Section I - Dr Maung Maung: The Life of a Patriot

Summary

Dr Maung Maung was a man of many parts — a scholar and a soldier, a nationalist and an internationalist, a parliamentarian and a public servant — and his life and times spanned seven decades of political, economic and social turbulence in the country he loved and served, Myanmar. A pioneer amongst post-colonial journalists in Myanmar and Southeast Asia, he was also at home in the libraries and seminar rooms of universities in the United States, Europe, and Australia in the midst of the Cold War. As a lawyer and jurist, Dr Maung Maung believed that the law had to remain relevant and adaptable to changing societal requirements. As an author, in Myanmar and English, he wrote both weighty scholarly tomes and light-hearted accounts spiced with his often rye observations on the varieties of the human species. A husband and the father to seven children, he was a keen observer of human strengths and weaknesses. A loyal friend to many, he was never known to malign his critics or deny the merits of their arguments. As a man of affairs, he was capable of understanding the weaknesses of individuals and the institutions they built, both historically and those with which he served and that ultimately failed to live up to their ideals. He was remarkably equitable and was never known to lose his temper or express his frustrations but always held firm to his own humane values.

Prior to everything else, he was a Myanmar patriot. As a Myanmar, he served his country in a number of capacities, even briefly joining the British Burma Auxiliary Force along with five or six of his fellow underage classmates while he was a student in Mandalay on the cusp of the Second World War in Southeast Asia. After the British retreated to India, he enlisted in the new Burma National Army (BNA) and eventually served in the resistance to the Japanese occupation of Myanmar toward the end of the War.