By: Sai Wansai
Friday, 21 February 2014

First, a common national identity in a multi-ethnic state is one of the most crucial component in a nation-building process.

As all know, the Burmese military prescribed national identity "Myanmar" is not accepted by the non-Bama ethnic groups or nationalities as a common identity, which also belong to them.

In other words, "Myanmar, Bama, Burman" are labels only identified with the majority "Bama" and have nothing to do with the non-Bama ethnic groups or nationalities.

If you ask a Kachin, Shan, Karenni, Karen, Mon, Arakanese and Chin, what race or nationality he or she belongs to, one would only get the answer of "I'm Kachin, Shan, Karenni, Karen, Mon, Arakanese or Chin"; but not "I'm a Kachin Myanmar or Shan Myanmar and so on".

In the United States for example, it is quite normal to hear "I'm Korean American, Palestinian American, Chinese American, Armenian American and so forth".

Still there is another example, when you ask an Indian from Singapore, he would likely answer "I'm Singaporean" and not "I'm Indian from Singapore", which means the Singapore, common national identity is fully accepted.

I mention this because I came across a Chinese friend from Singapore, when asked about his national identity, replied without hesitation that he's Singaporean. Another Chinese friend, the one who questioned, from Hongkong was furious of his answer for he didn't say that he was Chinese.

The point I'm trying to put is that the nation-building process of successive civilian and military Bama-dominated regimes has never seriously taken off from the ground, needless to say about instilling a common national identity that all could agree upon and embrace wholeheartedly.

The core problem to forge such a common identity is the failure to instill a sense of belonging to each other. And there is no way around from first coming to terms of mutual agreement in power-sharing and resources-sharing as a fundamental basis, before we could work or agree upon a common identity. For now, it is like putting the cart before the horse, which will only lead to confusion and disagreement, especially where a common national identity is concerned. It should be noted that after more than six decades of independence from the British, we are still nowhere near to forging a common national identity.

To sum up, forging a common national identity is only possible if the power and resources-sharing is adequately worked out beforehand. Choosing a name or label is relatively an easy part of the process and we only need to ask all the stakeholders - all the ethnic groups residing within the country, Bama included - concerned.