Power, Cultural Nationalism, and Postcolonial Public Architecture Myamar

Commonwealth & Comparative Politics
ISSN: 1466-2043 (Print) 1743-9094 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fccp20
Power, cultural nationalism, and postcolonial

public architecture: building a parliament house in
post-independence Myanmar
Renaud Egreteau
To cite this article: Renaud Egreteau (2017) Power, cultural nationalism, and postcolonial public
architecture: building a parliament house in post-independence Myanmar, Commonwealth &
Comparative Politics, 55:4, 531-550, DOI: 10.1080/14662043.2017.1323401
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14662043.2017.1323401
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COMMONWEALTH & COMPARATIVE POLITICS, 2017
VOL. 55, NO. 4, 531–550
https://doi.org/10.1080/14662043.2017.1323401
Power, cultural nationalism, and postcolonial public

architecture: building a parliament house in post-
independence Myanmar
Renaud Egreteau
ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore
Downloaded by [University of Florida] at 21:09 28 October 2017
ABSTRACT
This article focuses on the contested, and frequently postponed, construction of
a new parliament house in postcolonial Myanmar. Since the late colonial period,
the country’s legislative bodies have convened in four different buildings, three
located in the former capital Yangon and the latest one in Naypyitaw. Drawing
on legislative proceedings and media reports, this study interrogates the
relationship between decolonisation, national identity, state-building, and
public architecture in post-independence Myanmar. It suggests that the
commissioning and construction of a new legislative house has always served
a dual objective: projecting state power and national pride in both Myanmar’s
early postcolonial and later post-junta political contexts, whilst symbolising a
sense of nationhood grounded on the representational ideals of the dominant
and ruling ethnic Bamar elites.
KEYWORDS Parliament; legislative building; public architecture; state formation; national identity;
cultural nationalism; Myanmar; Burma; burmanisation
Introduction
‘This is a royal palace’, lamented Su Su Lwin, a veteran politician from Aung
San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) and Myanmar’s ‘First
Lady’ since her husband, Htin Kyaw, was elected Union president in March
2016.1 She was not referring to the mammoth presidential mansion located
in Naypyitaw, the country’s new capital since 2005. Rather, she was denoun-
cing the gigantism of the parliamentary complex built to the southwest of the
presidential compound. Inaugurated in January 2011 after elections were held
three months earlier by the ruling junta (State Peace and Development
Council, or SPDC), Myanmar’s new parliament complex stretches over 800
acres. It comprises no less than 31 buildings and is fenced off with barbed
wire. The structures boast red crimson pagoda-style roofs and are guarded
by massive statues of chinthe, Myanmar’s mythical creatures, half-lion, half-
dragon, that traditionally protect Buddhist temples and monasteries
CONTACT Renaud Egreteau regreteau@gmail.com

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
532 R. EGRETEAU
throughout the country. The lavishness is in stark contrast with Myanmar’s

three previous parliament houses, which were all erected in Yangon
(Rangoon), the former capital, between the 1920s and 1970s. None displayed
such massive architecture and gilded ornamentation.
The construction of monumental public buildings is considered a political
statement in itself. Authors have explored at length the linkages between
state-formation, nationalism, imperialism, and public architecture. Beyond
their mere housing function, public buildings indeed project the power,
culture, and civilisational order that a state or empire aims to uphold at one
particular moment of time (Dovey, 1999; Kostof, 1995; Lasswell, 1979). The
often lavish architecture of public edifices, and their richly ornamented
halls, corridors, rooms, stairs, and offices make them befit the importance
and power of the institutions they are meant to house (Milne, 1981, p. 133).
Furthermore, state-sponsored arts and architecture have proved a major
instrument used by national elites to define, express, and promote national
identity and (re)shape the idea of nationhood (Kusno, 2000; Macintyre,
2008; Vale, 2008). As democratic or postcolonial nations have emerged, new
sites for the representation of democracy and the expression of a new collec-
tive identity have been erected (Cope, 2001; Roberts, 2009; Wise, 1998). Parlia-
ment buildings have proved among the most visible symbols of the national
identity, but also of the governmental power, of a modern nation (Goodsell,
1988, p. 287). The decision to build a new parliament house, and the choice
of location, architectural aesthetics, interior design, and materials, is seldom
a straightforward process though. It often fosters intense public debate
(Greer, 1999; Reynolds, 1996; Rosi, 1991).
Taking its cue from this scholarship, this article focuses on the contested,
and frequently postponed, constructions of a new parliament house in post-
colonial Myanmar (Burma).2 Since the late colonial period, the country’s legis-
lative assemblies have convened in four different buildings. The unicameral
colonial legislative council (1897–1936) was seated in the Secretariat, a vast
ministerial and administrative complex in downtown Yangon. Once the Gov-
ernment of Burma Act, 1935 made the legislature bicameral, the lower
chamber remained in the Secretariat compound, while the upper house
was moved half-a-mile to the west, in Yangon’s New Law Courts building.
After independence was won from the British in 1948, bicameralism was con-
tinued and the construction of a new building combining the two chambers
of the Union parliament began to be discussed. Yet, the project did not see
the light. Both chambers remained in the same colonial-built assembly halls
until a coup d’état staged in 1962 by the armed forces, or Tatmadaw,
ended parliamentary democracy in Myanmar. In 1974, a new constitution
imposed by the regime of General Ne Win restored a unicameral legislature.
A parliament building was eventually erected to the west of the Shwedagon
pagoda, in northern Yangon. The one-party People’s Congress was a model of
COMMONWEALTH & COMPARATIVE POLITICS 533
rubber-stamp parliament; it convened only a few days a year between 1974

and 1988. Lastly, Myanmar’s fourth and current parliament was inaugurated
in January 2011 – some 23 years after the People’s Congress was dissolved
by another military coup in 1988. It has since been housed in a grandiose
structure located at the heart of Naypyitaw, the new capital.
The objectives of this study are threefold. First, the article shed lights on the
complex bureaucratic and political process of commissioning a public build-
ing in Myanmar’s early postcolonial years. Due to political instability, red
tape, financial stringency in a post-war context, and intra-elite disagreements
over architectural designs and aesthetics, the construction of a new parlia-
ment was repeatedly delayed in the 1950s and MPs remained crammed
until 1962 in the two old chambers designed and built by the British 30
years before. Second, it underscores the significance of public architecture

in the power projection and representational ideals of the Myanmar postco-
lonial state – be it democratic and civilian, or military-led since 1962. Third,
it demonstrates how the cultural politics of decolonisation, but also more
recently of democratisation in Myanmar’s post-junta context of the 2010s,
have influenced the construction of parliamentary buildings purported to
be the testimony of a national identity primarily defined by the dominant
ethno-religious group of the country, the Bamar. In particular, the gigantic
parliamentary edifices built in Naypyitaw in the 2000s were not only meant
to display the Bamar Buddhist canons promoted by the post-1988 military
regime. They also intended to epitomise the power and durability of the
new post-junta political system the Myanmar armed forces have designed
for the 2010s.
British parliamentary legacies

Britain annexed what covers Myanmar’s present territory after three success-
ful wars waged in 1824, 1852, and 1885. An executive colonial government
served as the British supreme authority in these new territories. In 1897
however, a ‘Burma Legislative Council’ was designed and tasked to advise
the colonial government.3 But the new council was in no way construed as
a first move toward self-government for the province. Rather, it was a
vehicle for British and mercantile interests. Its nine initial members were
simply appointed by the colonial executive and did not even enjoy the
right of interpellation (Tinker, 1967, p. 1). From 1897 to 1923, the Lieute-
nant-Governor, as chair of the council, could veto any of its decisions
(Trager, 1966, pp. 48, 79). The British gradually expanded the powers, auth-
ority, and size of this first council (Taylor, 2009, p. 75). In 1915, its membership
rose to 30. Yet only two of these delegates were elected, respectively by the
Rangoon Trade Association and the Burma Chamber of Commerce (Singh,
1940, p. 38). In 1923, London allowed further political reforms by outlining
534 R. EGRETEAU
the principle of ‘dyarchy’ in its Burmese province. Under the new dual system
of governance, policymaking was asymmetrically shared between a dominant
gubernatorial power and a still weak, even if expanded and more representa-
tive, legislative branch. In particular, the reforms morphed the unicameral
council into a majority elected assembly. The latter initially comprised of
103 representatives, including 80 elected. In November 1922, the first ever
legislative elections were held in the province (Singh, 1940, pp. 38, 39).
Other polls followed in 1925, 1928, and 1932 (Taylor, 1996, pp. 166–167).
To house this new legislative assembly in the early 1920s, a small one-
storey building was erected in the inner courtyard of Yangon’s Secretariat
(Furnivall, 1960, p. 16). A flamboyant neo-gothic edifice located at the heart
of the then capital, the red-brick Secretariat Building had been since the
late 1880s the seat of the British colonial and administrative power in
Myanmar.4 It displayed ornate walls, turrets, and clock towers (see Figure 1).
The relegation of the legislative council chamber to a rather unimpressive,
tiny building standing in the middle of the gardens of the lavish Victorian-
style colonial compound, was, as John S. Furnivall noted, a revealing metaphor
of where colonial power was then supposed to lie (1960, p. 16).
A last wave of late colonial reforms transformed the Burma Legislative
Council into a bicameral assembly – or ‘Burma Legislature’ – after the elections
held in 1936. The administrative and political separation of the Burmese pro-
vince from the rest of British India, outlined by the Government of Burma Act,
Figure 1. Myanmar’s first legislative building (1920s), Secretariat courtyard, Yangon

(picture by author, March 2017).
1935 came into force in April 1937. The new lower chamber, or House of
Representatives, was to accommodate 132 elected members. This assembly
remained in the same detached building located inside the Secretariat quad-
rangle. For lack of space there, the new upper house, or Senate, was trans-
ferred to the upper floors of the New Law Courts building, half-a-mile away
from the Secretariat. The building had been erected in the late 1920s
between Strand Road and Bank Street, to the south of Sule Pagoda. The
new Senate was to lodge only 36 members, half of them elected by their
peers in the lower house, the other half appointed by the British Governor
(Senate Manual of Business and Procedures, 1938, p. 5).
Ganga Singh, a lower house MP elected in 1936 from Mandalay, has pro-
vided in his Burma Parliamentary Companion a description of the layout of
the two houses (Singh, 1940, pp. 368 and 470). The House of Representatives,
the dominant chamber, was loosely designed on the model of the House of
Commons in London. The Speaker sat on an elevated chair at one end of
the assembly hall, with the ceremonial mace lying in front of him when the
parliament was in session. Seats were arranged along two lines of straight
rows facing each other. However, the layout was initially designed in the
1920s for a 103-member unicameral council. More benches and seats were
thus gradually added facing the Speaker at the other end of the assembly
hall in a half-moon shape to accommodate the rising number of representa-
tives. Unlike in the British House of Commons however, there was no large
gangway in the middle of this chamber for clerks to sit at; only a couple sat
around a small desk (Furnivall, 1960, p. 42). On its side, the main room
housing the Senate on the fourth floor of the New Law Courts building was
initially designed in the 1930s as a semi-circular assembly typical of multi-
party parliamentary systems such as the ones observed at the time in conti-
nental Europe.
The last session of the bicameral legislature elected in 1936 convened in
1941, soon before the Japanese invasion. Elections planned for November
1941 were cancelled for the duration of the war (1942–1945). The Secretariat
building suffered heavily from Japanese and Allied bombings during the con-
flict, and the parliament house in its courtyard could therefore not shelter the
legislative council when the returning British Governor reconvened the
assembly after the war, in January 1946.5 It took a year to repair and refurbish
the old parliament chamber. But it was ready to house the 255-seats constitu-
ent assembly tasked after the elections held in April 1947 to draft and vote on
a new constitution for an independent Myanmar.
The Constitution adopted in September 1947 opted for the Westminster
model of parliamentary government and the continuation of a bicameral leg-
islature. The two chambers remained in the same locations designed in the
late colonial period: the New Law Courts building for the 125-member
Chamber of Nationalities, or Lumyo-su Hluttaw, and the Secretariat quadrangle
536 R. EGRETEAU
for the 250-member Chamber of Deputies, or Pyithu Hluttaw (Furnivall, 1960,

pp. 41–42). The inside layout of the latter continued to replicate the typical
bipartisan assembly. Yet once again, more benches had to be provided to
seat the members of the full legislature when the two houses convened for
joint sessions. To the right of the presiding officer were ‘government
benches’ occupied by the prime minister, his cabinet and the parliamentary
secretaries.6 Opposition MPs sat to the left of the Speaker. This arrangement
conditioned the morphing of Myanmar’s early postcolonial politics into a
bipolar field whereby the dominant ruling party – the Anti-Fascist People’s
Freedom League (AFPFL) – faced a weak, multiple and disorganised opposi-
tion. The Chamber of Nationalities on Bank Street occupied a far smaller
room. Echoing the layout of the 36-seat late colonial senate, seats were
lined up mostly in front of the speaker, himself on a pedestal.7
State-building and the commissioning of a new parliament

In the mid-twentieth century’s postcolonial moment, the planning and construc-
tion of public spaces meant to shelter the institutions of newly independent
states have proved a powerful vector of decolonisation. The establishment of
presidential palaces, legislative buildings, courts of justice, and ‘national’
museums has been an integral part of the self-construction of the newly deco-
lonised states (Dovey, 1999; Kusno, 2000; Lasswell, 1979). Studies have high-
lighted how parliament buildings have epitomised the history of a society
and representational ideals of its elites, while exemplifying the values and
ideas of political life at the time of their construction. Their location, but more
importantly their architectural designs, decorative and artistic displays are all
expressions of the past and present realities of a state’s political and lawmaking
power (Cope, 2001; Goodsell, 1988; Macintyre, 2008; Rosi, 1991).
The desire to build a new legislative house gained enough momentum in
Myanmar for the issue to begin being debated by its lawmakers right after the
independence in 1948. The decision to allot public funds to the construction
of a new house was however delayed until the early 1950s. In early 1953, a
proposal was eventually accepted by the lower chamber and a budget of
30 million kyats was provisioned.8 A piece of land stuck between the colo-
nial-era Government House’s compound, the old Golf Links and the Maidan
where the British used to hold ceremonies and parades, was chosen for the
new complex. Construction was scheduled to start by late 1953. As in the
late colonial era, the Royal Institute of British Architects was consulted by
the government of Prime Minister U Nu, elected in March 1952.
The first objective was to gather the two houses in the same location. The
Chamber of Deputies, in the inner courtyards of the Secretariat, was barely big
enough to fit some 350-odd representatives when the Union parliament con-
vened for joint sessions. MPs even publicly joked about it. Ohn Nyunt, a
representative for Myaing North, sarcastically stated during a question session

held in the Chamber of Deputies in September 1957 that the parliament
house was not even as imposing as some of Yangon’s cinema halls. ‘The
Ritz Cinema hall in Sule Pagoda Road [is] grander than the present parliament
building’, he pinpointed, urging the government to build a house ‘dignified
enough’, and ‘worthy of a sovereign independent nation’.9 Bohmu Aung,
Speaker of the lower house between 1954 and 1958, also admitted being
embarrassed by the ageing facilities of the house when receiving foreign
visitors.10
The second goal of the relocation was to erect a building best epitomising
post-independence Myanmar’s indigenous cultural and historical traditions,
rather than pure modernity, and move away from the old British-built colonial
edifices of downtown Yangon. In processes of decolonisation, architecture

can stand as a powerful vector of emancipation from the old (or vanishing)
colonial rule and order. Drawing on local identity, city planners and architects
can promote the construction of public buildings displaying characteristics
typical of indigenous traditions long stifled by the former colonising auth-
orities. This act as a symbolic re-appropriation of the culture, histories, and
social realities of the society long subdued by outsiders (Kusno, 2000).
The incorporation of features of Burmese architecture into public buildings
had already been regularly discussed by members of the colonial legislative
council in the late 1920s and 1930s.11 A relatively successful attempt by
Burmese architects to include indigenous cultural elements into late colonial
Yangon’s urban aesthetic was best epitomised by the construction of
Yangon’s City Hall. Designed by U Tin, a renowned Burmese urbanist, the
imposing town hall eventually completed in 1935 demonstrated that the
modern, colonial, civic architecture of the 1920s and 1930s could espouse tra-
ditional Burmese iconography, peacock sculptures and palatial roofs (Lewis,
2016, pp. 90–92).
Parliament delayed: debating the new nation’s architectural

aesthetics
The perspective of a new legislative building fostered lengthy and heated dis-
cussions in the 1950s. They underscored the complex bureaucratic, political
and financial processes that preceded the decision of U Nu’s first post-inde-
pendence government to effectively start the project in 1953. The debates
also reflected the incapacity of Myanmar’s first postcolonial elites to agree
on how ‘Burmese’ and indigenous the design and architecture of the new
public building should be. The shaping and aesthetics of public buildings
and monuments indeed illustrate the representational ideals of the state or
regime that has commissioned them (Cope, 2001, p. 3). They reflect the
national symbolism and identity, which the ruling elites aim to promote
538 R. EGRETEAU
(Reynolds, 1996). This often comes with controversies. It took 10 years of

intense debates for the government of Papua New Guinea to erect its first par-
liament house in the 1980s (Rosi, 1991, p. 289). The architects of the new
building wanted the latter to embody the ‘ideals of nationhood’ and the
national aesthetics of the new Papuan state – in fact the cultural views and
national ideals of the ruling class. Likewise, the new Sri Lankan parliament
was dubbed a ‘temple to Sinhalese nationalism’ when it was erected in
Colombo in the early 1980s (Vale, 2008, p. 236).
As in the late colonial era, debates in Myanmar on the need to re-indigenise
the public sphere and the architectural urban landscape abounded in Myan-
mar’s immediate post-independence years. Beyond the willingness to de-
colonise and de-Westernise the society, polity, and economy of the newly
independent state, this has been exemplified by regular, heavy-handed cam-

paigns of ‘Burmanisation’ launched by the country’s Bamar-dominated
elites.12 The process of Burmanisation is manifested by a ‘Burman’ (Bamar)
social, cultural, political, and economic hegemony and the subordination of
foreign (but also non-Bamar) cultures, languages, and populations to the
Bamar majority.13 The first post-independence, democratically elected gov-
ernments of the country early on defined far-reaching programmes of Burma-
nisation of the national economy, the state administration and the armed
forces, among others. The post-1962 military regimes expanded, manu mili-
tari, these Bamar-centred policies (Holmes, 1967).
Disagreements within Myanmar’s leadership over the aesthetics of the par-
liament building played a considerable role in the frequent postponing of the
project. Despite the rising influence of a socialist-inspired architecture, quite in
vogue in 1950s Asia, the desire to erect a public building displaying local, ver-
nacular identity markers appeared as a priority of U Nu’s early administrations.
Several models proposed to the government were rejected in the 1950s
because they did not properly express ‘Burmese architecture and design’.14
A former Speaker of the Lower House, Bohmu Aung, once deplored in the
Chamber of Deputies the abundance of ‘Westernised’ plans proposed by
foreign, but also Burmese, architects, and engineers.15 A new parliament
had to be ‘Burmese in taste’, it was often heard on the benches of the old
assembly.16 The special committee tasked after the 1960 elections to lead
another round of projects reviews maintained that a new house had to be ‘cli-
matically suitable for Burma’, ‘impressive, in accord with Burmese culture and
modern’.17 This led the most notably advanced project being suddenly
rejected in June 1961 by the committee members as it was deemed ‘too
Thai or Cambodian’.18
A deepening economic crisis and financial stringency due to a sudden drop
in world rice prices – Myanmar’s main export product in the 1950s – however
kept on delaying the project. Or so Thakin Chit Maung, then Minister of Infor-
mation, attempted to justify its postponement in a reply to a parliamentary
question three years after the initial decision had been agreed upon. In Sep-
tember 1956, the minister promised the construction would eventually com-
mence in 1958, to mark the 10th anniversary of Myanmar’s independence.19
The debates on the choice of architectural design and aesthetics were revived
in parliament in 1957. U Nu, returning as Prime Minister in June that year, set
up a new parliamentary committee to consider updated proposals for a new
project, and in doing so abandoned the one selected in 1953. In February
1958, the Parliament Construction Committee confirmed the original choice
of location at the crossroads of Prome (Pyay) Road and Ahlone Street in north-
ern Yangon (‘Site marked for new parliament’, 1958).
But once again, the decision to start the construction was postponed in
1958. Personal rivalries and infightings within the ruling party led to severe
political crisis and the intervention of the armed forces. In September 1958,
the Tatmadaw stepped in and its commander in chief since 1949, General
Ne Win, was elected Premier a month later by the Union parliament gathered
in a joint session. The parliament was however shrewdly maintained in place
by Ne Win for a year and a half until new elections could be held, under mili-
tary control, in February 1960. But the idea of building a new parliamentary
house was put on hold by the military caretaker administration. As soon as
U Nu recovered, for the third time, his Premiership after the military retreated
to its barracks in April 1960, he launched another round of discussions. In par-
ticular, Duwa Zan Hta Sin, a representative from the northern Kachin State,
tabled in September 1960 a motion on the issue in the Chamber of Deputies.
He deplored that after 12 years of independence the country had still no ‘suit-
able’ parliament.20 This was a ‘slur to parliamentarians’, he argued, who had to
cope with the discomfort of having to share each single bench in the house
with seven other MPs.21
Several proposals for a new house were once again examined, in particular
by the National Housing Board and the Institute of Burmese Architects.
Another parliamentary committee, comprised of past and present house
speakers and cabinet ministers, was appointed in August 1960. In December,
it agreed on a new project planning a grandiose house with palatial roofs and
a distinct secretariat building in the forefront. Yet, the project selected was
once more abandoned a few months later, this time for ‘not keeping with
Burmese culture’.22 The Secretary of the Institute of Burmese Architects,
tasked to provide another series of workable sketches, nonetheless confirmed
in a letter to the editor of the English-language daily The Nation that he hoped
to very soon ‘materialize the project so as to have a functional, modern, Bur-
manistic building’.23 A young architect, Bilal Raschid, had also attempted to
propose his own plans. Son of U Raschid, a former anti-colonial leader and
key post-independence Muslim politician, he had been conferred a degree
in architecture from the University of Liverpool in 1961, thanks to the
design of an original parliamentary house.24 Using his father’s political
540 R. EGRETEAU
relationships, he lobbied, unsuccessfully, Mahn Ba Saing, then Speaker of the

lower house, to convince him to adopt his own model.25
It was eventually the project of Aung Myint, an architect from the National
Housing Board, which retained the favour of Premier U Nu in December
1961.26 A foundation stone was to be ceremonially laid out in October 1962
and the construction of the new parliament to commence soon after. The par-
liament compound was expected to be ready and functional before the
organisation of the country’s next round of legislative elections, scheduled
for 1964. According to the proposal, the two legislative chambers would be
facing each other, with offices reserved to parliamentary staff standing in
the middle. Close to the Chamber of Deputies, which was designed for the
accommodation of 300 representatives, a main hall with a seating capacity
of 400 persons, would serve for joint sessions of the Union legislature. The
Chamber of Nationalities would have displayed a similar layout but with
smaller dimensions. A cafeteria, a library for 10,000 volumes, eight separate
rooms for the private use of political parties, and residential quarters for the
speakers and deputy speakers (‘with tennis courts and flower gardens’)
were also mentioned.27
But two months after the project was voted, the coup d’état staged by the
Tatmadaw on 2 March 1962 not only cancelled, once more, the construction, it
also dissolved the parliament. A decade of prolonged discussions, red tape,
and the incapacity to settle on one specific project and effectively start the
construction of a new house on time revealed the complexities and flaws of
the early policymaking process of Myanmar’s post-independence adminis-
tration. The delays seemed also to have been linked to the potentially disrup-
tive re-organization of a bicameral legislature, which convened and
functioned only 8–10 weeks a year in the 1950s. In the end, it illustrated
how hesitant and undecided were Myanmar’s first post-independence steps
toward parliamentary democracy.
Designing a one-party legislature (1974–1988)

Myanmar would have to wait for the establishment of General Ne Win’s one-
party dictatorship in 1974, to see the initial plans of erecting a new legislative
house realised. Not only did Ne Win’s government effectively build a new par-
liament in Yangon, fulfilling the promises its elected predecessors had failed
to keep in the 1950s, but it also transformed the parliament’s interior layout
into a semi-circular model that would outlast Ne Win’s one-party rule well
beyond the dismantlement of the latter in 1988. In changing the chamber
design from a bipartisan setting to an amphitheatre in the 1970s, Ne Win’s
chauvinistic regime continued Myanmar’s postcolonial efforts to turn its
back on colonial legacies (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. Interior of the former People’s Congress (1974–1988), now Yangon’s regional
parliament (picture by author).
From 1974, a unicameral parliament, or People’s Congress (Pyithu Hluttaw),

became the highest legislative organ of the Ne Win regime (Taylor, 2009,
pp. 329–330). The one-party legislature first convened after tightly controlled
elections held in January 1974 (‘State power handed’, 1974). All political
parties, except the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) had already
been banned in 1964. The site chosen for the new house was, as originally
envisioned by previous civilian governments in the 1950s, located along
Prome (Pyay) Road, to the west of Yangon’s landmark Shwedagon pagoda.
A series of new buildings was constructed in the early 1970s to the southeast
corner of the erstwhile presidential compound where the colonial-era Govern-
ment House once stood.28 However, the new buildings did not follow classic
Burmese architectural canons. Rather, they were showpieces of socialist archi-
tecture, quite popular in the Third World at the time and much in keeping with
the ‘Burmese Way to Socialism’ imposed by Ne Win’s regime in the early
1960s. The result was a massive structure defined by stark lines and square
columns. Only the gently sloping green tiered roofs of the compound’s build-
ings were clearly derived from Burmese pagoda-style and palatial
architecture.29
Until 1985, the first three BSPP legislatures elected respectively in 1974,
1978, and 1981 all convened in a big square hall hitherto used for mass con-
gresses of the BSPP. The meeting hall featured parallel rows of seats all facing
a stage on which the chairs of the speakers and presiding officers stood
(‘Pyithu Hluttaw’, 1974). Representatives sat in the alphabetical order of
542 R. EGRETEAU
their respective state and divisions.30 This was, however, a novel chamber
layout that departed from the early British bipartisan legacies adopted by
Myanmar’s post-independence parliaments. How parliamentary delegates
are seated in the house is politically connoted and decided upon by planners
and architects well before a new legislature meets. Myanmar was home in the
1970s and 1980s to a single-party system with no legal opposition. There was
therefore no need to follow the Westminster arrangement with two parlia-
mentary sides facing each other inside the chamber. As an editorial of the
BSPP-run Working People’s Daily explained in March 1974:
To those accustomed to party conflicts, lobbying, bargaining and floor crossings
of the parliaments, the Hluttaw session may seem to lack lustre and liveliness.
Because Burma has adopted a one-party system, such activities are out of the
question in the Pyithu Hluttaw. (‘The Pyithu Hluttaw’, 1974)
It was not until the last BSPP parliament (elected in October 1985) that the
BSPP parliamentarians moved to a newly built, half-moon shaped amphithea-
tre.31 Data on the nature of the internal debates over the delayed construction
of the new house during the BSPP era remain however scarce and difficult to
assess. It took Ne Win’s regime more than a decade to finally construct a new
assembly hall for the Pyithu Hluttaw.32 For the first time the parliament house
adopted an arc-of-circle assembly with the presiding officers sitting on an
elevated chair, facing the MPs in their consecutive semi-circles of seat rows.
This new interior layout has remained the norm ever since. The new
amphitheatre built in 1985 did not have, however, much time to fulfil its
duties. In September 1988, the Tatmadaw seized power after another coup
d’état and dissolved the BSPP unicameral body. The chamber built in 1985
would not be used as a legislative building until the convening of Yangon’s
novel provincial parliament in 2011, more than two decades later. Even the
National Convention, the hand-picked assembly tasked by the post-1988
junta to draft a new constitution in 1992, did not convene there. Instead,
the 700-member constituent assembly gathered between 1993 and 1996 in
the central meeting hall of Yangon’s presidential complex, where the BSPP
Central Committee used to hold its congresses.33
Power and identity in a parliamentary ‘discipline-flourishing’

democracy
Legislative buildings are a symbol of a modern state’s authority. A place of
power, they house individuals – lawmakers and representatives – having
power and performing power plays (Dovey, 1999, p. 46). Nigel Roberts has
argued that ‘Grand designs’, monumental structures, and unusual architecture
are thus often expected from buildings purported to represent the ‘highest
aspirations’ of a state (2009, p. 78). In the 2000s, the decision of Myanmar’s
military regime to erect a new capital city illustrated the willingness of its elites
to commemorate, re-appropriate, and re-invent Myanmar’s ancient glories
and move past the British colonial legacies (Preecharushh, 2009; Tainturier,
2014). This was not the first time in the country’s ancient history that a
capital was replaced with another one, far from it (Lieberman, 1980). By
mixing postcolonial chauvinism, karmic Buddhism, and historical mysticism,
the junta that succeeded Ne Win’s regime in 1988 has frequently attempted
to reproduce, and re-interpret, the many histories of the Bamar in order to fit
into it (Houtman, 1999; Maung, 1999). Through the relocation of a capital, the
need to revive the old monarchist traditions of building new centres of Bamar
power was just being re-invented by Myanmar’s most contemporary military
chiefs.
Among the many official buildings constructed during the 2000s in the vast
plain that now forms the city of Naypyitaw, the new Union parliament, or Pyi-
daungsu Hluttaw, stands above. A new parliament should ‘take your breath
away’, in the words of Kim Dovey, who used the neo-Gothic majesty of the
Westminster palace as the perfect illustration (Dovey, 1999, p. 55). This was
obviously the case for Naypyitaw’s grandiose new parliamentary compound,
comprising 31 massive palace-style buildings. In Buddhist societies, the
number 31 is not trivial. The Buddhist cosmology enumerates 31 ‘planes of
existence’ into which beings are reborn until they can escape them, and
the seemingly endless cycles of re-birth, to attain Nirvana. Human beings
are said to be located in the fifth plane of existence. This led Aung Zaw, a
veteran Burmese dissident and political commentator, to quip about the
long way ahead before Myanmar and its out-of-touch leaders could escape
from the 31 parliamentary buildings and terminate the endless cycles of
their country’s sufferings (Zaw, 2010).
In 2009, a year-and-a-half before the novel legislature convened for the first
time, Myanmar’s central bank introduced a 5000 kyat banknote. On the back
of it, an image of the new parliamentary buildings was printed, revealing the
significance that the junta intended to give the soon-to-be shaped legislature.
Preparing its gradual, yet partial, withdrawal from a power it had seized in
1988, the Tatmadaw designed, and followed from 2003, a road map to a ‘dis-
cipline-flourishing democracy’. The roadmap outlined a transitional process
which would end with the installation of a post-junta parliamentary system
of government (Egreteau, 2016). Even before the official inauguration of the
new parliament in Naypyitaw, criticism of the gigantic structure was rife,
though. Detractors not only lambasted the compound’s allegedly pharaonic
expenses, but ridiculed its disproportion (‘Myanmar’s new capital’, 2008).
Reporters allowed to attend the new legislature’s first session, which con-
vened on 31 January 2011 after controversial elections had been held three
months earlier, were stunned (‘A parliament’, 2011). One NLD lawmaker
elected in the 2012 by-elections grumbled:
544 R. EGRETEAU
This place is huge and shameful. This is not the kind of facilities we need, this is a
‘royal palace’! […] There is a lot of window-dressing and old-fashioned politics.
[…] The set-up of the chambers is also not conducive enough for proper discus-
sion and the sessions look like ‘rehearsals’. 34
Unlike the previous legislative buildings in Yangon, the new parliamentary

complex in Naypyitaw is indeed grandiose. Anyone authorised to cross the
series of checkpoints leading to it could not but be impressed. The compound
sprawls over 800 acres. Parliamentary staff and special branch security guards
routinely use motorbikes to travel from one building to another. The northern
entrance is delimited by a small muddy stream crossed by two bridges, which
gives the occasional visitor the misleading impression that a medieval moat
surrounds the place. The seemingly isolation and gigantism of a compound
fenced off by military guards obviously speaks of commanding power. The

massive central structures of the compound house the legislature’s three
main assembly halls: the Pyithu Hluttaw (a 440-seat lower house, or House
of Representatives), the Amyotha Hluttaw (a 224-member upper house, or
House of Nationalities), and the larger joint assembly, or Pyidaungsu Hluttaw
(664 seats). Long, imposing hallways link them.
First-time lawmakers all seemed to have been impressed by the reverbera-
tions and echoes of these almost emptied galleries, as interviews have
revealed (Egreteau, 2014). Cavernous meeting halls have been designed to
welcome hundreds of guests, whether for conferences, banquets, or the ele-
venth hour speech of a whip to his parliamentary troops. This is a space that
carries authority, where people feel humble and obliged, or ‘ana-deh’ when
entering the grand buildings.35 The gigantism has also reflected the asym-
metric power relationship between the military elites who have envisioned
and commissioned the new house in the 2000s, and the Myanmar people
meant to be represented by, and in, the new legislative body of the post-
junta system that emerged in the 2010s. Not only has Myanmar’s military
establishment deftly overseen the institutional transition from direct military
rule to ‘something else’ after general elections were held in 2010. But it has
also successfully imposed its choice of architectural symbolism, design, and
location for the country’s post-junta institutions. The grandeur of the parlia-
ment buildings has acted as a powerful and symbolic force of legitimation
of the new political system carefully designed, and imposed, by paternalistic
military elites (see Figure 3).
The interiors of the three half-moon shaped assemblies and gilded
amphitheatres are similarly impressive. The architects and commissioning
elites opted once again to not revert to the bipartisan layout of the late colo-
nial and early postcolonial periods. Rather, they reproduced the semi-circular
assembly arranged by the BSPP regime. Since 1988 the ruling military nomen-
clature has indeed never departed from its original propaganda to return to a
‘multi-party’ system and turn its back not only on the socialist one-party rule
Figure 3. Main entrance of the new Pyidaungsu Hluttaw building, Naypyitaw (picture by
author, November 2016).
of the 1970s and 1980s, but also of the bipartisan colonial heritage. Besides,
the entrenchment of ethnic politics in postcolonial Myanmar and the consti-
tutionally mandated presence of the armed forces in the post-junta legisla-
ture, as outlined by the constitution adopted in 2008, could not allow a
return to a simple two-row type of chamber layout.
The shaping of Naypyitaw as Myanmar’s new capital city in the 2000s also
exemplified the articulation between ethnic Bamar national symbolisms and
the representational ideals of the elites that have ruled Myanmar for half a
century. The new parliament’s structures, designs, arts, and interior aesthetics
all represent the national identity promoted by a long dominant ethnic Bamar
Buddhist establishment. Beside the architecture and inside layout of the three
chambers, the iconography and decoration displayed in the complex are a
tribute to royal Bamar traditions and the Buddhist canons revered by the
majority of the country’s population. In the middle of the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw’s
entrance hall stands a massive 8-meter high golden hsun-ok, a traditional ped-
estal-bowl used for offerings to the Buddha or the Sangha, the community of
monks. These typically Burmese artefacts, filled with food donations, flowers
and gifts, are commonly placed on altars next to a Buddha image. As pointed
out by Nirmal Puwar about Westminster, even the texture of the walls of a leg-
islative chamber can shape collective memories and reveal cultural histories
(Puwar, 2010). The Buddhist-inspired iconography on display reflects Myanmar’s
dominant religious traditions, which the ruling elites who have designed the
post-junta state institutions have long aimed to uphold.
546 R. EGRETEAU
Decorating a parliament is a historically grounded ritual in itself. One of the

walls of the glittering entrance hall in Myanmar’s parliament exhibits, and pro-
vides the names of, all types of woods found in Myanmar today, as proudly
confirmed by parliamentary staff.36 Outdoor stairways leading to the three
amphitheatres are each guarded by three pairs of bronze-coloured statues
of chinthe, the mythical creatures, half-lion, half-dragon, that protect Buddhist
temples and monasteries throughout Myanmar. MPs from ethnic-based politi-
cal parties have early on deplored the Burmanisation of the parliament’s archi-
tectural and ornamental aesthetics. ‘This is too much Buddhist’, simply put
Pugin Lam Kian, the General Secretary of Zomi Congress for Democracy,
and a Christian member of the upper house elected in 2015.37 But the
massive and ornate parliamentary complex seems bound to remain a
symbol of what Myanmar’s ruling military and political elites have so far obsti-
nately aimed to show to the people, and to the world: modern grandeur, pres-
tigious Bamar royal traditions and Buddhist-inspired tenets.
Conclusion
The external architecture, inside layout and designs of Myanmar’s successive
parliament buildings have corresponded to different phases of the country’s
political history. The lengthy search for a new legislative house in the early
post-independence years has underscored how decolonisation processes,
cultural nationalism, and a flawed nation-building have influenced public
architecture in Myanmar. The repeated postponements and wrangling over
the design and cost of each project proposed in the 1950s have, in a sense,
illustrated Myanmar’s hesitant steps toward parliamentary and representative
democracy, and the failure of its first postcolonial elites to build a cohesive
independent nation. Yet, public architecture has continued to serve as a
key expression of the national identity and power ambitions of the successive
political and military leaderships that have ruled Myanmar, particularly since
the coup d’état staged by the armed forces in 1962.
The promise to design a parliamentary house worthy of a powerful state
and representing the values and ideals of its ruling class – long dominated
by Buddhist and ethnic Bamar communities – appeared to have been even-
tually fulfilled in the 2000s. The military junta in power between 1988 and
2011 chose to build an extravagant parliament house in its new eerie
capital city of Naypyitaw not only to provide Myanmar with a new iconic
building, a prominent architectural symbol of the state, whose image could
even be printed on banknotes. It also suggested that a new post-junta era
of ‘disciplined’ democratisation could emerge from the construction of a
new legislative space and seat of popular representation by an authoritarian
government shaping on its own, and without opposition, the institutions of
the regime that would succeed it in the 2010s.
Notes
1. Interview with author, Naypyitaw, January 2014. Su Su Lwin was first elected to
the lower house in April 2012, as NLD representative for Thongwa, a rural con-
stituency north of Yangon.
2. For linguistic simplicity and without any political connotation, I use the English
adjectives ‘Burmese’ and ‘Burman’. ‘Burmese’ refers to the citizenship and
common language of the people of present-day Myanmar, while ‘Burman’
more specifically designates the ethnic Bamar majority of the country, where
non-Burman ethnic minorities, such as the Karens and Kachins, also dwell.
Myanmar is the country’s official post-1989 appellation, and admitted as such
henceforth. ‘Yangon’ is the vernacular term for the English ‘Rangoon’.
3. Before 1897, the head of the colonial executive and leading administrator of
British Burma had only the rank of ‘Chief Commissioner’. Burma was elevated
to lieutenant-governorship in 1897, and governorship in 1923.

4. Although the Lieutenant-Governor initially resided in the Government House,
located in the north-western outskirts of Yangon.
5. The Burman, 29 January 1946, p. 1. The meeting took place instead at Yangon’s
City Hall, Corporation Building.
6. A description is provided here: ‘Session opens with swearing’ (1956).
7. Another useful description, with pictures, is provided in: New Times of Burma, 3
July 1956, p. 1.
8. New Times of Burma, 14 September 1956, p. 4.
10. The Nation, 17 September 1960, p. 1.
11. For instance, read the long debate on the topic between four MPs (Ba Pe, Thar-
rawaddy U Pu, O. DeGlanville and Ba Shin) in a 1930 session of the Legislative
Council: Burma Legislative Council Proceedings (Rangoon), Vol. 17, No. 3, 18 Feb-
ruary 1930, pp. 169–178.
12. Gustaaf Houtman prefers the term of ‘Myanma-fication’ in the post-1988 context
(Houtman, 1999).
13. Since independence, the ethnic Bamar majority has represented about two-
thirds of Myanmar’s total population.
14. New Times of Burma, 16 February 1958, p. 1.
15. The Guardian (daily), 17 September 1960, p. 8.
17. The Nation, 24 July 1961, p. 1.
18. The Nation, 24 July 1961.
21. The Guardian (daily), 17 September 1960, pp. 1, 8.
22. A scale model of this rejected proposal is pictured in The Guardian (daily), 30
June 1961, p. 1.
25. Which is the end was not selected either. Author’s interview with Bilal Raschid,
Washington DC, November 2016.
26. The Nation, 12 December 1961, p. 1.
27. The Nation, 12 December 1961.
548 R. EGRETEAU
28. Damaged by an earthquake in the early 1970s, the colonial-era presidential

palace was soon after flattened.
29. It now houses the regional government and parliament of Yangon. Visitors can
observe the complex from a distance when driving along Pyay Road and Ahlone
Street.
30. Since 1974, Myanmar is administratively divided into seven states and seven div-
isions (or ‘regions’ after 2008); Working People’s Daily, 9 February 1974, p. 1.
31. The Guardian (daily), 5 November 1985, p. 1.
32. Already in 1978 the Minister for Construction was picture in the Working People’s
Daily inspecting the foundational work. Working People’s Daily, 28 October 1978,
p. 1.
33. Working People’s Daily, 10 January 1993. When it reconvened in 2004, the
National Convention was transferred to the township of Hmawbi, some
60 kms north of Yangon.
34. Interview, Naypyitaw, January 2014.

35. Interview with an ethnic Rakhine MP, Naypyitaw, January 2014. ‘ana-deh’ is
hardly translatable in non-Burmese languages. It refers to a situation in which
a Burmese wishes to say something or behave in some way but is prevented
from doing so for various social, cultural, and physical reasons. The concept
plays a key role in the shaping of interpersonal relationships in modern
Myanmar.
36. Interview, Naypyitaw, August 2013.
37. Interview, Naypyitaw, June 2016.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Christina Fink, Robert Taylor, Bilal Raschid, David Stein-
berg, Soe Thwin Tun, Thant Myint-U, the editors and the two anonymous reviewers for
their constructive comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
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Commonwealth & Comparative Politics

ISSN: 1466-2043 (Print) 1743-9094 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fccp20

Power, cultural nationalism, and postcolonial

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Power, cultural nationalism, and postcolonial public

CONTACT Renaud Egreteau regreteau@gmail.com

throughout the country. The lavishness is in stark contrast with Myanmar’s

rubber-stamp parliament; it convened only a few days a year between 1974

years before. Second, it underscores the significance of public architecture

British parliamentary legacies

Figure 1. Myanmar’s first legislative building (1920s), Secretariat courtyard, Yangon

for the 250-member Chamber of Deputies, or Pyithu Hluttaw (Furnivall, 1960,

lined up mostly in front of the speaker, himself on a pedestal.7

State-building and the commissioning of a new parliament

representative for Myaing North, sarcastically stated during a question session

edifices of downtown Yangon. In processes of decolonisation, architecture

Parliament delayed: debating the new nation’s architectural

(Reynolds, 1996). This often comes with controversies. It took 10 years of

independent state, this has been exemplified by regular, heavy-handed cam-

relationships, he lobbied, unsuccessfully, Mahn Ba Saing, then Speaker of the

Designing a one-party legislature (1974–1988)

From 1974, a unicameral parliament, or People’s Congress (Pyithu Hluttaw),

question in the Pyithu Hluttaw. (‘The Pyithu Hluttaw’, 1974)

Power and identity in a parliamentary ‘discipline-flourishing’

Unlike the previous legislative buildings in Yangon, the new parliamentary

fenced off by military guards obviously speaks of commanding power. The

Decorating a parliament is a historically grounded ritual in itself. One of the

to lieutenant-governorship in 1897, and governorship in 1923.

28. Damaged by an earthquake in the early 1970s, the colonial-era presidential

34. Interview, Naypyitaw, January 2014.

Tainturier, F. (2014). Of golden palaces and celebrated rulers: Inventing traditions in

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