Type rest of the post here
While some consider the term abusive and degrading, there’s general acceptance that it takes on a sense of honor, respect and lovingkindness when it’s used in the form Kalagyi (Big Kala), to describe independence hero Abdul Razak.
U Razak rose from the position of headmaster of Mandalay Central National High School to become minister of education and national planning in Burma’s pre-independence government. His career was brought to a brutal end at the age of 49, when he was gunned down by assassins on July 19, 1947, together with independence leader Gen Aung San and seven other cabinet members and colleagues. The nine murdered leaders are commemorated annually on the country’s Martyr’s Day.
Mandalay, where U Razak taught, is a center of Burmese Buddhist faith and culture. Yet U Razak, of ethnic Indian-Burmese origin, was fully accepted by the community.
His former students remember him with affection, retaining a picture of their former headmaster dressed in a white shirt, black jacket and green sarong, holding a cheroot in one hand and a cane in the other. A new book published in July titled U Razak of Burma: A Teacher, a Leader, a Martyr, collects some of their reminiscences.
“Whenever we saw Sayagyi (headmaster), he always smiled back at us. Even when he was holding a cane to punish the students for their misdeeds, one could not see any hint of anger on his face but only a grin on his lips,” retired air force Lt-Col Tin Aung wrote in a school memoir.
U Razak was the child of an Indian father, Sheik Abdul Rahman, a police inspector, and a Burmese Buddhist woman Nyein Hla. While his brothers and sisters chose to be Buddhists, he maintained the Muslim name Razak, in honor of his father. Although nominally Muslim, U Razak was a secularist who deeply loved Burma and encouraged unity in diversity.
As a bachelor of arts student at Rangoon University, the staunchly nationalist U Razak took part in the 1920 demonstrations against the British colonial education system. He demonstratively switched to a BA course with the alternative Council of National Education, established by Burmese nationalists. He graduated with the council’s BA degree, and carried the academic title with pride.
In 1921, U Razak founded the Central National High School in Mandalay and became headmaster in 1922. Envious rivals referred to his school as Nay-jin-dai School—nay-jin-dai describes an undisciplined place where people come and go as they please.
Undeterred, U Razak built his school into one of the two leading academic establishments in Mandalay. It produced an impressive number of national and local leaders, civil and military leaders, diplomats, scientists, sportsmen and women, artists, writers and journalists.
Although a Muslim, the young U Razak won high respect for his proficiency in Buddhist studies and the Pali language. He frequently visited Shwe Kyaung, Mandalay’s “golden monastery,” to study Buddhism and Pali, demonstrating his personal belief that young people need to respect and learn their religion for its moral values and national culture.
U Razak’s school routine ensured that all Buddhists students attended their prayers and religious lessons. The newly emerging national education system frequently ran short of funding and often could not pay staff salaries. But he won great trust among his teachers and the parents of his students with his school program of reinvigorating Burmese studies and promoting Burmese culture, patriotism and nationalism.
U Razak also encouraged his pupils to participate fully in sports. He employed a former Indian boxing champion to train his students, some of whom went on to represent Burma at the Olympic Games.
His approach to sport was to develop character. A retired colonel, Khin Nyo, recalls U Razak telling him: “You yourself were a boxer. Your real character showed up not when you were winning but at the moment when you started to lose. And if you were of lower moral character, you would start using elbows and head, which were forbidden. For the sports on which you do not have to spend much money, such a revelation of one’s true character is common among ordinary people.”
But U Razak didn’t spare the sporting elite, telling the former army officer: “When it comes to expensive sports like golf, the so-called gentlemen, such as top British Indian Civil Servants (ICS), top British commercial and other senior government executives and Burmese ICS take up, they think of themselves as having an impeccable character…But the moment their scoreboards indicate that they are losing, they start to show their true colors by resorting to unscrupulous measures.”
Khin Nyo defined U Razak’s true qualities as selflessness and self-sacrifice. The ex-colonel had cause to test them personally when U Razak was detained, along with other Burmese nationalists, by Japanese occupation forces during World War II.
Gen Aung San ordered Khin Nyo to organize a rescue plan. Khin Nyo gained access to U Razak in jail and briefed him on the plan.
U Razak rejected the plan because it did not include his jailed comrades. “If you rescued me alone and if I followed you, I would be regarded as a selfish person and a traitor by the group,” he reportedly told Khin Nyo. “My name would be tarnished. As it is, my conscience cannot accept this arrangement.”
Khin Nyo later wrote: “[His face] showed clearly that he wasn’t trying to be heroic nor was he thinking of his honor. It was just pure selflessness and the nobility of spirit on his part. It was then that I got a glimpse of his true character.”
The decision nearly cost U Razak his life when allied bombs hit Mandalay and fire swept through the prison. U Razak was rescued by his students.
After the Japanese surrender, U Razak became a leader of the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League in Mandalay. When the governor of Burma, Sir Hubert Rance, asked Gen Aung San and his AFPFL to submit names for the executive council, U Razak was proposed for inclusion in the cabinet as representative of Upper Burma by all Mandalay-based communities led by Buddhist monks.
A major achievement during his very short term as minister of education and national planning was to start the process of establishing a future Mandalay university.
U Razak also won wide recognition for organizing Burma’s Muslims under the AFPFL flag, in preparation for the approaching struggle for independence.
He was elected chairman of the Burma Muslim Congress at a time when the example of Pakistan was being advanced in support of pressure for the establishment of a separate state for Burmese Muslims. U Razak rejected the idea and urged the Muslim community in Burma to be a strong and respected community without hindering national development.
The standards of leadership and ethical conduct embodied by U Razak are often cited as examples for Burma’s new post-independence generation. As one of his pupils, Dr Nyi Nyi, a former deputy minister of education and minister of mines, put it in a recent tribute: “Sayagyi was a leader of men with a vision for the future. He foresaw what would be needed in a newly independent country and started preparing its young people for it.” Type rest of the post here
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