Part 1: Section 3 Summary

This section was first published in 1990 by the Indian Institute of Advanced Study. Aung San Suu Kyi thinks India is the perfect country with which to compare Burma since it too had a colonial past. The two differ in that Burma is predominantly Buddhist and India is predominantly Hindu. They also differ in the way the British incorporated them. In Burma, colonization occurred in 3 clear-cut phases over 50 years and in India it occurred gradually over 200 years. Being primarily Buddhist, Burma had no major social problems. There was little social stratification,s no caste system, and women were equals. The populace was largely literate, because most had attended monastery schools. Aung San Suu Kyi quoted from several British sources to show the condescending stance they took towards their colonial subjects: one passage written in 1908 said that the modern Burmese "had adopted the...