Myanmar’s Ground Situation Forces Recalibration of Global Reactions Where does India stand on its position vis-à-vis developments on Myanmar?
Sao Shwe Thaik became the first President of the Union of Burma (4th Jan 1948) and the last
Saopha of Yawnghwe. A sense of ominous foreboding amongst the new union’s restive ethnicities was palpable and on its first anniversary of Independence on January 4, 1949 the Statesman had warned bluntly,
“Co-operation and understanding cannot come about so long as the element of violence or threat of violence exists, for violence has no counterpart in freedom, and liberty ends where violence begins. The progressive retreat of democracy in the world today is mainly due to the worship by nations of the cult of physical force. The deterioration in this direction has been such that the much-vaunted democracies are nowadays hardly distinguishable from totalitarian states”.