By Myint Zan
15 January 2026 is the 48th anniversary of the passing of veteran writer and politician U Thein Pe Myint (10 July 1914-15 January 1978).
In my previous article (GNLM, 19 July 2025) on U Thein Pe Myint (generally ‘TPM’), I stated that I might write about TPM’s political relationship with the late former Prime Minister U Nu (25 May 1907-14 February 1995). Parts of this article deal with TPM’s a few political statements made in his column ပွင့်ပွင့်လင်းလင်းပြောပါရစေ (‘Let me speak frankly’).
U Nu’s comments on TPM to devote solely to literature, not politics and TPM’s response
In my previous article, I praised TPM’s literary gifts. Hence, I feel almost reluctant to write this Part. A Burmese saying goes ဆိုရေးရှိက ဆိုအပ်လေ ‘if things ought to be said, had a cause to be stated, then, they should be stated’. TPM and U Nu, who was to become the first Prime Minister of independent Burma, were colleagues at the university. U Nu was seven years older than TPM. What was then called ‘Ko Gyi Nu’ (elder brother Nu) was from the delta town of Wakema, and TPM from quite far away, Budalin in the hinterland. They became good friends at the University of Rangoon. When three of TPM’s earlier short stories were published in 1937, U Nu wrote an Introduction. A further collection of nine short stories by TPM was published around 1952. By then, U Nu had become the first democratically-elected Prime Minister of independent Burma. TPM was active in (sort of oppositional) politics against the U Nu government.
U Nu wrote a second Introduction to TPM’s 1952 collection of short stories. The Introduction was dated 7 November 1952. U Nu wrote in his second Introduction that the politics of the ‘left’ kind has not given any advantage to TPM. He urged TPM to fully concentrate its energies on the literary field.
Since 1952, much water has passed under the bridge. TPM was elected to Parliament in the 1956 election. It was an election held where political parties freely participated in a Parliamentary democracy. Later, post-1962, TPM critiqued ‘bourgeois parliamentary democracy’ to which he had taken full advantage of when it was in force.
On 2 March 1962, General Ne Win (6 July 1910-5 December 2002) took over power. ‘Ko Gyi’ (elder brother), U Nu, and many other top leaders were arrested and incarcerated. U Nu was released on 27 October 1966.
In a Preface dated 27 November 1966, TPM wrote largely in response to elder brother Nu’s exhortation in 1952 to fully concentrate on the literary field. TPM apparently believed that the ‘fruition’ of his leftist political movement was, by 1966, ‘around the corner’. After all, the then Revolutionary government professed ‘marching towards socialism in our own Burmese way’.
Many of those whom the then Revolutionary government stated as ‘leftist and rightist destructionists’ were arrested. Among those, a few thousand arrested were left-wing writers junior in age to TPM. They include Dagon Taya (10 May 1919-19 August 2013), Bhamo Tin Aung (9 June 1920-23 October 1978) and Mya Than Tint (23 May 1929-18 February 1998). Bhamo Tin Aung, for example, spent about seven years being incarcerated. Although a more senior leftist writer than those three leftist writers, TPM was not arrested at any time during the post-1962 period.
TPM’s response to U Nu’s second introduction was dated 27 November 1966. TPM wrote in his 1952 response to U Nu that his political aim was to abolish the old system (obviously parliament democracy) and to establish a new ‘social system’. TPM wrote that until such a social revolution is fully established, he will continue to be active in politics. TPM affirmed what he wrote in 1952 again in 1966. By the time TPM affirmed what he wrote in 1952 (in 1966), the ‘Burmese way to socialism’ and ‘epoch-changing revolution’ were in full force.
TPM wrote (in November 1966) that the time was approaching when he could open the ‘war front only in the literary field’ (he used the word စစ်မျက်နှာ, which is military usage and displayed militant leftism).
U Thein Pe Myint passed away in January 1978, just 11 years after he made that somewhat pompous if not facetious comment. One wonders whether TPM considered in his last year (1977) that the time had come to devote all his efforts to the literary front as General Ne Win’s ‘epoch-changing revolution’ was in its 15th year.
Further implied critiques of U Nu and ‘rightist clique’ by TPM
On 29 November 1968, General Ne Win invited 33 civilian politicians in what he himself called a ‘very important meeting’. (See The Working People’s Daily, 30 November 1968). Among those invited was U Nu, whom General Ne Win had overthrown and put in detention for four years and seven months. At least seven or eight of the invitees were previously detained.
On 2 December 1968, a 33-man (they were all men) Internal Unity Advisory Board (IUAB) was formed. They were to meet for six months and at the end of it, to submit a report to General Ne Win and his Revolutionary Council. On 3 June 1969, the IUAB report was published in all the government-run official newspapers. The report mentioned that ‘regarding the need for internal unity’, Revolutionary Council Chairman General Ne Win convened a meeting on 29 November 1968. Facetiously (again) and almost obsequiously, TPM wrote, ‘Why did the IUAB Report mention the date 29 November 1968 — the day General Ne Win called the meeting and not 2 March 1962?’ Of course, it was the date of the takeover.
My response after all these decades to TPM: why should the IUAB report mention the date of 2 March when several members of the IUAB were detained, if not on the day of the 1962 takeover, then in the subsequent months and years? General Ne Win, in his speech, did not mention his takeover and did not even imply to the invitees that they should endorse his takeover as TPM suggested. So TPM was more ‘General Ne Win than General Ne Win’ himself!
Within days of the publication of the 33 men IUAB report, the then hack journalists were severely condemning U Nu. I do not recall the exact contents of TPM’s critique of U Nu, but when U Nu’s interim report was made available in June 1969, U Nu was out of Burma. He left in April 1969 ostensibly for a medical checkup abroad. And then on 27 August 1969, U Nu made a declaration in London that he was ‘still the legitimate Prime Minister of Burma’. (The full declaration was reported in original English and Burmese translation in the 3 September 1969 issue of government-owned newspapers.)
To cut a long story short, on 29 July 1980, U Nu returned to Burma after the invitation of the President (Ne Win) on behalf of the organs of State power in consideration, recognition and honour of the leading and distinguished role in the freedom struggle. (This was reported in the front page of all the Burmese language newspapers and also in The Working People’s Daily, predecessor to The Global New Light of Myanmar, on its 30 July 1980 issue). When U Nu returned to Burma in July 1980, his ‘younger brother’ TPM had been dead for over two-and-a -half years.
A person who is close to TPM’s family told me that when U Nu heard about the demise of TPM in January 1978, he sent not one but two telegrams (not the internet telegram channel, which did not exist in 1978) to express his condolences to TPM’s family. U Nu sent the condolence telegram twice to make sure that TPM’s family received it.
If this story is true, which it probably is, then U Nu was a magnanimous person. TPM’s critiques of U Nu did not in any way diminish the elder statesman’s fondness for and sorrow at the death of his younger colleague.
TPM as a columnist in Botahtaung newspaper, and two articles that he wrote
TPM contributed regular articles to the Vanguard newspaper he founded. TPM has written a few hundred articles from at least the early 1960s to about 1976 under the generic heading ‘Let me speak frankly’.
On 2 March 1972, on the 10th anniversary of the takeover of 1962, TPM published an article.
I do recall parts of what TPM wrote, which was published more than 53 years ago. TPM opened its 10th anniversary takeover with the phrase ‘Oh, it has been ten years, yes, ten rainy seasons.’ ဆယ်နှစ်ဆယ်မိုး (since the 1962 takeover). And then the first several sentences listed the shortcomings of the then-10-year-old Revolutionary government, albeit TPM added that these are those made by the Revolutionary government’s ‘detractors’. (Thankfully, he did not use the word ‘enemies’.)
In the context of the time, it was just a tad bold to have written thus. In the first four or five sentences, TPM listed a few of the criticisms against the then-10-year-old Revolutionary government. But the rest of his article listed their ‘great achievements’. There is a Burmese mode of argument which, in translation, reads ‘a cock’s retreat and attack.’ The Myanmar-English Dictionary defines it as ‘emulation of a tactic of a game-cock in a debate or an argument, i.e., to give grounds to the adverse view in the opening round and then pounce on its opponents’. TPM in the first few sentences of the ‘tenth anniversary article’ stated the criticisms made by the detractors of the Revolutionary government. But then he tried to negate the criticisms, saying there are also many good things that have been done by the Revolutionary government.
In December 1965, Revolutionary Council chairman and Chairman of the sole legal party Burma Socialist Programme Party, General Ne Win, addressed a Party seminar. He admitted that the Burmese economy then was having many difficulties. He stated that some people blamed his then deputy, Brigadier Tin Pe, for the economic mess. General Ne Win stated that he was also responsible for the economic policies and the hardship the Burmese were experiencing. He stated that his government was like a person who had grabbed the tiger’s tail. It must continue to hold it.
Time magazine complimented him. It wrote: ‘Candour in a military dictator is rare, self-criticism even rarer, but Burma’s strong man General Ne Win showed both in a speech last week’. Therefore, one had to assume that Thein Pe Myint’s initial listing of the criticism of the ‘social revolution’ or ‘epoch-changing revolution’ in his 2 March 1972 column is not as notable as General Ne Win himself over six years earlier, who sort of admitted that much.
The Stoppage of ‘Let me talk frankly’ columns, no more ‘battlefield’ in the political front?
In November 1966, in response to U Nu’s exhortation to abandon politics, TPM wrote about his belief that the time to devote all his energy, time, ‘blood’ and sweat only to the ‘literary front’ would be arriving ‘soon’.
Query: has it arrived ten years later, in say, late 1976? For that was around the time when U Thein Pe Myint’s political columns ‘disappeared’ from the pages of The Vanguard. Has the time to devote TPM’s energies solely to literary matters finally arrived, say, by 1976? Nah.
In his ‘Let me speak frankly’ column of 23 October 1975 under the title ‘Cost of Presidential Pasoe’ (men’s Longyi), TPM had commented on the statement of a resolution made by the one-party Legislature to allow K5,000 a year for presidential clothing or ‘regalia’. In one of his last columns, ‘Let me speak frankly’, TPM did not openly state that allocation of K5,000 (which is equivalent in 2025 to about K5 million as inflation has risen more than 2,000 times since 1975) is ‘a bit much’. But apparently, the title Thamada Pasoe boe (‘The Cost of the Presidential garment’) might have displeased the ‘elders’ လူကြီးများ at that time. This ‘frank opinion’ of TPM, perhaps, was one of the last articles that the Vanguard would publish. TPM’s future columns to the newspaper he had established failed to make it to print.
Around 1976 or 1977, I attended a literary-related seminar in Rangoon. One participant asked a question to one of the speakers: ‘Why were there no more columns by TPM in the Vanguard Daily?’ The speaker just started to answer the query by saying that ‘there must be some reason’ when the Chair of the session, U Ba Kyaw (1917-1987), then chief editor of the now defunct The Guardian (Rangoon) newspaper, who wrote under the pseudonym MBK, peremptorily stopped the speaker from proceeding any further. Thein Pe Myint, the veteran writer, journalist and politician’s articles were not published anymore in response to his questioning about the monies allocated for the Presidential ‘regalia’.
After his regular columns disappeared from The Vanguard, TPM continued to publish a few short stories and a novella in the literary field in other private magazines. In fact, apparently, his last novella appeared in the August 1977 issue of a private magazine. It was published less than six months before his death. TPM’s political columns, perhaps in the last year or two of his life, came to a stop in a newspaper which he founded. But some of his literary pieces were published in private magazines even after his political columns were not published. His passing at not that old age of sixty-three is to be regretted since he could have further produced significant literary work.
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