(1907–1995), Myanmar political figure and writer. Myanmar (Burmese) leader U Nu, born in Wakema, Myaungma District, in 1907, received a B.A. from Rangoon University in 1929. He became headmaster and later superintendent at Pantanaw High School and worked briefly under U Thant (1909–1974), who later became UN secretary-general. He completed a law degree at Rangoon University in 1935. In the same year he was elected president of the newly established Rangoon University Student Union. His expulsion from the university jointly with nationalist leader Aung San (1915–1947) gave the impetus for the 1936 university strikes and marked the beginning of his political career. Aung San convinced him to join the Burmese nationalist movement the Dobama in 1938, where they were both elevated to the executive committee, causing a rift among the membership. He became known as Thakin Nu at that time. Outbreak of war in Europe in September 1939 spurred renewed demands for national independence, and U Nu's involvement caused him to be sentenced to two years in prison on 15 July 1940. During his imprisonment, he wrote a number of plays. Freed in the wake of the Japanese invasion of Burma on 9 December 1941, he subsequently became general secretary of the united Dobama-Sinyetha Party and served in Ba Maw's (1893–1977) government under the Japanese as minister of foreign affairs (1943) and as minister of information (1944).
After Aung San's assassination in 1947, U Nu was invited to be chair of the Anti-Fascist Peoples' Freedom League (AFPFL), the dominant party in the country. On 17 October 1947, he concluded the Nu-Attlee agreement on Burma's national independence and became Burma's first prime minister on 4 January 1948 at national independence, serving until 1962 with brief interludes in the 1956–1957 period to reorganize the AFPFL. He became leader of the "Clean" AFPFL faction in 1958. Between 1958 and 1960, he invited a "caretaker" government headed by General Ne Win to deal with the nation's security issues. U Nu won the office again in the 1960 election and declared Buddhism the national religion in the same year, which caused considerable opposition among non-Buddhists. As prime minister, U Nu failed to address politically ethnic and Communist insurgency, and he overemphasized Buddhism (the grounds for his electoral appeal) as a solution to national unity at the expense of a more inclusive approach to religions in general.
Ne Win's 1962 military coup put an end to electoral government and U Nu's role within it. He placed U Nu in prison. After his release on 27 October 1966, U Nu left the country in February 1969, and at a news conference that was held in London on 27 August 1969 he declared himself to be the "legal prime minister" of Burma. Subsequently, he was based in Bangkok, where he tried to organize Burmese resistance in the Thai-Burma border region. However, he left Thailand for India in June 1973. Under an amnesty declared by the Council of State (by Ne Win), U Nu returned to Burma on 29 July 1980, where he became a monk for a while and where he got involved in Buddhist missionary work, including the Burma Pitaka Association, which he founded. He again proclaimed himself to be the legal prime minister and declared an interim government on 9 September 1988, but this met with little or no support. His time as a politician had by then ended. For refusing to disband his "government," U Nu was put under house arrest on 29 December 1989 but was released on 23 April 1992. He died in Rangoon on 14 February 1995.
U Nu is remembered for his interest in Buddhism and in literature and translation. He set up the Nagani book club in 1939, which translated major political tracts for the Burmese readership. Also, between 1954 and 1955 he initiated the Sixth Buddhist Sangayana (Sixth Buddhist Synod), only the second to be held in Burmese history, to ensure the purity of the Buddhist canon.
Ba Maw, U. (1959) "U Nu Psychoanalyzed." The Nation.(October).
Butwell, Richard A. (1962) "The Four Failures of U Nu's Second Premiership." Asian Survey 2 (March).
——. (1969) U Nu of Burma. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
——. (1975) U Nu, Saturday's Son. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. (Includes an autobiography written originally in Burmese by U Nu himself, translated by U Law Yone, and edited by Dr. Kyaw Win.)
Nu, U. (1954) Burma under the Japanese: Pictures and Portraits. Ed. and trans. by John Sydenham Furnivall. New York: St. Martin's.
——. (1957) The People Win Through: A Play. New York: Taplinger.
Sarkisyanz, Manuel. (1961) "On the Place of U Nu's Buddhist Socialism in Burma's History of Ideas." In Studies on Asia, edited by Robert K. Sakai. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Trager, Frank N. (1963) "The Failure of U Nu and the Return of the Armed Forces in Burma." The Review of Politics 25.
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