ANobel laureate no less, Aung San Suu Kyi is most idolised and subsequent reviled leader in modern times. In November 2010, when she walked free, the entire world cheered for Aung San Suu Kyi. She was the darling of the entire free world and considered to belong to the ranks of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King Junior. Czech President, Václav Havel- instrumental in lobbying the Nobel committee to award her the Peace Prize - had said of her: “She speaks for all of us who search for justice
Seven years later, Suu Kyi is a political pariah. All discussions about her unbending rigidity on the issue of Myanmar’s tormented Rohingya Muslims have resulted in widespread criticism
While the rest of Myanmar may subscribe to the theory of hating the Rohingyas - the common misbelief is that they are Bangladeshis and immigrants –Suu Kyi does represent her party and her failure to speak against active genocide has resulted in her fall from grace. News reports that she asked the US to avoid even using the term Rohingyas witnessed a backlash of criticism from the developed world
Those who interacted with her in earlier years recall, “She was a gentle soul, extremely gracious and graceful. I was posted in Burma and an elderly relative who had come to visit us had died. As a result, we had made our excuses for a dinner that she was throwing for the diplomatic community. A day later she learned the reason and a massive wreath of white lilies arrived… It was not a close relative, and the gesture was not required as per protocol… but she did it anyway,” recalled one officer.
Another diplomat, an Indian, remembers Suu Kyi sending generous portions of plum cake to every mission staffer at Christmas. Yet another officer who interacted with her in India regularly says, “She was a voracious reader, and loved detective fiction. She loved fiction with descriptions of food”. In fact, in her book ‘Letters from Burma’ Suu Kyi herself says she decided to learn how to cook chicken fricassee after reading a description of it in one of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe books.
Drawing room debates about Suu Kyi now revolve around whether her incarceration – at great personal cost – made her like this, or was it that she was always this way but the imprisonment and its attached publicity obscured reality.
In keeping with Burmese tradition, her name is derived from her parents, and her paternal grandmother: Aung San was her father’s name; Khin Kyi was her mother’s and Suu from her paternal grandmother. ‘As a child, she would have been addressed as Suu, and now the Burmese as a mark of respect prefix Daw (an honorific for any revered woman) or Amay (mother).
A little understanding of the country and its affairs is necessary to understand Suu Kyi. Her compatriots refer to themselves as Burmese and the country as Burma. But since the nation comprises people of other ethnicities, the politically correct usage is Myanmar.
Burma’s icon was born in June 1945 in Hmway Saung village outside Rangoon (officially called Yangon now). Her father Aung San had negotiated independence from the British Empire in 1947 and assassinated by political rivals shortly afterward. Catapulted into the political limelight after her husband’s death, Khin Kyi then brought up Suu and her other children in Rangoon.
In 1960, Khin Kyi was appointed Burma’s ambassador to India and Nepal and moved to New Delhi. While one son had drowned in childhood, another had moved to the United States. Thus, it was Suu who accompanied her, to finish her schooling at the Convent of Jesus and Mary, in New Delhi.
Students who were with her at the Lady Shri Ram College, where she studied Political Science, say that in addition to Burmese, English, French, and Japanese, which Suu Kyi officially speaks fluently, she had absolutely no problem with Hindi too. She then went on to St Hugh’s College, Oxford.
Married to Michael Aris in 1972, Suu Kyi, a mother of two, returned in 1988 to care for Khin Kyi who was ill. She, however, found herself the leader of the pro-democracy movement there. In 1995,Aris visited her for Christmas. This would be the couple’s last ever meeting as the then Burmese dictatorship denied Aris any further visas
Two years later Aris was diagnosed with terminal cancer and appeals from the Pope and the UN Secretary-General failed to secure him a visa. Instead, the government of the day encouraged Suu Kyi to leave Burma to visit him. Fearing that she too would be prevented from reentering, Suu Kyi did not go. Aris died in 1999 having met his wife only five times in the past decade.
Her steely determination to sacrifice her personal life towards the cause she stood for was what brought Suu Kyi’s name to the lips of students across the world, making her a household name
Global media who had only been reporting Burmese affairs sporadically had started taking note of the woman who had been under house arrest for 15 years over a 21-year period.
Suu Kyi was repeatedly offered a deal, in which she would be allowed to leave Burma if she promised to never return, which she refused. “As a mother, the greater sacrifice was giving up my sons, but I was always aware of the fact that others had given up more than me…my colleagues who are in prison suffer not only physically, but mentally for their families who have no security outside- in the larger prison of Burma under authoritarian rule,” she has said explaining the decision.
In 2015 Suu Kyi became State Counsellor of Burma, a post that was created especially for her. The Burmese constitution prevents her assuming the office of President as her children and late husband were foreigners.
In interviews to the international media, the head of the Burmese state, Suu Kyi has denied that there is any ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyas. She has, however, has taken no steps to bring them any relief vis-à-vis citizenship. All they get is a token residency card with no guarantees of citizenship ever. Why the silence? Is the Suu Kyi spirit finally broken or has she been co-opted?