1. In 1961, U Nu made briefly made Buddhism the state religion and caused dissent amongst Christian Kachin nationalists and was one of the main factors for the Kachin conflict.
12 Facts About U Nu
1. 2.
Less than two years after his election victory, U Nu was overthrown by a coup d'etat led by General Ne Win on 2 March 1962.
3.
In February 1969, U Nu submitted a report recommending that power be handed back to him and that the Parliament abolished by Ne Win in March 1962 be reconvened to appoint Ne Win as president to remove the 'taint' of Ne Win's government being 'usurpers'.
4.
When Ne Win made no response to his report, U Nu left India for London.
5.
Nonetheless U Nu formed his own 'government' reappointing Mahn Win Maung who was overthrown in the 1962 coup as 'President'.
6.
Amongst this backdrop, U Nu combined orders for military equipment from India with a request to receive Buddhist relics on loan.
7.
Beyond stately actions, U Nu took to fulfil the Buddhist ideal of the Chakravartin by engaging in personal merit-making and increasingly strong vows of celibacy to atone for the sins of the nation and to bring stability to his rule through religious devotion.
8.
When General Ne Win took over in 1962, one of his first acts was to repeal the Buddhist acts that had passed under U Nu's administration, including the ban on cow slaughtering and declaration of Buddhism as the state religion, as they had alienated largely Christian ethnic minorities such as the Kachins and the Karens, and perhaps was symbolic of a personality clash between Nu and Ne Win.
9.
An earlier version had been published in 1974; it was translated into English by U Law Yone, Editor of the Nation till 1963 and who, like U Nu, was jailed by the Revolutionary Council in the 1960s.
10.
Besides serving as Prime Minister, U Nu was an accomplished novelist and playwright.
11.
The play The Sound of the People Victorious that U Nu wrote while he was Prime Minister is about the havoc that Communist ideologies can wreak in a family.
12.
The Prime Minister U Nu himself wrote several politically oriented plays and novels.