To the saleswomen at a clothing shop here, the arrival of democracy means more customers looking to buy tight skirts and sleeveless tops, a sharp departure from the sarongs still ubiquitous in most of the country and a sign of what one clerk called a craving to “live freely.”
For a group of lawyers working out of a garage in central Yangon, it means the freedom to battle Chinese investors’ plans to transform a British colonial court building into a hotel.
And for one of the country’s best-known linguists, it means the right to rail against the name “Myanmar,” which the former military government officially bestowed on the country and forced its citizens to use.
“I live in Burma, not Myanmar,” Maung Tha Noe, the linguist, thundered during a recent interview. “It’s my democratic right!”
The changes that have swept Myanmar over the past year are often described in political terms, starting with the release of the pro-democracy advocate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and hundreds of other political prisoners.
Once-taboo subjects
But the military had such a pervasive influence over everyday life for decades that the generals’ relinquishing of power last year has also led to lifestyle changes well beyond the realm of politics. Most notably, it has allowed debates on once-taboo subjects, uncorking five decades worth of bottled-up opinions.
Writers and linguists have been freed to debate the use of words and terms banned under the junta. There are heated arguments about who should be considered a citizen and discussions over the preservation of buildings, which might have been touchy under a junta that cared enough about appearances that it built an extravagant new capital at a time of deprivation.
Myanmar, in short, has begun to search for a national identity defined by its people, not the cloistered vision imposed by military governments.
At the heart of the matter, in a country with 135 recognized ethnic groups, is a freer and freewheeling debate about the relationship between the Burmese majority and the nation’s minorities, a subject that never received a full hearing during military rule, largely because the military was at war with a number of ethnic minorities.
At a recent conference in Yangon called “National Identity and Citizenship in 21st Century Myanmar,” the elephant in the room was the hegemony of the Burmese majority, a group that includes the military hierarchy and most senior politicians.
Yin Yin Nwe, a panelist from the Shan minority, denounced a society where the majority received more benefits and better services. Another panelist, from the Chin minority, which includes many Christians, said the current government and Constitution still give preferential treatment to Buddhism.
'Inspired by the American identity'
The overriding question at the conference was whether Myanmar would become a melting pot or a less integrationist society.
U Kyaw Yin Hlaing, a Burmese academic who has assisted President Thein Sein in peace talks with minority groups, said the president was “inspired by the American identity” and solidly favored a melting pot.
Judging by the divided opinions at the conference, the question of ethnic identity is likely to remain unanswered for years. But speakers said it was a measure of the changes in the country that such a meeting was held at all.
Yet on some issues, like the basic question of what the country should be called, old authoritarian ways die hard.
In June, the country’s election commission warned Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi to stop referring to the country as Burma, noting that the Constitution says, “The state shall be known as the Republic of the Union of Myanmar.” (The military officially changed the country’s name in 1989, soon after quashing a popular revolt against its rule; some Western countries, including the United States, continue to call the country Burma, as does Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, despite the government’s admonishment.)
While many younger Burmese shrug at the question of the country’s name, Mr. Tha Noe and other linguists say they feel strongly about it because of the way the military went about changing it, and about how the generals sought to use language to shape their message.
They banned references to the “military coup” of 1962, calling it a “takeover” by the Tatmadaw, the formal term for the armed forces that translates as “great defense force.”
Reasons for Burma ban unclear
It remains unclear why the military banned the name Burma, which was used by British colonizers, but also by the Burmese independence movement that fought them.
With the country now on a path toward a more democratic society, Mr. Tha Noe said he hoped that language would evolve in a more “natural process” rather than by the dictates of a self-serving military.
For others, that same battle applies to architecture.
After the move to the newly built capital, Naypyidaw — with its grandiose government offices and a massive military museum — government offices in Yangon were abandoned and left to rot in the tropical heat. Then, as one of its last major acts, the junta auctioned off some of Yangon’s oldest buildings through a secret bidding process.
But details of those auctions are now being called into question, and civic groups, like the lawyers fighting the conversion of the court building, are becoming more vocal about preserving what they call national treasures.
“They belong to the people,” said U Than Thin, the group’s leader. “That’s why it’s called national heritage.”
While preservation is partly a matter of aesthetics, it also seems inseparable from questions of identity. Within a few blocks of each other in downtown Yangon there is a Buddhist pagoda, a Hindu temple, a mosque, a church and, in a country with few Jews, even a synagogue.
Mr. Kyaw Yin Hlaing, who studied under Benedict Anderson, a scholar known for his work on how “imagined communities” become nations, said pinning down a national identity in a country with so many ethnic groups, languages and traditions might prove impossible.
“Sometimes we will have to leave it undefined,” he said, offering a more cosmic definition of identity. The new Myanmar, he said, might be a place where citizens “close their eyes and feel that they belong there.”
This article, headlined "Burma? Myanmar? New Freedom to Debate Includes Name," first appeared in The New York Times.