Myanmar's past key to changing its future - author

By Gill Murdoch

SINGAPORE, (Reuters Life!) - A pariah state led by generals who have oppressed their people for more than 40 years: Myanmar is a black and white story to most writers.

But understanding how history has shaped Southeast Asia's most stubborn military junta not only adds accuracy to debate about the former Burma, it is key to changing the country's future, argues historian Thant Myint-U.

In his latest book "The River of Lost Footsteps", the grandson of U.N. Secretary-General U Thant draws on history and his personal experiences to analyse the prospects for change.

He spoke to Reuters Life! while on a visit to Singapore.

Q: Many writers struggle to make sense of Myanmar. Some romanticise it as a forgotten tragedy, others characterise it as on the cusp of revolution. What do you make of these depictions?

A: An old but still current way of seeing Burma is as a sort of tyranny that can be stripped away -- that underneath there's a timeless, peaceful, Buddhist country. That was the paradigm through which the British saw it in the 1880s before their invasion. That's why they thought that the removal of the king would change everything very quickly for the better. The results were a disaster.

A sort of contemporary version is to see Burma as a sort of a Eastern European-style democratic revolution in the making. That if enough people took to the streets then the regime would collapse, but everything else would stay intact and you would have a very peaceful and stable transition to democracy and a free-market economy.

The two kind of reinforce each other: this older sense that Burma is a tyranny over an otherwise peaceful Buddhist society, and this more contemporary sense of this Eastern European uprising in the making.