If interested those that can be identified are given in Appendix '0*.

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they sought more comfort in religion. The pongyi teacher and leader to the people no matter what he because of the nature of religion itself.

remained a had done

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CONülüölONS TO PAKT OWE

The founders of the YliBA and II Ottajna laid firm foundationa and pioneered the national political action to regain government power from the foreign ruler. But these leaders throughout the 19£0s were unable or unwilling to look beyond self-government within the British Empire or home Ifcule or Dominion Btatus. For them, their initial

struggles to be able to set up a political body even with limited aims had been a great act of daring end had taken all their fortitude and resources to forge ahead into the GoBA period of political agitation for reforms.

The intensity and persistence of British govern­ ment victimization, suppression of political agitators, general repression and economic exploitation of the people daunted many a brave leader, and apart from the few who from the beginning pi'ofessed to be constitutionalists and gradualists, the leaders who thundered uncompromising non­ cooperation find x'esistance of British limited reforms very soon took to fighting for one kind of office or another. Thereby they also destroyed their great reputations of outstanding national leadership and were assumed to be corrupt and spent forces by their own and the next generat­ ion.

The most important point about this period was the leadership of the nationalist movement being by stages,

totally absorbed by the sangha through the GC63 directorship of tiie G'JBA within 5 years of the founding of the GCG3; and the tenacity with which the bulk of the GGBA, and its following

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in che countryside maintained their "boycott" of the government till finally in 1952 elections for Reparation issue, all the "boyeott-GCBAs" Joined in and voted, against separation from India, and thus lost the record of over 20 years of consistent non-cooperation in such a doubtful and meaning-less matter, for whatever the outcome of the elections the British Govern­ ment in London, and Parliament were already committed to

separate Burma from India in order to grant the latter a more advanced constitution.

The preoccupations of the most capable lay political leaders and the outstanding sayadaws of the GCOB in the

"legislature politics" caused them to lose prestige and

credulity, so that by 1929 after the split of the GCBA at its 16th Conference in Toungoo when the Ye-Co sayadaw took along U Bu, and set up another GCBA which really was to take part in

the coming "Reparation" struggle within the framework of

British constitutional procedures, the power and authority of the GCBB sayadaws over the people was also finally broken. The GOBS was nearly as badly split as the GGBA by 1950* The final humanising experience for the sangha was to come with the Tharrawaddy Rebellion, and the 1952 elections, when all the OCRS sayadaws stood exposed to the people as equally human and open to attractions of the benefits acruing from office and position. But it was already obvious to most townsfolk that the OCRS sayadaws had from being the power behind the GCBA (boycott) into the powers that made "Bga-daung-zas" (5000 eaters or Ministers who got a salary of rupees five thousand).

Therefore by the end of the 1920s the founders of the nationalist movement had all lost the leadership of the

people; most of them had also lost faith in the ideals with which they had started out. All the 1920s crop of political leaders whether lay or sangha had by the end of the decade being corrupted by the evil force, the Dyarchy constitution, that began with the elections in 1922, and caused the first split in the GdBA in August 1921. At least then, it was a genuine struggle between those committed to constitutional

struggle and those rejecting it for Gandhian Gatyagraha.

Many genuinely patriotic sangha, almost all the dhammakatikas to a man were dedicated and honest; they spent most of the decade in jail; two of then died in the struggle against the government; others retired to tawyak.yaungs (small meditation monasteries) and many others dropped out of active politics

after having served their terms in prisons and having found out on release that the GCGG was as fragmented as the GC13A. Only very few were lost to legislature politics. Gome

joined a new political movement that sprung up in 1950. Done of the 1920 crop had been able to think in terms of total independence for their own country, and never demanded such, nonsidering it unthinkable. The generation of political leaders and enthusiasts of 1950s had to take up that calling, and they succeeded in their role. The new youngmen this time took good care not to let their leadership be taken away by the sangha. This we shall see in Part II.